Jumping When You Can't Stay: My Journey Through Burnout, ADHD, and Finding Alignment

Welcome to Episode 1 of the Clarity, Confidence & Growth Podcast. Host Brandon Sanderson opens up about the career shifts, burnout, and mental health challenges that led him from tech support to coaching. He shares his adult ADHD diagnosis at 26, his journey through anxiety and recovery, and how he learned to build a life aligned with his values — one intentional leap at a time.

Whether you're a young adult feeling stuck, a parent supporting someone with ADHD, or anyone in the middle of a hard transition, this episode is an honest invitation to find clarity in the chaos, build confidence through self-understanding, and pursue growth even when the path isn't obvious.

In this episode:

Why Brandon left a stable career to pursue coaching

Recognizing and working through burnout

Getting an adult ADHD diagnosis — and what changed afterward

Managing anxiety and supporting recovery

Why misalignment hurts, and how to start moving toward your values.

Our Website:bransandservices.com

Brandon/Bransand Solutions and Services Socials-
Facebook
Instagram
Tiktok
Youtube
Linkedin

Are you a coach? Join The Coach's Community- Co-Hosted By Brandon Sanderson, Jamie Winslow, Joe Keohan, and Tony Renner! 

Transcript

Brandon Sanderson (00:05)
I want to start with a feeling, not a fact, not a stat, just a feeling.

That feeling of sitting somewhere and no longer feeling like you belong. You're going through the motions and you're thinking, I can't be doing this anymore.

Maybe you've felt this at a job or maybe you've felt this at another area in your life. I felt it sitting in my car after coming home from an awesome Europe trip and just not connecting with the retail career that I did for over a decade.

I was done. And this is the story of how I got here. And maybe some of it will be familiar to some of you. Hey, I'm Brandon and welcome to the Clarity Confidence and Growth podcast. I'm happy to be your host. Let me take you back to where it all started. 16 year old kid, just starting out, co-op student at our local future shop.

He had no idea what he was building or what he was wanting to do with his life.

Looking back, I was coaching before I even knew I was coaching. In those years of when I started at Future Shop as a co-op student, I was very heavily active at school in social groups and being that leader in person to always be the helping hand or the person to support.

After I finished my co-op at Future Shop, I was offered a job part-time, customer service. I took it and not too long after I moved into Geek Squad. After going into Geek Squad, I quickly became full-time when I turned 18 and became the youngest supervisor at the time at 19 years old in a store 45 minutes away from my house. This was a big time of transition for me. I met a

guy who became a partner for quite a long time. got a new car. I started this new career transition to a supervisor. And I was, I look back at those times and I really don't know how I made it through some of those years. But we got it through. I became a good leader, coaching my team, supporting my team. And I bought a house.

that relationship ended up ending. And then things really started to kind of take a turn for me. I feel like at 19 when I started this role, I was very confident in myself. I knew where I was going. And by the time this relationship ended, I was a shell of whoever was.

I didn't take it so well and I ended up getting a pretty bad alcohol habit during the beginning of COVID. That lasted a good few years, went down some rough paths and I ended up becoming sober in April of 2023 after starting a relationship with another guy that I thought was really gonna work out. alcohol ended up ending it.

At this point in 2023, when I had decided to quit drinking, it was a time where I was surrounded by alcohol because I was watching a friend's pet and I just did it. It was tough, but we pushed through it.

I ended up being sober for just over two and a half years.

I, at this point, was going beyond at work. Everything was going great with my performance. I had an awesome team. I had grown them. I had pretty much almost fully groomed the next person to take over my role and had gained a lot of confidence in what I did. I had team members who'd come to me for support. I'd always be there to guide them, give them whatever they needed.

and I get a lot of praise just around what I was doing and it felt very good.

I started coaching people through seasons of their lives that were in my close circle of friends or were part of my team or just in the retail space where I worked. I realized the conversations that meant the most weren't always about the metrics and the numbers. They were a lot about making sure that people connection was made for the growth. If you could connect with your people and get them going at their top level, your results came.

I wasn't as a team lead anymore. I was showing up as a coach. I just didn't have the title yet.

At this time I was feeling really confident and good. I did decide to move back to my home store closest to me. A lot of the reason behind that was family. have a dad who had a non-benign tumor in his spine in 2015 and that has created long-term health issues for him. And then in 2021 he had an aneurysm.

what really started to make me think I needed to be closer to home.

There was a couple ambulance calls before this as well and I had to rush back from Cambridge and it just ended up being... I knew it was time. I was confident in myself. I was grown in my role where I was. And even though this was the same role I was moving back to at my hometown, it would get me closer and then I could move from there.

So I applied, very quickly got the role as I had been doing the role so well in my current store. The general manager there knew me. He loved my work. So back to Brantford I went in about, I wanna say, I think it was around October of 2023.

When I got back to the Brantford store, I really started to see how much leadership growth I'd had. Jumping in right away in leadership conversations to give an opinion, not being afraid to step up and out of comfort zones, because I just knew I'd make it work. And I was confident in my abilities with pretty much all rounds of the business at that point.

I started to feel kind of off during this time, but it was okay. It was just a transitional period, you know, from one store to another.

But I think this is where the bran sand seeds really started to grow in their smallest of era that I wouldn't have known yet. It had probably been the first time around that time as well. I had heard from my friends that the season of my Best Buy career was over they felt it was over, but I just wasn't there yet.

So we went through 2023 season into 2024 and 2024 was a year of a lot of chaos and just not being able to get into a consistent routine moving to the store closer to home. My assistant manager at the time was my first manager at the company and she had went through some rough time and normally I'd be someone to be there for her and

be supportive as a friend, but I just couldn't. I couldn't be there. I couldn't be the support. And...

that was tough for me, but at the moment I don't think I realized that.

And I think that's a lot of where the shift started to come of my ADHD diagnosis.

I have a really close friend that I got close with when I was... Pretty much in my drinking days is when it started. She was my teen lead in...

Cambridge when I was there. What's the store I worked at before I came back to my hometown store.

I would talk to her and things were okay and I just felt like something was off and finally in around the back to school season I just couldn't take it anymore and by October of 2024 I was taken off work for generalized anxiety disorder.

This wasn't really new to me at the time. I had had generalized anxiety disorder in the past. And I'd always got through it. I'd always make it through. I never missed work for it before, so I knew this time was tougher and things were harder.

I was off work for two weeks. I had tried a new antidepressant and it still wasn't any better. I went back in to the doctors. It was a night after a cooking night that I did with my friends in Kitchener. And I hadn't slept. I was exhausted. And I walked in and I said, listen, I'm like, this isn't working. I've already had an accident. I've already had turmoil happen. Like something's still wrong. Like I'm off. I'm...

Not myself. So I explained to her some of the things that had happened and she had did an ADHD assessment at that time and very quickly it determined that I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult at 26, almost 27 years old.

I went looking for support as an adult with ADHD. And what I found was a lot of resources for parents, for teenagers who are in school, but not nearly enough for adults who are mature and trying to manage a whole life that they've built.

You are not alone and there is support out there. And that's part of why I'm here.

Part of the ADHD diagnosis did confuse me. I'd held a career and a job for over a decade at this point.

I had been able to keep routines in structure, but looking back they did always fall.

So there was a lot of confusion. I did all the apps, I did inflow for a while, it's just expensive, but it did have some insightful information. I did start watching some ADDitude videos, but a lot of it wasn't aligning was needing at that

and now is what I'm meeting for my coaching, and I do watch a lot of those.

but there was nothing I could really pinpoint to help support me at that time. And at the time I didn't know about coaching. I did see my therapist and I did start seeing my therapist at this point once a month. That was very helpful. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity to be able to do that and to be able to get that support around.

I'd say three months, four months after I was back, I was just off my committed schedule that I was given by TELUS Health. And there showed to be some corporate shifts in the organization with Best Buy. I was no longer just a team lead of our computer services department. I was team lead of our computer sales and our computer services department. I was never a guy who wanted to be in sales, who wanted to be a sales leader. And I...

was probably the most nervous in my career from...

Back when I was 19, like when I first was a teen lead, I was feeling a lot of those feelings again.

I noticed very quickly once I took on this team lead of computing sales and services roles that the values and the company were changing and I maybe wasn't aligned with them. I really started feeling a misalignment. February of 2025 was the real start. My best friend and huge advocate and supporter through all the hard times I've had since 2020 in my life.

I have a real core group of about three close best friends and this girl was always there, business, personal, and she was let go. She had supported a role that wasn't even hers for a year leading up to this and that hit me. That hit me hard. I was like, what value do I have here? Like you can do everything.

And once you either get too high on the ladder or too high up or company needs restructure and changes and they just can't fit you anymore, you end up just being a number. And I was like, what am I doing?

I really started asking around this time, is this still where I'm supposed to be? Is this where I'm supposed to be?

Was my best friend Morgan right when she looked at me that day and said, I really think you've outgrown Best Buy?

I don't know, but it really started making me wonder.

May of 2025, that assistant manager that I mentioned that was my first leader and manager with the company was Letgo. She had just got back from medical leave for supporting her mental health and her self-care, and she was terminated.

Because of performance. Performance that was because she was mentally not well and needed support and had to take time off to get the support. This really hit hard. I had had a lot happen during that time. When she was off, we didn't have an assistant manager for a while. I supported our team leader of operations at that time.

And I was involved with information that I shouldn't have had in my role that was heavy to hold. And I started to think that, if I want to keep moving up in this company, I'm going to have to hold heavier information then this. And is that something I really can do? Or do I really want to do it? Is it worth my mental health?

I really started to feel lost, alone, and didn't really feel like had a lot in the building at that time to go to. Laura, if you ever listened to this during those times, you were definitely the person who kept me grounded some of the times, and our conversations and talks that we had to keep me moving forward were some of the only reasons I made it as long as I did. So I owe you so much for that if you ever do hear this.

That same month, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it was almost the same day I enrolled for Jay Shetty Certification School.

I'd seen an ad after watching a Mel Robbins video and it was about this coaching school from Jay Shetty and I was like, you know, I have a lot of these values. I've been doing a lot of this at Best Buy. This has been a lot of what I love. So at a time where it wasn't very good.

It wasn't a good time financially. wasn't the best move. I decided to take the plunge and apply.

I didn't know exactly what I wanted going forward, but at this point I knew Best Buy was not going to be a long-term plan anymore. I needed something different.

So during the time from May till August, I really focused on Jay Shetty. I focused on getting the modules done, the quizzes, the coursework. I was pushing hard to get this done while working full time because I had had a trip that we were planning for over a year to Europe and I did not want to have to do any of the work while I was there. I wanted to be ahead so I could enjoy the trip and everything would go great.

little did I know that time away was going to mean way more to me than I ever thought.

I had went on that trip not knowing what to expect. I never had really any desire to go to Europe. A trip I'd planned to go to Italy on I didn't end up going because of Covid. I backed out

I came back and I couldn't reengage. Keep in mind our trip was extended because we did have an airstrike here in Canada and that did push our stay a little bit longer. But it just meant the trip was more amazing. We got to see more of Scotland, more of the east side of Scotland, Glasgow and all around there and it was awesome. We a great time. And I came back.

and I couldn't reengage. I couldn't get back into work. I went in and the first two days I gave it my all and it just wasn't clicking.

And I had asked at this point if I could put in some of the time that I had worked while I was in Europe because when our trip got extended I did a few tasks to keep the team moving forward because I'd only planned for that time being away and I got told that I couldn't.

I'll be honest here, when this leap happened, it wasn't because my finances were in a good place. It wasn't because the timing was ideal. But I was finally like something had to give. I can't do this anymore.

Sometimes you don't jump because everything is lined up. You jump because you can't stay where you are anymore. And that's very valid and where I was on this Saturday.

I was closing payroll and I added that time anyways.

I didn't know if it was gonna get me let go. I knew it definitely had the possibility to. But there was a lot of factors to it. And I was just like, you know what? I've done so much for this company and a lot I haven't got paid for. And I've missed time due to this air canada strike I'm putting it through. I'm advocating for myself. It's time I do. And if it bites me, then that's just my clear sign.

This chapter was over.

So, you might be wondering...

Why coaching fully just after this? Well, I'm not just doing coaching. I am blending my Geek Squad background and my love for helping clients learn and grow with their tech. I love coaching and teaching clients new simpler ways they could do things after watching roundabout ways they do it. I loved demonstrating different tasks or seeing clients enjoy when they could finally figure something out and get it on their own.

My retail leadership growth, I loved the developing of people. I loved coaching teams, investing in growth, and I quickly found I really liked going to boost sessions and the sales training sessions and doing that coaching, even if I didn't like all the sales aspects of it. And I was good at it. We were number three multiple months in the company when I was in that role.

My coaching certification gave me the tools, structure, and credentials to do it properly. And I'll be honest, a lot of it was just life skills and me learning a lot about myself and growing. But I am still doing more certificates. I'm doing neuro-linguistic programming and going to be becoming a neuro-linguistic practitioner. So I'm certified completely in neuro-linguistic programming

I didn't have to choose the two things I loved. I built something that'll hold both tech support and services and supporting the growth of people in their technology while coaching and supporting people that way because technically helping people grow in their tech is coaching them to do better. So I created Bransand Solutions and Services.

That is tech services plus ADHD, life and personal development coaching.

they're connected. It's all about helping people show up, whether that is more confidently with their new diagnosis of ADHD or it's at their computer or anywhere else in their life.

Primarily, I'm looking at supporting young adults in their 20s, 30s, maybe even early 40s, navigating a new ADHD diagnosis or teenagers and supporting the parents because that can be a tough, tough role to play depending on when they're diagnosed.

I'm in the building phase, early, imperfect, and I'm doing it anyways. Clarity and confidence and growth exists because I needed something like this and it wasn't there for me. This show is for people feeling stuck, uncertain, and who just need the reality and that push to make the move.

Every episode connects back to those three things, getting clear, building confidence, and choosing growth.

If I can do this mid burnout, mid career shift, mid figuring it all out, so can you.

And there's gonna be support from many people on this podcast. I have fellow coaches who I'm looking to interview to bring on to know their story and where they come from as we all have different backgrounds and we're looking to support each other. I have good friends that I feel would like to come on and have businesses and can show their growth and how they're doing running successful businesses.

And I just want to show the real side of things, that clarity, that confidence, and that there is growth out there. If you're sitting with that feeling of, i can't keep doing this, that's not weakness. That might be your clarity. Starting to show.

If you're sitting with that feeling, of I can't keep doing this, that's not weakness, that might be your clarity starting to show up.

You don't need everything figured out to take the first step. I didn't. And I still don't really have it all figured out now. We're still going with the flow and learning and growing every day. And we'll be every day.

I thank you all for being here today for this episode. I can't wait to bring more episodes with my favorite coaches, my best friends, and everyone close to me I love. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at bransand.s.s You can also visit our website at bransandservices.com to book a free connection call or to also find all of the links where you can connect with us online.

I hope that this resonated with some of you today, and I really can't wait to be back here for the next episode of Clarity, Confidence, and Growth, hopefully in two weeks, as that's the schedule I'm hoping to go with.

And lastly, just in case you forgot, I see you, I believe in you, and I'm cheering you on. Until next time, thank you for watching.