Latest / Quick Wins for ADHD Moms - Short Episodes, Real Solutions for Burnout and Overwhelm / Breaking Free from Burnout: ADHD, Sobriety, and Finding Balance with Heather Simco

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Breaking Free from Burnout: ADHD, Sobriety, and Finding Balance with Heather Simco · Quick Wins for ADHD Moms - Short Episodes, Real Solutions for Burnout and Overwhelm

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have a very special guest.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Heather Simcoe is on the show today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: But before we start the show, I want to share something that genuinely caught my attention.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever picked up your phone to start a timer and ended up distracted instead, you'll get why FocusOR stands out.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: FocusOR is a physical focus companion that helps you start without opening another app.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You twist and click to begin, and in deep focus mode, it creates a real pause between you and your phone.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So just one quick check is easier to stop before it turns into a spiral.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when you finish a session, you get a visual reward that makes consistency feel encouraging instead of punishing.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: If that sounds more doable than trying to outwillpower your phone, it's on Kickstarter right now.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Tap the link in the show notes to back focus or in the early bird price and be among the first to get one.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest is Heather Simcoe.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's a transformation coach and founder of Complete Concierge Solutions and Sober Boss Babe.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: She helps high-achieving women break free from burnout, alcohol, and self-sabotage through mental, physical, and emotional sobriety.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: With 20 plus years in entrepreneurship and over a decade sober, she teaches women how to reclaim their energy, elevate their leadership, and build aligned high-performance lives and businesses.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're really gonna enjoy the interview.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you for having me.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I very feel very blessed and grateful for being here.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's uh we always start off our show with a quick win.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us your quick win, and then we're gonna dive into your story.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You have so much wonderful things to say.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were just talking a few minutes before we started recording, and I'm so excited for people to listen to your story and hear hear your message.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what is today's quick win?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Today's quick win is um, and I listened to your podcast about planners.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: My quick win is before I leave my work at the end of the day, I have my piece of paper, my version of a to-do list, out on my desk so that when I come in, it's the first thing I know I need to do.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's already nothing's out of sight, out of mind.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that has been such a huge quick win is having it visually present in front of me.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I remain focused as soon as I get in.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not, you know, pulling all the different, you know, squirrel or shiny ball syndrome.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that has been a massive recent um quick win.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Just five minutes before I leave, make sure it's laid out, and I'm set for the next day.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Planning ahead.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's something we don't normally think about, but if we get into the habit of it, right?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Set it out.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It like completely changes the way our day goes.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just a teeny little quick win like that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, Heather, tell us, tell us your story, kind of where you've been and and what you're doing now.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll make it short.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of ebbs and flows.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So um I know it's I'm writing a book, so eventually you can just read the whole story.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, so then we have we'll have you back on when you have the book out.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: We'll circle back around for sure.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yes, I was born and raised in California.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually a product of a teenage pregnancy, which my parents' biological parents broke up after being married for a couple years.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I ended up having being custody with my father, and then he remarried, he married someone next door by the time I was four, who was only 14 years older than me.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I didn't see my mom, my biological mom for most of my life.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: She has her own kind of issues.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I grew up in a very Cinderella-like uh environment, and I was just always aimed to please, people please, don't get in trouble, just overly controlling environment.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a lot of addiction, family brokenness, basically every kind of brokenness you can imagine in a family, you know, that was there.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the time I hit high school, um, I had a really I had a best friend, and we of course wrote letters back in the 90s, back in the dark ages, before emails.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And she had um sent a letter, and my stepmother saw it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: She said something not very nice about my stepmother, and I was no longer allowed to talk or to her or see her anymore.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And my first coping mechanism and dopamine hit was food.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I called that my first drug of choice because I was kind of a nerd.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really the beginning of you know, overcompensation or deprivation and uh leaning on something to cope because I didn't understand, we didn't know ADHD, I didn't really understand any of the stuff.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I just forged through to make sure I got good grades.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was my goal.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: My ticket out was to get into college, and my stepmother was from New York, so we moved to New York after I graduated high school.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And very shortly thereafter, I was 17, I moved out and I've been on my own since I was a teenager.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So basically homeless in a brand new state, no driver's license, no car.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if anyone knows anything about the uh upstate New York, you can't get a job without a car, and you can't get a car without a job.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I didn't have a driver's license, so stuck on campus in, you know, before everything's built up.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the drinking picked up, which most kids do in college.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: By my second year of college, I started dating my now husband.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've been married almost 24 years now, together, almost 30.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he owned a business.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to school for being a school teacher.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I mean, talk about the 100 miles an hour.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would go to school, then I was teaching, come back and help him, you know, manage the business.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we were in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mixed martial arts world at its infancy and became kind of pioneers in that, in that industry and really built this amazing empire.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to leave teaching in 2010 and do that full time.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Through all this, was what I didn't realize most undiagnosed ADHD, and my coping then became alcohol.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And regardless of how much I leaned on my coping mechanism, if I put that down, it was something else, whether it was competition, work, working out, like those extreme goals to keep working towards, not realizing it was a form of addiction.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we eventually built the business up enough.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: We sold part of it and retired here to Southwest Florida, where we are now.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I got into a car accident within a month of moving down here, and it took away everything that working out.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was minor, it was nerve damage, but literally everything fell apart.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that I had been overcompensating for in the world, all the titles, all the goals got stripped away from me.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I really had to deal with me as a whole.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I eventually we we found a church and women who were in sobriety who introduced me to the recovery program.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it didn't stick right away.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: It took about a year and a half, and I'll have 12 years actually next Thursday, April 30th, of sobriety.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a moment where thank you.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just I surrendered.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I realized I was an I got a girl, self-sufficient girl, because it was survival mode my entire life.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: That I did everything the opposite of everyone in my family, and it worked until that last key was a completely different key that didn't unlock what I thought it did.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, why are all these things working for everything else and not this one?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that final surrender and asking for help to God just the compulsion was gone.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where the heavy lifting comes in and transforming who you are as a person, how you organize yourself, where where all of your cobwebs and everything is.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the heavy lifting really starts.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so over the past 12 years, I've just done a lot of digging, a lot of research, really understanding, you know, how people work, codependency, ADHD, you know, alcoholism, sobriety.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the I've worked with a lot of women locally.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some are, you know, and in the addiction world, some are huge success stories and some are not.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so um you can't want it more than someone else.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: But in that, I realize how much more I have to offer, even in the online world, to become a life, wellness, and transformation coach, where figuring out who you are as a human sober mentally, physically, and emotionally, especially ADHD moms, learning how to be comfortable in the middle instead of living in those extremes allows you to optimize everything that you can do in your life by having a clean diet, recognizing your emotions, you know, having that mental and emotional, the mental stuff.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's if you have medication, whatever it is that you need to make sure that your mind is set and all three of those realms so that you can optimize who you are as a person.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because ADHD women, I mean, I pedal to the metal.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I was making bangs, like I was doing really, really well in the business.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then, but it all came crashing down because it was all untreated mental illness that I didn't realize that I was suffering with.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's really my huge passion now is to help walk in and find those blind spots for women and help them reorganize themselves in that concierge or in the community environment that they're no longer alone, they don't feel like they're crazy, and they can have someone walk in and reorganize.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I call myself the chaos coordinator, and it's really what I'm doing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm great at it for other people too.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I figured out for myself.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly, is having, you know, going in and being like, okay, like I said, my daughter is unfortunately.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter has not unfortunately, this is her own superpower.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: She has been diagnosed with the male version of ADHD as a female.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so my whole life, even though it's like hyper activity, like the normal focus that we see from she has all of them.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Her therapist went, Wow, sweetheart, you have them all.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's like, You're rare.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, You are special, you are extremely special, but in the best way possible.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, and so me coping, her coping, you know, she won't drink water if I don't put it in front of her.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in all, my focus and passion and purpose has become really helping women wherever they're at, come to terms with their addictions, their mental illnesses, and learn how to utilize them as a superpower instead of feeling, you know, undervalued, lack of love in themselves, and really lean into it, accept it, learn how to utilize it, but then they can propel forward.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then the sky's a limit once you're all aligned with everything that you're you're made a certain way for a very specific reason.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And once we can come in line with that, then all of the dreams, everything that you're looking to do become that much easier.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the little things like, you know, forgetting to take the garbage out, like all the other things we do as ADHD people kind of fall aside because there's a system in place that allows you to be able to succeed instead of constantly backsliding and and the you know, the extreme emotions, which I'm constantly coaching my daughter through all of the time.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So right.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you're coaching ADHD women, well, women in general, yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you probably do see a lot of the ADHD tendencies.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that interesting that um, you know, through your story, you've been able to pick apart all these different things.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And an underlying was was possibly the ADHD, but it's so hard to see what that looks like when you're in the middle of it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You really do need someone else to be able to step in and say, girl, you're doing fine.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's going on, here's what structure could look like.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the hard work, like you said, is like in that middle ground.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we find ourselves like it's just sometimes it's easier to be on the extremes.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: It feels so much better.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's comfortable.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: That uncomfortable is so hard to find in the middle.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that that has been my biggest struggle over the past 12 years, really digging into it is learning how to live in the balance.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I've gotten almost I've learned to become so much more comfortable that when the extremes happen, I'm uncomfortable with the extremes because I've learned how to live in in the I find myself like if I hit I joke with my husband, if I'm hitting a guardrail, it's not personal.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just know I need to get back in the middle lane.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've created bumpers.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't I'm gonna hit it once in a while.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be like, wait, where's Heather going?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not going over the cliff, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit a few guardrails here and there as I continue to figure it out.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But having those proper senses in place, even like putting my keys by the front door, like it's all these little tiny things.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what I do with a lot of my women with we focus on one tiny thing at first, and it that's why it's a long, slow growth because we're so used to quick wins because we want those dopamine hits, is that it is a slow process.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: We need to master one system first and then build on it once it becomes like second nature.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, it was like I felt almost like it was a punishment.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I need my keys by the front door?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't spend 10 minutes looking for them in the bottom of my purse or where I might have accidentally left them.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen a lot of success doing that because I did it for myself with my own daughters, and so and then doing it with other women.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: But one tiny thing that you build on, then next thing you know, you've got a whole foundation that is so um you just don't even think about it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's just automatic that everything else becomes so much easier.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because we do tend to we just forget, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Out of sight, out of mind.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if we don't have those habits already built in, yeah, and it does take a lot of time.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I I will definitely attest to that too, is like keys go like non-negotiable, they go here now.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then like if you don't, like there goes 10 minutes.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'll pull out in my fun little key holder, like something that makes it fun.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or a tile, like the tiles or apples where you can beep them.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So many and whatever trip works through game changers entirely, yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: That and that's a fun thing because then you are like, oh, new system.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it keeps working, it keeps allowing that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where you build all those tiny little wins every day that are automatic.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: It sets the foundation for for our ADHD brains to then move to the next things instead of looking for the false hits.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: You've already had, like you were talking about in the planner, you have that foundation first thing in the morning already that you don't need to keep looking for new, you know, dopamine hits throughout.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not that we're not going to, but it's less likely.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it it allows our brain to go, hey, I did that.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I did that.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can do this.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of like, oh, I'm just such a mess.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's chaos.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna get out of this.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, we can have control over things.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to dive in a little bit more, you know, you working with your daughter and how how that works.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: How old is she now?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: 21.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Last March.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's 21.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you've been an ADHD mom for a very long time.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I've, you know, 21.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've got I've got an 18-year-old, she'll be 19.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know about all this ADHD stuff until like maybe five or seven years ago when our youngest was born.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, oh my gosh, what is going on?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then we realized this ADHD thread in our family, and it completely changed the way I had to do life or think because I was burnt out.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and I know you work with a lot of women like on that burnout cycle.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can you just tell a little bit about like your personal story and especially like with your daughter, like as a mom, as a child who has ADHD?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's that, it's a different dynamic when you have it and when she has it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where um I lead a lot by example, and that's been very helpful.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And she was diagnosed in kindergarten.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: We knew, like, my husband had learning disabilities to get her at least on the radar in school as soon as humanly possible.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so in fifth grade, or at five years old, she was diagnosed ADHD.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, at the time, we didn't put her on medication because my husband had learning disabilities.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: We felt that it was best instead of her learning how to lean on a medication that early in life, that she understood what her body felt like in its normal state so that she could develop her own successful tools like we did before we even knew we had it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that was a struggle.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's been in multiple schools, she hates school, it feels like prison.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she's super artistic, you know, and though I've I've been able to not make her feel less than if we have to move to another school or if it's not quite the right fit.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's this you don't just because that system works for other people doesn't mean you have to fit into that system.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was very, very careful her growing up to make her understand that just because she's different doesn't mean that it's bad.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like what your difference is is actually your superpower.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: How can we use this that makes you unique to your own abilities?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: That other people don't have those those tools.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: The way she sees things, she can conceptualize this.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: She made this behind me.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's all her.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like she she has this amazingly artistic mind and finding that confidence in it.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we, you know, learning how to move with how she is, so she feels confident and secure in who she is as a person.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then she hit 18, 19 years old and then realized, okay, maybe I need some medication.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you're an adult now, you can research it on your own.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: We just at the time there wasn't a whole lot out there that didn't have certain side effects that we we didn't want to have to worry about long-term, what that would look like for her.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not that, you know, and that's the thing on this, even in recovery.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I am so much, if you, whatever your doctor says, whatever your diagnosis is, listen to your physician first over anyone else.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's got an opinion about it.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have my own, but I always tell everyone please listen to your physicians first.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they're there for.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I give my my daughter that sense of autonomy so that she could have the confidence to make that decision for herself.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like she tried it for a bit, didn't like it, and then found her own dose.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And now she knows when she needs to use it, when she doesn't.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: She's so much more self-aware that if she hadn't known that her entire life, she knows what her extremes and lows feel like that she now can manage what it looks like in her adult life.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, she still lives at home and we're we're more of a family-based business.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So she does a worship at our church now.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we still go through those highs and lows where she'll bottle everything up and then that fatigue and she totally crashes.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so as a parent, I'm always waiting and making sure not to make her feel guilty for her natural ebb and flow and using it to empower her and how to have tools so it doesn't happen as often.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, but yeah, it's been, it's been an immense journey, and I'm glad I had one because she was a lot when she was little.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I listened to, I had the situation like, Think honey, are you good with one?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm good with one.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had horrible postpartum depression.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Yeah, because I already got my wife back, I don't want to lose her again.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like, we're good.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it puts you in a whole different state.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like I have inattentive ADHD.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So having children was like, oh my gosh, I need to use all my attention toward this baby or this child who is three and he's jumping off huge, huge swings and slides, you know.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, pay attention.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, pay attention.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's exhausting.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is entirely.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and when you have other family members, you're dealing with your own and trying to manage it and everyone else's.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, it and then that's like, oh, we're all on a hundred, we're all doing really well, and then all of a sudden everyone crashes.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it is really funny.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, in retrospect, looking at it, but the more, and that's what I really that's what I love about the work that I do now is it's my own personal growth.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I keep working and moving forward, which is such a beautiful thing.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then to be able to work with women to help them build it and plug them into a community.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, like it feels so isolating, especially in our generation.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't understand, most of us are all grown un undiagnosed mental health or learning disabilities we didn't even know.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: We had trying to compensate for 40 years of bad habits based on this and realigning and shame, like a lot of shame.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why aren't you like everybody else?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't you do this?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't you read fast like they?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't you finish this paragraph in three minutes?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, all the time.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it was good at school, but it would take me 20 minutes to read like 10 and Cliff Notes were my best friend in college in high school before the internet.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, yeah, but you know what it is.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: What I and to encourage anyone listening, we are such good thinkers.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're like you said, problem solvers.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have this amazing brain that can think outside of the box that I almost have to remember other people don't think like me.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm like, and so that's where who I am now becomes that coach because I can think through and see almost, I don't know if you know Doctor Strange or the Marvel stuff.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I always joke, like we're us as a family, we're so good on all the what if you know, like you play the basically play the tape, our old school mindset, but play the tape on all the different scenarios and figure out what is gonna work best or not.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I realized I'm like, wow, most people's brains don't work that way.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So here, here's my brain, I'll help you.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which I don't understand.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I yeah, I've had Yeah, like I don't understand how people don't think that way.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't very long ago when somebody was like, I said, I have explosions in my head all the time, and they're like, Wow, that sounds like that hurts.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, nobody else deals with this, exactly constant ideas and you know, building a thousand businesses in your brain, and like, okay, here's how it can work, and here's what the branding's gonna look like, and here's and like you build this whole thing, and then it's like, well, now do I have to do something with that?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just come up with ideas and let somebody else take them and run?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The boring stuff, the boring stuff the middle stuff, the middle stuff, and but boring systems.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's why thank god my husband and I like we we balance each other very well, and so we've changed those different roles as we've gone through.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So knowing who, whether your business partner, whoever it is you're working with, having that balance also, you know, luckily ours are opposite enough of one another, whatever version of ADD, like we we balance each other very well in that.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so, same thing now that I'm in the the entrepreneurial mode and he's in the stable mode, I have to allow him to come in with the stability to remind me what needs to be stable and not take it personally.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, that's right, he knows me.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like it's not a punishment, it's not a criticism, it's a did you didn't think about this part?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh thank you.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I'll I'll go back and reimplement that, you know, very system, the little foundation again.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So but yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: My husband does that all the time too.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, so is this a new idea?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, You're working on this right now.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let's oh gosh.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: God bless him.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I love out of sight, out of mind because I started doing this one thing with my husband back and forth.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then we went on vacation.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I put it away because I didn't want our we had someone clean the house.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I'm going to put that away, this little notebook for the two of us.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then a month later he goes, Well, weren't we doing that?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh my, out of sight, out of mind.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I put it away and it was that's it, it disappeared.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, like you can't keep everything out in front of you because then it becomes clutter and mass.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess it's like, yeah, go ahead.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, that was it, the clutter and mass because he, the OCD, needs everything clean, and now I'm understanding why I'm such a messy person.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's not out in front of me, it doesn't exist.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: It makes sense.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It does help whittle things down to like, here's what's important, we'll keep this out.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else can go away right now.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's a dopamine hit when you find past crafts or something, like, oh, I was working on that.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you had an ADHD mom, ADHD kids, she's coming to you just like her mind is tangled, she doesn't know where to start.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: She knows she needs help.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like, where do you start with her?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: What are the some maybe a couple tips or tricks or something, questions that you use to help her sort things out as she starts this journey?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: The first place I always start is time inventory.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you spending your time in that chaos?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we look at how what her routine looks like when she gets up.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Really, it's a we take it uh an entire inventory of her time.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when we start rearranging like-minded tasks together, whether it's the kids' soccer practice, can you get gas on the way there?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: We start I start grouping tasks together that make it so much easier so that she alleviates the time.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: So she goes from being in a chaos mode, especially with kids and herself in many different directions, to then having a more economized, less chaotic day, so that when the other parts are might go crazy or chaotic, there's time for those allowances because your kids are gonna forget their shoes.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So then, you know, all those little things are always gonna keep happening.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can create a healthy foundation of some of the basics, like having your groceries delivered so that you're just looking at what you need, so you're not, you know, looking at the next sale and just grabbing stuff just because you feel like it or you're going grocery shopping hungry, little tips and tricks like that that kind of create a nice base for the family lifestyle, so that then also your kids are used to more of a structured environment, and then you can start following suit.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's usually the first place I start is time management, reorganizing their day and really rearranging it accordingly to their lives, which is why I like that one-on-one, because it's not a one size fits all, and looking at everything and how they know how to make the the proper adjustments or not.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then we go from there.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that's usually that's the first place to start, whether you're 80, no matter who it is, that's the first place always start is looking at time inventory, where your your energy is going and what time you're spending on everything.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the first key to unlock everything else in your life.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So time, looking at time, I think that's beautiful and a perfect way to start.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of us have time blindness, so we don't know how much time tasks actually take.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so a reflection, of course, helps with that too.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Heather, how can someone find you?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're online.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at your web wonderful website, but how can they find you?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And where do you kind of interact most often?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are like Instagram or TikTok or email.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm on all of the above.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wherever I'm on on Instagram, TikTok, my website, um, YouTube, but usually I I mirror everything, even on Facebook.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so anyone, whatever general main social media everyone's comfortable with, um, I'm on any of those.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's all at Heather Simcoe.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I just use my first and last name.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's no other, you know, dashes or dots.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and luckily I'm the only one out there, so it makes it easy.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to just come directly, you can fill out a form right on my website or DM me.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on all of the social media platforms.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you they're all direct contact connections with me.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a link tree.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all the different things that I offer that are on all of my bios as well.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, and the other thing, just so everyone is aware of, if I'm in sunny Naples, Florida, this fall I'm hosting a retreat in Naples, Florida.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a waiting list to get on that where we have a three-day reset for you know, these us high-driven moms, you know, who are in extremes to be able to reset and rebuild and come back with tools to really realign their lives.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the bigger things that's coming down the pike in October.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so if you want to join the wait list, I'd love to host you here in my new hometown of Naples, Florida.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds wonderful.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Naples is it's a beautiful area if you've never been there before.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful area.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: It feels I don't know, tropical.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just, it, it just feels perfection, really.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Heather, thank you so much for just your story.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you and where you where you have come from and the transformation that you personally have been through.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that you're helping women go through that very similar transformation and just helping them where they are.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for being on the show.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate hosting.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 27:38
  unknown: Just the little text, little take that kick box, go quick, points for HDHD.