🧠 Creative Work Practices for AuDHD Artists & Entrepreneurs —with Mattia Maurée

Amelia [00:00:02]

[Music begins to play, overlapping with the introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia [00:00:08]

I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia [00:00:22]

Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all Off the Grid [music jams and fades out].

Amelia Hruby [00:01:15]:

Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about running a successful, sustainable business with no or minimal social media presence. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and I am coming to you a little froggy today because I am just getting over my first bout of COVID. After a week in bed, I am returning to the mic quietly with my voice a little tender and inviting you to today's episode. Luckily for you, I have recorded all of the interviews in this series before I got sick, so they'll sound great, even if this intro is a little nasal, a little croaky, a little whatever we want to call it.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:01]:

Before I introduce today's guest, I want to make sure that you know about the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. This is a free resource that I've created to help you leave social media if you want to do that and consider how you could share your work on and offline without a social media presence. So it includes my five step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and a creative marketing experiments database to help you start creating quarterly marketing plans that are not reliant on social media. Those tools pair with the first few episodes of the podcast and basically turn into a free mini course that will help you do business your way without Daddy Zuck or Mr. Musk or any of those other people.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:50]:

We don't want to talk about telling you that you need to post a million times a day or do whatever to be successful here at Off the Grid. I want you to run a successful business with your values and your joy and your purpose and your pleasure intact. And so that is what we are doing here together. Thanks so much for tuning in. So, today's guest is somebody who I think really lives into everything I just shared.

Mattia Maurée is an award winning composer and a coach for AuDHD entrepreneurs. In this episode, we're going to talk about the realities of running a business when you are neurodivergent and/or disabled. Mattia is going to share their lived experience, finding their way in their artistic and coaching careers, and offer lots of anecdotes, advice and perspectives about what it means to be an ADHD or Autistic or AuDHD, as they put it, entrepreneur.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:55]:

And we talk a lot about the role of community in that experience and how finding communities of people who can understand what we're going through or what we're up against can really change our journeys and how we feel about them. So if you are one of our neurospicy listeners out there, this episode goes out to you. I would love to know how you feel about it, what you learned from it, and I want to invite you to join Mattia's new community, Like Your Brain, which supports all of our Audhd friends out there. So head to the show notes for information on that. We'll talk about it a little bit more at the end of the episode. In the meantime, we are going to dive right in to this conversation. Hi, Mattia. Welcome to Off the Grid. I'm so glad to have you.

Mattia Maurée [00:04:51]:

Yay, thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here. I love this podcast.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:54]:

Yes, this podcast loves you. So we've worked together in a few capacities. You've come to The Refresh. We've done some coaching. You're a member of the Lifestyle Business League. And I feel like through those shared experiences, I've really gotten to witness and support the ways that you have built a really multifaceted career as a composer, as a coach, with so many modalities that you're entrained in and use in your work. And something I really admire about you is the way that you create space for both your artistic creative practice and your business work or coaching work of supporting other people. And so I'm really happy to have you here today because you're someone that I look to as having a career that does manage to do both, as they say.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:48]:

And I also think this is a really exciting conversation for us to have. Because if I'm just being really honest about my privilege, a lot of my success in business does come from me being a pretty neurotypical person with very high executive functioning and a lot of things that I know sometimes I'll say on the podcast, like, we'll just do this, this and that. I'm sure people hear, and they're like, Amelia, that would take me years if I could even focus long enough to get that one thing you just presented as a very easy option done. So in addition to being excited to have you here because I admire your business, I'm excited to have you here to speak to your experience as an AuDHD business owner and the host of AuDHD Flourishing, your new podcast that has already found a growing excited audience. So all of that to say, welcome again. I'm so happy to have you. And I thought I would open us up by asking you a little bit more about this term AuDHD, which may or may not be familiar to listeners. So could you talk a little bit about what does AuDHD mean and how you've come to understand it in your own life and work?

Mattia Maurée [00:07:00]:

Yeah, so you'll probably see this somewhere in the show notes, but AuDHD is ADHD with a lowercase U between the first A and D. And what that's getting at is combined autism and ADHD. So actually, up until the 90s, you could not be diagnosed with both in the US. They were considered mutually exclusive. We are now reaching almost the opposite of that, where we're realizing that up to 60% of people with ADHD are autistic and up to 80% of autistic people have ADHD. So there's a huge overlap. I won't be surprised if in our lifetimes there's actually either a new term or like something else that we're like, oh, there actually is this third thing. So I think of the combined neurotype as different than the experience of just being an autistic person or just being an ADHD person.

Mattia Maurée [00:07:45]:

Because my entire life experience has been these two somewhat opposing needs and sort of forces in my brain. For example, just as a really simple one, my autistic part really, really wants routine desperately and loves it and would be very happy to do exactly the same thing for the first, like 2 hours of every day, every day. And my ADHD part of my brain is like, nice routine you've got there, let's throw it out the window every six weeks. And a lot of AuDHD people will talk about this, that they can have a routine, have a habit going, and then when it's gone, it's gone forever. Like you can't get it back. And it's this really frustrating experience. So something like that, if you go to sort of a traditional mental health setting and you're describing that there's a lot of just “do it” language, it's like, well, can't you just start the habit again? You're like, no, I literally can't.

Mattia Maurée [00:08:36]:

So one of the ways I describe it for ADHD people is basically if it has felt like your whole life that no advice works for you, everything everybody suggests does not work. And not only does it not work, but you know yourself well enough to look at it and be like, I'm not even going to bother trying that at this point. Like, by the time you've reached adulthood, you're just like, you know what? I know that's not going to work for me. So there can be this really high level of frustration where there's skill and capacity and strengths, but sort of a lot of the traditional pathways and advice just don't work. So there's also like a really high level of frustration, I think, especially day to day.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:15]:

Yeah, I can completely imagine this. And it also then makes sense to me something you said before we started recording, which is that many AuDHD folks then go on to start their own businesses, almost perhaps out of that frustration. But can you share a little bit more? Like, why do you see so many people with AuDHD start businesses?

Mattia Maurée [00:09:34]:

Yeah, I mean, honestly, a lot of it's out of necessity. There's also so both ADHD and autism can be described as interest based nervous systems that we only, not only want to do things that are interesting, but essentially only can garner the executive function, the ability to get going if the thing is interesting. So there's also, I have what I call a bad habit of turning my hobbies into businesses. Just like getting good at something, doing it professionally a little bit, and then being like, whoops, I'm actually good at this and I'm actually getting paid well, so sure I'll do it. And then ending up with it doesn't necessarily work out long term. So having this very sort of cyclical working on something and then also just the necessity of not doing well in a traditional sort of corporate career setting and that I think, so ADHD is more kind of well understood and accepted in certain ways. I think if you are in a work setting and you say, hey, I have ADHD and I need this accommodation, there's a little bit more understanding around that.

Mattia Maurée [00:10:32]:

And then for autistic people, a lot of what happens is these really subtle social problems that are technically solvable, but if the people that are in charge of you don't want to solve them, it's very easy to fire you because of them. So a lot of autistic people have been fired or sort of pushed out or I mean, I honestly think a lot of it's just bullying as well. I think a lot of autistic people have been bullied as adults. So if you're consistently having that happening and you're in sort of boring, not necessarily well paid jobs because a lot of AuDHD people also have kind of a weird job history. I've done a lot of different careers, so I haven't grown one career to a large degree. It can be really hard to find work where you actually fit in and you're being paid well and you actually like it and it's interesting long term. I think that that's a very hard bar to meet. So it's a lot easier to just go do your own thing.

Mattia Maurée [00:11:30]:

A lot of us have really cyclical energy as well, so we'll have these like we can work really hard for a bit and then we need a lot of rest. And that is just not what jobs and sort of productivity culture are geared toward at all. There's no space for the resting part. They just want you to be max productivity all the time and our bodies just don't work like that.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:50]:

Yeah. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit more of your personal journey. I've mentioned that you do many things and you've mentioned that you've had kind of many careers. But how has this played out in your own experience and the business that you run now? What are ways that you have crafted it to suit your cyclical energy, your desire to have routine and then never do it again or your need to have routine and never do it again? How does that play into kind of your career path and your current business?

Mattia Maurée [00:12:22]:

That's a really good, really big question. I will try to hold onto it in my mind and create some kind of actual narrative. Okay. I'll actually say something recently that I've been really proud of myself about, which is I think I've finally reached a point where I'm not reaching to overwork as a sort of primary coping mechanism for my life. I've always been an overworker and I also have physical disabilities and that's actually a thing I want to mention because a lot of AuDHD people also have really commonly comorbid things. So like I have Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos, there's POTS, there's mast cell stuff and a lot of these things are just they kind of all go together in a big clump basically. So I've had some autoimmune stuff and some just immune issues over my life. Had asthma and migraines and all these things have made work difficult.

Mattia Maurée [00:13:15]:

And it also means and then I think in part because of the ADHD or just like executive function problems when my body and brain are working, I'm like, I have to use this. I have to work as hard as I can as long as I can because I don't know when my body or brain are going to just stop working again. So it's been this very cyclical overworking and then burnout including in my business. So this isn't just jobs, but something that I've really worked on in the last few years and I feel like finally really achieved in some real way is not just forcing myself not to work nights and weekends, although that was a step. But for real disconnecting, completing the stress cycle, basically not having little mini burnouts every weekend where I just needed to do nothing all weekend. And what I've realized is that cyclical energy thing is on a given day and I'll again give a recent example, my brain was doing some weird stuff this week so I was like, you know what, I'm not going to try to focus on my work.

Mattia Maurée [00:14:21]:

I'm just going to have a TV show on in the background and then I'm going to make a list of things I can do while that's happening. So I'm going to pull all the things from my list that are not my hardest deep work tasks but things I can do while I'm a little bit distracted and that let me actually get through some stuff. So that's kind of like that current picture. But part of what it took to get there. And part of the reason it was so hard to get there is that we have all these messages from the neuronormative culture about, this is how you should work, this is how you should focus. This is what you should be able to produce in a certain amount of time or by a certain age. You should have met these metrics, all this stuff. And I think a lot of the shame around that, it's exhausting to experience.

Mattia Maurée [00:15:06]:

So I would be tired and exhausted from just thinking about my problems and not actually doing anything that's like, yeah, so extra frustrating. And something I'll kind of add a lot of neurodivergent brains, actually, and this includes OCD as well, there's syncing issues between different areas of the brain when they look at brain imaging. So it's actually a lot of times over syncing. So parts of the brain are sort of like more connected than they should be, so they should be able to detach. But like, for example, in OCD, the motor areas of the brain are activated when you think, so where someone without OCD just has a thought and you're like, oh, that's whatever. For somebody with OCD, your brain is like, I have to take action. I have to do something right now.

Mattia Maurée [00:15:50]:

And there are similar things in autism and ADHD. So a lot of I think what we've been told about you should just be able to do this, it's like, no, if your brain is actually functioning differently, if it's actually doing different things, I don't know, I guess some people do say to addicts, just stop it. But we know that that's not reasonable, Because there are actual things going on in the brain, right? So anyway, that's just kind of this background thing that the more I've learned about the brain, the more I've been able to actually accept that I am never, ever going to be able to behave in a neuronormative way or run my business in a neuronormative way. So I have to have space for things to be different. And I know I'm not really answering your question about the how, but I feel like this sort of, like, big picture, sort of like how I've gotten here is really important. Because it's not just, oh, I did these things because those things might not work for another AuDHD person anyway, like the exact little steps I took to get there. But I think having a sense of it is possible to enjoy your day to day work.

Mattia Maurée [00:16:58]:

It's possible to not overwork. It's possible to make enough money working essentially 20 hours a week. I’m probably working closer to 30 hours a week at this point with the podcast and everything, but not every week. Some weeks I work a lot less and there's space in my calendar and in my year to be able to get the rest that my brain needs. Because if I push myself sort of maximally, then I burn out and lose a few months anyway.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:27]:

Yeah, I think hearing you speak of kind of the seasonal piece and some of these ways you've designed your business for me, it brings social media into the mix. So I'm curious, has your as I've heard you put it, like on again, off again relationship with social media affected your mental health, your business, your ability to kind of take care of yourself in these ways?

Mattia Maurée [00:17:50]:

Yeah, so I was thinking about it and I was realizing, oh my God, I've been on Facebook for almost 20 years because I got on it in 2004, because I was in one of the schools that let you do that pretty early on, and I wasn't I mean, people weren't really using it that much then. I think it was more like 2007 when people were using it a little bit more actively. There were more people on there. I was then off of Facebook for almost four years and actually came back not long after the pandemic started because I was like, oh, I don't have a way to keep track of my friends because I can't do the stuff I would normally do. And I know that's just one social media, but I was like, wow, 20 years. How much time have I put in there? I don't even want to know. And how much do they know about me? Yikes.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:33]:

Knowing that you've been on social media for a very long time, like many of us millennials or elder millennials, how have you brought your cyclical approach to social media? And what are the ways that you've kind of worked with Instagram or other social platforms in the past that have really suited your AuDHD?

Mattia Maurée [00:18:53]:

Yeah, I think it's definitely been cyclical both in terms, I mean, I've taken breaks from all the social media I've been on, I guess, except Threads, technically, because it's very new and I did join that. Funnily enough, being on Threads and it being so chill and not having ads was part of what made me realize, oh my God, fuck Meta, I'm out. But basically it was so chill and there were no ads, and I had it in dark mode and it was just text and occasionally pictures, but it wasn't giving me those dopamine hits and experiencing oh, this is what social media could be if they weren't trying to mine me for every bit of data that I have to sell me cheap crap that's going to end up in the ocean. I have strong opinions about it. Yeah, but basically having that experience recently kind of reminded me, oh, right. When I've left social media in the past, it's been essentially because I'm experiencing as what feels like an addiction. And I know it's not quite the same.

Mattia Maurée [00:19:47]:

I don't want to diminish anybody's experience of full drug addiction or something where it's like a really life ruining experience and at the same time, literally, instagram and Facebook have done experiments on us to see if they can make us depressed. And they could, and they did. So I don't want to go too intense on that side, but if you want to learn about this stuff, this information is out there. And I kind of know that in the back of my mind, which is why I kind of used the bad relationship analogy, that it's kind of like, yeah, I know they're doing bad things, I know they're manipulating me, but whatever, I'm getting these other things out of it. And a lot of what was kind of working for me and where that cyclical energy was coming in is, hey, if I had a launch in my business, I could post on social media and I could get engagement, and I would feel good about that. But for example, I've had videos go viral, like a million views on several different platforms, and I don't think I got any direct sales out of those. So I think a lot of what we're searching for in social media as a business owner is essentially eyes on it so virality or just generally an engaged audience. I had a lot of engagement, but it wasn't necessarily leading to sales. And so the amount of time I was putting in, like, I was calculating the time I was putting in to how many sales I was getting directly from social media and just going like, this doesn't make sense.

Mattia Maurée [00:21:09]:

Even if I'm enjoying this, and even if cyclically I have the energy to put into this, even if I'm getting something out of it, it's not really what I'm trying to do. And because you don't own the space, like, I know so many small business owners who've had their account turned off for no reason. Like, I have somebody who I would say has a business very similar to mine and is AuDHD, whose Instagram was deleted. She still doesn't know why. She never got an answer for them. She never had a formal complaint against her account that she knows of, and it's just gone. And all that data is gone because she hadn't saved it. So something like that happening to someone close to me, I was just like, wow, they don't care about me, and I could be very, very screwed, and all that effort that I put in would just be gone forever.

Mattia Maurée [00:21:56]:

So again, I don't feel like I'm making, like, a very single cogent answer, but I've had these real, honestly, I've had a cyclical approach, emotionally I've had a cyclical connection with social media where sometimes I'm like, this is working for me again. Early in the pandemic, I was just like, yeah, this is really giving me something that I can't get elsewhere. And I appreciated that. And I just don't like feeling manipulated and feeling like I'm putting in so much time and heart and authenticity and vulnerability and so much of myself and I don't own that at all. And it can just be taken away at any time and nobody thinks that's going to happen to them until it does.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:41]:

Because these social media platforms can at any time remove your account. That's what the terms and conditions we all agree to say. They don't have to even give us a reason. You have no right to your account outside of them granting you access to it. And what's coming up for me, as you say this, is that that's a really precarious position to be in as a business owner because it then can be a direct threat to your livelihood financially. I also then in the context of this conversation, think of it as like especially for disabled and neurodivergent folks, it can really be precarious for your community. Like if the only place that you're accessing community is on social media platforms and your access to those platforms can be taken away at any time, then you could find yourself completely locked out of your community and completely isolated. And that makes me feel panic honestly when I even say it.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:34]:

I can feel my heart rate rising as I just try to imagine. We don't think of it this way when we're just like hanging out on Instagram or TikTok and chatting with our friends and feeling really connected. But at any like if we don't take those connections off of those platforms, we could lose them at any moment.

Mattia Maurée [00:23:49]:

Yeah, I have somebody on Facebook who's disabled and a friend who I think I'm friends with four or five of their accounts at this point because Facebook keeps locking them out of their account and then they make a new one and it just keeps happening and they have to go find the groups and disability groups for like, say, my local disability, I'm in Philadelphia, so my local philly disabled queers group is very, very helpful and supportive for me when I need a really specific thing. When I'm like, hey, what's the law here around this? Does anybody know what the answer to this question is? It's so helpful. And also I back up my data on social media periodically just because I know it could go away so I have access to some of it. But if I didn't do that and all of my accounts were just deleted with all of that information, I think I would be incredibly, just beyond distressed because there's stuff on there that I have like 20 years of information that I would never be able to access again. So yeah, I mean that's just, again, one thing that can go wrong. But then on the other hand, if that never happens and you're just on there forever and I was thinking about lately how I've actually been having trouble balancing my creative time and my business time. Well I mean my creative time sometimes is business time. They're not mutually exclusive, but I was like, you know, I would feel really good if I had a really consistent 10 hours a week of creative time.

Mattia Maurée [00:25:11]:

And I was like, I bet there are weeks where I'm spending at least 10 hours on social media. Easily. And honestly, probably more than that if you look at your phone data. And I was just like, if I just dropped that and that was not a part of my life, what could I do with 10 hours a week for the rest of my life? It's kind of shocking. And I say as a music teacher, I'm like, you could get really good at an instrument in 10 hours a week. Really good.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:38]:

I could never. That's not true. [laughs]

Mattia Maurée [00:25:41]:

You could become okay at an instrument in 10 hours a week. [laughs]

Amelia Hruby [00:25:44]:

The truth. That's the truth.

Mattia Maurée [00:25:48]:

And the other thing I really think about is so it's not just the time for me. It's also because I have taken these long breaks from social media. I'm about to again. It's mental space. It's not just time. I could be not looking at my phone or not looking at an app, but thinking about, oh, I just took this picture and this would be really great for this type of post or thinking about my life or viewing my life through a lens of consumability and sales and part of for me being able to disconnect from my business and not just having it be constant, constant drain on my resources is not thinking about marketing all of the time and having my marketing be a distinct, like an activity or more like a job that I'm doing as opposed to how I'm viewing my entire life all the time. And as an artist, it's really important to have mental space because boredom and just sort of like existing and just openly taking in information but not in that dopamine smashing kind of way is a crucial part of the creative process. And if we don't have that, I mean, that's part of why I haven't been composing as much lately is because I've kind of let my work fill up a lot of that space again in my life. So even though I'm not quote overworking in terms of hours, I think in terms of mental energy, I am letting it take up pretty much all of my mental energy at this point.

[music fades in]

Amelia Hruby [00:27:12]:

Hi, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools. When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:42]:

Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy to use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails. And even better, it's really set up to help you create easy to use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that automagically.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:24]:

If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below. In the show notes, you'll get a discount, I'll get a kickback, and we will all send more beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid.

[music fades out]

Amelia Hruby [00:28:45]:

When you leave social media, you do get a lot of time back. I definitely experienced that. And then you choose how you want to channel and use it. And I wrote pretty vulnerably to my personal mailing list earlier this year about how I realized that I was still spending a ton of time on my phone even without social media. And I kind of walked through, I was like, oh yeah, before I just got on Instagram but now I play this weird game and I do my Duolingo every day, spend a lot of time in Letterboxd staring at other people's movie reviews. Sometimes I'm like, this is actually a nourishing fulfilling activity and sometimes I'm just craving something to scroll.

Mattia Maurée [00:29:25]:

For me that actually can be really relaxing. So my go to game that I've played, I think 1500 hours in Steam at this point is Train Valley Two. I finished Train Valley One very quickly and then I got Train Valley Two and I've been playing it because there's like user levels on it and I love to just sit and play my train game and then listen to something. It's often a podcast or a book or something, but that to me is relaxing, it's refreshing. It resets me in a way that scrolling social media absolutely does not because especially Meta, part of what they do intentionally is show you a really sad or upsetting post and then a really happy post because the back and forth of that emotional rubber band effect keeps people there. So it gives me this kind of emotional whiplash that is not refreshing, even if it looks from the outside like I'm doing the same thing, just kind of sitting and doing something chill.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:16]:

Yeah, I think that's a really important reflection and what it's reminding me of is the way that play has been a really important part of human experience, kind of for as long as humans have been humaning. And I think that games are a very fun way to play, but I want to distinguish that from the way that we talk about things being gamified now and how there are now all of these tasks we might do or apps we might go to where our experience is kind of they talk about it like it's being turned into a game, but not for the sake of play, for the sake of profit. And I think that that's a really important distinction you're making. Like you can go play Train Valley Two. And what you're getting from that is this sense of play exploration. To me, play is kind of like thinking without an outcome in mind. Your brain just gets to kind of explore and do things without some specific goal. And that's really healthy for our brains and for our, I think, like spirits, our creative practice as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:17]:

But that's so different than exactly what you're describing on Instagram, where we may go to Instagram without any sort of outcome or concept in mind. But Instagram has a very clear desire which is to keep us there looking at ads and buying things. And so I think the platforms preclude play. You can't play there because of how they're designed, whereas there are plenty of games we can still go play.

Mattia Maurée [00:31:40]:

Yeah, and part of again, just because I got really interested in neuroscience and what is happening in the brain, play is crucial to our mental well being. And if we don't get it, this is just a phrase that stuck out to me in the literature at one point. It was basically like the only children who don't play are severely depressed and I think that's true for adults too, right, or just don't have the space for it right, because it kind of gets edged out in our life. But the other thing I think that's really important for Autistic and ADHD people to know is that engaging in our special interests or play or basically that sort of like open ended curious exploration of something that we are enjoying just for its own sake is one of the keys to getting out of burnout. And so if that's true in my mind, I mean, I don't know if this is scientifically validated, but my assumption is it's also probably useful for preventing burnout and helping us with that stress cycle on the shorter term. If we can just kind of be getting our brains into that kind of open lens space, essentially. That's kind of my bias as a hypnotist, basically, is that we need these sort of open lenses sometimes in our life to be able to kind of zoom out. And it's one of the things that play does and it's one of the things that even though when you're engaging in a special interest and really focused on learning, it feels very sort of down and in focused. But really you have this kind of curious like ooh, what's that term? I'm going to go follow that. So this kind of this rabbit hole effect that's very playful and very curious and very open, and it's so, so helpful to the brain. I kind of can't overstate how important that is for neurodivergent people.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:22]:

Yeah. Thinking about play, we've talked about the games we like to play, but I'm curious, what are other ways that you bring play into your work and your life?

Mattia Maurée [00:33:36]:

Yeah, I mean, one thing for me is playing with animals is just deeply, deeply nourishing and centering to me. So my old man kitty, that I had for a long time died a year ago. We just got a kitten. And that period without a cat in the house because I'd had him for 15 years, I was just like, oh, my God. The cat was meeting 30% of my touch and social needs. Like, so much of my, I was just like, oh, okay, I don't have that. Now I have to actually go seek this out. It's not just built into my life.

Mattia Maurée [00:34:04]:

Certainly animals. I mean, nature, this is broad, but I like walking when I can and like hiking when I can, if my body's up for it. Doing things that are just kind of again, that sort of open ended, no purpose, just sort of existing, playing, looking at things that are interesting to me. I love museums, going to art museums. I consider that to be kind of playful and nourishing my creative side. And then I also do this thing I call triple stimming, which is doing something like it's usually playing a game, listening to an audiobook, and then being under a weighted blanket. And if my brain really needs just a lot of extra stimulation, I will sometimes add a TV show onto that. So I will actually have, like, a TV show and a book going at once. I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous, but sometimes my brain is just like, give it to me. I just need to just give myself all this stimulation. I usually only need that for, like, 20 or 30 minutes, and I'm like, okay, I can remove one of these things. But sometimes my brain is just like, I just need a lot. And that is much healthier than cocaine, I assume. I've never tried cocaine, but I think that that's probably a similar vibe.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:16]:

You might think that that sounds like a lot, but I literally all the time, I say to my partner, I'm like, I wish I could just watch a show, read a book, and listen to a podcast at the same time. Sometimes all I desire is to be doing all of that at once.

Mattia Maurée [00:35:29]:

Try it. Well, that's the thing. It's an interesting experience. So the thing that I did actually, at one point when I was a teenager, just to see if I could, was I read a book and listened to a book at the same time to see if I could actually comprehend both I could. So that's the other thing about certain brains, is I have more neural connections than a neurotypical person, I literally have more nerve endings and I have more neural activity. My brain is producing more information at rest and I am taking more information in consciously that for other people would be unconscious information. So is that overwhelming? And do I get overwhelmed easily? Yes, but also my brain could do some pretty cool things and to bring that back to the business ownership stuff, if I give my brain what it needs and the support that it needs, my brain can produce amazingly creative solutions. And I hear over and over, for example, from clients that I noticed something or said something that their therapist of five years hadn't noticed. And I'm like, oh, to me this seems like an obvious connection between these two events or these two things that you're talking about, right?

Mattia Maurée [00:36:29]:

These seem connected, but I have a pattern seeking brain and so that's kind of the strength side of it, that I think if you build a business doing things that you enjoy and that are interesting and that fit within your energy, you can actually do really well with that. You don't have to do the boring stuff that you hate that can be put off onto other people or eliminated completely, which is a lot of what I do is just like, I just don't do those things. And I think that's part of why my energy is so much better these days, because, yeah, I'm working more, but it's all work that's aligned with my ability and I'm not trying to make myself get better at the things that I am simply not good at, like tiny admin follow through. That's never going to be my strength and that's okay.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:14]:

Yeah, exactly. So on that topic, I know that one of the things you've really taken up in your business that has really suited you is podcasting. And I wanted to invite you to share a little bit about your show, AuDHD Flourishing. I know you had a show before that as well, I think, called The Longer Road. How has podcasting suited your brain and your business?

Mattia Maurée [00:37:38]:

Yeah, so I wanted to start a podcast for a long time. I remember very vividly the first few episodes I recorded of The Longer Road literally in my closet. And I felt really nervous, really vulnerable, and I was like, oh, it's such a weird format because you're talking and it's almost like you're having a one sided conversation, which is a pretty autistic thing to do, I guess info dumping is kind of a thing that I do. So I'm recording it and I'm putting it out there and the first podcast, which technically still exists, but I'm not making myself put an episode out every week on both podcasts because my brain just can't commit to that. And one of the things that I noticed, and it's actually one of the things that's made it easier to take a step away from social media, is a lot of my thoughts and interests are long form or suited to long form content. Even on, say, a Facebook post, which could be quite long, I would go there and I would just be like, no, I want more context for this. I want to be able to give context and give links and kind of a podcast is so great for being able to put quite a bit of information into like 20 minutes.

Mattia Maurée [00:38:39]:

So I was finding that that was working really well and The Longer Road is, the intention behind it was basically I was looking for podcasts about a bunch of intersectional identities and not finding them. So I was finding, oh, here's one for disability, here's one for being queer, here's one for being ADHD, but not one that was all of my identities. So that was always my intention with guests, was like, okay, here are all of your identities. What's interesting to you? What are you enjoying? What's giving you joy? And so one of the other interesting things is, so the AuDHD Flourishing has been going for three months and it already has as many listens as the first podcast has gotten in the last two years, almost.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:18]:

So growing fast.

Mattia Maurée [00:39:20]:

It's growing fast. I think having a really clear title because people search AuDHD as a term, I think it's really clear what that title is. The Longer Road. I mean, that could be about cars for all anybody knows, right?

Amelia Hruby [00:39:33]:

True.

Mattia Maurée [00:39:34]:

We're almost at 8,000 listens total in a few months, which feels like a lot relatively. So it's been by far, I would say, the best sales tool I've had besides a newsletter. So to connect that back to kind of the social media thing, it's like social media, I could post about something five times and people might sign up for it. And with the podcast, people are I'm not saying, oh, we should just start a podcast. It's not a small endeavor, especially to keep it going for a long time, but for my brain, the audio is so much easier than video, so recording audio is a lot easier for me. It's pretty easy for me to just pick a topic and talk for 15 minutes. Like, I can do that. And then people are committing to listening to me for a bit. I think they get a better sense of who I am.

Mattia Maurée [00:40:21]:

They get a really good sense of how my brain works. When they hear me go on tangents, it's like, okay, this is how their brain organizes information. And so I think people hear that it's not just the information, it's like who I am and how I'm presenting it. I actually have lost count of how many people have reached out about AuDHD Flourishing and said, this is the first time I've heard my life experience described ever. And I've had one person say, like, this is my favorite episode of any podcast I've ever heard. Right? So like, really strong reactions, but it's also because there's just not a lot out there and it's part of why I started it is I was looking for AuDHD podcasts and I only found two with that in the title. So I was like, okay, I know this is a need. I know a lot of people are interested and exploring this, whether or not they end up seeking or finding a diagnosis.

Mattia Maurée [00:41:09]:

A lot of people are like, this kind of sounds like me, this is useful to me. And so that's also part of kind of the message of the podcast is like, if you find this useful and you want to be here, you're welcome here. You don't need the label because a lot of people aren't going to take the label, but they find the information useful.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:27]:

Yeah, certainly. I think that it's just exciting to hear how much the show is resonating with people. I mean, I think that's what I'm hearing what you're saying is like, you've really found this point of connection and you are able to cultivate resonance around this experience. And I think that to put on my podcast studio founder hat for a moment, what you just described of searching for shows around this topic, realizing that there aren't many and then creating one, is such a wonderful way to make a podcast and grow an audience. Not that your stated goal was like, I'm doing this super strategically from audience growth, but you just noticed there was this thing that no one was making and if you want it, probably other people want it. Most people don't come to podcasting that way. Many of us start a show because we just kind of want to have conversations or there are many, many motivations for starting a podcast. But I think if one of your goals is cultivate community and grow an audience around your show, paying attention to those things that you can't find other shows on can be really helpful along the way.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:32]:

Especially if you have something like a search term that you're like. People are definitely searching AuDHD. Okay, taking off my podcast studio founder hat, because that's not what this is about. But if anyone wanted some free podcast advice, I think the way that you did this was great. And I am not surprised to hear about the success that you've had both from stepping into this space that you wanted more conversations around and from the strength of your episodes, how compellingly you weave together all these sources of information and shared experience and all of that as well. So it's not just finding an empty niche, but also like, being a great podcaster and you had all this experience from your other show.

Mattia Maurée [00:43:08]:

And being able to actually say something. I know that this sounds kind of obvious, but as a general, taking a step back and looking at marketing in general, I've said this to you before, have no interest in sending a weekly newsletter for no reason. I have no interest in just like and I get these newsletters, so I get it, but people being like, oh, this is the thing that happened to me this week and I'm going to weave it into a story and then there's going to be a moral at the end and this is what I learned. And I'm just like, this feels like a children's book to me. There doesn't have to be a moral to every story. I'm not trying to make fun of anybody in particular, but I just don't want to do that. And that's another thing I want to say as an AuDHD business owner is a lot of what matters to me is, besides just my values broadly, I just don't want to do shit that I don't want to do. And if I don't want to do a particular thing in my business, I just don't do it. And so for me, taking this big step away from a lot of social media and deleting some of my accounts is just I don't want to. And you don't need a bigger reason than that. And I don't think it needs to be like a huge kind of like in a relationship you can leave because you want to. That can be it. Which is also an important piece of advice, I think.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:16]:

Yes. Also, there are many reasons to step away or to quit social media or anything else you might be doing in your business and your marketing and your life, but your desire to do so is enough of a reason. To kind of wrap up our conversation. I wanted to just get a little visionary together and talk about online community spaces that are not on social media. So we've already talked in this conversation about the ways that online community is really important for disabled and neurodivergent and AuDHD folks because it becomes a place where you can meet others who share your lived experience and who may not be a part of your immediate local community. But we've also talked a lot about how social media can actually just really negatively impact our mental health, our lived experience and all of these things. So I'd love to hear, as you are stepping away from some of your social media platforms and continuing to not do things you don't want to do, what are some ways that you're creating online community to kind of suit your brain and ways we can imagine other folks could do the same?

Mattia Maurée [00:45:29]:

Yeah, so one of the things I did that was really helpful was I kind of sat down with a list of all the spaces I'm on digitally, including all the different chat platforms and stuff that I have for various different groups and basically what's working and what's not working. So just kind of evaluating what do I like about this, what do I not like about this? And then also separately from what exists. Just journaling about what do I want, what am I looking for, what's my ideal? Because I think we're so used to just kind of taking the tools that are handed to us that it's easy to be like, well, this is the best option right now and it's like, yeah, but what are your needs and what would actually meet your needs? First of all, because there might actually be a tool that there aren't that many people on but that technically does do that thing. And then I'll just ask about that. I'll start asking people like, hey, do you know or I'll ask my techie friends, do you know of something that would do these things? I did that around productivity software and to dos and stuff because my brain hates most of those things. So I was like, okay, these are the things I need and I need it to not be visually cluttered and all this stuff. And I actually found something through that, through asking people.

Mattia Maurée [00:46:33]:

So for example, 2016 when I left Facebook originally, I started a Mighty Networks and that was back when it was free. So technically that is social media like, but you're kind of creating your own. I was inviting people in, so I don't know, I had 100 something people in there, so it was a little bit more of that, kind of smaller, you could actually feel like it was a community in a way. And I was active in there for a while. I've been a part of Discord groups. Patreon has a social component because people can comment and chat and start threads on them. But again, it's these kind of like individual themed communities so there are things like that that exist.

Mattia Maurée [00:47:08]:

I'm also on just group chats, again a topic or these things. I think what I would sort of vision and imagine and want would be something where people had a lot of control over what they were seeing and how they were interacting and how other people can sort of reach and notify them. There might be ways in which you would want to be able to connect with strangers, but not just want to be getting the messages I get on Facebook of people being like, I like your business, would you like to spend $5,000? Yeah, thanks. So helpful. So I don't know that something like that exists in sort of a robust large way with a huge audience, but I think having bespoke spaces that meet some of your needs actually feels a lot better for my brain at least than having something that has thousands of options but is also just a lot of mental clutter.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:09]:

I have also, since leaving social media, joined many Discord channels or Discord servers. I've joined many Patreons. I've been in a lot of different even some people's like Substack newsletters are really trying to create community through comment threads and different things. But I agree with you, it's that sort of shared affinity around a particular topic and then also tapping into kind of what is the size that works for your brain, which you've mentioned. Are you someone who really, once it gets past four people, I have to tap out, or you're like, if it's less than 1,000 people, there's not enough happening for me to maintain interest. Right? It can be wherever there's no set number that needs to work for anyone but knowing what you prefer and that can be different based on the topic, it can be different based on the type of relationship you want. It can be different around your support needs in that area.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:58]:

But I loved what you shared just about taking the time to assess the digital spaces you're already a part of and then separate from that journaling around, like, what do you desire? And from there, similar to our conversation about podcasting, if what you desire doesn't exist, you could step into creating it if you so chose. Because I really do believe maybe this is maybe it's naive of me, but probably not. But I think that if it's something you want, there are other people who also want it. And we just have to create these things and find them. Find those people or they'll find us once we kind of put ourselves out there with having made it.

Mattia Maurée [00:49:31]:

Totally. And there are, app developers email me at least once a week so I know there are people out there ready to make an app. [laughs]

Amelia Hruby [00:49:39]:

Always. Oh my gosh, so many app developers, they are ready and waiting.

Well, one of the spaces you're creating is obviously the AuDHD Flourishing podcast, but I know you're also developing sort of more community oriented space somewhat associated with the show called Like Your Brain. So could you tell us a little bit about that and how listeners could potentially connect with you there if they'd like.

Mattia Maurée [00:50:02]:

Yeah. So this came out of, actually work I did with Amelia. I developed a program called Love Your Brain, which is more like you know, coaching, working on a project. And it's this very intensive five month program. Did that twice this year. Next year I'll do it once. And a lot of people were saying, hey, I am not ready for Love Your Brain, but I want to do something with you. And they wanted a space where essentially they could grow but have be kind of chill. And I was like, yeah, I don't really have anything like that.

Mattia Maurée [00:50:28]:

And there's not a lot like that out there, right? It's kind of like you do a program because you have a goal and you're working really hard and you focus a lot. And I wanted something that was almost the opposite of that. Like a phrase I really love and I can't remember exactly how it was put, but it was basically like if plants are given what they need, they grow. And that's it. It's in the nature of nature to grow if it gets water, sunlight and good soil. And that's kind of what I'm looking to create is the conditions for growth without it being super driven or goal oriented. So it's actually going to be a space on Patreon, so there's a community aspect to that but it'll still be a closed group.

Mattia Maurée [00:51:11]:

We're going to have calls during the month and really just a focus on gentle coworking, being witnessed, maybe finding an accountability buddy in there who has the same neurodivergences you have so that you can give each other the exact kind of support that you want. I've just been thinking about that some of what I was offering in coaching is essentially something that an accountability buddy can offer you for free. And I was like, I would like to focus on, on the coaching side, the kind of deep dive, intense stuff that you can't find anywhere else and then let you kind of get that in between accountability stuff for free because you can. And I'm wanting to create more spaces like that because I feel like there's a lot of gatekeeping around growth. Essentially you have to pay for it and be in these spaces. And I'm like, I mean, technically you will pay for this because there'll be a sliding scale, but it's going to be the lowest tier, I'm thinking is $7. And if you don't have $7 a month, great.

Mattia Maurée [00:52:03]:

This supports the podcast, which is free, which you can listen to for free. So that's the intention is just kind of creating the conditions for growth without being so kind of hard driving. So it's a space you could just be in. I'm imagining, like, ideally, you can be in there for a year and just kind of hang out and get some support and see what happens and make some friends and yeah, I'm really excited because a lot of my spaces have been so goal oriented. And this is not that it's just hanging out and there will be some knowledge and some stuff along the way. I'll put information in there but I really want to focus on integration and implementation more than just throwing more information at you because we all have enough of that.

Amelia Hruby [00:52:47]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited for this to exist. And listeners, end of the show notes, all the information will be there. The podcast will be linked, Like Your Brain will be linked. And I just really hope that this episode helps you like and love your brain. And like Mattia said earlier, it doesn't really matter to us whether you are AuDHD, get diagnosed in that way, choose to identify in that way or not. What's most important here is that you're finding ways to support your unique, specific to you, brain. And I just think that we have so much to learn from Mattia and from the AuDHD community about the ways that they've adapted their work to their life and to their brain. And so, Mattia, I'm so grateful you joined me today. Is there any final things you want to share with listeners?

Mattia Maurée [00:53:40]:

There is nothing wrong with you except for that one thing that is totally wrong with you that probably you can get medicated for.

Amelia Hruby [00:53:48]:

Wise, wise words. Well, thank you so much for joining me and until next time, friends, we will see you off the grid.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:00]:

[music fades in]

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