ADHDifference

S2E12: Building Empires & Leaning Into ADHD Strengths + guest Colin McIntosh

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 12

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Julie Legg welcomes Colin McIntosh, a serial entrepreneur best known as the founder of Sheets & Giggles and co-creator of the AI-powered tool sheetsresume.com. Colin shares his late ADHD diagnosis story, how it shaped his work ethic and personal strategies, and the unfiltered realities of building multiple businesses while navigating ADHD.

Colin talks about the highs (hyperfocus and creativity) and lows (distraction and dopamine traps) of ADHD entrepreneurship. From his 3am work sprints to self-imposed deadlines and ditching morning meetings altogether, Colin offers practical, real-world advice for anyone building a business with an ADHD brain.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Colin’s unexpected journey to a late ADHD diagnosis
  • How ADHD shaped his path as a multi-time entrepreneur
  • The behind-the-scenes story of building Sheets & Giggles
  • Why traditional structures don’t work for ADHD brains
  • Creative ways Colin works with his ADHD, not against it
  • What makes ADHD brains thrive in startup life
  • Colin’s refreshing take on failure, dopamine, and distraction
  • The surprising role Reddit played in launching his side hustle
  • Why mission-driven business fuels sustainable focus
  • Encouragement for ADHDers who are just getting started

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JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I'm joined by Colin McIntosh, a serial entrepreneur with purpose woven into everything he does. At just 35, when he's not growing a bedding empire, he's building tools like an AI powered resume builder and supporting communities and individuals through his philanthropy. Diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, he has an inspiring journey to share and great advice for budding ADHD entrepreneurs. Welcome to the show, Colin. 

COLIN: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk. This was something I've been looking forward to. I've never done a podcast about ADHD, so this is kind of a cool first. Absolutely. So, we'll dive into it. Now, you're an entrepreneur and you've built multiple businesses, but before all of that, there's your own ADHD story. And can you take us back to when you first realized that ADHD was part of your journey? Well, I grew up in South Florida in America, and I grew up in a family where, and I love my mom and dad to death. They're two of my favorite people in the world. They're still together after 41 years, but my mom kind of is like one of those people that's like doesn't believe that ADHD or ADD like exists. And so, you know, I never got tested for it as a kid or it was never something to where even the symptoms were like, they weren't really problematic for me. I guess I'm lucky in the terms of like how mine manifests which is much more in like the hyperfocus side of things. But I grew up in a family where like my mom would say the things like you know "Can you believe that they're classifying like you know, kids having energy as like a medical condition?" You know and so like I didn't really think about it for a long time. I didn't ask myself "Do I have this?" I didn't. It wasn't anything that was present in the back of my mind. I just I took the lumps along with the positives. And then when I got older into like my mid-20s, late-20s, I started thinking like maybe like maybe I do have ADHD because I started seeing more stuff online about the symptoms of it and how it manifests and you know. The need for urgency, for deadlines, you know, self-medicating with caffeine, all these different things. And I'm like, "Man, that sounds a lot like me." And you know, a lot of people kind of talk like I do, which is kind of a way-finding conversation where you go from A to C to F, back to B. And so it's been a really interesting journey. I think I got diagnosed officially when I was like 32 or 33. I'm 35 now. I've never really been properly medicated. I've tried a couple things but haven't really found something that I really think is for me. And so now I'm 35. It's... we were talking about this earlier. It's hard for me to self-medicate with caffeine these days because I can't drink it past, you know, 1 or 2:00 in the afternoon, otherwise I won't sleep all night. But yeah, it's been an interesting journey to like and you know, I'm not sure if you're curious about like how it manifested when I was a kid or like looking back like what the warning signs were or whatever, but it's actually been I think a gift for me in my life and I consider it kind of like my best quality and my superpower. That's awesome. 

JULIE: That's a great attitude to have and you're not alone with that regard. There are others too that really embrace it and I think everyone can over time. Sometimes that journey after diagnosis, it can be a short win going, "Yeah, I've got this." And others it takes it takes a bit of time to get your head wrapped around it all. What were your thoughts after diagnosis? Was it clarity? Was it validation? Was it...? 

COLIN: It was a lot of clarity. It was a lot of clarity. It was funny. The guy who was diagnosing me was like, you know, he's like, "Have you ever made any poor like financial decisions?" I was like, "No, no." And then I was like, "Oh, wait. Well, yeah." And he's like, and he's like, "Are you are you fast with money?" I was like, "Well, no." And I'm like, "Oh, wait, no. I invested my whole life savings into a bed sheets company on a whim." Like, "Yes, actually. Okay, maybe that's not the most normal risk loving behavior." And you know, like I don't budget. I don't, you know, like nothing like that. And then he was asking me about like, you know, "How did you do your schoolwork when you were a kid?" And it's interesting because a lot of people with ADHD don't do well in school, right? Like for obvious reasons.  I always was straight A's, straight 100s if I could help it. And you know, got a perfect score on our SAT, which is like the American standardized test. And so I always had like hyper hyperfocus with tests and with studying, for tests. But there were two things that were really early signs looking back. Number one is when I was a kid, you know the handwriting test where you're supposed to write the same sentence like 50 times in a row where you're practicing I would do it to where I wouldn't write a sentence. I would write one word here, then one word down here on the bottom of the page where I knew that word was going to be. Then a word in the middle, then a word here, then a word and I would eventually fill up the whole page with 50 of the same sentence. But I never did it in order. I'd do it diagonally or randomly. That was one thing looking back I'm like "That's weird. Like that's a really weird way to do that." And then the other thing is I... my mom and I were talking about this yesterday. I never started a paper ever in my whole life until 11:00 the night before it was due. And I just knew that if I took me an hour to write a page and I had an eight-page paper due at 9:00 in the morning that and I had to leave for school at 7:30, that if I started it at 11:00 p.m. I would finish at 7:00 a.m. I would go to school and I would and I'd have the floppy disc for my paper. And I'd get to school and I'd put it in the computer and I'd print it out and I'd turn it in. And it was like it's the... it's crazy looking back. But that's how it... then I pulled all-nighters in college for basically every exam I ever took. Still got a 37 GPA. Like, you know, it was it's wild the way that the ADHD brain works. But yeah, so those are kind of my earlier warning signs and an earlier journey. Looking back, I'm like, it's very obvious I have this. So... 

JULIE: Wow. Yeah, yeah. You're an entrepreneur and we'll talk about your sheets business shortly, but entrepreneurs with ADHD often talk about a double-edged sword of traits, whether it be hyperfocus, impulsivity, risk-taking, and this kind of scattered energy. How have you seen ADHD show up in your entrepreneurial path both as a challenge and as a strength? 

COLIN: So, I think ADHD makes you a phenomenal founder. You can wear many hats, you can jump from task to task, role to role. You don't get bogged down in any one particular goal or task. Context switching is very easy. You can jump from finance to logistics to product design to marketing. You have interest in all those different areas and you're able to say like, "Wow, this is really fun. This is cool. I get to look at different things." It's also why I used to be a great recruiter because recruiting is also awesome for people with ADHD because you're talking to this candidate about a software engineering role, then you're talking to this candidate about a finance role, this candidate about a marketing role. You're meeting with this client in this industry vertical, this client in this industry vertical, and you're having all these different conversations all at once in your brain, and it's very engaging work for people with ADHD. And so, the best founders I know all have it. Now that being said, it doesn't make very good CEOs and I have been very guilty of this in my career of it makes it very hard to have a you know, org chart that makes sense where you have a team that is functioning in a planned and orderly way instead of you know kind of having a bunch of people running around doing their own fiefdoms who are more autonomous that you check in with and you know have standing meetings with. But you don't really have organized ways of, you know, checking on their performance or like, you know, goal setting or different things like that. And so, I've had to get CEO coaching. I've had to really, you know, ask for help and ask for mentorship and a lot of advisers. And honestly, I think a lot of founders, which is something that I'm, you know, I'm considering, should consider whether or not they're the best CEO to continue to run their business after they start it. I think that people with ADHD are wonderful for taking an idea from zero to one, something that doesn't exist, and then breathing life into it. Especially if they have a strong interest or a passion in the area, because the things that somebody with ADHD can get done in a week or a month of hyperfocus is insane. And I think that you can take something from zero to one very, very quickly. And you know, like Sheets and Giggles, we went from zero shipping our first box in October 2018 to our first million-dollar month in November 2020. And that was a lot of, you know, 4:00 a.m. bedtime, 7 a.m. wake up, drinking pre-workout as soon as I woke up and then just fixating for, you know, 16 hours. And then with my resume builder I... that I launched that one year ago and within 5 days we had our first $1,000 day. You know and like and that type of come up is really intense. But long term I think that maybe there are better candidates to run the businesses that we build and scale them. 

JULIE: Wow. Yeah. Now you talked about Sheets and Giggles. So that that had grown from a crowdfunded idea into a multi-million dollar sustainable brand, and all this time you're giving back to charitable donations and social impact hiring. What's exciting you right now about your business? 

COLIN: Yeah. Well, so there's we've launched some awesome new products. Our pillow is made in Denver with formerly incarcerated Coloradans. We pay them a living wage, helps people get back on their feet after they've been in jail. And when they paid their due to society, helps lowers our local recidivism rate, lower homelessness rates. And that's probably my favorite thing that I'm most excited about with the company is our pillow production in Denver. And you know, we've had people who have totally changed their lives working with us and, you know, reconnected with their families and gotten clean and bought a home and, just so cool to have that impact with something so simple like a pillow. And then, I'm really excited about the future of the brand. We've got a lot of irons in the fire. Some news will be coming out with soon, and I can't really share it here, unfortunately, because it's still private. But I think that SNG will continue to grow and will I think pretty shortly be a more household name than it already is. But, yeah, it's been a, it's been a really wild ride. I started the company 8 years ago, 8 years ago this month, actually, and we raised almost $300,000 in pre-order crowdfunding. And we shipped our first box 6 months after that. And it's just been a journey. We shipped hundreds of thousands of units like you said. We've donated six figures to charity. I'm not sure the exact number nowadays. And we've even planted like tens of thousands of trees, we used to do one per order. And it's been just so cool to like make a positive impact with something, you know, so basic selling widgets on the internet. 

JULIE: That would take up a lot of time and energy but with purpose and you... it's not just a financial... 

COLIN: It's selling widgets on the internet right, like I'm... It's bed sheets and I've always said that like I wish companies like would be more honest about what they're doing like you know, you're not changing personal hygiene you sell a toothbrush on the internet. You're not changing how cultures interact with one another you sell a suitcase on the internet. Like you're not you know... like these brands drive me crazy with their aspirational nonsense that I don't know who it appeals to. I've always been more of like a jester, outlaw type of brand person where I really like making fun of the status quo. And so for me, I've always said like we sell bed sheets on the internet. Like we're not curing cancer. This is not rocket science. We're going to sell you some amazing luxury sheets. They're going to be sustainable and eco-friendly. They're going to use way less water than cotton sheets. They're going to use way less pesticides, zero pesticides actually. No microplastics. You know, they're all made from trees, mostly eucalyptus. And it's just so fun to like have a product that you can be proud of, but also something that you don't take too seriously. And then the charity is my way of being able to get out of bed in the morning, which is hard because the sheets are amazing. But it helps me get out of bed in the morning because like it's not, you know, eventually you get tired of doing digital marketing, like a AI changes things so rapidly. Like Tik Tok didn't exist when I started the business. There's been, you know, Covid obviously and like all the logistics and supply chain challenges with that and now of course this completely stupid pointless trade war. You know we... there's been challenge after challenge after challenge of you know starting and running a business over the last better part of a decade. And so you've got to do something that you feel passionate about. And for me I'm super passionate about charity, philanthropy giving back to my local and national communities. And so that's what actually keeps me moving on it. And running a high growth business with ADHD does require a lot of energy and focus. 

JULIE: I'd love to hear from you a strategy that you rely on to keep you moving forward and you know, without burning out. What... so what can you share? 

COLIN: I... this is such a hard question. I don't, I don't think... So for a long time, I didn't think about my ADHD at all, right? I just I knew that I worked weird and different than most people. I would just put my music on and get into the zone. And now what's really been hard is the phone because the phone is such a dopamine you know, a short-term dopamine producer. And so that has why I've actually been thinking about my ADHD more and more the last two or three years is because I'm like, what's wrong with me? Like why can't I get my day started the way that I used to? And I realize it's because I wake up and my brain is just dopamine seeking like very early in the morning because the phone has become this sort of endless drug supply that I can just have right in front of me. And so, some of the things that I've been doing lately have really been centered around like getting the phone away from me and like out of my life, which is hard. Like, it is an addiction. And it's... and it's hard. And so, I've really I've put my phone in my safe. I've put it in my car and left it there in the middle console. I've you know, I've given it to my wife and I've said, "Don't give this back to me until you know, I come back at the end of the day." And that's kind of like it's not a strategy, it's just like a necessity. And then I would say one of the things that comes to mind is like a lot of people with ADHD, I get this massive burst of creative energy at about 9:00 at night. I know a lot of people have that as a symptom where it's like they come they're nocturnal. They just like come alive in the evening. And instead of trying to shove that down and like force upon myself a, you know, 1000 p.m. bedtime or something where I can get my sleep, I have no morning meetings. I never structure any morning meetings for myself. When I get that creative energy burst, I run with it. I go to a local bar or kava bar or something like that and I will set up my laptop and I will just work from like 9:00 to 3:00 in the morning. And those six hours I think are my most productive of any day of the week. And I do that probably like three, four nights a week. And I have a really wonderful and understanding wife who knows that this is when I get all my creative energy out. And this has always been this way. I think I built my companies in the evening, versus during the day for the most part. And so that's something that I've just leaned into and I haven't judged myself on that. I haven't said like this is not appropriate or this is not a good way to live or this is not healthy. I've just said like this is what I need in order to get my to-do list done and my task list done. And I think it has something to do with the fact that there's no emails at night. There's no Slack notifications. There's no text messages. There's no phone calls. There's no meetings. And I love going to these bars that are like more chaotic. Maybe there's a pool table. Maybe there's darts. Maybe there's video games and I can just put my headphones on, set up my laptop and my secondary screen and I'm just the guy in the corner just working for 4, 5, 6 hours. And yeah, I'll play a little. I'll play a little Nazi Zombies on Call of Duty when I'm done with my work at 2:00 in the morning before I go home. But yeah, that's been actually incredibly productive for me is to lean into sort of my natural schedule and my natural circadian rhythm. 

JULIE: I love that. Actually working with your brain rather than trying to resist and block trying to… Yeah. So that seems to be a nice easy way a path of less resistance and when you've got that result, those results coming through. I mean why wouldn't you? That sounds great. 

COLIN: And I think people really beat themselves up like I think that people like whether it's because they you know they have an expectation from their parents or from their spouse or from their colleagues or you know society. I think people like say like "What's wrong with me? Like why do I? Why can't I fit in with my classmates or with my colleagues?" And I think you just have to embrace what makes you different. It's... and I know that's easier said than done. It's, you know, it's like telling somebody with depression like just be happy. Like just get, you know, just why don't you just like stop? Have you ever thought about not being sad? But like, you know, with... I do tell people who have ADHD, like dude, it's a superpower. Like it's, I know it's so hard to get started. Like that's my biggest symptom is like getting started, getting that ball rolling is so difficult when there's no urgency and there's no deadline for me. So, like creating my own deadlines is kind of the way that I would phrase that strategy. And I've noticed like if I'm working somewhere that closes at 700 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. or whatever it is and I have to get out of there when they close it and I've got to finish up my work and go home and I know I'm not going to be able to restart my work once I do that. Now, I've created this sort of artificial deadline for myself, kind of like those papers I was talking about earlier, where I'm like, "Okay, I have to finish by 2:00 in the morning or I have to finish by 7:00 p.m." or whatever it is. And I think that that is a really good strategy too, is like create those artificial deadlines for yourself. 

JULIE: Great advice there. Thank you. Thanks, Colin. And for someone who has ADHD, who's dreaming of starting their own business, what would you like them to hear?  

COLIN: I mean, I think there's the traditional advice of like, you know, start something that you're passionate about, start something that speaks to you because I mean, with ADHD, it's so hard to work on anything that you don't care about. It's just really really hard to be like "Today I'm going to go you know like do XYZ because it's a paycheck," and like you know, it's just going to be so soul draining to do something like that. So if you can like really think about like what interests you and like why, and then throw yourself into that and you what I find is that there's usually somebody willing to pay for your, call it special interest. You know, like your expertise in some area. And so I think that that's... and you can start by saying "What am I best in the world at or what am I most interested in the world at?", you know, like "What really captures my fascination?" And for me lately it's actually interesting. It hasn't been resumés or bed sheets. I'm obsessed with history right now. I've got this like maybe it's because of everything devolving around me in America that I'm like actively like I'm learning more and more about. There's a wonderful podcast called Fall of Civilizations you know that I listen to. Another podcast called The History of Rome that's just so incredible. These are like... and I'm bringing this up because like 20 years ago podcasting as a profession didn't exist, right? And now if you have like a hyper-interest in, you know, fallen societies, you can be like Paul Cooper and you can go make a podcast that gets a million subscribers that is long form educational content about societies that have risen, left the record, and fallen. And like that's valuable to some. Like no one would have ever told this guy go do that in your career. You know he's a PhD so again hyperfocus like hyperfixation on one subject. I actually don't know if he has ADHD but I kind of feel like he might. But yeah, so I don't know. Those are kind of the first things that come to mind. And then like I mentioned earlier like lean into what your brain is telling you. Like try not to fight your brain too much. And get the phone away from you, man. And then more tactical advice just founders, the founders really focus on your business model. A lot of people they have a product idea or they have like a service idea, but they haven't actually written a business model or a financial model. And for people with ADHD, that can be really hard because it feels maybe daunting or boring to like do a whole spreadsheet with like a P&L statement and a forward-looking forecast. But there are wonderful tools out there to get you started. The financial model I used for Sheets and Giggles in the beginning was called Startup Rocket, and that's like a pre-made model that you can plug your own numbers into in terms of price, margin, cost, churn rate, monthly visitors, conversion rate. And like really hone in on your business model and what makes it unique and different.  And understand if you've got a viable business, because the worst thing that you can do is like waste your time on something that doesn't really work. But you should set up guard rails and sort of decision points where it's like, okay, if I spend 6 months doing this and I'm not seeing these numbers or these goals come to life in 6 to 12 months, I'm going to, you know, either go back to the whiteboard and retool it or I'm just going to move on with my life. Don't spend years of your life on something that's not working. And you can validate that ahead of time with a really good financial model and business model. 

JULIE: Great words of advice. Also too I think it's important to know your strengths and also know some of the weak points as well and there's no shame, in fact it's very good business, to actually bring on experts in the fields that you know that you're lacking in. 

COLIN: Yeah so that often calling in help is a very strong move. I have wonderful mentors and advisers I mean that's something that I'll tell everybody is you can't do it alone. You have to have people who have been there, done that, who can advise you on, you know, what to do and how to do it. And, the simple thing is like what different terms mean in a contract or, you know, how to think about go to market strategy or, which channels to select, what your pricing should be, how to build a product, how to bring something to market. I would also say, maybe specifically people with ADHD, physical products are really hard. And I did not realize frankly what I was getting into when I started Sheets and Giggles. You have to build a product. You have to do quality assurance. You have to find someone who will build it with you. You have to get the finances to pay them upfront or large deposit. You have to coordinate usually global supply chain and logistics. You have to be on top of your communication and your email. You have to hire people on your team to help organize that with you. You've got to raise enough money from customers in order to actually produce something and go to market and produce a significant volume of units so your cost is affordable and sustainable. You've got to set up a warehouse with storage. You've got to get a software system to manage the inventory. You've got to run a P&L, do forecasting, planning, SKU by SKU, color by color, size by size. And if you grow really fast, 2, 3x, 4x year over year like we were doing, you're... like my first Q1 was like 200K. My second Q1 was 700K and my third Q1 was I think 2.2 million. And you grow, you do. Like you tell me how to forecast that. Like you tell me how to finance that, forecast that, inventory plan that, and do it all in a way where you don't have too much overage or you don't miss your numbers on the underside and you miss out on sales because you're out of stock in your best sellers, but you don't have too much in your worst colors. Like that that is so hard. So I may also advise people with ADHD to maybe do a software business or maybe a service business or something like that because the complexity of a physical product is insane. 

JULIE: Thank you so much for sharing the realities of this. [Sorry, there's a lot.] No, but I think it's important to hear because we come up with amazing business ideas literally every day. I'm sure we'll come up with something, several ideas that "Oh that could work, that could work," but the reality is we do need to consider them. Absolutely. Look, you've just been a joy to chat to Colin. Thank you so much. Very informative. Lots of information there. Links to your bits and pieces or how to connect with you will be in the show notes. Awesome. 

COLIN: And I do I just want to say to wrap, thank you for having me. I just wanted to mention that it's funny. We didn't even get to talk about the resume builder or anything like that, sheetsresumé.com. I think also people with ADHD will be very good serial entrepreneurs. So don't feel trapped into just having one company. Like if you have interest, follow them and you know you can start multiple companies as well. It's not too late to talk about your resume business though because that sounds quite exciting. Well, it's very fun. It's you know I used to be a recruiter early in my career. I loved helping candidates find jobs. Back in 2018, I wrote a Reddit post about how to write a good resume. It's gone super viral. My resume has been downloaded, I think, five or six million times by now and it's like the number one resume advice on the internet. If you search for resume template, I think my Reddit post is like the third post that comes up. It's like Microsoft, Harvard, and me. Very weird. And I've answered like tens of thousands of questions over the years on Reddit from people who want resume advice. I've always given my time for free, kind of that give first mentality. And then about 2 years ago, I started doing one-on-one professional resume reviews for people who asked because had so many people ask and it kind of broke my heart that I didn't have time to help them. And then it became overwhelming. So many people asked that my buddy and I ended up creating one of my software engineer friends, an AI resume builder and that has been really tremendous. We launched that last year, one year ago. And it's been really crazy. It's you know, it's not a seven-figure business yet but it's in the six figures. And just to have the, you know, spend five or 10 hours a week on that. That is so cool to have, you know, just this passive, AI software in the background. And the best part is because it's not my main source of income, I have Sheets and Giggles, I actually give it away for free to so many people. It's normally $99 for like a lifetime membership. But if people email me and they're like, "Hey, I can't find a job. I can't afford this, but I could really use it." I just give it to them for free. And I probably give it away to like a dozen people every day. And that has been very cathartic for me because as a recruiter, you can't help everyone that comes across your desk. And so now 10 years later, I get to stay really sharp in the industry and help people find jobs. And it's a tough job market right now. And so it's been very fulfilling to have that as my passion project. And that's a it's a dumb name. I'm the bed sheets guy. I'm Sheets. Sheet Talk is my podcast. And so it's at sheetsresumé.com. Stupid name, but I am who I am. 

JULIE: So, you are who you are, Colin, and you are awesome. And I thank you so much for sharing your ADHD journey with me and the listeners, and wish you all the very, very best for your exciting projects. 

COLIN: Thanks, Julie. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks for letting me, let me probably ramble a little bit. I'm sure most of your guests probably ramble at least a little bit, so that's good. 

JULIE: You're in fine company, Colin. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. All the best.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Colin McIntosh

Guest