Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:00 You're listening to within our reach, a podcast by reachability association that focuses on accessibility, inclusion and leveling the playing field at work and in your community. My name is Shelly Alward MacLeod, and my co host is Blake Hunsley, and today we're joined by Amanda Van Tassel, owner and founder of no hassle dog training, to talk all about neurodivergence and entrepreneurship. Enjoy the episode,

Blake Hunsley 0:23 Amanda. Thank you for joining us. Why don't you introduce yourself and also plug that business, because it's a cool business, and we're gonna be talking a lot about it.

Amanda Van Tassel 0:31 Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yes, I'm Amanda. I'm the owner of no hassle dog training. I do private in person and virtual lessons to help people have better relationships with their dogs. It's been a passion of mine for years, and when I finally left the corporate world, I was like, yeah, why not?

Blake Hunsley 0:54 Amazing. So as people probably guessed from the from the title of the episode, I don't think I'm going to be outing you here to say that you are another person like many of us around here, lives with ADHD, personally, as someone who also lives with ADHD and has aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur one day, I'm thrilled to have you here. I'm excited to pick your brain, and hopefully you will allay some of my fears about starting my own business and add to my excitement. But if it's the opposite. If it's all a bunch of challenges, you have to warn us about too. I mean, we want the honest to goodness picture here, so I'm excited to hear both. So thank you for joining us. I'm

Amanda Van Tassel 1:28 here to give you the God's honest truth, I swear.

Blake Hunsley 1:33 Okay, so I guess, first of all, why don't you tell us? Well, what were you doing before you took your entrepreneurship journey, and what kind of spurred that on, I guess, is a good place to Sure,

Amanda Van Tassel 1:43 great question, actually, and honestly, it helped me so much in my entrepreneurial journey. I used to work in the nonprofit industry in the energy sector, so I helped people save energy on their power bills for eight glorious years, I actually really loved what I did. I believed in it, so it made going to work every day feel just a little bit easier. However, that being said, I still burned out. And anybody that's worked in the nonprofit sector knows there's a lot of demands placed on you that are outside the scope of your typical employment. So Right?

Blake Hunsley 2:28 We joke around here a lot that you can have a job description that's stable and accurate for about a minute that's and then something will come up. It's just the nature of our industry. Yes, your the

Amanda Van Tassel 2:38 passion. I'm a Yes girl, 100% so they knew that they could come to me and be like, Amanda, we've got this really cool project for you. Let's send you to remote fly in northern Labrador for five days, which ended up being about eight days, because we got snowed in in March in Labrador, right? Like, they're like, Hey, go do this thing. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, right. It was just, it was part of my passion. It was, but it was also part of what you're absolutely right, burned me out at the end. So during COVID early days, I was on sick leave, and I had a boss previously who told me to never stop asking myself what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I asked myself that question when I was just on my knees, basically crying in the bathroom one day, and the answer was little bit different than what I do today, but it was I would have a little ranch, and I would have a cool little doggy daycare. There'd be all kinds of activities for them to do throughout the day. I'd own this neat little like hobby farm, but it would be for dogs. And I kind of stopped, and I went, Oh, my God, I think I have to do this, right? And it just it stuck in my brain for the whole three months that I was on sick leave, and I realized that I had a little bit of money from my dad passing away. I sold a business of his. So I thought it's now or never. I'm gonna waste that money on something ridiculous or not and maybe go on a cool trip or something. But it wasn't start a business, right? Yeah. So I went for it. I gave two weeks notice. My HR rep thought I was absolutely nuts. Oh,

Blake Hunsley 4:32 we're gonna get to the we're gonna get to the many, many factors that stop people from joining the entrepreneurship, yeah. But that is, oh boy, having people you work with tell you, you must be nuts. It's gotta be the most common. I 100%

Amanda Van Tassel 4:44 right. Like the look on her face was just like she her jaw opened and like, slack on and slack jawed, and just, are you sure? Like, there was probably three different conversations before I left in that two week span. And. And I was like, No, I'm, I've never been more sure about anything in my life, and I never, I'm gonna get emotional. I never felt that feeling before, that that passion, that fire, yes and and I loved my job, but not like I felt in that moment. And I was like, I gotta, maybe it is crazy, but I gotta do it right. Yeah, have to try. I find

Blake Hunsley 5:25 it so funny too, because people with ADHD, typically, we are less risk averse, which is the nice way of saying. We often have poor impulse control. But so I think in a way, we make kind of natural entrepreneurs. But then on the other side of that, you have virtually everyone I've ever met, or at least worked for present workplace accepted where you you don't get a positive sort of response to that impulse. And on top of that, you get people who say, Oh, okay, well, but you work so strangely because you're ADHD or you don't start and finish projects the way a quote, unquote, normal person would it can be a really big turn off. So what got you over that hump, and was that a natural fear of yours? Did you have that reticence about starting your own business, or did you just say, You know what, I can do this. I have faith in me. The hell with it.

Amanda Van Tassel 6:12 Really, it was. It was blind faith to start with. And then, of course, reality sunk in, because then you actually kind of go out and do the thing right? And it was, there was so much learning, so many mistakes, a lot of looking to coaches and mentors and things like that to help guide me, because all the things that I learned up to that point were to survive in the corporate world, right, right? And all of these masks that I put up, and all of these coping mechanisms and notebooks and things like that to keep my life organized and not make, you know, these flip from decision to decision, kind of, you know, lifestyle choices or or career choices. But that's normal for me. That's natural, right? And when you're in business, often, especially when you're a solopreneur, you have to flip from thing to thing to thing throughout the day. So I thrive in this chaos.

Blake Hunsley 7:19 So the things that might exhaust a neurotypical person about entrepreneurship would probably actually be refreshing to you. Lights my

Amanda Van Tassel 7:27 fire, because I get so bored, you know, if I had to come in doing this same crap every day, oh, like the, you know, even when I was in customer service on the phones, at least every conversation was a little different, and you got some cool personalities and interesting stories from people that kept things different, even though you came in and you just, like, strapped the headset on, and, you know, type, a type of every day, right? But there was, there was a difference in the people that you dealt with, and I find that's what I thrived in. And then moving into the business world, it was literally everything that I had to, you know, had to do and and just from one 45 minute span to the next, I could be doing admin work. I could be traveling. I could be at a customer, a client's home, doing a training session with a super cute puppy, and then picking up a day training client and heading home and doing four hours of training with them on my

Blake Hunsley 8:27 own. I'm wondering. And Shelly, I don't want to paint you with a neurotypical brush against your will, I apologize, but I believe a more traditionally neurotypical entrepreneur would probably describe you a little bit. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So I'm very curious the things that you and I might take energy from the constant needing to be jumping on a different fire. I'm sure that happens running your own business as well. Do you get that same drive? Or is that the part of being an entrepreneur that you might find more draining?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 8:55 Well, I'm just reflecting on all of this and the conversation that we had before we actually got on this about organizational procrastination and how some people thrive. And I think this is a really important, important thing for me, is that there's aspects of being a an entrepreneur, which I am, I own my own business, and have for 17 years. Wow. And I find that there's many things that I like, right? Obviously, it's why I'm still doing it. I'm passionate about it. But there's parts of the job okay, that I literally Okay, have to, like, you know, like somebody almost needs to cattle prod me to do, which is, like my the bookkeeping piece, yes. And which is ironic, because I love getting the money. Of course, I honestly to this day, every time, like a check or something comes to. To my bank account. Money comes in. I'm, like, as excited as I was on the very first day, yes, but then I'm immediately, you know, distraught at, oh my gosh, I gotta do this bookkeeping. I gotta do this accounting. This is killing right? So that's very problematic, sure, right? And, but I think that's in everything, like, as you were talking about, is that being an entrepreneur is in you, you talked about it like, what are the things that you're passionate about, and what things might you need to outsource to somebody else. What? Yeah, you know, as as a collective, and I didn't, you know, really fully grasp this in the beginning of owning my own practice, because when you're in the corporate world, like, you know, there's somebody in every department that handles this, like, and I'll use it as an example. Sure, you had a problem. When you're in the corporate world or working for, you know, an organization, you have a problem with your computer, right? You call it, and somebody comes fix it. When you're an entrepreneur like you, they need to figure it out. You are the team. You are the team, exactly, but you're never alone. And sometimes, as an entrepreneur, it takes, it, takes a, you know, a little minute, okay, for us to figure out that we need to actually be banding together. And that was maybe the biggest aha moment for me, was that I don't actually have to do it all, right? There's other people out there who have the skill set that I either need to buy, or we can barter, yes, right? And so I think everybody's situation, you know, and you know, whether you're on the, you know, the autism spectrum, the ADH, whatever your thing is, I think that entrepreneurship, you know, could be for everybody. Yeah, right. And, you know, often people say to me, Oh, I couldn't be an entrepreneur, because I, you know, I don't like to do this, or I don't like to do that, okay, but if you're passionate at widget making right, you can have a business making those widgets, right? And somebody else can be doing all the other stuff. You just have to set it up properly. Yeah, right, yeah. So I love, I love hearing that, because how you were talking about the nerves, the Is this the craziest idea ever. That's exactly how it was for me 17 years ago. Yeah, when people were like, you're going out on your own. And I was like, yeah, and kind of to this your same point, this could be the craziest idea ever, or it could be successful. And that is the blind faith that I always tell people like so they're like, what if it doesn't work. And I and I counter now with, what if it does exactly,

Amanda Van Tassel 13:01 and look how happy you are. So what if it doesn't? Like if it doesn't? I know for me personally, once I got that idea in my brain, I don't think I would have been able to rest easy until I knew that I had at least given it a shot, right? Like the rest of my life would have just been spent guessing, like, what if I had, of, you know, not whizzled away my dad's inheritance on trips and clothes and, you know, maybe buying a house or something like that. Guess, that's a good investment. But, you know, I really, once that idea got started in my head, I was like, Yeah, I can. I think I can do this. And it was, I think, having that, that faith in myself for the I think, really, for the first time in my life, like that, and plans for the future, like, what, what do I want to be when I grow up? And then when I answered the question, felt really good about my answer. So, you know, like, I think it would have been a disservice to me and to the company that I worked for to continue any longer,

Blake Hunsley 14:17 right? I love that piece of advice about continuing to ask yourself what you want to be when you grow up. Because, yeah, this is something I've always felt a little guilty about, is that it's, I'm 42 and I'm still asking myself what I want to be when I grow up. I just it's something that has never been a settled question for me. And part of that, I think, is ADHD, and part of that is just life choices, of course. But no, I love that you've made it, made it a positive? Yeah, I am curious about two things that you that you've talked about here so far. The first I want to address is mistakes to avoid. You said there were a lot of mistakes you made early on that you'd like to avoid. There's nothing I love more than hearing someone who has been a success at an entrepreneur. And I think it's safe to say you're a success. I've seen your work on my own dogs. You're definitely a success with them, thank you. I love hearing about people who've been through it telling me firsthand what to avoid. Just save me, save me the trouble and drama down the road. So what are some of the mistakes that you encountered early on, or that you made early on that you would want people to avoid?

Amanda Van Tassel 15:15 I think, honestly, one of the bigger mistakes was staying too small for too long, especially in my capacity in person sessions. There's only so many hours in a day, right? And with no facility, no office that I'm working out of, I'm also traveling, just taking a lot of time. And for somebody who wanted to grow relatively quickly, because my savings account is going to dwindle just as quickly, I wish that I had have taken the jump into the online world and like virtual training and consulting faster. Okay, way faster, like within my first two years, even, you know, get your feet under you get give yourself a year to be small, right? And and do those things and feel comfortable, but get uneasy and get uncomfortable really quick. It's, it's the most successful I've felt is when I'm the most uncomfortable. I think I love

Blake Hunsley 16:22 i i love that as an anxious person. And again, anxiety tends to be the nice, little happy partner. For ADHD, I thrive on it. I routinely have to tell myself to do things because I'm afraid of doing them, and often the most rewarding things. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to ask you, because I'm just, just so

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 16:42 we call that like risk management, like you know, like having, whether you know it or not, like you're the highest risk usually brings the biggest rewards. You can make it work if you have all the things in place. And I think that's important to think about, like as a business owner, it's not always 100% comfortable, yeah, right. Like, the things that you're looking for Blake to ask yourself, like, there's going to be lots of days where you're like, What the heck is going on? Yeah, what have I done? Very brave of you. Literally, like that feeling of panic comes over, and then you're like, two days later, you just got five new pieces of business or something that you'd really wanted and you didn't think was ever going to come to fruition. Kind of just like, happens yes, and then you're like, yes,

Blake Hunsley 17:40 and this was the best.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 17:45 I like that description, getting uncomfortable. Yeah, life is about like some uncomfortable sail

Amanda Van Tassel 17:51 through. I think sometimes you need help to get uncomfortable too. I've got a coach I and it is holy well worth the money.

Blake Hunsley 18:02 Who is this coach and what do they do? I'm very curious. Her

Amanda Van Tassel 18:04 name is Dr Holly Tett, and she is actually a human psychologist and a dog behaviorist, fun, so, like the coolest combo ever. And she is a business coach. Okay, so I took she took me on. I'd been following her advice for a number of years, and when we met in January for the start of our six month thing, we set some goals, and I said, I want to 10x my revenue. And she laughed and we laughed and you know, but then she goes, Okay, if you're serious about that. And I was like, You're right, I am. We need to do a summit. And I went, Oh, that's that's uncomfortable. So by summit, I mean, basically I'm interviewing dog trainers and behaviorists from all over the world, people that I have no business reaching out to right and little old me, and with all the audacity in the world, I am emailing all of these people going, Hey, do you want to talk to me about leash walking? I'm going to do a big conference this summer, and it's actually a thing now. It's the registrations open. I've built every web page, interviewed every dog trainer I have. It's just been so phenomenal to watch that, like, level of discomfort turn into a thing where it's like, holy crap. I just did that. And there's like, people from all over the world now that are signing up for this, this summit that I just created. It's, it's like, it's really cool.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:44 I think, I think that's an example of, so what if it did work right? Make the calls and yeah, and I'm certain not every single person responded to you, like, in a positive manner. I got a lot of no's, right? Yeah, but you got a lot of yeses,

Amanda Van Tassel 20:03 right? Yeah, enough to do a 10 day Summit. So yeah.

Blake Hunsley 20:06 Honestly, I love the fact that you haven't lost your Oh, how dare I little old me emailing these people so audacious, but you still do it. That's the Yeah. That's the takeaway for me, is because I do get that sort of imposter syndrome feeling of like, Papa, who am I to be asking these strangers for for business and assistance? But that's what you have to do in business. Absolutely.

Amanda Van Tassel 20:25 The

Blake Hunsley 20:26 other thing that you mentioned off the off the top, that really kind of piqued my interest was talking about masking, because, and I'll get you to explain, if you don't mind, a little bit, what masking means to you, yeah, what the impact of it is, because, personally, I find it exhausting, and how that's changed now that you're an entrepreneur. Does that, do you find you still have to do a bit of masking, or is it something that you've kind of been able to free yourself from now that you're running your own show? Very good questions.

Amanda Van Tassel 20:53 So for me, masking was, I think, really putting a wall up between how I thought felt reactive, honestly versus what I showed the rest of the world and and then there's the coping mechanisms as well that go into that there's all the tools, the things that, you know, like notebooks, so that I didn't interrupt people in meetings and notebooks, so that I could schedule things and notebooks so that I could have a to do list. And you know, I really did have about six from the corporate days. And I have to say it was exhausting. It's part of what caused the burnout. Absolutely, I'm sure of that, and I have to do it so much less now I still have to do what I call put on my customer service face when I meet with clients, and I feel like there's also times. So just the other day, I was recording a whole bunch of intros for my summit to do little bios for each of the speakers, and I could hear the tone of my voice shift as soon as the recording started right like so there's still a little bit of a mask that goes up. But the part that's less exhausting, I think, is that I can take that down many times throughout the day, I do a session with a client, and then I come home and I can have some downtime with my dog and maybe take her to the park or do some admin work. And the mask is gone then, and then I maybe put it back up later on in the day. So it's not this nine to five exhaustion of who's looking at me. What are they? Are they judging me? You know, do they think I'm weird? Here let me put another sticky note on my computer monitor to remind myself of X, Y or Z, thing that I know I'm going to forget in five minutes. I don't do those things anymore, and down to one notebook. Oh,

Blake Hunsley 23:08 my God. Oh my

Amanda Van Tassel 23:10 god. I know this is something I aspire to personally schedule and to do list all in in one page, which is great for me, but I'm down to one notebook. And that was, yeah, that was a feat. And I think that was giving up the corporate world and needing to get rid of so many of those masking moments that I could just track my life on one notepad, right? Not sticky notes and six notebooks I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 23:38 love that I love that it shows that you became your true self, yeah, and you were able to do the things like in the time that you wanted, in the way you wanted, not to, you know, not to beat into somebody else's drum, so to speak. And the other piece that you talked about how you still like putting on your customer service face, and I that I was trying not to snort laugh out loud, because I think that's important for everybody to realize there's always going to be some mask that you have to put on, because in every piece of your life, right? And in this case we're talking about work, there's going to be something that's not maybe your forte, and it may be all the time, or it may just be today. It's not my forte to deal with that. But I agree, like, there I have to put the mask on, okay, when I'm having certain conversations, you know, with with clients, right? And, but the I'm not doing that to your point, eight hours a day, and that's the big difference when you're an entrepreneur, that you have the ability to schedule to, you know, to your

Amanda Van Tassel 24:54 masking abilities,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 24:58 right? Yeah, if you recognize. Is that I'm, I'm not my, my I don't want to be talking to clients eight hours a day, yeah, so then, right away, you know, okay, well, then I likely don't want to set up, you know, eight intake meetings today, this week, or today, or whatever the case. You have the ability to do that when you're working for somebody else. You know, the ability to do that, here's your job description. Get to it. Yeah, exactly. But I love the masking. That was a great question. Yeah, interested to hear how that affected you.

Blake Hunsley 25:30 Yeah. I have a lot of experience being exhausted after eight hours of masking, so I understand. I found it very interesting when you talked about customer service being a bit different, though, because I used to work eight hour shifts, dealing and helping customers face to face all day long. And people would ask me, how are you not fully burned out by the end of that? But it's a different person every couple minutes. It's constant, constant kind of cycle of refreshing on your toes a little Right, exactly, and then moving to a more traditional office environment, like, thank heavens. I work in the not for profit industry, where everything is changing every 20 seconds. Or else I 20 seconds, it would be nightmarish for me. I would have so much boredom would be would be a big issue for me, absolutely. I'm curious if you had this issue. I know a lot of people with ADHD in a traditional work environment have a bit of trouble with authority. We often are a bit resistant to following other people's instructions. I think that inspires a lot of us to want to take the jump into entrepreneurship. Was that something for you as well or no? So

Amanda Van Tassel 26:25 yes and no, and I think some of it stems from me being a people pleaser. So I I fear authority, respect authority, so I'm very much a like, I'm I do what I'm told, kind of, I was always the good girl right growing up, and grandma's Angel, of course. But there's a certain level of spiciness I think that allows me to buck that authority every once in a while, and sometimes it's when I know I'm right, and it takes a little while to maybe convince others that I am but yeah, so I wouldn't say it was as much of a an authority thing For me, because that people pleasing just runs Ooh so deep. It's gonna take years of therapy so baked in. But you had, you had asked about mistakes, and I do want to touch on one more big mistake that I made early, early on in my business, that I fixed as soon as I realized what I had done interesting, okay, was not setting boundaries quickly enough. Okay,

Blake Hunsley 27:45 so explain a little more about that, because I know this is something a lot of us

Amanda Van Tassel 27:49 struggle, yeah, that, and it's huge. And again, it goes back to the people pleasing thing, right? I mean, I just wanted, I wanted everybody, and I'm growing a new business, so it's like, I'll take you all, all I want all of you, but I can't that's not that's not sustainable. And I think it was really important for me to recognize that those boundaries are in place to protect me long term, and I had to put things into place so that my entrepreneurial life didn't end up so similar to my life in the corporate world that there was no difference, right? And I was still just going to end up burned out from doing what I do now. So doing things like cancelation policies that I'm I'm still working on it a little bit. I let a few people walk over me occasionally, but I'm getting much better at just directing them to the link that's right on my website. Yeah, so it takes away that awkward, weird, icky conversation that you're having about, hey, if you do me wrong, here's the here's what I'm going to charge you for it. So it's like, here, it points to it, and they have to accept it when they sign on to work with me. So it kind of takes that, that weirdness away and and I can fall back on, well, you, you did agree to this when you signed up with me, so it's but it is up to you as an entrepreneur, to stick to those boundaries, and it's it's up to you whether you decide to make exceptions for them or not, and recognize that if you allow exceptions to happen, there will be a certain percentage of the population that will absolutely take advantage of that. I'm working with one of those people right now.

Blake Hunsley 29:42 The lovely thing, though, is, as an entrepreneur, at the end of the day, you get to make the decision to how you approach these things. You're not at the beck and call of anyone else. And that sounds delightful to me. Yeah, I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 29:50 love I you know all these things that you're saying that you know, lessons, lessons learned. And I think this is great for those people out there, because we. Have many people at reachability that are considering the entrepreneurial Avenue, and everybody's going to make mistakes, yeah, right, and it's likely because I think about the boundaries piece at the beginning of starting a business, we want, what do we want to do? We want our business to be successful? Yeah, so we probably burn the candle at both, at both ends, but you learn pretty darn quickly about boundaries. So I think this is important. It's important, as we hear these things, so that if you're just starting out on the entrepreneurial road and you have yet to set some boundaries, you might want to start thinking about that, because here's some lessons that we've heard that it's likely going to sneak up at some point that's right, and

Amanda Van Tassel 30:49 grab you, yep, and you're going to be like, Oh, why didn't I listen to Amanda when she's like, it was set. Some boundaries

Blake Hunsley 30:57 we talk a lot about here, about around here about self management and self control. And I think you're a really good example of somebody who's kind of nailed those two things, sure, which has really served you well going into into running your own business. I think you as someone with people pleaser kind of tendencies, and also with the fun challenges that ADHD can bring. If you weren't so self aware and self managed. I can't see you be being as successful as you are right now, this soon in the game, too. No,

Amanda Van Tassel 31:25 you're 100% right. And honestly, I've been this self aware for many, many years, and it took a lot of work to get there, but I recognized I like people watching. It's a hobby of mine. So I certainly, throughout my years of people watching, recognized that there were some fundamental differences about how I operate in the world versus how other people operate, and that people watching led to more and more self awareness, I think, and then going through years of therapy really helped, although I'll still tell you the day that my therapist said paused me mid ramble, I'm guessing. Have you ever looked at being diagnosed with ADHD and I went, Well, you know, it's funny, my whole family is but never once thought about, you know? Oh, yeah, I might have a little touch, right? She goes, you might want to go talk to your family doctor. That was the most unaware I had ever been about myself. Like to go and go through that process of getting diagnosed and go do the testing with the psychiatrist, was eye opening. I, like, had never flunked a test so bad in my life. He was like,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 32:57 you passed the ADHD.

Amanda Van Tassel 33:01 He was like, wow, this is severe. This is this is severe. It was like, well, and it made sense, because my mom, my brother, my all of my uncles, my cousins, like, it was just literally, like, you look through our family tree and it's just spells ADHD, like, that's our monogram towel, family crest it is, I'm telling you, and back in the day when it was still called Asperger so I'm assuming that there's potentially a bit of autism spectrum in our family as well. Yeah, just undiagnosed, officially,

Blake Hunsley 33:38 often hand in hand with ADHD,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 33:39 let's be honest. Well, we were talking before the show, right before the podcast, you and I, and talking about education and how we do things, about being a high achiever. So this is yet another exactly, using a high Ding, ding, ding. High Achiever.

Blake Hunsley 33:56 That's right. When I

Amanda Van Tassel 33:57 do it, I go all out. Let me tell you,

Blake Hunsley 34:01 there's a really good lesson in there for people who are for a couple people, people who suspect that they may have ADHD, and people who have gotten like you and I both a, not as a child diagnosis, but a full blown middle of adult. And how nice to find a kind of diagnosis is you were just your household was just littered with people with ADHD, and you still didn't had no know that about yourself. So if you're out there and it's suddenly taking you by surprise and you're kicking yourself thinking, why didn't I know this years ago? Yeah, maybe just don't feel so bad about that. It's not, it's not always so obvious, even with people right there in the room.

Amanda Van Tassel 34:32 So don't, don't beat yourself up. Just be thankful that you're recognizing it now and getting the, you know, help and potential treatment for it. Yeah, that was definitely for somebody who is relatively self aware of very, Oh, wow. Got a moment like, I felt a bit like an idiot, but I was like, I said, I was always the good kid. And when you also grow up. A family where my little brother had really severe ADHD and also terrible food allergies growing up, he was the one that everybody focused on, right? So it was, and apparently there's a term for me, glass child is what it's called, interesting, and you were the one that was forgotten about,

Blake Hunsley 35:21 aka the one we didn't have to worry about, is exactly,

Amanda Van Tassel 35:25 and that was word for word, things my mother had said over the years, we never had to worry about you, and she was actually long since passed when I got diagnosed. So that would have been a really that's one of my biggest regrets, is never being able to have that conversation with mom. How did you how did you miss this all through these years? Holy ladies, as

Blake Hunsley 35:49 someone who's currently having those conversations with a parent who is potentially also missing those signs in themselves, it's not necessarily a really clear cut conversation

Amanda Van Tassel 35:58 with a good That's right, yeah. I have

Blake Hunsley 36:01 one last big question for you, if I may, yeah, that I want to kind of wrap up on here is ADHD and entrepreneurship. Is it we always talk about, and I don't like the phrasing, but we talk about it as Tova references, as super stigma, or a superpower ADHD. So when we're talking about all of the responsibility of running your own business, all of the nerve it takes to get it off the ground and just take that risk. In your opinion, if you had to sum it up, which is it superpower, or is it a super hindrance, or is it just somewhere? Is it not as big of a factor as you expected?

Amanda Van Tassel 36:33 It is a pretty big factor, although I'm still on the fence about this superpower versus disability, really, because there are days where I am stuck in paralysis and brain fog, even after I've taken my medication, even after I've done all the things that I should do to be able to power through my day and be productive. And I just want to cry, right? And I feel so helpless and so out of control. Now, 90% of my days are not like that, and I do feel like it's a superpower in some way, shape or form. It's given me the ability to think differently about life, about business, about relationships, that makes me, I think, unique and and who, who I am as a person. So, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to look at myself as like this burden to society or this person who's just labeled as disabled, right? It's, there's, it's so much more than that. So I think absolutely, there are top notch qualities that are through and through ADHD symptoms, that have allowed me to be who I am and manage my business in the way that I am and, you know, keep on my toes basically, and do all the things. But then there are still days where I'm like, Well, man, that's just this would be so much easier if I didn't have to do this and didn't have to fight some of these things. Also every single day, you know, or take medication for it to make it normal, right? And or make it what other people see or deal with on a regular basis. Yeah, I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 38:21 think that you, you, you're probably superpower, yeah, because you just described 90% of the time as a superpower. And I've often had the conversation, you know, with Tova about, you know, the superpower, super stigma. Sometimes it's what we choose. Yeah, right, because if you'd have chose that, it's going to be this big burden, and that's how you're again. That's that reframing focus. Then you're likely always thinking about it from the disability effect, as opposed to all the things that you talk to us today both the self awareness and the boundaries and some of those things that's using your ADHD as a superpower, very true, right? Yeah, and so I think that's kudos to the success that you've had in your business. This summit sounds fantastic. And we know stepping, you know, just stepping outside of, you know that to call people yep and not be afraid of rejection, not being afraid of the word no, no just means you try harder, yeah. Look at the success. So you know, for our people who are listening to this podcast, I think this is a great example of, you know, entrepreneurship, that it has thrown you some curveballs Absolutely, and you gave us some great, you know, opportunities if you're about to start a business or maybe you already. An entrepreneur and you're struggling in some of the areas that Amanda has talked about, have a little look. Maybe it's an adjustment that you need to make, but this is a great example of a success story. Congratulations, thanks, congrats, Amanda.

Blake Hunsley 40:18 And to build on that success, could you please plug the summit and your business and tell everyone exactly where they can find you and pay you reasonable rights for excellent service. Yes,

Amanda Van Tassel 40:26 it's like the thing I'm worst at selling myself. So my summit starts June 2. So depending on when this airs, it's June 2 to 11th, and it is called the perfectly relaxed walk Summit. I have 20 experts from around the world coming to talk to everybody, whether you're a dog Pro, a dog parent or a dog nerd, to help everybody have just better walks with their dogs and be able to take them more places. And if you want to hit me up for any private or virtual training. You can find me at nohassledogtraining.ca. Amazing.

Blake Hunsley 41:06 I'm gonna do my best to get this episode out in advance of your Summit. I'm going to try really hard, but don't wish you all a success. Thank you so much. I've got I've been lucky, Shelley, you've been lucky a bit too, to be around here to see a bit of this process. But yeah, I've seen a fair amount of it up close over the last five years, and you just keep on growing. And it's lovely to see. It's very inspiring. And again, as someone who has aspirations to do my own thing down the road too, then, yeah, you've given me some good advice today. So thank you very much. Shelly, would you take us home? Absolutely

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 41:37 well. Thank you. Thank you for listening to within our reach. We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode. If you have an idea for an episode, topic you'd like us to cover, or if you'd like to join us as a guest on the podcast, reach out to us at withinourreach@reachability.org, thank you. Everybody. Have a lovely day.

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