How Negative Environments Impact Your ADHD Brain(with Brandon Smith)

Presented by Understood.org

Bad environments can train ADHD entrepreneurs to second-guess themselves long after they leave those environments behind. Brandon Smith shares how years of struggling in school, standardized testing, and constant negative feedback shaped the way he saw himself, and why finding practical work completely changed how he viewed his ADHD brain.

In this conversation, Brandon breaks down how environment affects confidence, self-trust, business growth, and leadership. He also shares lessons from building a construction company, learning to delegate, and realizing that many ADHD business owners stay stuck trying to perfect systems long before they actually need them.

What We Cover

• Why ADHD people often confuse environment problems with personal failure
• How Brandon rebuilt confidence through practical work
• Why school experiences still affect ADHD adults years later
• The mindset shift that helped him hire and delegate
• Why unfinished systems can still move your business forward

If you're enjoying ADHD Skills Lab, you may also enjoy Understood.org’s new podcast, Sorry, I Missed This.

Listen here: https://lnk.to/sorryimissedthisPS!theadhdskillslab

 P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This isn't just me, it was very much the environment that was surrounding me that I was engulfed in, an environment of, you know, the classroom atmosphere, but also just the external pressures and conversations and what people were saying about me. That just wore me down.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This episode is brought to you by understood.org, the leading nonprofit helping millions with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. Hello, everybody. Today I am so excited to be joined by Brandon Smith, host of the Open Concept Podcast and founder of New Vision Projects, a company that builds custom homes and helps people bring meaningful spaces to life. Brandon's work sits at the intersection of identity, purpose, execution through both construction and conversation. He explores how we move from being stuck to intentional and a little bit about how our brains do not always cooperate because Brandon, when we were talking, talked about his ADHD and is happy to come and share with us on the show today. So we're flipping the mic. I've been on your podcast now, you're coming on mine. Thanks so much for being here, Brandon.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Guy, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it was uh it was a lot of fun having you on my show as well, and I'm really happy to be here. It feels a little weird being on the other side of the on the microphone, I gotta say. But I'm I'm happy to come on and share my story and and help as many people as we possibly can. But a lot of the insight that you brought me on my show was or my show was was awesome. So I'm I'm hopefully can can help contribute as much as possible to you and your audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm really glad we were I work with a lot of people in in sort of construction. I think that practical knowledge is so helpful and so complicated when you have ADHD. For those of you who, those people who don't know you, like take me through did you know you had ADHD symptoms? Like, what was that journey for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I I always struggled in high school. And so it really goes back as far as grade eight, grade nine. And there was some it was going through some difficult times, and school learning was certainly one of them. It was it was adding layers of complexity to an already, you know, weird home situation where my parents were splitting up and I was going through some depressed states. I was told in the eighth grade, I was falling asleep in school a lot, falling asleep in class. I wasn't doing all that that well. Um, my teachers, they told me that, you know, they always thought that I had potential, but they were writing me off as far as being a student, an accolade of the academic. It was a time where, you know, ADD was a big buzzword. It wasn't even ADHD at that point, it was just ADD. And my counselor had that I was talking to, he had told my mom and said, Yeah, he has a learning disability, and there were some pills for that, right? So ADD being a big buzzword, Ritalin was a thing, and so their solution to the problem was just give me some medication, give me extra time to go and do extra work that I already didn't want to do. And so they they kind of, you know, they they fed me some some medication, they labeled me with ADD, and they took away the courses that I was interested in and filled it with blank time in my calendar where I sat in a very small room with one teacher and like two other students so that I could focus on the work that I didn't want to do in an environment that I didn't want to be in. After school, I was told that I needed to do extracurricular learning. So after school, their solution was to put me into more school, into another scenario where I would just continue to fall asleep and not, you know, I would just was not interested in the in the work that we were doing. I wasn't doing very well. And naturally, just being in that environment, it really put me into a state where I had labeled, because I had been labeled with having a disability at that age, it penetrated who I was to my soul. And because I was told that this is who I was, that was who I was. That was who I believed myself to be. Because all of these other people that were educators, teachers, guidance counselors, parents, they were the smart ones. They were the ones that told me I had a problem. So who am I to argue with them at that age? When I'm not very educated, I clearly know that I have a you know some sort of issue going on. Uh, but it was it was uh it was really tough. It was it was really tough, especially at that at that young age.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So sounds like where you are in that moment, you're being given tasks, you're being given solutions, they don't feel like they're working. Describe what the shift was when things started to feel like they were working for you.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

When I started getting good at something on my own terms, and I felt that I was making progress in an area that wasn't defined by the environment that I was in, I knew that I was starting to get ahead. And for me, that was snowboarding, right? That was I was up on the mountain, I was getting better and better, that was where I wanted to spend time. It was a place that I felt respected. I had other peers that were sort of in a similar category, but I knew that when I was getting up there and somebody saw something in me, then I was able to progress and get better and spend more time jumping into something that I loved. Now, I didn't go the route of going the, you know, being becoming a professional snowboarder like I thought I was going to when I was 15 and 16. When I when I felt that I was in a place where I could express myself, when I felt that I was in a place where I could really make make ground, get better at what I was doing outside of that environment, that was really where I felt powerful. All throughout high school, I barely graduated high school. You can go back and look at my report cards. They were like, I was I was a little worried, but they ended, they managed to, you know, to push me through, and that was good. What happened was I I always really wanted to work as well. From a young age, I was always, always working, and I got my first real job. Uh, we can go back a bit further and talk about some of the the earlier jobs if you'd like to. But I got what I would call my first like real career job really early out of high school, and that was in construction. So my mom's house had burnt down, and I was helping her move into a rental, rental home, a little basement suite. And the the landlord, the person that owned that house, he was a recruiter for a large construction company, what was at the time one of the biggest construction companies here in Canada. And he said, Well hey, we need some we need some help. We need some strong, you know, strapping young men to come down and work on the you know the construction sites and get involved. And so that seemed kind of interesting to me. And so I went to the office and for an interview, or what I thought was an interview, but I wasn't actually walking into an interview, I was walking in to sign my employment papers. So I didn't even know what I was doing, but I was like, I guess, like, okay, I'll do this. And then I started the next week. So I walked onto this construction site with zero experience in the construction industry, and they gave me a broom, and that's all I did for months on end was just like I just pushed a broom. I was hired on as a laborer, but I showed up, right? I showed up. I was making money, I wasn't in the environment that I was that I was in. I just I I kept my head down. I worked, I asked questions. I eventually graduated to to now pushing a squeegee and clearing water off of the concrete versus cleaning up garbage. And about four, four or five months into this job, I was asked by one of the gentlemen that I was working with, who was one of my managers, if I wanted to start an apprenticeship. And I didn't even know at the time what an apprenticeship was. But for the first time in a long time, I felt that somebody had seen something in me that I didn't see in myself. And as soon as I was given that opportunity, I went home. I I told my mom, I was excited, and I said, heck yeah, like let's let's jump into this thing. Why not? So without even knowing what an apprenticeship was, I agreed to do it. And they sort of explained to me along the way of what that meant and what this could be. And so I thought it was a good opportunity. And then I went to trade school for my first year. So I worked, I worked with this company for about a year and a half, and then I went back to trade school. Something happened, Sky, that I never thought would ever happen. I fell in love with learning, I fell in love with mathematics, I fell in love with the idea of the concept of just you know reading on paper, dissecting notebooks, dissecting notes, because it was something that I was interested in. It was something that caught my attention that I knew how to use practically in this in the real world. And that was a big, real big defining moment where I realized, okay, this isn't just me. This isn't necessarily a problem with me. It was very much the environment that was that was surrounding me, that I was engulfed in, an environment of, you know, the classroom atmosphere, but also just the external pressures and external conversations and what people were saying about me. That just wore me down and down and down, and I needed to get free from that. And that was a couple of turning points that I found really, really affected me in a positive way.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Before we get back to the ADHD Skills Lab, I want to share a podcast I think you're gonna love. It's called Sorry I Missed This from the team at understood.org. We know that our executive functioning challenges don't just stay at our desks, they follow us into every part of our lives, including our most intimate relationships, whether it's dating or longer-term commitments. Hosted by Kate Osborne, the show explores strategies that will actually respect how our neurodivergent minds are uniquely wired for love and connection. I listened to an episode called Oh Baby, it's an ADHD pregnancy, which I've been through three times now, and I loved what they said about sensory struggles we can have, how we remember, and all of those little differences you don't realize until it gets there. So to listen to Sorry I Miss This, search for Sorry I Miss This in your podcast app. That's sorry I missed this. You know, obviously you were struggling with falling asleep, and so that was one of the reasons that you ended up with this diagnosis. And then you ended up in a position where you're like, oh, I've I really love this. I'm finding something I love, which is always an amazing moment that you know get that natural dopamine boost, all of that kind of stuff. I want to know from you. Explain to me what you think the struggles were, even as you were doing this apprenticeship, you know, that you think might have been related to ADHD, and then some of the strengths as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

The biggest struggle was tests. And still to this day, like one thing that I've told very, very few people in my life when I went to write my final exam, and I was I was a great, what I would consider a great carpenter, right? A great tradesperson. I knew trades inside and out. It took me three times to write my interprovincial exam because I failed it. I knew all the answers, but I had a real difficult time with the time constraints that were on the test. The fact that a lot of these written answers are designed to like make you double guess yourself, and they're kind of worded the same, but it's sort of, you know, one's sort of the right answer, but one is a better answer. To be able to concentrate and figure out what it was that they were asking me to do, that took a a lot of time and energy and strength to like sit down and be able to actually focus on that. Where I know practically in the real world, I can make those decisions in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I think a lot of people feel like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

It was, it really was that that pressure, and not only the pressure of the test, but also that was where I started feeling these negative thoughts and having these negative conversations with myself about I never did well on test because this was something that was labeled into me at a at a very young age. So all of that started to come back when I was now in an environment where it it took me a lot of work to develop that out of me, to redefine who I was and redefine this idea that I was actually good at tests. Because as soon as one sat down in front of me, it just went back to this place where you're not smart, you're not good at tests, you're going to fail, you have a history of failing exams, like your teachers don't have any faith that you're gonna get this done. All of these negative thoughts that I had from that young age filtered even into that point where I was taking the exam. You know, put me in the shop, put me in a in a conversation, I can describe anything, I can, you know, build anything. And those were the skills that were really gonna serve me, not trying to figure out is D, you know, slightly better than C, but understanding I need to get through that in order to get the, you know, in order to get the certification that was recognized at that time. And so that was really the biggest struggle that kind of came back to bite me in the butt early on for sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And so I'm curious then, you know, you had these struggles, you you, you know, you got through some of the more academic sides of things and you're into this more practical side. Take me through when you wanted to do your own thing. Because now you've, you know, you are obviously the founder of these projects. Describe that shift from working for somebody else to wanting to work for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

It came with building confidence, right? And and that was a huge, a huge part of it. And it took years to build that kind of confidence where I felt that I could move on. Now, where I started to build that confidence was, you know, the the scoreboard and what I was able to produce. And so I needed to prove that to myself. I needed to prove that to other people that I could actually do what I say I could do. And if like it was just like white knuckling it through adversity, right? White knuckling it through these bad thoughts that I I had about myself, about these negative, negative tendencies that I might have. It did actually do a lot of good looking back. Like there's a lot of positive that can come from that because it showed what you mean by that. Yeah, it forced me to have to work better in other areas. So it forced me to have to show up, right? I couldn't get by with this idea that hey, I'm I'm smart enough to do what I needed, you know, to do what I need to do. In fact, I'm not smart, so I have to work harder. I I'm I'm not smart, I'm never gonna be looked at, so I have to show up earlier. So I'm I'm not I'm not smart, I'm never gonna make it, so I have to ask questions, I have to ask better questions because I need to figure this out. So, what that did was it put me in a position where it was actually a huge blessing, where a lot of those things, the showing up or the showing up early, the the hard work, all of those things that that started to build the confidence. My whole life now is like really rooted in a lot of that stuff that I value because I know what that what that did for me. So I'm you know very thankful for going through this process and having to work through this on my own terms. But that was how I got through that point to start building confidence, was really developing a track record of showing up. And as I did, people started seeing more and more in me and started offering more and more opportunity, giving me more and more places to go with my career. And I remember I was sitting, I was uh second year in my apprenticeship. I think I was like three years into construction, and I had finished two years of school. And I was asked to sit at a at a table at the comp, like the head of the company table to go over and have a QA about what was going on in the construction industry. And we went around Sky and everybody was saying their titles of who they were. There was probably 20 of us in the room, you know, senior project management, this, surveyor, this, 25-year site super over here. And it got to the point where me, I'm like, I'm second-year carpentry apprentice. And they kind of all looked at me, right? And it was like, why is this? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? But I tell you, it was wild to be in that position. And they all felt that despite my accolades and where I was in the my current, you know, academic position with the company, whatever I didn't have much schooling behind me. There was a reason why I was there at that table. There was a reason why I was invited to go and provide feedback because they felt that the information that I had to provide was going to be valuable to them operating their company and moving forward.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

And that was also a defining moment where I was like, okay, somebody here believes in me. People are starting to see that I'm not this person. And they started seeing that in me before, well before I started seeing that. And that was the biggest, you know, one of the bigger issues that took me a long time. But making that transition back to your sort of original question from working with that company to going and founding my own company, that did not come without building up a huge amount of confidence over time. There's no doubt that I was scared shitless. But I had at that point, well, I was like barely graduated high school. So I'll give you a bit of a bit of context from this. Barely graduated high school. What construction allowed me to do was at the age of 22 buy my first home. And I was the youngest, I was the first person in my graduating class to own their own home. And then I bought my second home at the age of 23. And this was because I was able to put my head down, work, save money, and buy a place that was like reasonably inexpensive. But making the jump into starting my own business, I now had two mortgages under my belt. I had a very small amount in savings. It was a huge risk, but ended up making that jump simply because now I felt I had confidence in myself and people had confidence in me.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

So you talked about this idea of, you know, if we zoom forward a little bit now, you run your own company, you know, you have a team with you, there's a lot of pieces going on. Can you tell me just as a baseline, like how many people work for you right now?

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, so there's 12 of us total that are in-house, and we have on any given project, we have about 50 to 60 odd uh uh subcontractors that are around at any given time. But in in-house, there's uh there's about a dozen of us, 13 of us maybe.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Do you have an EA at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 18:46

I do, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Okay. So in in any given job, you know, that you're doing, you're not doing your own quotes or like doing a lot of the admin side of it. You're not doing a lot of the contracting side of it, you're more overseeing it.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, and I'm I have a full team that's overseeing everything. So my my primary focus right now is focusing on sales, marketing, and leadership. That's really it. So biggest part of my day is focusing on marketing, getting our our team out there. And here, just overseeing operations, trying to make them more effective by integrating, understanding, you know, which AI products are gonna work best. Yeah. Um that's a big part of it now. Yeah, but I have an awesome team that handles delivery. My project managers that work with us, they're they're here because they're way better at it than I am.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I wanted to double down on that a little bit because you you're in a position that a lot of the people that I work with want to be in. Like a lot of the people I work with are at a point where they have they have hired a few people, but they haven't really got that full oversight yet. I think that's the messy middle that a lot of people talk about when it comes to these kinds of businesses. And so what I want to know from you is given that you're, you know, you struggled with the same symptoms that they've struggled with, what was that shift? Like, how did you go from I have a couple of people, but I'm not fully, you know, out of this out of this stuff to getting out of it. What was that shift for you?

SPEAKER_02 20:21

It was having an ungodly amount of trust in people that they were that they were going to be able to to do what they needed to get done, and take have faith in the in the fact that I've done a good job in hiring people. I've made it very clear that this is the that this is the vision, this is where we want to go, and have been able to define an understanding of their vision and what they want and know that without a doubt we can fit their vision inside what it is that I want to go build.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Did you have a moment where you had to invest sort of before you were ready? I was talking to Cassidy about this on an episode a couple of days ago, and you talked about this idea of having to invest before you saw the outcome. And I imagine for you bringing these people on and trusting them, that's a lot of trusting in in you know, in the future and your like can you describe that for me a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, I think and and Cassidy's great, so I can't wait to listen to that episode as well. The biggest struggle that people have is they is like with business itself, when you it's there's a lot of uncertainty, right? You just you don't know what it is that you're gonna necessarily be getting yourself into. So people have a tendency of let's say you're you know, you need you want to hire somebody to replace you, but call it a project manager, call it a success manager, maybe whatever you know your business is. Like, I just don't have enough work coming in to like to to hire for this role. So like I'm gonna I have to just keep focusing on that and trying to get some more work in. But at the same time, I can't really focus on getting more work in because. Because I'm still doing all of these tasks that I know that I need to hand off. And so at that point, it's just this secular, you know, motion that you just kind of get into and you can't really get out of because you know that if you could just focus the time on what you need to do versus what you're doing, it's gonna clear up this time, but you keep jumping back and forth between both stages. And I I'm a big fan of what I call forcing functions. So I literally just went over this with my team. So forcing function being you set something in stone, you invest in something, whatever that is, and you're gonna run as fast as you can to make sure that you hit that goal because you put something at something at stake. So my preference is knowing right now, okay, hey, pipeline may not be as full as it's going to be, but I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna hire that person with the expectation that my pipeline is gonna be full. Because when I go and hire that person, I know that I'm gonna put in all the I'm gonna put in the time, the effort, just the the the grit to actually make the decisions that I need to make. I'm gonna cut everything else out because my one like defining factor that I know that needs to be done is gonna be to fill that pipeline and make sure that that that whoever I'm hiring comes into my world. It also like even even with onboarding, right? So with onboarding processes, anytime that I've hired somebody that's maybe been a bit intimidating to me, because maybe you know, I used to have this thing like I needed to be the smartest person around. Why would anybody come and work for me if I if they you know were smarter than me, they would just go and work for somebody else. That was a huge, yeah, it was a huge mindset blocker. But what it forced me to do was anytime I would I would hire somebody that I thought was, you know, better educated than I was or had more accolades than I did, was really start to dial in that onboarding process. And I knew like, okay, when this person shows up, everything is gonna be dialed. And I'm gonna like that becomes my one priority focus is like make sure that I that everything is put together in a way that is gonna blow the socks off of this person when they walk in so that they get kicked in the face with excitement to be here. So that that is a forcing function.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Go through this then. I wanna I want to get a sense of this because one of the biggest things that can happen, especially if you struggle with ADHD, is not knowing which bullseye to hit, wanting to have 10 bullseyes. You mentioned, you know, you hire someone, you onboard them, you know, okay, pipeline isn't what it is, but I'm onboarding this person because I am trusting and believing that we're gonna go fast together and we're gonna hit that bullseye. But the problem that I see a lot with clients, and quite frankly with myself as well, is we want all the bullseyes. And this is a big conversation. So, what I want to know from you, because clearly you've done it, is how did you stay with the one thing?

SPEAKER_02 24:54

I get it about 90% of the way done, and then I focus on that finalizing that last 10% at the 11th hour. It's the same way that I like I used to get my homework assignments done, and it's the same way that I and like granted, I'm not saying that this advice is the best advice for everybody. This works for me, right? And I'll give an I'll give an example, right? We go back to onboarding, all right. So I know in my mind, I've worked through the the onboarding checklist when I was hiring my first employee, right? And it's gotten better and better and better over the years. I've hired, you know, almost probably a hundred people over my 16, 17 years in business. Maybe not quite that much, but lots of people. Onboarding somebody as has gotten better and better over the years, and it always does. And that's the thing is you can always refine it as you go. It doesn't need to be perfect when you start, but that's where you that's where you learn from. So when I'm well use the hiring document as an example, if I'm building that, I'm getting it to a point, right, where where I know I'm gonna need this in the future. I'm gonna get it 80% done, 90% done. It's not gonna be perfect, but I'm gonna put it there. And then when it comes time to actually make that hire and onboard that person we've interviewed, we've agreed that that they're gonna come on and they're coming on for their first day. I know that before they get hired, I have that confidence that I'm gonna go in, review that, and get it done and get it dialed before that happens. But I don't have all the confidence in the world, nor that I think it's the best strategy to dial it in and get it 100% accurate because there's just way too many layers of complexity that can force you to just talk yourself out of it or say, I don't have time to do that, or it's not good enough, and it's you're just not gonna be able to do anything at that point. I like starting it, and if if even if it's not a hundred percent done, I've come to understand that that's okay, it's gonna get 80% done and 90% done right now, and 10% when it matters, because I don't need to eliminate a hundred percent of problems that are not problems yet.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yes, and I think that's so important. I think that's the number one thing that I I need to remember, and I also remind everyone else is like you will want to do all of it, but you can't. So you have to figure out what is the most what is the biggest problem you have right now, and then you have to go after that problem until it's fixed. Like that's super simple. I think we've heard it many times from many mentors, but it's the same. It's it's true, and a lot of this comes down to like having faith. You mentioned that idea, having faith that yes, you were correct, yes, this was the right problem, and yes, you are solving it.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

The question always comes back to is this the right problem? Right, and uh to to solve. And you know, we we talk about theory of constraints in a lot of here. If you haven't read the book, The Goal um is an awesome book on theory of constraints. It's quite fun as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

It's a fiction book.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Yeah, it's it's super fun. I love the audiobook too. Like that version had a bunch of different characters in it and chit-chatting, and yeah, it was it's a it's a fun book. But that book, it it got me. If anybody else has read it, they probably had this over, you know, after reading it, they kind of jumped in this place and they're looking for problems to solve, and they're like, okay, we want to tweak this, we need to tweak that. But it's it really is asking the self, okay, is there is this a is this a right now problem, or is this potentially a problem down the road? And that's gonna be solved at a different time. Like the problems that need to be solved down the road, we know like that that might need to be worked on, but it may not be something that needs to be solved immediately, right? So it it is just it is just attacking those in priority sequence. And I think Sky like people need to realize too that every business is broken, and it always will be in perpetuity for as long as you're a business owner, it's there's always gonna be stuff to work on. There's no there's no perfect business. I've yet to see a perfect business, and I I I don't ever think that any business I ever own will ever be perfect because that's it's super subjective. But as soon as you can kind of wrap your head around that, it like it really frees you up from a lot of that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

A hundred percent. And I think one of the things that I wanted to touch on with this, because I get this a lot from people who work in trades and these kinds of you know, construction trades, all those businesses in Australia, which is close to where I live, we call it tradies. So trying not to say that word. But you know, there's always this conversation of I can't hire good people. You know, if you're in a service business, that's the conversation I hear all the time. People say, I just can't hire good people, you don't understand this industry, I live in a local area, there's no one good here. I've tried this, I've tried that. That's always the conversation. Now I know because I've I've spoken to a lot of people who teach and work in this environment, that this is not true, because obviously successful people solve this problem. How did you solve that problem?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

You know, it's funny. I I have that same conversation with people all the time, right? And they say, Oh, you know, you can't find anybody, can't find good help. And I was asked, I was like, okay, well, is your competition finding help? Does your competition have good people? And they're like, Yeah, well, they got some pretty good people. It's like, okay, well, then first of all, let's just eliminate the fact that that's a limiting belief. It may be challenging in your market, no doubt. There may be some shortages, but those people are out there. So you need to give them a compelling enough reason to come and want to work with you, work with the team. But that, first of all, is something just that you need to really get out of your mind because it is not accurate. It is just something that you've heard in the marketplace, it's something that you've made up because you've tried once, tried a couple times, you've thrown a little ad out there and you didn't get any bites, and now you're sitting back and you're blaming this external environment on your situation or how you perceive that. And I always ask, too, I'm like, all right, well, what are you trying? And like, are you trying or are you moving mountains? Right? Because there's a difference. Throwing an ad out there on Indeed or ZipRecruiter or whatever it is, Facebook Marketplace or something.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

Cool. Like that is that is trying, sort of, right? But if you're moving mountains, right? All right, like how many people are you getting out there and talking to face to face? How many like physical flyers are you putting up at your local gym? Probably none because you're embarrassed and you don't want to like go and you know put up the fact that you have a board in your hiring, right? How many, how, how many recruiters have you talked to? Like, there are ways to solve this problem. It's either gonna take time and energy or it's gonna take money, and you have to decide, you know, which is more beneficial. But those problems can be solved. But I always have to ask, are you trying or are you moving mountains?

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Let's talk about embarrassment for a second, because I want to I want to go into this. You mentioned that, and I think that's so key. It's embarrassing to do what what we do, quite frankly. Coming up on podcasts or or sharing what you do or posting something. I know you've got a new podcast, you know, or you've got a podcast that's doing amazing and you're sharing. There is a level of embarrassment. I think people talk about this idea, everything you want is on the other side of cringe. Do you have an example of something you did that was embarrassing or could have been cringy, but was very helpful in this way?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Oh, so many. I think you know, the most common thing, right, is is social media because it's right, it's right there, it's in your face. You talk to the camera, you realize pretty quickly, you know, oh my my teeth don't look right. I don't I don't like that about me. I don't like my eyebrows. I like the tone that I have, it sucks. Like nobody's gonna listen to me. But it really is like this this awkward moment. And Alex Ramosy talks about this a lot, and it's this lonely chapter, right? The lonely chapter being you're in a position where you know that you want to make this exponential growth, and maybe you're dropping off some friends, some people that have been in your life because they're no longer serving you, because you're on this path of trying to get better and better, but you're not quite at a point where you can hang with the the people that you you know are on your radar, you look up to as mentors. But there's this, there's this kind of this this gap, this kind of like cringe gap where you're trying to find your voice, you're trying to find your audience, and you're trying to, you know, if it's in the gym, uh you use that analogy a lot, right? It's like, okay, I'm I'm there, I'm kind of overweight. Like, what's the point of even going to the gym and working out because I don't look good? And you're like, what are you talking about? This is this is your journey. Like, you gotta get in there, you gotta start moving, you gotta start lifting, you gotta start eating right. And eventually, you like you're gonna build the body that you want, you're gonna develop the strength that you need. But people don't like that because it's uncomfortable. People don't like people don't like that growth stage because it's like it's like puberty, right? It's like you go through this awkward teenage stage and you start growing hairs in weird places, and your voice kind of starts getting a little weird and you start smelling a little funky, but we go through that as we continue to grow in different cycles.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

I think anytime you're growing, it's gonna feel uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Anytime you're growing, because it and this is the thing. So I've developed a framework that I'm I'm still like tweaking, talk about the like 80% done, kind of 100% completed thing. A really great framework called the trade-up framework. And it highlights at each point where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, everything from when you're working for the company and you have this just like this burning to go and work like learn for yourself and work for yourself and this curiosity, what's going through your mind, what's happening, what do you need, what are you afraid of? And throughout the like each stage, there's there's different steps because you take a step up the rung and the ladder towards the highest version of yourself, towards that legacy you, those things don't become as scary anymore, right? The person that's that's recorded a hundred podcast episodes has now recorded a hundred podcast episodes. So like jumping on and talking in front of a microphone is not that scary anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

For the person jumping on and talking to somebody who's a bigger creator or something like that, still scary. Maybe the first time on video.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

But that's that's that's trading up. That's what we're about, right? It's trading trading up the skills that you have for the skills that you need. But you're going to again, like I say, every business is broken and always will be in perpetuity. And what I mean by that is there's always gonna be things that you can do better, and as you're growing, your business is going to continue to break again, and you're gonna have to fix things, and then it's you're gonna you're gonna want to grow your business to that next level and go from you know 10 million in revenue to 15 million in revenue to 30 million in revenue, and everything that you built that was gonna get you to where you were today is going to break and it's not gonna work at these next levels. So you have to be okay with knowing that things are gonna break and things are going to need to be solved, and that's part of business, and that's part of life.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

If you had a phrase that would, you know, sort of sum up your life and and what you believe in, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

The best way to predict your future is to design it. I think it was I think it was Peter Drucker that said that.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

And I buy that and I I think about that all the time. When I am uncertain about what's gonna come up in the in the future, I just know that I have the power to put in place the design parameters of what can make that happen. I'll give people I'll give people a a bit of a a little hack here. And maybe I I don't know if I told you the story when we were recording on my podcast. I was asked by my business coach if I had a plan to get to$100 million in revenue. And I said, I I I don't. I but I have a plan to get to 30 million. And he said, come back and tell me when you get a plan, put together a one or two page plan on how you're gonna get to$100 million in revenue. I was like, shit, okay. Um so I took my plan to$30 million that I that I had and was sort of like this the big ideas of what this was gonna look like. I took my personal goals that I wanted to to achieve over the next 12 months and fed it to Chat GPT. And I said, build me a, you know, build me a plan to get to$100 million in revenue based on you know this scaling of this and kind of what the parameters are. So it did that, it did an okay job of defining a plan and refined it, you know, a bit more. And I was like, okay, this is like this is kind of kind of cool, but this seems kind of weird. Who is the person that I need to become in order to ensure without a doubt that I hit these targets and hit this$100 million in revenue? And so it spat back all of these things. It's like you're gonna have to get up at 5 a.m. You're gonna have to do this, you're gonna have to train at this time, you're gonna have to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, that seems a little scary. But I went back and I reframed the question. And I said, Who is it that I get to become throughout this journey of building this business to$100 million in revenue? And it totally reframed everything. And it started talking about all these great peaks that I was gonna be able to hit and all the things that I was gonna be able to feel, and all the people that I was gonna be able to bring with me, and what my family was gonna look like and how they were gonna be affected positively. And it was and it redefined and redesigned who that person was that I could become if I got really excited about it and changed that mind frame. So that was a that was a really fun exercise that I encourage anybody to try.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

I love that. I love that. Also, and Brandon, well, so wonderful to have you on the podcast. Tell everyone where they can find you.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Awesome. Yeah, find me for sure on Instagram, follow me at build with b smith. I am there. Find me on the open concept podcast, anywhere on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or YouTube, I was gonna call it. Apple, iTunes, I am there, YouTube. Check out the open concept podcast and trade up coaching. We coach with we coach trades and home service businesses through our trade-up framework that we've designed. So if you are in the trades or home service business and you're looking to scale up to the next level, reach out, send me a message on uh on Instagram. I'll make sure I connect. Just DM me Sky and I'll know that you came from this podcast and we'll get you sorted out.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five-star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good, couldn't do it without you.