The Missing Puzzle Piece: Navigating Business with Undiagnosed ADHD
From my 1970s art gallery to my beautifully scattered second career
Being older and likely wiser hasn’t necessarily been an asset in starting or maintaining a business. It’s really a matter of opportunity.
Some of us take a step into the business world at the end of our working careers because we haven’t been brave enough to do this while we held down a full-time job. Becoming unemployed later in life, either through retrenchment or retirement, gives us a chance to reassess what we want to do.
Often, we have held a long-time desire to work for ourselves, we’ve had an embryonic business idea or have been working on a small business on the side and now we have a chance to try and fly.
Others of us, which includes me, had no idea that we had anything substantial to offer in the realm of running our own businesses and fall into enterprise by accident.
I have been involved in a number of businesses over my working career, which I have either run on my own or in partnership with others. None of them were particularly successful and some failed spectacularly. Each one of these opportunities taught me something - mainly not to back myself, as I believed I wasn’t a good prospect in the business stakes.
What I didn’t know back then - and only discovered much later in life - was that I was navigating the business world with undiagnosed ADHD. Looking back, my track record suddenly makes perfect sense.
I had lots of good ideas (well, they were to me!), but my neurodivergent brain had a quirky idea of what should work and what I liked, which wasn’t always everyone else’s cup of tea.
Like many with ADHD, I was multi-passionate long before it was a trend. I co-owned an art gallery in Unley in the 1970s, was a successful Tupperware lady in the 80s, a not-too-bad Avon lady in the 90s, co-owner of a gift shop in the 2000s, family partner in a health food store in the 2010s, with a few side enterprises along the way - and all the while held down full-time jobs and raised a family.
It was a huge surprise to me that I became successful with my business following ‘retirement’ from my full-time career. Uncovering my ADHD was the missing puzzle piece that finally allowed me to understand how I work best. This journey has brought about a thirst for learning which I always had in moderation, but which is now running on absolute hyperfocus!
Part of the reason for the crazy learning I am doing right now is that the space I work in - from the rapidly evolving digital landscape to coaching my fellow neurodivergent business owners - is constantly growing. The immediacy of online communications means businesses are always finding new ways of reaching their target audiences and I love helping them do it.
Building a business later in life in such a time of change and evolution is exciting and stimulating, and I don’t plan to ‘retire’ from this beautifully scattered second career any time soon!
If you resonate with this beautifully scattered journey, make sure you’re subscribed to Beyond the Busy Brain. I’d love to hear in the comments - what ‘failed’ ventures from your past actually taught you exactly what you needed to know?