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Mind · 10 episodes

ADHD & Neurodiversity for entrepreneurs

The guests who work directly on ADHD and neurodivergence agree on a starting point that surprises most founders: the problem is rarely knowledge. Entrepreneurs with ADHD have usually done the courses, read the books, and know what they're supposed to do. What's missing is a set of processes built for how their brain actually initiates and sustains action, not more information about strategy.

There's real disagreement about what ADHD is. Some treat it clinically as a performance disorder rooted in executive function and dopamine regulation. Others push back on the disorder framing entirely, calling it a different brain type that needs different tools the way someone needs glasses matched to their prescription. Both camps land in the same place operationally: white-knuckling harder doesn't work, and traditional productivity systems that assume clean prioritization and accurate time estimates actively fail these brains.

The more surprising thread running through the neurodiversity conversations is that the traits causing the most trouble, impulsivity, novelty-seeking, hyperactivity, hyperfocus, are the same traits that make early-stage entrepreneurship possible. Nobody argues ADHD is simply an asset or simply a liability. The consistent claim is that it's a double-edged trait that needs deliberate structure, rest, and self-awareness to stay on the productive edge instead of tipping into burnout or crisis-mode dependency.

What holds across every conversation

  • Stop looking for more business knowledge. If you already know what to do but can't execute, the fix is an ADHD-specific process, not another course.
  • Replace prioritize-then-list systems with brain-dump-and-filter methods; holding multiple priority categories in working memory at once is often the actual bottleneck.
  • Build in sensory or immediate rewards for starting a task, since the dopamine hit for initiation may be processed differently than for neurotypical brains.
  • Expect only two real activation states, intense interest or urgent consequence, and design deadlines and accountability structures that manufacture urgency deliberately.
  • Treat rejection sensitivity as a real occupational hazard in a rejection-heavy job, not a personal failing, and build support for it before it derails decision-making.
  • Schedule rest as deliberately as you schedule work. Hyperfocus and 90-mph output modes make it easy to skip recovery until burnout forces it on you.

Why standard productivity advice fails

Brain-dump-and-prioritize systems, the Eisenhower Matrix, and clean to-do lists assume a working memory and prioritization capacity that ADHD brains often don't have.

So it's not about working harder, it's not about white-knuckling it, that's not gonna get you where you need to go. It's about understanding how your brain works and building the processes that are actually fun and work better, which is a crazy combination, but it's It's the whole wearing glasses that don't match your prescription sucks. It's not helping you and you're not getting more done. It's like, it's the same concept.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 26:35· listen →

I always know when it's a traditional productivity kind of tip or system when they go, okay, first dump everything out of your brain. Then prioritize everything and then make a list of your to-dos. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up the bus.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 33:19· listen →

It's like, it's not an attention disorder, it's performance disorder, right? We know what to do. We have trouble doing what we know. And part of that is our ADHD brains make it really hard to decide stuff and prioritize stuff because everything's equally important and equally urgent.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 14:48· listen →

ADHD as performance, not attention, problem

The recurring reframe: it isn't that people don't know what to do, it's that the gap between knowing and doing is where ADHD actually lives.

It's like, it's not an attention disorder, it's performance disorder, right? We know what to do. We have trouble doing what we know. And part of that is our ADHD brains make it really hard to decide stuff and prioritize stuff because everything's equally important and equally urgent.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 14:48· listen →

ADHD brains get in naturally get into motion with only 2 stimuli, right? And that is intense interest or urgent consequence. And in between that, I call that the dopamine desert, right?

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 12:58· listen →

Usually they come because they are, they know the stuff, they've done the courses, they've done the marketing course and the business course and that kind of stuff, but it's just not clicking for them, there's a piece missing. And usually that piece is building ADHD processes to actually help unlock all of the information that they've learned.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 2:56· listen →

I don't think of it as a disorder. I just think it's a different brain type. And like nobody thinks twice about supporting, like if your vision isn't quite where you want it to be, you wear glasses or you get LASIK or you wear contacts. And why should ADHD be any different?

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 11:57· listen →

Crisis mode, dopamine, and rejection sensitivity

ADHD brains often move only under urgency or intense interest, which explains both the productivity crashes and the outsized emotional toll of a rejection-heavy job like entrepreneurship.

It's not that I couldn't finish an email. I couldn't finish the first sentence of an email. And you know, I realized later it's because, yeah, I was in crisis the whole time during that stretch and ADHD brains do really well in crisis. Like, we can rise to that occasion.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 7:35· listen →

Initially, when I started working with people, there was this idea of things like rejection sensitivity dysphoria and the idea that people with ADHD struggled with it, but there was no research on it that you could find, no academic research. But now it is coming to a head.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 17:19· listen →

This thing just took 3 months and 20 minutes— 3 months to procrastinate, 20 minutes to actually do it— like, but I did it, right? Then they keep doing that each day, all of a sudden that trust starts to come back to themselves.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 25:44· listen →

Neurodivergent traits as founder strengths

Hyperfocus, hyperactivity, lateral thinking, and comfort with self-designed roles pull neurodivergent people toward entrepreneurship, especially in the earliest, most chaotic stages of a venture.

It's very clear from all the research we've done that neurodivergent individuals are attracted to entrepreneurship. And I think the most simple reason for this is that you can design work in your own business to fit your own specific strengths and weaknesses.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund · 14:32· listen →

It seems that what serves them particularly well is hyperactivity because you can work long hours, you can work hard. You can also hyperfocus, meaning that you can kind of, if you find something you're really interested in, you can really hyperfocus on that and kind of cut away everything else.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund · 17:03· listen →

Many of your listeners probably will resonate with this, but I think I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I will go back to when I was 5 years old, I would wake up in the morning and think maybe I could sell perfume to the neighbors, like using our rose bushes or things like that. It's just in my blood.

Dr. Julie Causton on ADHD, Burnout & Remote Business · 0:43· listen →

Building structure without losing yourself

The practical fix isn't more willpower, it's external scaffolding: delegation, sensory rewards for task initiation, deliberate rest, and small daily practices that rebuild self-trust.

And so when you have a brain like we have, it's fun to be inside this brain. It's a good time. I enjoy it immensely. And then I'm face down. So I have 2 modes, 90 miles an hour and zero, and those are my options. And I've had to build in rest in brand new ways.

Dr. Julie Causton on ADHD, Burnout & Remote Business · 15:48· listen →

And when I don't wanna do something and it's on my task list, I'll take a minute and just sit with the fact that I don't wanna do it. No thanks. It seems terrible. And then I'll ask myself, can I delegate it? Can't delegate it. Let's imagine. All right, I wonder how much time it's going to take. And I'll be like, I bet I could do it in 8 minutes.

Dr. Julie Causton on ADHD, Burnout & Remote Business · 22:12· listen →

There's a physiological sigh where it's just like you breathe in and then you breathe in another 20% and then sigh it out. And it just chills out the nervous system surprisingly quickly. And it doesn't require counting or executive function like box breathing.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August · 29:55· listen →

That decision to stand in cold water for 10 to 30 seconds at the end of a shower is something the body resists. And everybody with ADHD who's struggling to get organized in life can benefit from an intentional practice of something that kind of sucks a little.

The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin · 44:10· listen →

Vulnerability to burnout and stress

The same traits that fuel early momentum carry real risk: entrepreneurs, and neurodivergent entrepreneurs especially, lack the external boundaries that would otherwise force rest before burnout sets in.

You have a vulnerability to, for example, stress. You have a vulnerability to being attracted to drugs and things like that. And it's important to be aware of this. And it's also because of this that self-care is so, so important for the neurodiverse entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund · 22:36· listen →

The thing is that as an entrepreneur, you don't have that, right? So it's like, if you don't know what your boundaries are, if you don't know what your limits are, then it's really, really hard.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund · 10:03· listen →

There's one study that was published in Harvard Business Review where they found that about 1 in 4 entrepreneurs show signs of moderate to large burnout.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund · 8:06· listen →

I don't know if you've experienced absolute burnout, but I would say I have experienced absolute burnout. And so it's like also when you visit that place called burnout and you probably have lived there for a couple years without knowing it almost, it's just not, it's just not a place you wanna visit again.

Dr. Julie Causton on ADHD, Burnout & Remote Business · 17:16· listen →

The companion guide

Reading about adhd & neurodiversity is one thing. Changing it is another.

John’s companion guide turns what these conversations cover into something you can actually work through.

More moments worth hearing

Everything else these conversations turned up on this subject.

Are you making what you need to be making to support the life and the people and everything that you wanna support? If not, where is the bottleneck? Look at your business. You know, where is— if you think about the theory of constraints, it's like, where is the piece that if you, you know, doubled everything, your business would break? And often, they're the bottleneck.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 12:22

The thing I love to tell people is you'll probably already working almost as hard as you can work. A lot of times people will come to me and they'll say, I just need to white-knuckle it. I read this book about dopamine detoxing and I've decided I just need to go harder.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 25:51

I dump some things down on the paper. There's no theme to it. It's really just whatever's top of mind. And I found that to be super helpful. Never been a great meditator, but the past couple years I've been trying. It's gotten better. I found breathwork a little bit more accessible to me, especially in terms of getting into what they call heart-brain coherence, which is a really great way to self-regulate.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential · 20:03

How is this happening for me? Not to me. What is this teaching me right now? Okay, a little patience, a little calmness. So when your brain is working from a higher vibration and it's more positive and optimistic, ideas flow to you easier.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers · 12:23

Our brains work in the opposite way... Be it first before you see it, right? So I don't mean pretend, but I mean, go to the emotion of having it now and then see what happens.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers · 16:55

On top of my vision board, it says, this or something better... The universe says, no, no, no, this over here is gonna be amazing for you and you don't even know it yet.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers · 18:42

I don't know if I believe in balance. I think some days it's like 80/20 and some days it's like 60/40. We had this business now for 27 years... I never had balance. Somebody something always got left.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers · 20:55

I asked him one day how he knew so much about love, and he spelled out, I learned it from Jesus Christ.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers · 32:14

So ultimately, the goal is not to control the mind, but rather to control where awareness goes within the mind. And the critical thing to understand is that any given point in time, either your environment, which are the things and people around you, that's what I define environment as, can dictate where your ball of light goes. Or if you had enough control over your own awareness, you can choose where it goes.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur · 0:40

But if I can't focus, I can't be present. And if I can't be present in those experiences, then all those experiences I worked so hard to earn are wasted ultimately. I just don't experience them fully. Then I go through life having some sort of very empty experiences.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur · 6:56

And I go, no, if it's my legacy, then I want a bronze statue of me in the middle of the garden, looking like a great explorer that I've built all this, created, and everyone to know that this is what I've done.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur · 16:54

So if someone comes up to you and says, I want an hour of your time or 2 hours of your time, the question should be, show me a deck. What are you going to do with my energy? What's my ROE, my return on energy?

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur · 35:54

If I'm talking to you and I want to be fully present, I want to hear what you have to say. I want to experience not only what you have to say, your energy, your presence of you being there. That matters to me. And that's why I learned to focus.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur · 46:11

I really subscribed to that mentality of just find the experts, you know, copy and paste, you want to hit this goal by you know this date, this goal six figures, yada yada yada, right? A lot of those tactical traditional milestones, and I fully subscribed to that.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 3:20

Even if you think it does, which I thought it did, it always gets you, right? It always bites you in the butt. And I didn't really understand how I could shift it back into something that was mine.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 4:59

It's more of setting that intention, going into space and just stepping in and relaxing and trusting yourself, trusting the conversation and knowing that the right people in that moment will always come find you.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 6:32

The whole idea of literally killing yourself for your business, to me, just never made sense. And I had a lot of guilt about that at first. So I'm thinking, geez, you know, am I really optimized as an entrepreneur because I'm not willing to do that?

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 21:28

So that isn't in alignment with quote unquote manifestation is that, oh, I'm going to set this intent and I'm going to initiate it. And you know, for some people that's just initiating it with a certain word or a certain practice or what have you. And then it's going to magically work. Well, unless you are a manifester and you're doing it in a way that isn't aligned with your design as a manifester.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 32:03

So what I love about Human Design, and also to take away, not even to dissect the tools that are inside of it, but the tools that are also available, like DiSC, StrengthsFinders, you know, Enneagram, all those things, you can see all of those results layer up. I kind of picture it as, you know, the personality tests that I just mentioned are kind of like the top of the iceberg, whereas Human Design is the bottom of the iceberg.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 35:35

It's those hallways that we try to push past, right? We just want to get to that next door or get to that next piece of information when really that is a point for you to celebrate, to recalibrate, to really go, okay, now what do I know to be true?

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 40:40

Every episode on adhd & neurodiversity

10 conversations, oldest to newest.

ADHD and Entrepreneurship: Unlocking Your Potential

ADHD entrepreneurs usually already know business fundamentals but lack ADHD-specific processes that make that knowledge actionable.

ADHD Entrepreneur Focus Formula with Steve August

ADHD is a performance disorder, not an attention disorder—people know what to do but struggle to actually do it.

Positive Activity: Daily Mindset Habits with Lori Rogers

Daily positive activities like affirmations, gratitude journaling, and meditation are scientifically linked to increased sales, productivity, and resilience.

Dr. Julie Causton on ADHD, Burnout & Remote Business

Leaving a secure tenured position for entrepreneurial uncertainty paid off because the pull toward consulting work had become unsustainable to ignore.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur

Awareness, not the mind itself, is what moves, and entrepreneurs can train it to stay anchored in a chosen 'home' area instead of reacting to their environment.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders

Entrepreneurs should prioritize mental and emotional profitability before financial goals, or financial success becomes unsustainable and leads to burnout.

Stoicism for Entrepreneurs: Lessons from Ken Davenport

Stoicism trains entrepreneurs to separate what they can control from what they can't, which reduces anxiety tied to uncertainty and outside events.

The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin

Toxic mold exposure can cause severe brain dysfunction that mimics other conditions and is often misdiagnosed by conventional doctors.

Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs with Alan McLaren

Personal branding works best when framed as generous knowledge-sharing rather than self-promotion, which removes much of the anxiety around it.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing & Neurodiversity with Johan Wiklund

Entrepreneurial wellbeing has two forms: hedonic (pleasure/satisfaction) and eudaimonic (purpose, growth, meaningful relationships), and the eudaimonic form is closely tied to overcoming entrepreneurial challenges.