ADHD Entrepreneurs Must Understand This in Order To Thrive | Business Coach Val Nichols

It's misalignment because you're not broken. You just haven't been given the framework. You haven't created an environment and you haven't figured out the strategy to build your business in a way that fits how your brain functions. Today, I want to talk about a critical topic that affects every single entrepreneur, every creative, every visionary, and every small business owner. In the world. Today we are gonna talk about mental health, the effects that mental health has on each and every single one of us, and what it means to really truly build your bold, beautiful business, even in those moments when your brain doesn't work for you. So if you are here, let me know. Let me say hello. Today we're talking about World Mental Health Day. So I know you guys know I'm a huge advocate of ADHD, of mental health. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Val Nichols and I am a business coach, an ADHD advocate and someone who has suffered with mental health issues myself. I've had them, you know, in my family members, and I know what it feels like to feel like I was once broken in addiction, in overwhelm, in burnout, and in silence. And so today I want to talk to those who are feeling this, and I want to break the stigma, and I want to break the silence one conversation at a time. In my journey, I've watched So many brilliant, creative, passionate people slip through the cracks, not because they had bad ideas or they had— they didn't have the drive or the talent or the skill to really truly make it in business. The reason why they slip through the cracks is because mental health. Maybe it was ADHD, unprocessed trauma that just kept them stuck. And today for Mental Health Awareness Day, I want to share what I've learned, what the research says, and how we can create a path forward that honors all of you, each and every one of you. Because when you're building a business, it is not just about your business. It is about your mind. It is about your spirit, and it is about your heart. Um, just a little bit of backstory for you guys. I was diagnosed ADHD later in life. I was 38 years old, and in my journey, I had already navigated my own addiction and recovery at this point, I had been sober since 2011. And for those of you who know that story, you know, I went from thriving, being like a super overachiever when I was younger, to essentially trading everything for an addiction and living in my car at 28 years old. And I say this not to get pity, but I want to share with you guys the context that mental health does not discriminate. To know that someone like me who has dealt with this my whole life— I have family members who are— have mental illness and that you can still build a beautiful business. From my process, I have seen collision and tension between mental health and entrepreneurship. Today I want to weave these stories together, the research, the strategies, so you can know where to begin. If this— once we break the silence and we band together to realize that mental health is a common everyday thing, And that we can do this. Why ADHD and mental health struggles coexist. So if you do have ADHD, I know a lot of you in my community have ADHD, and that's kind of been, you know, one of the specialties I have is working with entrepreneurs with ADHD. Many adults with ADHD actually experience comorbid conditions like anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, burnout. Overwhelm, freeze. And so if you've ever experienced anything like that, just know this is not the rarity. It is actually the norm. ADHD in adults often comes with a history of underdiagnosed shame and compensating strategies, right? We use the masks, we put the masks on to compensate. And this is something that honestly has made me very successful as a business owner, is that I've overcompensated my whole life. I didn't know I was doing that, but it's like I'll have my Google Calendar going. I have my paper planner going, and I have my calm strip from Lyra. This is box breathing. We can talk about that later. Let me know if you want to learn about box breathing. Overcompensated my whole life being overly organized to a fault because I'm always very aware that I have poor time management skills. I'm checking and double checking and quadruple checking when I need to be there, when I leave my house. Like I will write that out. Like right now. partnering with Blue Cross of Idaho. I am their tour manager for events they're doing, and I will sit down and write like, hey, it's going to take me this time drive time, it'll take me this amount of time to pick up the van, it'll take me this much time to go to the storage, meaning I need to leave at this time. And I will double-check that, quadruple-check it so many times because I'm overcompensating. Do you relate with that? Let me know in the comments. How do you mask your ADHD? In the past, there's been a stigma that, or a belief, That ADHD is something you grow out of. That is absolutely not true. 4 to 5% of adults still present, still have those ADHD traits, and up to 30% of entrepreneurs have ADHD traits. People with ADHD are more likely, as we all know, I sing these songs all the time. We are more likely to start businesses because we have entrepreneurial intent. Whether this is because we get bored often or maybe we have this way of like overstimulation can be really. Harsh for us. So if you do choose to go into entrepreneur, things like consistency, organization, decision fatigue. We also experience an extreme of mental health pressures. We— so according to this research that West Virginia University did, it's saying that we have more neurons to— that pick up stimuli, which is why we get overstimulated, right? And that helps us be extremely creative. We almost like can pick up on like the slightest little shift And it makes me an amazing coach because I can pick up on something my client does that's so slight that it's almost like I can read their mind. And I'm like, okay, what happened there? And we can dig deeper. And I'm able to pick up on patterns of behaviors, things that they wouldn't usually pick up on their own. That's because we have extra stimuli. We can pick up on that. But that also makes us more sensitive to the environment we're in, to overwhelm, to distraction, and to stress. With my, my background mental health, addiction, there are a lot of hidden wounds. I've been sober for 15 years now, but believe me, the hidden wounds that I carried made me so much more vulnerable. For a lot of my life, I thought maybe I was lazy. I thought like I couldn't get it together because I heard all of my life from teachers that Val's great when she actually does her work, or you have great potential, or you know, you're always late. You know, a lot of things that really caused carried shame and guilt about as I was in the adult world, as I was in the job market. And there was a lot of hidden wounds. Burnout comes from that because when your brain is firing in 10 different directions, you're carrying shame, you're pushing harder, you're often trying to outrun the underlying pain, which is exactly what I was doing those 5 years when I was drinking, running away and numbing. And I was absolutely trying to outrun the underlying pain. And this was all causing that shame, making me push harder. Fast forward, how that presented was fear, self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, guilt. All of these things cause us to spiral. And this happens with so many of my clients, whether if they're just busy-brained, if they're high achievers, if you're an ADHD entrepreneur. We often live in this spiral of shame, self-sabotage, guilt, feeling like we're not good enough, thinking we're too much. We have this extreme pressure to perform, to prove ourselves, and to be strong. Well, internally we are struggling, and we are the last people to show it on the outside because we have this false belief as an entrepreneur. All you need to do is look on Instagram and you see how All these people that just have it together, the beautiful house, they have the kids, they're not even sweating, and yet they're making multiple 6 figures. And so we have this pressure to perform, to prove, to explain, to validate, to be the strong one. Well, the whole time we are struggling internally. When I first discovered I had ADHD, I honestly went through a moment of like, oh, okay, this all makes sense. It's like watching that movie, The Sixth Sense, and at the end you're like, oh, the whole time this is what's happening. Everything started to make sense, but I also went through this like extreme shame spiral. I thought that people would think I was unintelligent, that they couldn't trust me. I thought the ADHD was the end. I truly thought it was like the end of the game. I'm like, great, Val, you had a great run, good job, but all your clients are gonna fire you now because they can't trust you. To actually do the job. I know that's absolutely not true today, but I really felt like people wouldn't respect me. That's internally what happened for me. And then once I learned, it was like this empowering force where all of a sudden I was like, oh, aha, aha, aha! This isn't me. This is not my behavior. This is a symptom. Of my ADHD. This is a symptom of my neurodiversity. And then I was able to really restructure my life and restructure my business with that knowledge and power in a way that honored my brain, didn't fight against it. And that's so important for us. You know, I've had regular, normal business coaches. I've had normal people in my life, well-meaning, that were just like, why don't you just Get a planner. Why don't you just use a timer? Why don't you just write things down? Why don't you just that? And they would really try and hammer into me that I just needed to follow this plan. I needed to follow this structure. I needed to follow this outline. But what I know today is that my brain just doesn't work that way. For me, it was so important to find someone who understands that and to give myself grace that my brain doesn't just work in this. Simple way. I can't just get started on a task. I can't just do anything. It's like I need to structure it in a way that works with my brain instead of fighting against it. The rituals, the strategies, the self-care, the boundaries, the mindset shifts that have allowed me to step into freedom, into impact, and into my true purpose. And as a result, the business I've built, the lives I've been so honored to get to change. And the confidence I gained, not because I was chasing this idea of perfection, but because of persistence, aligned strategy, and self-compassion. These are not things that the world traditionally honors. We like to wear busy as a badge of honor. We like to wear perfection and hustle and all of these things. But you know what I've really learned is that if you're ADHD like I am, Your brain doesn't work that way. It's all about being persistent. It's about learning how to lean into those moments when you have your creativity, knowing when to just give up because today it's just not happening, learning about burnout and the potentials of burnout and how to prevent that and how to get out of it quicker. Because there's a lot of times you can get that start, stop, start, stop, start, stop, and then giving yourself the compassion, the self-compassion you need. To not only survive as an ADHD entrepreneur, but to thrive. And I can tell you, for years I was really bought into this misalignment of brokenness. I remember thinking like, "I don't understand why I can't just blank. I don't understand why I can't just do this." I'd see people doing it. I'd see people showing up on time. I'd see people, you know, not wanting to start a task and somehow being able to self-motivate them to do it. I saw other people. Regulating their emotions in ways that didn't make sense for me. I saw people who were fine being in the same job for 20 years, clocking in, clocking out, and like good at good enough. And realizing that, you know, it was misalignment for me to think I'm broken. It's misalignment because you're not broken. You just haven't been given the framework. You haven't created an environment and you haven't figured out the strategy to build your business in a way That fits how your brain functions. The burnout, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the emotional swings— these are signs. These are like dash lights going off saying, hey, there's something you need to look at here. Something's not working. Something's out of misalignment. Something is not aligned for you. It's not a reason to say, oh, I knew it, I'm not good enough. Oh, who am I to do this? Oh, there we go, I should just give up. So there's not a reason to give up. When we integrate our healing, our strategy, our gifts, and we align to our passion and purpose, this is when the world gets brighter. So as we look at these things, structured self-care is a non-negotiable. Getting good sleep, nutrition, movement, getting into the rhythm of nature, taking mental breaks, anchoring rituals that ground you each and every single day. You know, I wear a copper ring to help ground me. I also, because I know I'm so sensitive to the energies around, I have a grounding mat that I will lay on. And because I know I, I tend to be the visionary, and so grounding is so important. It's chunking into microtasks and creating dopamine anchors. If you don't know what that is, let me know. I'll go over that in another video. But you want to create dopamine anchors, things that are going to stimulate that dopamine. A lot of times, and I myself am so guilty of this, and I have to write next to it and remind myself, I'll be making a to-do list, and instead of like a task list, it's like a to-do list, which is like a big huge event, like build your website. That's not a thing you can just check off a box. Like, that's an actual project that needs managed, right? So then we have to go in and create micro tasks. And as you check each and every single one of those boxes off, it's just going to affirm your worth, affirm what you're doing. So when you break your big projects into mini wins, you will associate those small tasks with pleasurable rewards, thus your dopamine anchoring. For you guys who are out there, if you— maybe you are looking for a decision framework, if you're looking for more alignment in your business, just know that I offer a ton of great resources for that. I'll be talking about that throughout the month right here, so follow me wherever you're watching this. Follow all the things because you want to use specific value filters to know that you're aligning with your purpose Not just with data. A lot of us can track the KPIs, we can do all those things, but data will not drive us. Dopamine will. When you have a beautiful framework to follow that, to create that, you will thrive. I want to just give a shout out to any of you who, if you have struggled with mental health, if you are struggling with mental health, if you somehow in the future are going to struggle with mental health, we all deal with it in one way or another. Let's break the stigma. Let's talk about it. Let's use this as a platform to start the conversation, build awareness around it, and let's celebrate not only awareness but healing and ultimately moving into thriving in an abundant, beautiful, aligned business that works with your brain and not against it. I love you guys. My name is Val Nichols. I'm a business coach for heart-centered, purpose-driven entrepreneurs just like you. I love working with ADHD entrepreneurs as well. And I am wishing you a happy World Mental Health Day. I love you. Let's take care of our brains. Let's take care of ourselves. Let's practice self-care and compassion. Bye!