Trying to be normal nearly cost me my business
For a long time, I believed success required containment.
Contain your ideas.
Contain your curiosity.
Contain the parts of yourself that don’t fit neatly into productivity advice.
So I did what many entrepreneurs do.
What I thought I had to do.
I tried to behave.
I stayed in my lane.
I limited my thinking.
I told myself creativity was something to indulge after success, a reward and an indulgence.
What I didn’t realise was that I was starving the very thing that made me good at what I do.
The quiet cost of suppression
When your brain is naturally creative, idea-driven and fast, suppression comes at a cost.
Not immediately.
But slowly.
Energy drops.
Momentum fades.
Joy disappears and friction creeps in.
Everything starts to feel heavier than it should.
It wasn’t a dramatic burnout.
It was subtler than that.
My business stalled.
Everything looked fine on the outside, but I wasn’t flying the way I knew I could. And more importantly, I wasn’t enjoying the process.
Still, I told myself the problem was discipline.
That I just needed to focus more.
Stick to one message. One audience. One path.
I kept trying to fix myself instead of questioning the system I was forcing myself into.
The shift that changed everything
The turning point wasn’t a new strategy.
It was acceptance.
Admitting I have ADH, and, more importantly:
Accepting that my brain works differently
Accepting that it needs stimulation, novelty and momentum
Accepting that ideas aren’t distractions, they’re signals
That moment changed everything.
Once I stopped trying to override how my brain works, once I stopped fighting myself, my business began to change too.
Designing a system that actually worked
Acceptance alone wasn’t enough. I knew there was a real risk of swinging too far the other way — chasing every shiny idea and letting novelty run the show.
So I did what I do best.
I designed a system.
A way to work with my brain, not against it.
A way to honour creativity without letting it derail execution.
That system became what I now call The Designed Creativity Method, built around five core elements:
1. Permission
I stopped suppressing how my brain works and gave myself explicit permission to be creative, curious and non-linear.
2. Containment (not restriction)
I didn’t act on every idea.
I gave ideas a safe place to land so they didn’t hijack delivery.
3. Dedicated creative space
I protected time for exploration, learning and experimentation — without immediate pressure to monetise.
4. Low-stakes experimentation
I tried things without expectation.
Joy-led testing rather than outcome-driven performance.
5. Intentional investment and visibility as a side effect
I invested in things because they mattered to me. Growth and visibility followed naturally — not because I chased them.
This wasn’t chaos.
It was design.
What that unlocked in practice
Once I stopped suppressing creativity and started structuring it, growth followed quickly.
Within twelve months:
My income doubled, taking me into six-figure turnover for the first time
One business became three, all in active growth
Writing shifted from blogging to publishing three number one bestselling books
A long-held podcast idea became a top-ten podcast, now approaching its first anniversary and preparing for monetisation
Client retention reached 97%
This wasn’t because I worked harder.
If anything, I work less now.
It happened because I finally built the business around how I work best — instead of pushing against myself.
Final thought
Trying to be “normal” nearly cost me the business I was trying to grow.
Accepting who I am — and building accordingly — gave me something far more valuable than focus.
It gave me momentum.