Geniuses are misfits. How could they not be?

If you’re strange enough to see the world so differently from everybody else, how could you also not be… different?

One of my Roundtable members brought one of vendors, a genius software programmer that I’ll call Mr. ADHD.

Roundtable was the first place he’d ever gone where *everyone* is a closet genius about something (or at least a savant :)) Everyone ‘got’ why he liked to have ten plates spinning and eventually turn three of those into full-on companies and hopefully sell one or two for cashola.

He jointed Roundtable too. So at his very first hot seat, he drew all his projects on a board and said, “Which of these companies should I kill?”

I said, “How many of them are profitable?”

“All of them,” he said.

“Then why not let all of ‘em run?”

Strangely enough, we were the first bunch to tell him that. An old boss he’d looked up to told him, you should just focus on one thing at a time.

Liberated, he went on to sell one of his firms for $1 million last summer. The first of many, I predict. Building companies in order to sell them is a learned skill, just like building companies in order to keep them.

Now the other thing he did last summer was bring his wife to a Roundtable meeting. He explains:

“She knew I was ADHD but she was still annoyed with me. It was like, “Pick up your things, do this, do that.” It was always something like my pants lying on the floor. I would say, “I didn’t even know it was there.”

We would argue and bicker. Constantly nagging each other, mostly her nagging me, and me yelling back or arguing back.

She’d say, “Why did you leave the toilet seat up?” I did not consciously leave the toilet seat that way. But then I would say something stupid like, “Well you should put the toilet seat UP for me!”

She thought I was maliciously dropping my clothes on the floor. I was not maliciously doing that.
Honestly, I had not noticed. When I left them there, it was because I was focused on getting into bed… which actually takes more thought than you’d think. For an ADHD person, it takes a
tremendous amount of concentration.

She came back from Roundtable with a lot. She finally accepted that ADHD was a part of me and it wasn’t a bad thing. She understood that I was not being malicious or careless with the small tasks by leaving clothes on the floor.

After Roundtable, she said, “Alright, I know my husband is not a lazy person. So let me try
something new…”

She moved my laundry basket from the closet to the corner of the room, exactly where I had been leaving my clothes on the floor. Well, lo and behold, it went from being 10 percent of clothes making it into the basket, to 80 percent.

She gained a better understanding of not just ADHD, but of me and how my being ADHD and
being crazy-eccentric is OK. It’s not something that I should necessarily try to change. It’s something I can work on and even channel, because it’s not like I’m being malicious.

Literally, since that Roundtable, I can’t recall even one fight we’ve had over my ADHD.”

* * *

Hardly anyone I know actually runs their business in a vacuum. EVERYONE I work with has spouses and family members. They are almost never silent about the business. So there hardly is any such thing as a “solo entrepreneur.” All those family members have to at least put up with us.

The nice thing is, they can be members of the Planet Perry tribe too.

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.