How many of us neurodivergent professionals have thought to ourselves, “I can’t stand working for someone else. I need to start my own business!” 

Wanting to become an entrepreneur is common amongst neurodivergent people, and it’s understandable. There are tons of challenges that come with trying to conform to typical workplace standards and expectations. And employers are not always very understanding of our unique challenges. 

On tough days when you’re battling burnout, RSD, or executive dysfunction, working for yourself can start to look appealing. 

Is entrepreneurship right for you?

One of the main reasons people avoid the idea of entrepreneurship is uncertainty. There’s no way to know for sure if you will be well-suited to self-employment.

Jenesis Rose Long, a business development coach and neurodivergent entrepreneur, says unfortunately, there is no real way to be certain. None of us can see the future, but we all want reassurance that we’re on the right path.

“Every single successful entrepreneur has asked this same question,” says Jenesis.

The good news? We can create our own assurances by taking a few simple steps.

Step 1: Get specific with your ideas. 

What type of business do you want to create? Will it be a subscription box? A virtual assistant service? An e-commerce retail store? Get as specific as you can with your ideas. You can leave logistics and financial details for later.

Step 2: Evaluate your motivations. 

Take your notes from Step 1 and be honest with yourself. Does this idea excite you? Are you passionate about bringing it to life?

Veronica Yao, career coach and founder of Atypical Careers, says this is critical for anyone considering starting a business.

“You shouldn’t be going into entrepreneurship because you’re trying to escape your current situation,” she advises. “If you’re not passionate about or driven by your business idea, that’s a recipe for burnout. Especially as neurodivergent people, we need to be really connected with the purpose behind what we’re doing and believe in our ideas to get through those tough times.”

If you’re confident in your idea and your passion for it, we can proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Maximize your use of personal autonomy.

“It’s not about self-employment or what you decide to sell. It’s about knowing that you are the captain of your ship, and that you will steer yourself in the right direction.”

When you work for yourself, there are no rules or qualifications. As neurodivergent people, this can be daunting and feel overwhelming, especially if you’re transitioning from a role with more structure, like school or working for an employer, so you need to create your own rules and boundaries.

Spend your energy wisely

Jenesis utilizes a method wherein she monitors her energy levels on a day to day basis and lets that guide her to-do list. As neurodivergent people, we tend to have higher “peaks” and lower “valleys” when it comes to our energy, and if we’re not careful about how we spend it, this can lead to overwhelm and burnout.

As neurodivergent professionals, we can create our own rules for how we run our business. But this requires an in-depth understanding of your ideal working style and conditions, as well as time and effort to put organizational structures and boundaries in place to maximize your chances of success. This can look like having accountability partners, designated “no-meeting” days, and planning “buffer time” and failsafes when it comes to your work.

“You don’t have to recreate a corporate environment of industrialism in your own flexible and creative business if it doesn’t work for you.”

Consider your working style.

If you’re the type of person who tends to hyperfocus and forget about your physical needs, you might adjust your work environment and schedule to prevent discomfort or health issues that may be caused by posture, eye strain, or forgetting to eat. 

“There is no rule that says you have to do administrative work at a desk.” Sit on an exercise ball if you like to bounce, sit on your couch if you prefer a softer environment, or position yourself so you’re facing a window if you prefer to look out a window while working. You don’t even need a traditional computer setup: your computer could be your phone on a tripod! Make your office environment serve you rather than the other way around. 

For that type of hyperfocus that can cause posture issues, Jenesis recommends the doorway pectoral stretch.

Even though it might hurt in your back or shoulders area, Jenesis says that the pectoral muscles are the ones that need to be stretched or massaged for issues caused by hunching over.

For the hyperfocuser who can get lost in a task until their body reminds them it exists, try setting up tasks so that they are naturally interrupted by bodily needs. For example, if you only need to do a task that takes a few minutes, do it right before you have to get up to go to the bathroom so it forces you to stop. If you have a task you’d like to do while eating lunch, but you’re worried you won’t be able to stop, only get half of your lunch so you’ll have to get up and stop the task in order to eat the other half of your lunch. This can also work with filling your water bottle.

If you’re the type of person who hyperfocuses so much that you forget your own body, however, you might try a different approach: time your tasks so that they will be interrupted by attending to someone else’s needs, whether that be a pet, a partner, or a child. Start your task a set amount of time before it’s time to feed your dogs, for example.

Finding your confidence as an entrepreneur

Along with customizing your schedule and environment to work for you, it is critical that you trust yourself. Having that self-trust allows you to work through setbacks and know that you will learn from them and pivot to something that works better.

Once you’ve gone through these steps, you may be concerned about the viability of your idea. What if your business fails?

“There’s this horrible statistic out there: 80% of new businesses will die in their first five years. Here’s what they don’t tell you: those businesses are still running the same people, they just look different. Maybe they rebranded, got bought by a bigger company, or decided they wanted to do something different.”

Jenesis emphasizes reframing your mindset about failure:

“The length of time a business has been open is not the only measure of success. A business is successful if you are meeting your values, you’re happy, you’re making good use of your resources, and you’re impacting people.”

Jenesis says she is saddened by this popular narrative about failure and compares the situation to a more familiar one in regular employment. If you work at a job for five years and then quit, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You still gained five years of experience.

It’s the same for self-employment. She says if you try something and it doesn’t work for you, you can always try something else next.

“There is no one that I know who has tried to start their own business that didn’t learn transferable skills into a thousand other jobs. When you’re an entrepreneur, you become the marketer, the salesperson, the financial manager, the service provider–you become everything for your own business.”

Managing finances.

This brings us to the next most common uncertainty: finances. Jenesis recommends starting out small to mitigate risk:

“There can be a very low barrier to entry if you take it slow and start small.”

The safest way to dip your toes into starting a business is to keep your current job and start working on your business on the side, using the funds from your job to help with starting costs.

As neurodivergent people, it’s common for us to have more financial barriers than the general population. So what if the money from your current job doesn’t cover your startup costs?

“There are several different ways I could advise someone on this topic, depending on their comfort level with debt.”

If you’re not comfortable with debt at all, you could try applying for small business grants. These are highly competitive and there aren’t very many of them, but they can be a great way of securing capital for free. If you find that there are no grants available to you, you may need to wait until you have more savings to start your business. But there is a wide spectrum of levels of risk you can take.

At the lower end of risk, you have the option of pre-selling your services or your product. You can have people pay upfront to reserve their spot. By pre-selling, you gain access to the capital you’ll need to fully start. However, honest warning, you need to be realistic in your estimations. Don’t pre-sell what you can’t actually fulfill.

Moving along the spectrum of risk, consider asking your friends or family for support.

“Depending on your comfort level, I don’t think it hurts at all to ask. You might not even know how much support is out there for you unless you ask.”

Business loans are another, more risky option. However, these come with interest and can get very expensive to pay off. Jenesis recommends getting an LLC if you choose this route.

A final, very risky option is to take on credit card debt to find your initial costs.

“I personally funded my business with a credit card with a 0% introductory rate for 15 months.”

She says she was aware that it was a huge risk–if she didn’t pay it all off in the first 15 months, she would start accruing hefty interest. But she was confident in her decision because she knew she could pay it off–if not with funds from her business, then by working a second or a third job until it was paid off.

Obviously, everyone will have different needs, abilities, and approaches when it comes to debt. The important thing to remember, whether you’re pre-selling or taking on credit, is that you will eventually have to pay it all back.

Be realistic with your abilities and your finances to avoid a costly miscalculation.

Dealing with rejection sensitivity as an entrepreneur.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria: It’s so common among neurodivergent people. What if you’re the type of person who experiences RSD and you receive a rejection during the course of your work? 

Jenesis recommends being realistic with yourself: you will never have a different brain, so you can stop hoping that one day, it will just magically stop bothering you. You will likely always be sensitive to rejection if you have RSD, so you need to work within that limitation.

 Jenesis recommends three options for dealing with it on your own:

Keep a “yay” list visible at your workspace. 

When you experience a rejection, it can help to look at other times you’ve succeeded. Every time you get a compliment, a nice email, or experience a success in your business, make a note of it in a way that works for you. Keep a list of these “yays” near you in your workspace for easy reference when you feel yourself going into rejection sensitivity.

Get moving. 

Often, the natural urge when experiencing a rejection or failure is to focus on that rejection and try to analyze it to figure out what went wrong and how you can avoid it in the future. 

This is not productive. You need to make that rejection smaller in your mind, not larger. You can do this by getting up and engaging in healthy, active distractions, such as taking a walk or having a “dance party” to a “positivity playlist”. This helps your brain re-contextualize the issue in a more realistic, healthy way.

Gentle self-talk. 

It’s a common piece of advice, but that’s because it works. Imagine someone you care about being spoken to the way you’re speaking to yourself about your recent rejection. Really imagine it. Would you think those words are fair, constructive, or kind? No, of course not! Now imagine what you would say to your loved one if they were experiencing what you are experiencing. It probably sounds much kinder and gentler! Try to consciously adjust your self-talk and speak that way to yourself about your rejection.

If these steps fail, Jenesis recommends getting a career coach to work through your RSD with. A career coach can provide an unbiased point of view which can prove invaluable for neurodivergent entrepreneurs, as well as taking some pressure off of loved ones who might be too stressed out by being “tied in” to the success of the business to be the kind of support you need.

Marketing your business.

For a justice-minded neurodivergent professional, marketing can seem daunting. With all the deceptive or predatory advertisements we have become accustomed to, how are we supposed to advertise our business without feeling gross about it?

Jenesis offers the following scenario:

“Imagine a chef who is selling the best pizza you could buy in an Italian farmer’s market. They’ve carefully made this pizza with the freshest local ingredients, and they’re feeling icky–like they’re trying to trick people into buying pizza from them. That would be ridiculous! Why would they feel icky about that unless they knew they couldn’t provide that level of quality over and over and over again to their customers? There’s a problem if you’re feeling like you’re tricking people.”

You can be completely honest in your marketing and it can still be effective if you truly believe in your product or service. If marketing seems like something you can’t do with a clear conscience, Jenesis says there’s either an issue with your belief in your work or that you’ve been taught something incorrect about what marketing needs to be. 

If you truly cannot overcome your aversion to marketing, you may need to consult with a career coach or delegate the task to someone else.

Delegating work as a business owner.

Delegation can be hard as a neurodivergent entrepreneur. Knowing what to delegate, if you need to delegate it, or even feeling like you can’t delegate something are all common issues neurodivergent people face in their business ventures.

The first thing you should consider, according to Jenesis, is what tasks are consistently put off, or dropped to the bottom of your to-do list. Any tasks that are costing you more time than they should–time spent either doing them or thinking about them–are tasks that likely need to be delegated to someone else. 

Once you’ve determined which tasks need to be delegated, there is still the issue of giving up control of those tasks. For neurodivergent entrepreneurs especially, it can be difficult to let others work on “your baby,” as Jenesis puts it.

Something that Jenesis recommends to help with this feeling is to look for people who are similar to you in both values and work style. Joining a neurodivergent online community can be helpful for this, and Jenesis recommends this method over “just hiring a random person from Fiverr.” 

TIP: Veronica Yao’s Facebook group, Neurodivergent Careers and Job Hunting, would be perfect for this purpose. 

Sometimes there is a mismatch in expectations when you hire someone to delegate work to. You need to set clear expectations in the work you expect your assistant to do. For instance, a common issue is expecting a social media content creator to also be a social media manager. However, a manager is someone who would be paid at a different level than a regular content creator. In order to keep your expectations and your pay in alignment with your business needs, plan out what specifically you need ahead of time and avoid hiring someone for the wrong role.

About Jenesis Rose Long, M.Ed

Jenesis Rose Long is a career and business development coach. Jenesis hosts the Sustain Your Passion podcast and teaches career development courses through her company and for university students. She co-researched and co-authored the soon-to-be-published book, Liberationships: Critical Mentorship in Practice. 

Jenesis earned a Masters of Education in College Student Services Administration, and an Honors Bachelors of Psychology from Oregon State University. She lives in Oregon where she enjoys spending time with family and friends, painting, and walking her two dogs Molly and Dunkin’.

About Veronica Yao, Atypical Careers

Veronica Yao is the owner and operator of Atypical Careers, and a career coach who specializes in helping neurodivergent professionals build sustainable work lives and gain autonomy over their careers.

If you’re looking for additional career support, join her Facebook group, Neurodivergent Careers and Job Hunting.