Why Being Neurodiverse Can Make you a Brilliant Entrepreneur

Transcriber: Leonardo Silva
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

Hi.

I’m G.

I’m queer.

I’m nonbinary.

I’m married.

I’m a parent.

I’m a business owner.

And I’m autistic.

Like many people,

I was late in discovering
the fact that I’m autistic.

It was only when my own child
was going through the diagnosis process

and I was faced with this long list
of traits and behaviors

that indicate that somebody
might be on the autistic spectrum,

and they all seemed eerily familiar,

that the pennies started dropping.

I spent 30 years

believing that the reason
I struggled to make friends as a child

was because I had the wrong accent.

When I was five, we moved house.

We only moved 20 miles,

but I believe the reason
why I couldn’t make friends very easily

and the reason why
I kept making social gaffes

was because I spoke the wrong way.

It was the only thing I could think of

that would explain why making friends
with other kids was so hard.

In retrospect, it might have been
because I thought

the make-believe games that everybody else
wanted to play were dull and boring.

It could have been because small talk,

even the primary school
playground variety,

was something I had zero interest
in engaging with.

It could have been influenced
ever so slightly by my belief

that the only toy worth playing with
and talking about was LEGO Technic.

And maybe, just maybe, my social skills
left a little bit to be desired.

But primary school me didn’t have
the capacity to comprehend all that yet,

so I just stayed in my bemused
and lonely little bubble,

until I was 10

and somehow I was given
the lead role in the school play.

When I was on that stage,
playing Oliver in “Oliver,”

I overacted terribly
and the other kids laughed.

They laughed with me and not at me.

They were connecting with me
for the first time.

It was a huge lightbulb moment.

My peers started to like me
when I played a role for them,

and there began my journey
into learning how to mask

and how to adapt who I appeared to be
to the outside world

so that they would accept me.

This is not an uncommon story
for an autistic person.

Now, although it may seem as though
this story is “Oh, woe is me,

I only got by in life
by compromising myself

and pretending to be
somebody that I’m not,”

that’s not the case.

I was blessed with a loving family

who were always open
and accepting of my quirks.

When I realized I was queer at 15,
they accepted it without question.

I never felt I needed to hide it -
and back in the 90s, that was a big thing.

Once I started to master
the basics of social etiquette

and I got to high school,

where I found other kind of geeky,
socially awkward kids,

I started to form friendships,

some of which have lasted to this day.

I always did well academically.

I came out of uni with a first class
honours degree in design,

and life looked pretty rosy,

until I had to start fitting
into the workplace.

It turns out that this autistic brain,

the same brain that
really didn’t understand

why anyone would ever want
to play make-believe

is equally incapable
of sitting back quietly

when faced with a business
practice and a workplace

that doesn’t make logical sense
or seems inefficient.

Now, to a degree, this can be helpful.

I’ve been able to point out things
to past employers and businesses

that have enabled them
to change the way they work

and innovate in ways
that have been helpful.

But in the grand scheme of things,

somebody that finds “the way we’ve always
done things” totally unacceptable

if it compromises efficiency,

someone who’s constantly
trying to innovate

in a big system
that doesn’t move very easily,

eventually overstays their welcome.

I never once held down a job
for longer than 18 months

before it was clearly time to move on.

Workplaces, like schools,
function through order.

They’re made up of boxes

that allow these big,
cumbersome structures to hold together

and do what they set out to do.

But those boxes don’t fit everybody.

So I left one job and then another,

and then I had kids.

I became a full-time parent.

And then because, as we all know,
it’s virtually impossible

to find a job that fits
around juggling small children -

but I have the skills -

I set up my own design business.

I had no idea at the time
what a revelation this was going to be.

Yes, it enabled me
to start earning an income

whilst also being a primary parent,

but it also freed me up
to do things my own way.

I was no longer tied down
to the way things “should” be done.

Let me give you an example.

Here we have the traditional
design process.

This is the way that I was taught
to work with a design client.

The client writes a brief,
sends it to the designer.

The designer creates
multiple possible draft solutions

and sends them to the client.

The client picks one -

the rest are immediately thrown
in the bin, never to be seen again -

and asks for revisions.

The designer makes those revisions,

and then the two play email tag
for as long as it takes,

until the client
is happy with the final design

or until both parties
lose the will to live,

whichever happens soonest.

This process can take weeks
or even months,

and I could never stand it.

So I stopped doing it.

When I had my own business,
I sat down with my clients, in person.

We wouldn’t write a brief;
we’d have a conversation.

There’d be no email
to ask for a darker shade of blue

because they could ask right
there on the spot

and they could see how it
looked in an instant.

There’d be no waiting for weeks
for the end result

because we’d create it together,
right there, on the spot, in a few hours.

What started as a way for me
to bypass the need to create designs

that would never be used

resulted in a methodology that also
got results many, many times faster.

It was a win-win.

But bearing in mind my autistic traits,

it also had all the benefits
for me personally.

In this traditional way of working,

I’d have to have multiple jobs
running concurrently.

This autistic brain multitasks
about as well as these hands juggle -

it is not pretty -

and eventually I start dropping balls.

Multitasking is not a skill I have,

but in this way of working,
it was the only way to do it.

But over here,

I only have to do one thing at a time.

In fact, I get to use
my autistically enhanced ability

to obsess totally and completely
on a single subject at one time:

my client.

I get to laser-focus on that one job
with no distraction,

which not only gets it finished faster,

but it also means
that once I know that job is done

and my client’s needs are met,

it’s done and I can leave
that mental space.

Once I do, my brain no longer
has to carry it around,

and I can’t tell you how freeing that is.

Because I run my own business,

I’ve been able to adapt a working
practice that didn’t work for me

into one that did.

And whilst doing so,

I inadvertently created
a new way of working

that is also brilliant for my clients,

which has been brilliant for business.

And I am not alone.

When I look around me
in the entrepreneurial community,

I see neurodiverse
business owners everywhere -

not just autistic people,
but people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia.

I see a world full of people
who, just like me,

have wonderfully different brains
that don’t fit into the boxes

that traditional career paths
try to put us into.

Those people, just like me,
chose to make it their own way.

And pretty much all of us have lived
through years of ultimately trauma

because we have been trying
to build careers for ourselves

in a world made up of boxes
that do not fit us.

Many of us arrived at self-employment
and entrepreneurship out of desperation,

and that sucks.

Entrepreneurship is brilliant.

It allows people to build businesses
on their own terms.

For neurodiverse people,

it can be a vehicle for them
to create businesses,

to generate income and to build lives

that allow their unique
brilliance to shine

without having to spend years
in forms of employment that squash them

or, even worse, teach them
that they are incapable of succeeding.

In a 2019 study by the Institute
of Leadership and Management,

half of all leaders and managers reported
that they would not employ somebody

who had one or more
neurodivergent conditions.

This is the world of employment

that neurodiverse people
have to walk into.

I never held down a job
for longer than 18 months.

But I have now been running
my business for nine years,

and I have reached levels of success
that I never dreamed could be possible,

which is great,

but it’s actually not why
I’m standing on this stage today.

I’m standing here today

because it took me 36 years
to figure out why I was different

and why some things were so hard.

I stand on this stage as a parent
of neurodiverse children.

I don’t want my kids to have
to go through years of not fitting in

before they have the opportunity
to forge their own way.

I don’t want any kids
to have to go through that.

Did you know that careers advisers
are not taught to suggest self-employment

or entrepreneurship as an option?

I do, because I asked them,
as I prepared for this talk.

I wanted to know if their careers advisory
world ever say to people,

“Set up your own business!

You’ve got a brilliant different brain
and brilliant different ideas.

You should do it your own way!”

But it turns out that’s not in the manual.

We might want to update that manual.

We are getting better all the time
at diagnosing neurodiversity.

But all the support that’s on offer
after that diagnosis

focuses on teaching
the neurodiverse person

how to change their behaviours,

how to change themselves

so that they can more easily fit
into society’s boxes.

We need to stop doing that.

And when it comes to supporting
neurodiverse people

to find jobs and careers,

we need to start
promoting entrepreneurship

as a viable career choice.

We should be doing that for everybody,

but especially for neurodiverse people
who have wonderfully different brains

that will only excel when they’re not
using most of their capacity

just to get through a workday
that somebody else designed.

We need to tell our
differently-brained young people

that they can forge their own path.

They can be the innovators,
they can be the leaders,

and they can lead the way for everybody.

We need to tell them they can do it,

and we need to believe
in them when they do.

And to everybody
here watching this, all of you,

but especially if you’re neurodiverse -

then let me be the one to tell you

that you do not have to fit
into a neurotypical box.

You do not have to fit into the boxes

that the world has been trying
to put you into,

because those boxes were not made for you.

You can make your own box.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)