ADHD Business Coach Tips: Finding Your Flow as a Creative Solopreneur

H: One of the things that I think has been most exciting and fun, but challenging, I think, at times for both of us is that you are a true multi passionate creative entrepreneur. So creating consistency and focus and being productive on your terms, I would say, was a big part of our work together, don't you think?

G: Yeah. Absolutely. I think I knew that I was going into my everyday life going, okay. What am I doing now? What am I doing to every moment was like, okay, let's just roll with the punches. And I was consistently overwhelmed and consistently just sort of squirreling my way through life. Like, what what's the shiniest thing that I'm gonna go towards next? Or losing an entire day off of, like, building one tiny color palette for one thing and forgetting where I was. So, there were a lot of things in my daily productivity in my life that needed some serious serious help.

H: Well, to be fair, you also have a couple of adorable littles and a four legger around and a husband. So you got a lot of moving parts to your life and a lot of moving parts in your brain. And I'm thinking back just when we first met. I don't remember then if ADHD was even on your horizon. I think what I remember you telling me is around that time, you'd been exposed to a lot of stuff on social media. It literally feels like since the pandemic, everybody's talking about freaking ADHD on social media. Like, the number of people who are self identifying with ADHD on TikTok and Instagram reels especially, everyone literally everyone I've met the last two years is like, I don't know. Am I or aren't I? And I think you were like, wait a minute. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Shit. Fuck. Maybe this is me after all.

G: Yeah. It was like every like, all these reels were popping up, and they were like you know, it was this checklist that I didn't even it hadn't even brought into my head before because I knew I had anxiety. I knew that depression was sometimes part of my life and it ebbs and flows. You know, we all have ups and downs, and I could possibly have significant ups and downs. But ADHD was never one of those things that I had thought could be a possibility for me. And then, you know, enter the sort of ADHD world of people that are just spilling their guts, and they're like, hey, is this you and I'm like, yeah, that's me. And then we, through this, community, I started listening to your podcast, and I was like, oh my gosh.

H: Wait a minute.

G: Hold the phone, it was just like this moment of, like, okay, wait a minute. What's going on? What's going on in my brain?

H: And you've learned since then, obviously, not just from our work together and our friendship that's developed over time that a lot of creative people have these traits and tendencies. And I think one of the biggest areas of confusion, Jess, is that people will say, well, I'm just creative, or I'm a multi passionate, or I'm this or I'm that. It's like, it's not like you didn't know you were different. You knew you were different but you had different theories. Well, it's because of this, or it's because of that. And it's like, I went down that list of what I call attributional theories. Oh, well, I'm this way because of my childhood, or I'm this way because of this.

And a lot of creative people are like, oh, I'm just fucking creative. Like, that's all there, that's end of subject. That's all there is to it but we're very curious people. And I think a lot of us are really drawn to understanding self and others better, like, at least the ones who are kind of people. And it's like, yeah, but, yeah, I get that I'm different but why? And it's that curiosity that kind of drives us to either seek out that information or when it crosses our path to be captivated by it.

And but you've made a decision as a result of this and it's something we've talked about a number of times, it came up during the rebranding of the podcast, which you were very instrumental in. I kind of reached a point even though I'd been a therapist for a bunch of years and been a business coach working exclusively with folks with ADHD for a number of years, that I started thinking, you know, I think there's just a whole lot of people out there who identify with these strengths and struggles, but maybe don't wanna have a diagnosis or don't really understand the point of a diagnosis other than medication. And if they're not interested in medication, like, why bother? Can we touch on that for a second?

G: Yeah. Absolutely, so there's a, family history of, anxiety and depression, and a lot of my family members have been heavily medicated for years. And I have feelings on medication, and I sort of believe that, everybody should do what's right for them 100%, my ideals are not part of this. But for me and myself, if there are natural things or habits that I can work on, if I can dig deep and I don't wanna say fix because I'm not broken. I'm just I need to adapt.

If I need to adapt my life in some ways, if I have to work a little bit harder to figure out how my life can be better on a daily basis or if I can, you know, find natural supplements or CBD has been pretty good for me too. Like, there I would rather try that to my hardest than take a pill. And I'm, again, not I think that they're that medication is perfect for the person that wants to make their lives better. I am a nonjudgment person, but for me, If I can do those things, that's what I would rather do. So, I've had other people before tell me, Jess, you're not broken. You don't need to be fixed.

And I've always kind of constantly sought out, like, oh, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Like, do I have ADHD? Do I have anxiety? Do I have depression? Do I have? Do I have? Do I have? And what I'm realizing is that no matter if I have the label or not, I'm still living with this brain. And so the words that I call myself or the definition that I have for myself or the definition that I have for myself is not gonna change because of that. What's gonna change is the actions that I take in my daily life to feel better and do better and have more joy and have more ability to breathe or have the ability to help other people.

I mean, in my business, my main goal is to help other people. So if I can help myself, then I can be better for everybody in my life. My kids, my husband, my dog, although she helps me be better, and my clients. So the better that I can be, the better I can be for everybody around me. And none of that has anything to do with a label that I give myself.

H: Everything about that is so relatable. And even though I had a license to diagnose and treat people for mental health disorders. As the years went by, I really voluntarily gave up weaving that. Because I think for some people, having an official diagnosis feels like permission, feels like acceptance. It can help them feel like, so now I know for sure that I'm not just lazy, unmotivated, whatever. Like, there's something legitimately different about me. And for some people who need the diagnosis to be able to give them that permission slip, absolutely. Other people wanna try medication. And for some of them, it's incredibly helpful. But I think even if you were on medication I happen to be medicated.

Even if you were on medication, that really only addresses a small percent of managing these traits. Like, it helps you persist longer at whatever you're paying attention to. But if you don't know how to pay attention to the right things at the right time, for the right reasons, you're just gonna spend more time doing that. And something I remember you said to me a number of times is that, you know, I know I'm smart. I know I'm incredibly creative. I know that I can help people in a very unique way.

I just need to figure out how to get out of my own way. And I think for a lot of the workss that we did together, it was like understanding. My brain is actually different. And I know one of your I don't even wanna say struggles, but it was you needing to understand how your brain worked works so that you can craft your business and how you perform the tasks of your business in a way that doesn't feel so effortful.

G: It's so funny. I started, one of the things that is overwhelming to me sometimes is when somebody's like, well, what's your turnaround time? And I and I'm like…

H: Wait. Hold on. I'll turn around and then you can count.

G: What's your turnaround time? Like and for me, my turnaround time is when it's done and when it's good and when it's right and when it's perfect for you. And that sort of comes around, you know, how I work in we talked a lot about transactional versus collaborative.

H: And we should probably define those terms.

G: Yes. Yeah. So when you first said that, I'm like, I don't know. People pay me money to give them stuff right? But I like to understand that the people that I work with are the masters of their business. And I love to kind of be a catalyst for their passion and use my creativity in a way that highlights them and positions them to reach their ideal clients. And the only way that I can do that is by understanding how they feel, understanding how they work, understanding their passions, their core values of their business, by understanding what their client experience is and understanding how their daily life works you know?

What makes you tick and when I can deeply understand that, then I can literally collaborate with them. I'm not building you a brand. I'm helping you understand who you are and what makes you special and attaching visuals to that but it's so much more than that. And when I have clients that are that are, like, oh, I thought you were just gonna show me the things and let me pick. Well, how am I gonna do that when I don't have your feeling? I need to hear your feelings and your opinions and your wishes and your hopes and your dreams. And when I'm in there moving making changes and making edits based off of the feedback of what my clients are providing, that's a true collaboration.

When somebody comes to me and says, I wanna buy a logo, I want this, this, and this, you make it and I pay you, that's very transactional. And that's hard for me, because it limits my creativity when somebody says, oh, I was thinking this. Or even if somebody, like, sends me an idea or a logo or some somebody else's work, and they're like, I want something like this, but, like, not exactly that. That's very difficult for me because it's recreate it's not collaborative. It's you hiring me to do a job, pay me to do it and some of that work is okay, but some of it. What I really truly love to do is, like, go deeper. I heard something the other day that was like, I don't want small talk. Show me your fucking soul. And I was like, that's it. Like, I don't wanna talk about the weather. I want you to tell me, like, tell me more. I always want more of people.

H: We were so well matched to work together, I think like, you didn't create my new branding. We created it together and developed a really deep, mutually respectful, affectionate, hilarious bond. And you helped me see things in myself, and in my brand, and in the way that I work, and what's uniquely different and special and transformational about me. And like you just said you brought a visual representation to that. And it reminds me when we first started working together, it's kind of like you knew you were creative, you knew you were this, you knew you were that like you've done so many incredibly creative things. And yet, because a lot of it is self taught, you don't have an MFA, for example.

It's like, well, is it good enough? And can I trust it? And can I really tell people, listen, you wanna do it this way because the results are gonna be great? Because to me, I see that as like, we are trained to think other people's approval is necessary for us to prove of ourself. That other people have to say, oh, well, she's got the right credentials. Or we, you know, somebody else has to say, you're great. But if you say, trust me, you're gonna fucking love this. That it's like, God, you're full of yourself. And so I think a couple of things that I wanna highlight about how I saw you develop over time together is that you gave yourself permission, Jess, to take charge of your own creative identity, your own creative process. You started feeling a lot more confidence and clarity about what actually makes you different.

When this gets released, I want you to listen to it a couple of times because the way you just described your process and the way you work very clearly, very confidently, like, that took work. That took digging into it. That took being willing to step away from the transactional nature. That very sadly is how most creative artists, graphic designers work because they don't understand that there's an alternative, or maybe they don't think that's what people want and you made the decision. Well, not everybody wants it, to be sure. There are plenty of people just think, well, I'm just gonna get Etsy basic, not even pro. I can do this.

Anybody can do this. They're not your people. You're not gonna be creating templates. You're not gonna be teaching people how to DIY their shit. You are the right person for someone who understands that their brand is an intimate reflection of who they are, their gifts, their talents, their values, their value and you wanna help bring that out. What we created together, I never ever would have been able to do on my own. I never would have even imagined it.

It never would have occurred to me. And because you trust yourself and you've learned how to work with your brain, you now trust that that's your process. That's how you work. That it's like that, you can do the basic stuff. I've seen you've done plenty of basic stuff. And if you have to, you can. But the collaborative approach is like that unlocks your next level of creativity and also just creates a tremendous level of satisfaction for you.

G: I think that there's something to be said for, I mean, so many parts of our lives, whether working with a coach or working with a therapist or, you know, calling your best friend because you had a fight with your husband and you wanna talk it out. Like, I know myself and I know so many people that need a mirror in their lives for anything. And when it comes to what I do in branding, no matter what happens, like, we live in our own little worlds in our heads right? So if you are sitting there and you're trying to develop your own brand or you pick a template or whatever, and you're gonna get in the way of yourself. And having somebody to work through every step of the process with you is, like, having your own personal mirror. And my favorite thing that I get to do is push people, like, outside of their comfort zone. Like, you need that x factor.

And yes, you may feel like you don't wanna put on those red stilettos, but I'm gonna make you put on those red stilettos, and I'm gonna make you walk across the room and shake your tush and see how you feel. How does that feel? And pushing people to an outer limit where they wouldn't have gone because they would stay what's where's comfortable. Gives people permission to have the confidence in themselves. And I think that the brands and the people and the businesses that I'm attracted to. Are the ones that are undeniably themselves and unique and authentic and the ones that come at everything with confidence.

And I'm not talking about, like, faux confidence. I'm talking about, like, real true passion and confidence. And the only way you can get to that level is, like, it's like the five people in the room, you know? You need to I feel like people were put on this earth to raise each other up in some way. And if I can do that for anybody in my life, a friend, a client, my husband, my children, like, obviously that's what we need, and that's where the collaboration comes in. And that's where my big crazy brain has opened up even more possibilities to how I can help people in the future because of working with you and really digging into this way of thinking.

H: I love that you came to a point where you thought, you know what? I'm gonna set aside the labels. I'm gonna set aside all the things that I've thought about myself in the past. And I'm just gonna get really fucking curious about, like you say, this big, beautiful brain. And I like to say, you know, I work with people with big ideas and busy brains. And it's like and I don't need to fit into anybody else's model for how I do what I do. And I don't need to fit into anybody else's productivity schema. I don't need to follow any coaches, gurus, you know, what it's like I need to figure out how to work with the brain I've got, not the one I thought I had or was supposed to have and that may look really different.

Something I'm thinking about is one of the things you wanted to do was be more consistent. And this was something we had to really chip away at over time because, like most of us, your thought was being consistent means I'm working on my business all the time. But for you, Jess, that just wasn't the best approach. For you, the best approach was stepping away from the business and living your life and building pillow forts with the girls in the living room and going fishing with your husband and going to record stores and going through old vinyl and then maybe coming back and sitting down for a few hours.

So it's like, I think, you always something we discovered about your brain is that you kind of always need to be priming the pump. You always need to be stoking the furnace, filling the creative fire like Julia Cameron says in The Artist's Way, you know, going on artist dates and just constantly nurturing your creativity so that when it's time to sit down and quote, unquote, be productive, you can do it. It's not cons oh, I gotta sit down and do a make sure I'm doing two hours of creative work every day. That we tried it. It wasn't right for your brain.

G: No. No. I tried the whole time blocking thing, and it's so funny because it was like, okay. Now I have it in my schedule that I have to sit down and be creative on this one particular project, and it was like, my brain went

H: Nope. But no. No. No.

G: And when I find myself getting stuck on something, it's also an energy exchange. So if I'm getting frustrated with something, I'm not gonna put that energy into my work. I'm gonna go down the street to the thrift store. I'm gonna clear my brain. I'm gonna walk around and or I'm gonna, you know, play with my watercolors for a couple of minutes, or I'm just gonna do something.

H: Rough house with the dog.

G: Yeah. The artist in me needs to have freedom. And if I'm putting the artist that needs the freedom and the ability to go wild into a box, then it's just doing my creativity a disservice. It's doing my business a disservice. It's doing my brain and my mental health a disservice to put me into a box. And this whole idea of, like, owning my own business fell into my lap, and that's a story for another day. But I think that, realizing that I am allowed to make this be whatever it needs to be was like the realization of a lifetime instead of, you know, hustle mentality or time blocking or push, push, push. It's like, no like, if this I need to let it breathe because that's where I'm at my best.

H: We need fun. We need flexibility. We need freedom. Not so that we can fuck off, although a little bit of that is probably very skillful as well, so that we can cultivate the curious, creative, charismatic qualities that help us do our best work. And I think it's the having the self acceptance and the self awareness to know when you're just fucking around. And when you're giving yourself some freedom so that you can create from a flow state as opposed to a forced state. Something, I do wanna talk about is that you, like me, like all of us, have had this conditioning to and I need to follow the rules. I need to do this.

Dealing with guilt when we don't feel we're working when we should be working. Is it okay to earn good money from something I get so much enjoyment from? Like, all you know, I think the time that we spent together, you unlearned as much as you learned and continue to learn because we're constantly peeling back the late layers to our authentic self and abandoning things that we were taught that didn't serve us then, and they sure don't serve us now. But one of the frustrations you had during our time together was, you know, we would set these big goals and plans, and you had every intention of fulfilling them. But more than anyone else I've worked with in the last few years, Jess, you had major, major trauma and loss during our time together that obviously it was going to hold you back. Can we talk about that for a little bit?

G: Yeah. Absolutely. So I lost my mother just over a year ago. And then, two months later, my father passed. And it's like I've been I'm laughing because it's not funny. Just, like, laughing at but I feel like I've been brought into this, like, secret society that I never knew existed because now I understand what people go through when they lose somebody you know? Any sort of loss teaches you so much about yourself. And, I haven't even I honestly, like, thought, oh, you know, a year has gone by. Why am I not over? You just never get over it.

Like, it's not something, but one of the things that I learned from the working with you on my business and going through that severe loss is that, you're gonna have, like, ebbs and flows and there are gonna be days when you're just, like, not gonna wanna get out of bed. And there's also gonna be days where you have to give yourself permission to have a little bit of joy because, and I keep reminding myself, like, they would want me to be successful. They would want me to be happy. But even that, I think that losing both of my parents so close together, has taught me a lot about the strength that I have inside of me to keep pushing forward and learning about myself.

And, honestly, even just thinking about my mom and so a lot of the struggles that she had. And I 100% believe that she had ADHD and struggled for a very, very, very long time with a lot of her mental health. And, looking back on that and now seeing what I'm going through, that is really, really eye opening for me. And I think that there's part of me that was like, you know, I feel like I could have gotten so much more out of this process if all of that hadn't happened. Like, maybe I should have waited to work with Diann or if only I had met her earlier.

But no matter what happens, I am so grateful that you were there to help me through all of that time. Because whether I went my brain always wants to, like, do everything at a really fast pace. I wanna learn something new and I wanna be really good at it. And if I'm not the best at it, I'm gonna throw all that out the window. And so when it came to coaching and business, what and I'm like, well, why am I not progressing? Why am I not the best at this? And then throw, you know, this severe trauma on top of it. It was sort of like, well, man, I feel like I should be much further than I am, but I'm exactly where I need to be.

H: You not only are exactly where you need to be. I think we are really terrible at being able to accurately identify our own growth and progress. Because like you say, we just keep moving the fucking goalposts. Like, we tend to be perfectionist. If we care about something a little bit, we care about it a lot. I think of it as like full ass or no ass, we can't half ass anything. And so you go at every everything you do, everything I do, it it's part of our nature to want to do our very, very best. And that's a beautiful thing because when we can get out of our own way, we can produce spectacular results.

The challenge is learning to be satisfied with those results, learning to quiet that inner voice that's constantly saying, shouldn't you be farther by now? Did you really make the most of this? What if this or that had to happen? You know, those voices are not helpful. They never have been. And, you know, because we can't prove it one way or the other, there's no way you can prove that you would have been further along. There's no way that you can prove that you should be further along. There's no way that you can prove to yourself, to me, to anyone else that you aren't exactly where you should be.

So why not just fucking claim it and decide this is how I'm going to talk to myself. I am going to affirm my growth. I'm going to affirm my progress. I am going to choose to believe that where I am is exactly where I'm supposed to be and this is my path. This isn't an aberration for my path. There's no way you can do your own path wrong, I guess, is what it comes down to. And I think it's when we think we're not doing it right, that's our old conditioning. Fighting for survival, fighting for relevance, trying to hold on to control. And we can say, you know what? We can either say, go golf, bitch. Or we can say, duly noted.

G: Yep.

H: Duly noted. Or I hear you like, we can have a town hall meeting with our own brain. Like, I hear that question or, you know, that's an interesting observation. Thank you for sharing it. And then just carry on with loving and accepting and challenging ourselves to be who we really are. I think that's really the challenge of the ADHD brain, whether we have a business or not, is like double down on becoming the most you and see what happens, you know? And I think you have.

G: I like that you said the most you is you because I think that the striving for perfection or striving for the best version of you or striving for better is something that, like, we're filled with just all this toxic positivity in the world, and everybody lose more weight, be smarter, work harder

H: Make more money.

G: Make more money. It's like, how about we, like, eat the cake you know? Like, eat just sitting down and spending that extra thirty seconds hugging your child. Like, just be present and understand that going a mile a minute isn't always gonna make you better or make you feel better. Like, feel it's okay to just to just and I think the more we allow ourselves with our busy brains to slow down a little bit and just kind of be present and be in the moment is what I've been sort of working on the past couple of weeks.

H: Actually, longer than that. Longer than that.

G: More like yeah.

H: I'm recalling conversations we had several months ago where you were saying that's what I want most of all, is to be more present.

G: I just wanna be more yeah. And I think that when you're more present, you feel more like yourself. Like, when you are trying to be 10 steps ahead of yourself at all times, you forget who you are and what feelings feel like. And you have to train yourself to slow down.

H: And sometimes speed up.

G: And sometimes speed up.

H: Well, that's your approach. Like, it's like instead of thinking I need to be consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, and that's how I'm gonna get ahead. I mean, you need to be consistent and that you're taking regular actions towards your goal. But how those actions look like, maybe big spikes and then long periods.

G: Oh, yeah. When I'm in hyperfocus, leave me alone. I'm getting the things done. My husband knows that if I put my headphones on and I start cleaning, like, he's like, I'm just gonna be over here. Like, I'm just gonna get out of your way. Because tornado dress Jess gets it done you know? There is nothing that can't get in my way when I'm like that, but then there is a period of rest that needs to happen after. Otherwise, you will completely burn out.

H: And we've both been there. We've both experienced burnout and know that, alright, that's not working for me. So this is what we're doing now. Hey, as we're wrapping up, I wonder if you want to share what's something you are currently working on now, even though our official, engagement has come to an end. It's something that we started together and you are in the process of doing now. And I think it's really exciting, and, there might be some listeners who'd like to know about it.

G: Yeah. So, one of my big crazy ideas that I came up with while we were working together, is to start a podcast of my own. So I have started the Brand Transformations podcast, and I am, seeking out my clients that I have worked with in the past and talking with them about their brand transformation, where they were, where how the process was of working through a rebrand and then where they're going. And what's so great about this is that it's helping me and them at the same time. And it's been such a fun thing to, to have conversations with my clients and really, like, dig deep on, like, okay, what were the challenges and what were your expectations and all of the things branding.

And then my hope is that it may help somebody out there that that listens, understand that this is not a black and white thing and see the difference between, a transactional approach and a collaborative approach. And maybe, you know, if they're on the on the fence on if it's time for a rebrand, then maybe this will help them find somebody to work with and not necessarily even for me. I'm not the per not the person for everybody, but, I think it's been really fun, even just setting it all up and getting it started. I'm a newbie, to podcasting, but, I just love having the conversations. So it is launched. It's a private podcast, so you have to subscribe, and then new episodes will come out as they're aired.

H: I will make sure that we link to it in the show notes so people who wanna know more about this collaborative approach to branding or rebranding can get to know you through the eyes of your clients, including me as I will be one of your episodes. And I think, you know, we started off with you talking about how somebody asking you, what's your turnaround time just makes you want to throw up in your mouth a little, versus now you have a podcast where you're not only talking about this is who I am, this is how I help. This is why you might wanna consider whether it's right for you. Like that, you're really leaning into the you as to you, which is to say you want to do deep, meaningful, truly transformational work with your clients, not just putting on a fresh coat of paint and calling it a day. And by the way, who wouldn't wanna work with someone whose philosophy is eat the cake?