The ADHD Entrepreneur: Hyperfocus, the Crash, and How I Cope

I have 17 tabs open right now — not on my computer, in my brain. I started three tasks this morning and finished zero. This is a normal Tuesday for me.

In this episode of The Law of Cassidy, I'm getting real about what it actually looks like to build and run multiple businesses with ADHD — not the inspirational "ADHD is a superpower" version, but the real one with the chaos, the shame, the hyperfocus crashes, and the tools that genuinely help.

I talk about getting diagnosed my first year of college, why ADHD looks different in women, the years I spent thinking I was broken, and the systems I've built to work with my brain instead of against it. If you've ever been called scattered, flaky, or "too much" — or you love someone who has — this one's for you.

We cover: 

💋 Why I can run a multi-million dollar business but can't return a package 

💋 Time blindness and the to-do lists that set me up to fail 

💋 The hyperfocus superpower (and the crash that follows) 

💋 ADHD, shame, and why it's so underdiagnosed in women 

💋 Practical tools: body doubling, time blocking, externalizing everything, protecting your peak hours, and delegating your kryptonite 

💋 ADHD in marriage and parenting

If this episode hit you, DM me your story and what's finally made things click. And if someone in your life has ADHD, send it their way.

Disclaimer: I'm not a medical professional. This is my experience, not medical advice.

🎧 New episodes every week. 

🛍️ Products I mention: CassidyBybee.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I have 17 tabs open right now, not on my computer, in my brain. So I started three different tasks this morning and finished zero of them. I had a genius idea in the shower that I absolutely had to write down immediately. And then by the time I got out, I had completely forgotten what it was. This is a Tuesday in a normal week for me. This is also a day that I run multiple businesses. I have ADHD, and today we're talking about what that actually looks like. The real version when you're trying to build something, not the inspirational version, not the ADD. ADHD is a superpower, the real one with the chaos and the shame and the tools that actually help. And the things that nobody told me before, I spent years thinking I was broken. So this is a quickie. Welcome back, vain ones. Let's go. Welcome to The Love, Cassidy, where we talk intimacy, business, power, healing, and the conversations that most people are too uncomfortable to have. I'm Cassidy. I am an entrepreneur, a wife, a mom, and I have spent nearly two decades talking about intimacy and working in the wellness space. If someone sent you this episode, you're in the right place. This one's for the vain ones. Let's go. Yeah, we're gonna talk about I don't know if you call this mental health. I don't know if you call this diagnosis, whatever, but you know me, I'm very honest. And I think a lot of people deal with this undiagnosed. So I was diagnosed with my ADHD my first year of college. So here's what that looked like. I all through high school did very well in school. Very well in school. Like National Honor Society. And I was like, I'm gonna be a dental hygienist. And if anyone knows anything about Utah and the culture, that's like dental hygienists or nurse. Like it's like the thing, right? And dental hygiene, I love the idea where I could be a mom and not have to work all the time and make great money. So funny looking back on that, because I make way more money than dental hygienists now. But yeah, it just was like the right path for me, I thought. And I had been working in the dental field and thoroughly enjoyed it. So when I got to college, I was like, oh, I got this. This is great. Um I couldn't pass a test. Like I failed biomedical core. Those that have taken it will know. I felled it four times. Like, and the crazy thing is, I knew it. I would sit down to take the like I knew I knew it. I studied, I was prepared. I would sit down and I like I didn't know it. Like it was the craziest thing. So it's not because I didn't care, it's not because I wouldn't study. I had studied, I understood everything. And like I said, came down to the test, I just would watch it all disappear. Like my brain just refused to perform on command. It was insane. So after, like for the years before I was diagnosed, I kind of had a story about myself that maybe I wasn't smart enough, that I wasn't disciplined enough, that other people could just sit down and focus, and I was the one who couldn't get it all together. The diagnosis didn't feel like a relief at first. It almost felt like an explanation. I didn't know what to do with. So here's what nobody tells you about ADHD. Before you know you have it, it doesn't look like what you think it does, especially for women, especially for girls who were told they were smart but needed to imply apply themselves more. Or um for people who couldn't hyperfocus on things they cared about and then like they could hyperfocus on things they cared about, but then they couldn't function on the things they didn't. ADHD in women often doesn't look like a kid who can't sit still. And I was humbled very quickly because that's what I thought, like growing up, you know, like the kids in school. Um, it looks like a woman who loses her keys every single day and you just had them in your hand, or you're like, where's my phone? And then after 10 minutes of walking around, you realize it is in your butt pocket. Like this is a normal activity. Okay. Um, it looks like a woman who starts a project on fire and then can't find the thread like the next morning. Like it literally is insane. So who has a hundred ideas and finishes 12 of them, who fit you feel everything deeply and you get overwhelmed by your own brain, and it you don't understand why everyone else seems to just function normally. Um, me, me. Hi, it's me. This is still me, and I'm medicated. So I built a multimillion dollar platform business with this brain. So let's talk about what this actually looks like. So before we get into the business stuff, I want to share some things because sometimes the best way to explain ADHD is not with science, it's with actual like receipts, like relatability storytelling. So five minutes and four hours feel exactly the same. Literally. Anyone else? Can I get an Amen? So I'm either 40 minutes early or seven minutes late. There's never an in-between. They call this time blindness, and it has almost destroyed me on multiple occasions, right? Like I always just don't feel like I have enough time, and then I'm like showing up 40 minutes early and I'm like, this is wasted time, or I'm late, okay. You once genuinely believed you could shower, get dressed, and drive across town in 12 minutes. You were not being unrealistic, you were being ADHD. I've also done that, okay? Like, let's be realistic. Like, you can't do all that in 12 minutes, okay? Um, I can run a multi-platform business. I can keep a human alive. I have managed employees, built brands, and navigated an industry for nearly two decades. I, for the love of my life, cannot return a package. Cannot return a package. If you are someone who's close to me and has seen my closet, you will agree. There are things that I never wore or I never used or something that I didn't even like. I cannot. The box is by my front door. It's been there for three weeks. I see it every single morning. I've moved it around. Okay. I have made direct eye contact with this freaking box, and the UPS store is six minutes away. Box is still still there. Can't do a return. And I've had friends be like, well, just return it. I'm like, oh, that's just that's just a lot. This is ADHD, not the inability to do hard things, the complete inability to do low stakes, low urgency, low interest tasks, and have no consequence and no deadline and no reason for your brain to like activate. Like hard pass. I can't return a package. Okay. So the business gets done, the taxes get filed, except mine are really late this year. We've been busy. Um, we filed for an extension for the first time in years. The content goes out, but the package will sit by the door for a freaking month. If you're not nodding right now, like if you're actually nodding with me, you're you're my people. So welcome. Okay. So ADHD and entrepreneurship have a complicated relationship. In one hand, a lot of entrepreneurs have ADHD. The risk tolerance, the big thinking, the ability to pivot fast, the obsessive focus on new ideas. Those are ADHD traits that translate well to building something. It's very true. Like a lot of successful people have ADHD. On the other hand, running a business also requires the same things ADHD makes the hardest. So consistency, follow-through, administrative tasks that are important but not interesting. Responding to emails, you guys would die if you saw my inbox and my texts. Okay. Um they've been sitting there for 11 days, actually finishing the thing instead of being halfway through 17 things simultaneously. Okay. Here's what ADHD looked like in my business specifically. So here's a good. We're gonna go good, we're gonna go hard, we're gonna share it all. So good. I come up with ideas faster than most people can implement one. Okay. I can see 10 steps ahead of where we are. I am genuinely energized by new projects. And that energy is contagious to me. My brain is always firing off new thing, new thing, new thing, new thing. Okay. Um when I am locked in, I am completely locked in. That hyper focus is real and it produces some of my best work. Okay. I'm also not afraid of pivoting. So for most people, when something happens in a business dynamic, it's paralyzing to them. Like they are like, what am I gonna do? Like, oh, this is all I know. Like, and I've I mean, I watch this with my old work dynamic, right? Like the team, we lost our team, pivoting, or like this is how we have to sell now, pivoting. Like, I I thrived in COVID. Like, I can pivot very easy. Okay. My brain doesn't get attached to the old plan the way other people's does. Okay. So when something isn't working, I can let it go, move faster than almost anyone. Pivot onto the next. Okay. Here's hard parts about ADHD and my business. So the follow-through is where it gets me like every time. So I can launch something brilliant and then completely lose it two weeks in because the novelty wore off, my brain is already somewhere else, I've started more things than I have finished. And for a long time, I thought that meant something was fundamentally wrong with me as a businesswoman. It doesn't mean I need systems and people and structure that my brain will not naturally create on its own. So the other hard hard part, this is my biggest weakness, is task initiation. So there are days when I know exactly what needs to happen and I cannot make myself start. Like if you were to ask my nanny or my husband how many times I say during the day, I gotta film, I gotta go film, I gotta get this filmed, I gotta get this filmed, okay? Um, and it's not because I don't want to, it's because the gap between knowing and doing feels impossible to bridge sometimes. So, and I will literally do anything. I will reorganize a drawer, scroll for 40 minutes, clean something that doesn't need cleaning before I start the thing that actually matters. My biggest weakness though isn't like organizing cleaning. Mine is like tech stuff. Like I will see something with AI or I will see something, you know, with Shopify, and I will like engulf myself in figuring it out when I have people that do that. Like, it's terrible. If you know, you know. Okay. The hyper focus, superpower, and the crash. So let's talk about the hyper focus for a second because it genuinely is one of the most misunderstood things about ADHD. So when people hear ADHD, they think can't focus, can't pay attention, short attention span all over the place. And they watch someone with ADHD spend eight hours straight building something, completely absorbed, not eating, not looking up, not stopping, and they think that person can't possibly have ADHD. But that is ADHD. This issue isn't the ability to focus, the issue is the ability to regulate where the focus goes. So when something activates the ADHD brain, something new, something urgent, something genuinely interesting, something with real consequence, that focus comes online. It's like extraordinary. Like it is like superpower psycho focus. I have done more in a hyper focus session than most people do in a week. Like, I think that's why I like really learned the world of TikTok shop and like how to figure that out. And I've helped multiple brands figure that out and like all the things because I will engulf myself, but then there is an aftermath of that, and that is the crash because hyperfocus is not sustainable, it burns through your neurological resources at a rate your brain can't maintain. And when it ends, it ends hard. The mental exhaustion after a hyperfocus session can be debilitating. You come out foggy, depleted, and often emotionally flat in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it. The crash is not laziness, it's your brain recovering from running a sprint for eight hours straight. And my the hardest thing for me is to then um not be a miserable blob. So if I'm in here hyperfocusing on something and I have to check myself, like, am I hyperfocusing? Do we need to move on to something else? Because then I will turn into a blob and then I go home to be home with my family after work and it's like no bueno, okay? The key, and this took me years to figure out, is learning to work with the hyperfocus instead of against it. So schedule the deep work for when the hyperfocus shows up, protect that window, and then give yourself actual permission to rest after rest, not scroll on your phone because that just causes more of the chaos. Actually, rest. So I want to talk about shame for a minute because I think it sits underneath everything else for a lot of women with ADHD. ADHD in women is chronically underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed. So the way it presents in women is different. Girls with ADHD are often described as spacey, scattered, emotional, disorganized, messy. They're told they're not living up to their potential. They develop anxiety, anxiety often because they're spending an enormous energy trying to mask the ADHD symptoms and appear functional. So they spend years, sometimes decades, believing the story that they're just not trying hard enough, um, that they're lazy, they're flaky, that everyone else can just do the thing and they are broken, like the broken one who can't. That story is a lie, but it sticks to a lot of women. Okay. So getting diagnosed my first year of college, sitting down for tests and watching everything I studied, everything I knew just vanish, that was the moment the story started to shift for me. Not because diagnosis fixes everything, but because suddenly there was a reason. A reason is the beginning of a solution. So if you are a woman, a woman listening to this and something is resonating, okay? If you have been called scattered, disorganized, or too much or not enough your entire life, please talk to someone, get assessed because knowing changes what's possible. It completely changed my career path. Like, look at me now. Like, totally had to revamp everything, but it was a win for me. So practical stuff because knowing you have ADHD doesn't fix the problem. You still have to build a life and business around a brain that works differently. So here's what helps me, and maybe it'll help you. And I'm always down for you guys sharing suggestions. Okay. So body doubling, so working in the presence of another person, even on a call, even virtually, dramatically improves task initiation for ADHD brains. So the social accountability activates the brain in a way that working alone doesn't. If you can't start something alone, call someone, go to a coffee shop, put on a focused little stream work thing together, the presence of another human changes like the neurochemistry. So if it sounds too simple, it actually works. And I'm like thinking back as I'm reading this, and I'm like, yes, I have been some had some of the most productive moments with um old colleagues or friends in this type of dynamic, which it makes so much sense. Okay, so time blocking with alarms, not lists. I hate a freaking list. Do not give me a freaking list. I will literally implode. Don't give me a list. So to-do lists are literal, literal death for ADHD brains. The list just sits there being in like a huge like miss of obligations with no sense of urgency and no activation. So time blocks with actual alarms are different. So the alarm creates urgency. Urgency activates the ADHD brain. I schedule specific tasks in specific windows. And when the alarm goes off, that is the only thing that exists. Nothing else. Just that task for that block. I do this when I'm creating content. Okay, set an alarm, two hours, done. Send an alarm, editing, done. So actually, time blocking does work. Do not give me a list. I will epically fail. Externalize everything. So your ADHD brain cannot hold information reliably. This is why I'm terrible and I've tried everything. So please, if anyone has any tips, um remembering names, remembering people's names. And I think it's gotten worse as I'm like creeping into perimenopause. Okay. Um, I'm just terrible at it. So it can't hold on to information. So stop trying to make it. Write everything down immediately in one place, not 17 places. Voice memo the idea the second it arrives to your brain. Um set the reminder the moment you think of the thing, not when you get home. If it isn't written down or alarmed, it doesn't exist. Accept this and bend, like accept this strategy and just like build around it because you will literally like just beat yourself down when you just forget things and don't remember things. So just build around it instead of fighting it. It's just the thing you gotta do with your ADHD brain, okay? So protect your peak hours, which I am psycho about this. So figure out when your brain is sharpest and protect that window. Like your business depends on it. And I have had moments where I am hyper focused. You have to eat. Your brain is burning calories more than anything else. And if you're using your brain a lot, you have to remember to eat. So, like my nanny knows if I have not been in that house, because my office is separate from my house, if I've been in there by 12:30 and I haven't had food, she brings food out to me because it is so important. So protect your peak hours. So no meetings, no admin, no anything that doesn't require your best thinking. And I've found myself in dynamics as I've shifted into scaling this business currently, that if I'm on Zoom calls all day, that's not peak for me, right? And I understand having meetings is important, but I also need to create my content. And if I touch my computer, I'm hyper-focusing in that. So I do best with content creation, actually like starting there with my workday because I have the energy, I have the focus, I'm not sucked into other things that need to get done. And this is content's top priority for me. That's what pays me. So um, the creative work, the strategic work, the hard stuff that goes into the peak window, everything else fits around it. So fit the zoom calls around it. So we are not structured people with ADHD, but you do a little structure, but not overstructure, and it'll help. Okay. So delegate the kryptonite. And I am figuring this out, and I have been through my fair share of wrong people and my fair share of right people. And I think we're almost there. Um, but the tasks that your ADHD brain finds the most excruciating, um, the administrative, the repetitive, the detail-oriented, those need to be someone else's job as soon as you can make that happen. So not because you're incapable, because your brain is built for something else. And using your best energy on your worst tasks is a bad, like a bad trade for everyone. When I walked away from pure romance and um decided to do this on my own and then eventually launching Covet, I had to find somebody that was doing emails. Like, and for a while, I was like, I just can't afford this right now. I need to figure it out. And I was spending hours doing clavio, and I'm like, what am I doing? And I was miserable. Like my brain is it thrives in creative, and when I get too caught up in Zoom calls or emailing or that repetitive administrative stuff, I'm not at my peak creativity. And so I'm slowly acknowledging that and filling in the cracks and hiring the people to help me with those things because it's not my jam. And it doesn't mean you're broken, it just is what it is, okay? So let's talk about a little bit about ADHD and relationships. And the hard thing is, is I married an ADHD or now my kid's like an ADHDer. I mean, she hasn't been diagnosed, but I'm I'm pretty sure. So in marriage, ADHD can look like forgetting things your partner told you that they know they told you. So starting projects around the house and leaving them half finished. Love you, Josh. The light bulbs in the laundry room need to be changed. Please. Thank you. They're like all out. The nanny is doing the laundry with one of my ring lights. This is Josh. Love him. But yes, he's the worst at this, okay? Um, I literally say this in my notes. Josh had to learn a lot of this, and I have had to learn how to communicate what I need instead of expecting him to understand. So here's what I know about ADHD in relationships. The partner without ADHD, but we both have it, but if you're the only one that does, um, ends up carrying like a lot of the mental load, which in our relationship, like the household mental load, I carry a lot of it, even though I have ADHD. So it's real interesting. But that's also why I bought a Skylight calendar. And that's also why I have these employees around me that just like no, these are the things that have to be done because I won't yeah. So I've I've celebrated my strengths and navigated my weaknesses. Okay. So not because the person with ADHD doesn't care, but because the ADHD brain genuinely doesn't register the things the neurotypical brain tracks automatically. And that imbalance, it's not named and addressed, and it becomes resentment, which causes relationship issues. So name it, talk about it, build systems together, not as a personal like failing, as a neurological reality that you manage as a team. And for parenting, Jovi is six, and I watch her sometimes, and I see myself, she's actually my twin. The way she gets completely lost in something she loves, the way she moves from one thing to the next thing at like full speed. I don't know what her brain's gonna tell us, right? We it hasn't been affecting her schoolwork or anything so far, but um, I know now with my experience, if it goes in that direction, I can help her. So um, confessions in the DMs is I have had ADHD and I start businesses constantly. I watch a lot of you online that do this. You're just on to the next thing, on to the next thing, on to the next thing. I get so excited, hyper focused for weeks, and then I've completely lose momentum and move on to the next thing. I have a graveyard of half-finished ideas. How do you actually follow through? So, first that graveyard is not a failure. Everyone of those ideas has taught you something. I truly believe that. But here's the thing follow through with an ADHD brain requires external accountability, not willpower. What willpower is actually a neurological, like neurotypical solution to a neurological problem. So, what works is real deadline with real consequences. A person who checks in on your progress and breaking the thing into small pieces enough that each one only requires hyper focus session to complete. The momentum doesn't come from the inside. You built it from the outside. Work with your brain, not against it. So, great example. I have staff like I have people I've hired that do different things, right? I got my guy that does my podcast and shoots for stuff. Like, if that stuff, if that podcast needs to be done, I'm doing it every week. Like, I have to show up with we gotta film on this day, we gotta do this, we gotta, I gotta be prepared. He needs it to be able to finish his job. Same with the email guy who needs a photo for this or needs me to share that. He needs it to do his job. So the accountability helps in those dynamics. Because I will tell you, there are times which I love what I do, I love my business, I'm passionate about it. But there are times where I'm like, I just don't wanna, but other people need me, and so that's how I navigate through that. So the covet this, we're gonna do the beaver butter um fresh vaginal wipes because you should love your beaver, love it more. But the reason I love these is they are actually made with organic aloe and vanilla fruit water. Um, they come with 10 wipes in a box. I love these for camping, I love these for road trips, I love these for traveling, I love just a quick cleanup, or maybe, you know, things are getting heated at the bar and you know you're gonna hook up in the car or something, you can just freshen stuff up. So they are great, they don't cause any irritation, they're like all natural. I absolutely love them. And like always, any products I recommend are on my website, cassidyb. So go check it out. So the law of Cassidy was I spent the first part of my life thinking my brain was the problem, that I was the hot mess. I was all over the place. I didn't have any type of, you know, structure. Turns out it was just a different kind of engine, the one that runs best on novelty, urgency, passion, and purpose. One that doesn't idle well, one that needs to be pointed at something worth building. The chaos is not a character flaw, the distraction is not laziness, the intensity is not too much. It's just a brain that was never designed for the conventional path, and the conventional path was never designed for my brain. So stop trying to fix your engine, learn how it runs and build accordingly. And that is the law. That's your quickie. If this episode hit you, if you recognize yourself in any of it, DM me, tell me your story, story, tell me what's finally made stuff click for you, what works for you. And if someone in your life has ADHD and you've never fully understood what that means, send them this. Not to explain them to themselves, just so they know that someone's sharing their experience and talking about it out loud. And I'm not a medical professional, so this is not medical advice. You know, I gotta give that disclaimer. But I'm Cassidy. This is the law of Cassidy, and I'll see you next week.