Is ADHD an Advantage in Business? It Depends Who You Are

H: Johan, when I interviewed you on this podcast a couple of years ago, we talked about the traits of ADHD that are advantageous for entrepreneurs based on your extensive research and at the end of that conversation, I asked you, what about gender? What impact does gender have on the data? And you mentioned at that time you were just beginning to study that and I could stay tuned for future research. Well, I did stay tuned and the research is now published. So that's what we're going to unpack today. For years, there have been studies that have contradicted each other. We've talked about this, whether ADHD helps or hurts. Now, based on your previous research, there was more on the positive side. What made you and your colleagues decide we need to look at the gender data within that data next?

G: That's correct. We have started looking into this, and I think you played a role in that. I mean, focusing specifically in your podcast about women and entrepreneurship. So I think it's also been just, you know, as a researcher doing this kind of research, there's a lot of people who contact me spontaneously after they might listen to your podcast. And I also talk to people, I interview them, even if it's not part of research, it's just, you know, something I do. So I think it's I think we just started noticing that there seemed to be differences between men and women. And I think the most decisive reason though was that we actually conducted a meta-analysis. I'm sure we're going to come back to that, but that's essentially, we realized there are now enough studies conducted around the world where you can start looking at what is the overall picture across all these different studies, different populations, different countries.

We were able to tease out, you know, differences between men and women. And then we saw there seems to be interesting differences here. And then we decided to conduct a study focusing specifically on that so that's kind of the background. And then we can talk more generally about the ADHD traits and how they relate to expectations about what's expected from a woman versus what's expected from a man. And I think it's fair to say that if we think about behavior in a classroom, being unable to sit still and interrupting the teacher and stuff like that, I think in most cultures, not to say all cultures, that is way more accepted for boys than it is for girls. So it's like, if you think about the stereotypes we have for what men and boys should be like versus what women and girls should be like, I think you could see that the ADHD traits align more with the expectations of boys and men. So that's a bit about the background, why we started getting interested in this.

H: Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, it bears out in my own family, I have 2 sons and a daughter. They all have ADHD, the second son has not been officially diagnosed, but he is finally now acknowledging, yeah, I guess this is me too and I actually have all 3 subtypes. And the girl was diagnosed later in life, in her 20s, in grad school, the firstborn boy at the age of 8. Why? Because he was the more hyperactive, impulsive subtype. Can't keep his mouth shut, can't keep his butt in the chair, can't keep his hands to himself, can't wait his turn, blurts things out and that becomes a behavior management problem and a learning problem. So I think the historical data is 100% in alignment with what you're sharing. We believe—

G: It's very clear. It's very clear. I mean, we know that a lot of girls used to be misdiagnosed as having anxiety or depression. And the reason for that was, of course, if you have ADHD but you don't get any support from your environment, that's gonna lead to anxiety and depression down the line. And that's what the research studies have shown, that a lot of those were misdiagnosed. They had ADHD and we can also see that now the rate of ADHD among women has increased faster than the rate among men thanks to this. So I think it's a good, it's a development for the better, actually. I also think you're typically one more way. I think the inattentive type is more common among women, whereas impulsivity and hyperactivity is more common among men.

H: Yes. Yeah, I hope I'll drop an idea for future research. I would love to see you do looking at the different subtypes in entrepreneurship because I have my own theory that if you are predominantly hyperactive, impulsive, really good at starting, not so good at sticking with, high risk tolerance, quick, decisive, all that, those are the traits that'll probably do you well as a starter in entrepreneurship. And we're gonna get a lot more into that later and those tend to be men. The other side of the spectrum, inattentive, distractible, more women, they're less likely to get into entrepreneurship and more likely to struggle with it once they're in. But I think the combined type, features of both sides, male or female, are the ones that probably are the most successful anecdotally. But do you agree?

G: Okay, interesting. We, in the meta-analysis I mentioned before, where we actually look across these, I think it's about 45 studies that we could actually analyzed, we find support for these differences between men and women and the differences between inattention and hyperactivity, impulsivity that you mentioned, so that it seems that when it comes to starting, it seems that it's the impulsivity slash, or really mainly the impulsivity that seems to be helping out and so forth but we can get into the weeds about that later on.

H: Absolutely.

G: But I'd be more than happy as we get more data, I'll be more than happy to look into these things. I think it's a good idea.

H: Yeah. And I think the other point that I want to make, Johan, is for anyone listening who is a woman and is the inattentive distractible subtype and has the audacity to be an entrepreneur, it's not that she can't succeed, it's that she's going to need a lot more support in that success, I think.

G: Absolutely. I think that's one of the things we should talk about, the fact that there's now a lot of books out there, there's a lot of social media out there talking about the superpower of ADHD. And I think that what anybody getting into entrepreneurship who has ADHD needs is not encouragement as much as they need support.

H: Yes. Thank you, very well said and we've talked previously about my personal thoughts. I'm not a fan of the superpower word because it's kind of a positive thinking sort of thing that really doesn't make any difference and our performance is inconsistent at best. So when you need encouragement, okay, then what? You gotta follow it up with something, so I absolutely agree with you. You know, something I thought was interesting about your recent research is that not surprisingly, women with ADHD were the group that was least likely in your sample to work for themselves, like 1% versus 4% of women without ADHD. And how well they tested in terms of like the standardized testing that all kids get in, kids in public school anyway, in elementary school. It didn't make any difference how well they did in the testing. So if it isn't ability that makes the determination whether they're going to go into business for themselves, what is it?

G: That's a good question. So, I think that if we look at I'm actually going to start talking about men because that's where we see the bigger differences. I think that it is largely impulsivity that drives people into entrepreneurship. I think that's where we see the biggest fit, this fact that you act before you think. It's really interesting because if you think about, I was just in class last night, I was teaching entrepreneurship to a class of regular students. And I spoke about what is like an effective process of launching a new venture and very much it is, you act. You look at the outcomes, if it turns out well, you continue. If it doesn't go as you were hoping for, you change something.

It's a very well-established kind of cycle of acting, evaluating, and pivoting and that just is very well adapted to somebody who's high on impulsivity. So that's really the thing that drives and as you said yourself before, women tend to more often be of the attentive type. And there you don't have that drive to kind of do stuff to the same extent. So my guess, and we don't know this, but this would be my guess based on anecdotal evidence and just looking at data, is that because women don't typically score as high on impulsivity, that's largely why we don't see overrepresentation. And as you mentioned, we actually see that women with ADHD were less likely to enter entrepreneurship than women without ADHD.

So it's really hard for me to know why they're underrepresented, but I would think that the main explanation has to do with this impulsivity versus inattention. I think it's so important to keep that distinction in mind when we talk about ADHD and entrepreneurship. The picture is just way more complex than we have typically assumed. I mean, we have these large gender differences we can talk about. We have the influence of cognitive ability, we have the differences between inattentive, combined, or hyperactive types. So if you want to, we can start unpacking all that because it's a pretty complex picture you find once you start looking at it. I'm going to give you one more element of complexity. And that is, I also think and we have some evidence that it depends on the stage of entrepreneurship as well. So we can start unpacking this at any place you prefer.

H: I have to confess, Johan, I have one problem with the study and that is that in this particular study, ADHD, being diagnosed with ADHD means that your mother reported it before the age of 15. And most women listening now didn't even know they had ADHD until they were in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s so in your dataset, they would not be counted. They would not be considered as having ADHD because they didn't find out early on. So are my listeners the exception to the findings, or are they invisible in it?

G: Great question. I would argue that they are largely invisible rather than being an exception. I think that, as you are well aware of, Diann, we know that for many, many years, women with ADHD were either not diagnosed or misdiagnosed as being anxious and depressed. And so—

H: Including me, by the way, including me.

G: Yeah, I'm not surprised. So it is more recent that women have started receiving their correct diagnosis so there is some support for that. So I think that's true as I mentioned before, we also conducted this meta-analysis across these 45 studies. where we had similar observations that we didn't, we didn't see any influence there of ADHD on entry into entrepreneurship for women. But yeah, so it's—

H: I think we're just let's just agree that we were invisible and hiding in plain sight. What I do find really interesting is you studied something that might be a little controversial, and that is the impact of intelligence. Because standard first of all, anybody that grows up, you know, in the US, they have to be in public school to have that standardized testing. If they went to parochial school or private school, probably don't have that. I don't know if this type of testing is done in Europe or elsewhere, but if the child does well on those tests, they might even be gifted, for example, then they would be rated differently in this research. But kids with ADHD, especially boys, typically don't do well on standardized tests. So how strongly should we consider the impact of intelligence?

G: Great point, I'm going to say a few things here. So first of all, I know that the whole idea of IQ intelligence is a contested area. So I don't want to get into that because I think though, I want to say a couple of things. Let's call it cognitive ability, I think it's important in 2 different ways. The first one is, and this is based on me interviewing people more than any other data, is that if you have high cognitive ability, you have the capacity to do what's called metacognition. It essentially means that you're able to kind of stand outside of yourself look at yourself and understand what kind of problems you might face. I think that's extremely important for people with ADHD.

H: Yes.

G: You know, if you understand, and I've met a lot of entrepreneurs who tell me that, oh, I was like, for example, a lot of the listeners to this podcast, they say, I was diagnosed at the age of 30, 40, or even 50. And then I started talking to an ADHD coach, and I realized that a lot of things the coach tells me to do, I realized myself that I needed to do in order to survive, whether that's as a human being in general or an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter. So I think that, and that just shows you that these people have this metacognitive abilities that is so important. So I think that that cognitive ability is really, really important if you have ADHD, because if you lack that, you're probably going to find yourself in situations where you just get angry and you don't you don't understand why and things don't work out for you and it's hard for you to understand why.

Sure, if you have ADHD and have that ability, you're still going to end up in situations that might be tricky, but at least you understand why they're tricky for you. So that's, I think, part of the reason why cognitive ability is important. The other thing is that I think it's important in entrepreneurship generally because as an entrepreneur, you have to do many different things. It requires you to have, you know, a working memory. It requires you to be able to do a bit of planning. It requires you to keep many things going at the same time, which is a lot easier if you have that kind of extra cognitive ability so I think it matters in those 2 important ways. And we might want to talk about a little later about the use of AI and how I think that could be a great asset specifically for people with ADHD. It helps out a bit with those, with that executive functioning that we find so challenging.

H: Well, we'll just speak about it very briefly now. And if we have time, we can speak about it some more at the end. But I just gave a webinar for Attitude Magazine, as I do several times a year. And the topic that I pitched to them, and they were very happy for me to speak on it, was how to use AI to support your executive functioning. I am a huge fan because not everybody can have an assistant, but you can have an AI assistant and I think it's fantastic. Yes, there are other concerns about AI, but my brain needs Claude. As my husband calls him, your French boyfriend.

G: No, I agree with that 100%. And we can talk about it specifically in the context of entrepreneurship because I think the most consistent finding, if you talk to people, entrepreneurs with ADHD, is this thing about filling out forms, doing the books, doing all those kinds of things.

H: The paperwork.

G: Yeah, the paperwork, the red tape, all that stuff. That's challenging for just about anybody. who's got ADHD and is an entrepreneur. And it's like, that is exactly where AI is the most helpful. I mean, in my own case, it fills out the forms for me, it keeps my finances for me. It does all these things so I think that's a great thing. Another thing that I find very useful with AI is that it actually responds very quickly. It's like, you know, as you're usually impatient, but it's like, if you talk to an expert or your spouse or whatever, it usually takes a while, here you get your response in 5 seconds. The other thing is that I get very angry with Claude when it doesn't, you know, give me the answer I wanted.

And as you know, AI has eternal patience, it never gets angry at you. It always apologizes if it doesn't give you what you expect so I think it has many advantages. And not least, and this is important, we've shown in other entrepreneurship research that people that used to start off as teams now actually start by themselves. Where they use, you could say they use AI as part of their entrepreneurial team. So I think that's a really important consideration that if you have ADHD, you know that you have certain strengths and also certain weaknesses. So I think AI can help compensate for those weaknesses in a way that's particularly important if you have ADHD. I see many, many advantages of it.

H: Yes. And also, I just love it. The reason why I laughed, Johan, is because it can keep up with you.

G: Yeah.

H: It's always available. It doesn't tell you that you're boring or you've already said this 100 times. I do think Claude can be a little long-winded and I can get impatient with it getting to the point. So I just heard, and you probably already know this, I just heard that there is a prompt or a program that you can run with Claude called I Have ADHD. And it's how to inform Claude to deal with you as a person with ADHD, like get to the point, bullet point, don't give me the long-winded explanation. Have you installed this?

G: I have indirectly. You have there's a general memory in Claude where you can feed information about yourself and one of the things I've told it is that I'm very impatient. So keep it quick and keep it brief.

H: Yeah. And yeah, don't flatter me, you know, because sometimes Claude will say, that's a brilliant observation. I'm like, don't do that, it's not necessary. You know, but it definitely feels like a helpful relationship. Okay, so back to the study, the paper is really largely, as my understanding is, about who starts and I think that's really, really important. But most people listening to this podcast have already started. Now your meta-analysis covers what comes next and the short version is that ADHD helps you start and hurts you in terms of sustaining. We know this intuitively, we know this by experience. Most of us are serial starters, but getting it all the way to the finish line, not so much. And that's true in our hobbies and our friendships, in our house cleaning and in entrepreneurship. When you talk about the hurt of ADHD in terms of sustaining that entrepreneurial venture, what are you referring to specifically? What does the hurt look like?

G: Boredom, more than anything. The fact that you need, in order to flourish as an individual with ADHD, you need novelty. You need to do new things and it's like when you get to that stage where it's like managing the going concern, it's like, yeah, you very easily get bored. I met so many entrepreneurs who just say, I've started 15 businesses. And then if I ask them, so why did you quit the other ones? They say, sometimes they say because they failed, but often they say, I just got so bored with it, I needed to do something new. And it's also, we've shown in other studies, as you know, I've conducted dozens of studies. We've shown in other studies that people with ADHD tend to be more innovative in the countries they operate. They are more likely to launch new products, which of course is not surprising because you need that stimulus in order to stay engaged.

So I think that's the main reason and it's also this thing where I think if you start a business and you are successful, you start hiring people. We very often assume that as a founder, you should remain as a CEO, I think very often that's not suitable if you have ADHD. It's better to leave that to somebody else and then you can take care of product development or very often talking to customers, working with marketing and those kinds of things, the things you find stimulating. Because if you don't find it stimulating, you're not going to perform. We know that people with ADHD perform if they are stimulated, if they are challenged, if they do new stuff. So make sure you actually get that within the company that you're running.

H: Yep. I say the two well, I often say that we treat boredom as a life-threatening condition, but the two outcomes that we have to steer clear of are boredom and burnout. And we are at high risk for both of those. But yeah, the starting and that's why I think a lot of the more innovative you are and the more impulsive you are, you should probably consign yourself to the fact that you are ideally suited to be a serial entrepreneur. So you can have that wonderful creative startup energy and then when it gets to the point where it really just needs to be managed, let someone else do it. You're already one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel by that point anyway. So just own it and don't expect yourself to stick with something after the novelty and the dopamine downloads wear off. Everybody will burn out.

G: Absolutely. I'm so happy you mentioned the burnout risk here. And that is a real risk we don't, as far as I know, we don't yet have data on this, I am collecting new data in Sweden. So you invite me back in 2 years and I'll have some new information to share with you then and there are 2 things I'm going to talk about now. So the first is about burnout and entrepreneurs with ADHD need support, there's no doubt they need support. And whether that comes from professional ADHD coach or a helping spouse or a business partner, it doesn't really matter. But it's so easy when you're driven by enthusiasm and you're driven to do new things, it's very easy to just go overboard.

You just commit to too much and it just grows and grows and you burn out so that's very clearly the case. I just now need the data to show this at a grander scale. So yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention is that one problem with the research that I've been doing myself and most other people is that we very often compare entrepreneurs with and without ADHD, I think an important question we are yet to answer is, for the individual with ADHD, is entrepreneurship a better choice than regular employment? The honest answer, we don't know that. It is tricky because it's always hard to know the counterfactual. How would Diann be doing if she was not now an employee doing this versus running your own business. So I think that's something which we need to look into in greater detail.

H: Well, I'm glad that you have the level of curiosity that you have and you're in a position to not only teach students but to do the research and publish. I think I just need to just run this podcast indefinitely and have you come back every 2 years to talk about whatever your latest research is. I'll keep asking if you keep saying yes but on the burnout topic, Johan, I was thinking about, because you've said that the business can survive the impulsive style, but the founder's wellbeing takes a hit. And I think this is especially true for women and women who, a lot of the women that I work with and those that listen to this podcast, they did their very best to what I call shrink to fit. And conform to the norm so they went into the corporate career, they went into the academic career, maybe they went into a nonprofit career and they just hunkered down as best they could, masking and all that until they burned out. Now they start their own business oh, they're so happy at first, now I get to do everything my way. I don't have a boss anymore, I'm the one who decides how things are gonna be. But they bring with them the habit of doing too much of everything. They needed that to get through corporate. They needed to work twice as hard but now there's no off button.

G: Exactly. Yeah. It's funny, I just have to tell you, my wife just got back home a little while ago. And I told her, I can't believe I'm working so hard, I mean, I'm old enough now that I should be ready to retire soon. At the same time, I'm just working more and more and it's just this thing where you’re driven by enthusiasm. You just get yourself into all these things where it was so stimulating when you first got into it and now, you know, you have to finish it off as well. And that is boring, time-consuming so you just realize, why in the world did I take on all these things? So it is, I think what we can do, what you can do with your platform, what I can do with my platform is to just make people aware that these are situations you're likely to get into. Here is a toolkit of things you might want to consider so that if people, if the listeners to your podcast have the knowledge about what is likely to happen, they're better prepared when it actually does happen. I think that's the best we can do.

H: Yeah. And I also think giving ourselves permission to not have to finish everything we start. Because first of all, I don't know about you, but I can't predict the future. So when I start something in a blaze of glory and a burst of enthusiasm, how could I possibly know how it's gonna turn out? But if I feel like, oh, I'm such a flake, I'm always starting things and not finishing 'em, I have to see this through, yeah, good luck with that. You're gonna be miserable. You're probably gonna be depressed and you're not gonna finish it anyway. You can give yourself permission to let things go. But I think what I do and what you probably do as well that's really helpful is doing a since I know I'm this way and I don't negotiate with that anymore, like, this is how I am, this is how I've always been, this is how I will always be. I say yes to too many things, I overcommit, and then I think, well, now I have to do it. So now I do things on the front end so that I'm dialing down on the impulsivity. I'm dialing down on the overcommitting, 'cause I know these are my tendencies.

Now I have a vetting process where I don't let myself say yes to anything right away. First, it has to go in the parking lot. I never agree to do anything when I'm asked, it has to sit in the parking lot. Whether it's my own idea or request from someone else, and then I run it through my vetting process. Do I have the time for this? Do I have the energy for this? Is this aligned with my goals and values? And will I give myself permission to get out of it prematurely if I can't finish this commitment? Just asking yourself those, and I don't naturally think of asking myself those questions, that's why I have them written down to remind me. Just remembering that I have those questions already starts to make me feel more grounded and settled. And then I could say, you know what, it sounded really good yesterday, but I think not.

G: No, it's I agree with everything you're saying and I think the important thing you mentioned here is that you have a deliberate process for determining this, because I think a lot of us and myself included, it's more like the things get further and further down in your inbox. So it's essentially, you just forget to do these things. People don't remind you and essentially just fizzle out to nothing.

H: Probably takes care of itself.

G: Exactly. That's not a strategy. That's not a strategy.

H: Well, actually, I thought you were going to tell me that's your strategy. I guess I should feel lucky you still open my inbox emails.

G: Yeah. So, but it's all, again, it's, I have been able to design a system thanks to AI. I'm not at all as deliberate as you are, to be honest, but it's been helpful. I run every morning, it automatically runs, you know, go through my inbox throw away the emails that I don't need to look at. And then I sort them into things that I can archive and things that need my attention, if they need my attention, it automatically generates reminders for me. So then I clean out my inbox and so I'm getting better at it. But it's definitely a challenge that I'm sure your listeners need to consider.

H: You're not giving yourself nearly enough credit, my friend. That sounds like a very good strategy and a very deliberate one and it works too.

G: I'm getting there. I'm just not always let's just say I'm not always delivering on it. I know I have more than 100 emails in my inbox now and I know that probably 70 of them are things I need to deal with one way or the other. So it's on paper, it should be better than it is in reality. But I'm trying, I think that's like you said, as long as we're trying, as long as we're doing our best, we have to give ourselves forgiveness for not being able to deal with everything.

H: 100%. Yeah. And I'm not, you know, I'm not perfect on every day either. Sometimes I just impulsively say yes to things and later go, oops, I guess I didn't look at my checklist. So, I want to think about—

G: As an entrepreneur, I think it's important that you try to separate what are these things in your business that need doing. I mean, the most important thing is potentially, you know, filing your, your taxes on time, right? If you don't, there's no saving for your business eventually. I mean, it's very nasty to be fighting with the tax authorities because you haven't filed your statements. So I think it's important to kind of make a list of like business priorities that are, these are things you have to do at certain deadlines. And then you can kind of, if you know that you're not any good at dealing with it, try and outsource it either to a person A professional or a spouse or a friend or have AI do it for you so I think it's really important that we do that.

H: Yeah, luckily, I have a fear of the government too and I think it keeps me on the right side of the tax situation. We've talked a lot today, Johan, about impulsivity and I want to shift now to talking about creativity, because every business owner that I know, one of the things I do with them when we first start working together is ask them to identify what their values are, their core values. And so many of them, this won't surprise you, has creativity within their list of their top 5 values. But the meta-analysis that you did didn't find support for creativity as a reason that ADHD and entrepreneurship go together. So do you think we need to redefine how we're thinking of creativity or?

G: Yeah, I mean, it's a tricky question. As you know, it's hard to define what is creativity. It's hard to measure what is creativity so there's a lot of challenges so it's really hard to say. I mean, if you look at the broader literature on creativity and ADHD, some studies find that it, yeah, people with ADHD are more creative, some find they're less creative, some find that there's no difference. So I mean, it is a very tricky question, but I don't want to put too much emphasis on the importance of creativity in entrepreneurship either. It's like, I think it's better to talk about maybe novelty or let's call it innovation, doing new things. And at the other end, you have this thing about routine and boredom. If we think about it in those terms, I think might be better. Just to know that I think most people would agree, if you have ADHD, you're good at improvising. You're good at because you just end up in situations you didn't plan for so it's something you learn from the day you were born so you're good at improvising.

H: Just making it up as you go along.

G: But I mean, you're good at improvising, you know that and you also like novelty. So you'd like when there's change and not every day looks the same, I think that suffices. I mean, you might want to call that creativity or not, I don't know. I don't think it matters so I think it's easier to talk about it in those terms because then we know that—

H: I think I agree with you.

G: This applies to people that we know, this applies to people with ADHD. We don't have to go and have a debate about if people with ADHD are more creative than people without it. As long as we know that they're drawn to and do well in novel situations, they're drawn to and are good at improvising.

H: I actually love that distinction, I think that makes a lot of sense. Instead of thinking about, are entrepreneurs with ADHD creative, more creative? What role does creativity play? We know we are attracted to novelty. We know that we are innovative. We know that we look at things differently. We know that we often get into situations without planning, which requires us to improvise. Those are alternative explanations and alternative terminology that I think actually really, really fits well, I appreciate you offering that. Getting back to women, when we met last 2 years ago, your advice to women, I would say, at that time would be stick it out, hang in there, get the right support, and you can overcome the stereotypes. But your recent study says, you know what, the barriers are structural and your individual ability may not get you past them. How do you want to redefine the advice that you give women now?

G: Let me just say that if you are a woman with ADHD in entrepreneurship, you could say it's a double whammy. Because if you look at the stereotypical entrepreneur, that is a man. So if you're a woman, it's like there are certain expectations and they look at you differently. I think, and there's a lot of research on gender and entrepreneurship, so I don't need to go through that, but I think anybody who's listening to this knows what I'm talking about. Then we go, and also we can go then to ADHD and say same thing there. The traits of ADHD are stereotypically associated with men. So you are up against, you're not the typical entrepreneur, you're not the typical person with ADHD. So I think that's A true thing that influences women with ADHD and entrepreneurship.

So that would be just to say you're up for a greater challenge than other people are. Does that mean that you can't succeed? No, it does not. I think you can very well succeed. I think it's important that you understand that these are stereotypes that you're going to find challenging. And I don't think there's any reason to sugarcoat it and talk about the superpower and all that stuff. So I think it's more important that women understand that these are 2 challenges that they have that are unique. And the other thing is that we provide the appropriate support and that you as a woman entrepreneur with ADHD seek appropriate support in terms of your business.

H: Yep, 100%. One of the surprising things from your recent research, and it actually made me very happy, is one of the strongest predictors of becoming an entrepreneur in your model wasn't the ADHD, it wasn't the gender, and it wasn't the test scores of ability. It was having a mother who worked for herself. Some of our listeners are that mother, and I am that mother. What would you like them to know?

G: The mothers or the children or both, maybe?

H: Let's do both.

G: Yeah, let's do well, I mean, I think I saw both the pros and the cons in my mother in terms of running her own business so, I think that's important. And as we see in our data, if you're an entrepreneur, there's a high probability that your son or daughter will also become an entrepreneur. And I think it's largely because we can see the advantages of running your own business, owning your own time, which I think is one of the biggest advantages. And something I want to get back to, which I think we didn't talk about this time, but I think it's worthwhile talking about is why should there be a link between ADHD and entrepreneurship in the first place? And there are a few different reasons that we spoke about last time, but I want to emphasize that the fact that you can adapt your work to fit your own personality, both, you know, capitalizing on your strengths and diminishing your weaknesses, I think it's one of the absolutely the biggest reasons why people with ADHD are attracted to entrepreneurship. So I think if you see that in your mother, I think that can be very inspiring as a child. You can see that they can run, they can have a profession where they actually flourish as a human being.

H: You didn't tell me that before, Johan, and I'm really glad that you shared that this time. I didn't realize that your own mother was your original inspiration. There's another follow-up question I hope you don't mind my asking, but because ADHD is largely genetic, do you speculate which of your parents bequeathed it to you? Because you were not diagnosed until well into your life.

G: No, there's no doubt there. It's my mother, I'm very much like her. And she, I mean, she obviously, she was born in 1927, so there was no diagnosis for that then. But I know she was a bit of a tomboy when she grew up.

H: That's very interesting.

G: I think that's what you call it, isn't it? Tomboy, I think that's the term.

H: Yeah, I think it's still well, you grew up in Sweden, but I think it's still an expression, tomboy.

G: Yeah, you know what I mean by that.

H: Yeah, I sure do. I sure do.

G: And I mean, interestingly enough, I mean, we spoke about doing the books and all those things, keeping track of that. She was extremely disciplined. She kept everything in binders, both in her private life and in her professional life and it was just because she had to. She made lists of everything she had to do. So she was a very, very, very disciplined person and I think that's the only reasons you could succeed as an entrepreneur.

H: I know you're always working on your what's next because that's how you're wired. What are you studying now and what are you doing professionally in the near future?

G: Okay, so 2 things I want to talk about, so one thing is I'm working with Swedish data simply because Sweden has so good data. So we're putting together data where we can follow people through their lifespans. We can look at their occupations, whether they're self-employed, what kind of business they run, or whether they're employed. We can also look at their healthcare data. So we know if they have been on sick leave, we know what kind of diagnosis they have, we know what kind of medication they're getting. So we were essentially getting this really, really nice large data. So that's something I'm working on raising money because it costs quite a bit of money and I'm also kind of building a research team around that.

So that's something we hope to get the data sometime during the spring and in about a year's time from now, we hope to have some analyses. So like I said, in about 2 years from now would be a good time for us to get together again, then I will have some results. On the other hand, I'm also working on establishing a research society, which is global because research is typically global about research on entrepreneurship and health and wellbeing more generally. I've been doing this research now for over a decade, and it's just, it's a growing community of scholars who are interested in this. And ADHD, of course, is a part of this, but I'm also interested in wellbeing more generally.

How can entrepreneurs increase their wellbeing? And so we just had a conference in Paris last week. There were about 90 of us there and me and my colleague here in Syracuse, we initiated to start this international society. And hopefully that will increase both the amount of research we're doing, but possibly more important, to increase the quality of the work we're doing. So those are, in terms of this, those are the 2 main things on my radar. I'm also doing other things, like we said before, I'm like everybody else. I say yes too often. I take on too much because I just find it very exciting, stimulating to do new things. I'm also doing research about AI and how it might lead to human extinction and so forth but related to ADHD, those are my 2 most important things at the moment.

H: I think you're probably going to have a future side hustle writing science fiction screenplays, that's where it inevitably takes you. But as always, this was a delightful conversation. I guarantee you, you're going to be back in a couple of years talking about your next study. And I know you're not on social media, I remember very distinctly when I asked you the first time we talked if you were on social media, do you remember your answer?

G: I think I probably said what I said to my students last night. I said, I'm not on social media because I care about my mental well-being.

H: That's exactly what you said, I will make sure I link in the show notes to our first interview. I said, are you on what social media platforms are you on? You said, I'm not on social media, I value my mental health.

G: Yeah, it is true. Some people I know it's not the same for everybody, but I mean, and there's a lot of research that shows the implications of social media on mental health and I happen to be one of those people that is very sensitive to those kinds of things. So, I know if I would be on Instagram or Facebook, I would know that my social life sucks, I never do anything fun. Everybody else is just sitting in the sun, having a beautiful vacation and if I were on LinkedIn, I would know that my professional life is equally bad. I never had any new job offers, I never changed anything so if I stay off those, I know I can feel better about myself.

H: This is what self-awareness and self-acceptance looks like. You know who you are and you know what you need to do to take care of yourself. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Johan. I really, really enjoyed our conversation.

G: Thank you, Diann. Likewise, it's always a great pleasure.