16/10/2026
Day 16 ADHD Awareness Month: Sharing about failure
Way back in 2003 I founded a marketing agency called Ideas Into Action.
It started the way it does for lots of women. Great corporate job... then along came the little people and I needed far more flexibility than the role allowed, so I took my skills into freelancing.
It was just me, at the dining room table, getting my first business card and my first laptop (a dell!) and loving the variety and the buzz of new ideas.
Then it grew.
I hired my first casual staff member. Then three. Then we went to serviced offices. Then I bought an office in Chatswood and had a fabulous full-time team and clients across three states.
From the outside, it looked like I’d MADE it!!!
But the last couple of years were literal hell and ended in total burnout and eventually, choosing to close the business and hand over clients to my staff, keeping a few myself.
I felt like a total and complete failure, and it took a while to recalibrate.
Ten years and a late ADHD diagnosis later, I had a new lens to help me understand what had actually happened.
I’d built the business in the way I thought a “successful” agency was supposed to be. All my decisions were right and made sense at the time, but I'd never stopped to ask whether they were right or made sense for me.
With the benefit of Kindsight (compassionate reflection) I can now see that the fit was all wrong for me. As the business grew, I was taken away from what I loved and was great at (ideation, strategy, innovation, client relationships) and thrown into what my sparky-brained self was NEVER designed for (like managing people, payroll, and processes).
Burnout was kinda inevitable when I also thought I just had to work harder and “sort myself out”.
Last night at The Mona Vale Chamber of Commerce inaugural Pitch Night, I shared this story and how I now use my “Business Fit” approach with clients to help them not end up where I did!
It was fun and it was fabulous to hear from lots of other local business owners too.
I also shared my “Business Fit Snapshot” exercise - and you can grab a copy too to see if aspects of your business also need a bit of proactive reshaping - the link to download a copy is in the first comment.
Here’s to building and running businesses in ways that better fit our strengths!
P.S: I used the Wayback machine to find my old website - this was built in pre wordpress days - what a blast from the past!
