Empowering Neurodivergent Individuals: Self-Employed vs. Traditional Employment Journeys

08/27/23 • 24 min

A Joint venture is a business entity involving two or more parties where the returns risk and governance are shared between all the members involved. Profits are also shared often depending on the percentage of capital initially invested by the parties. The venture may later add more investors.

Before starting a joint venture, it is paramount to keep four major considerations in view. The first of these is Careful Planning; assess whether it is the best way to achieve your goals using a SWOT Analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This may be done alongside the business partner. Second is Open Communication; this helps to confirm that all stakeholders understand the basics of a joint venture agreement, including goals, resources, deal duration, and others. In-person meetings and virtual meetings can be interchanged depending on the arrangement.

Next is Building Trust in the partnership; it may be fostered through transparency with information and clearly established performance metrics, all of which reduce unnecessary suspicion among partners. Lastly, Flexibility and adaptability can be very beneficial in creating room for opinions to be voiced and compromises to be made. Regular reviews of operations reveal room for improvement as well as opportunities for change while keeping in mind the legal and financial aspects of the venture. Note that the actions of partners can have a huge impact on the business and other partners.

Gatekeeping means deliberately restricting valuable information or opportunities to a few select individuals who meet predetermined criteria. Unfortunately, very often the same demographic groups are subject to gatekeeping even outside their professional lives but this stifles innovation, diminishes diversity, and promotes inequality.

Gatekeeping affects the neurodivergent community as they are often excluded from access to critical resources and this also limits their ability to contribute. As a result, individual progress is hampered while groundbreaking ideas are obstructed.

Intersectionality is the interconnection between one social characterization and disability as well as how their identities create privileges or disadvantages. Sarah has had to navigate through biases and prejudices that affect opportunities for growth in the workplace.

Starting your business requires planning, commitment, and risk management. Hence, the importance of vigilance, thorough research, and getting professional advice cannot be overempha

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Starting your business requires planning, commitment, and risk management. Hence, the importance of vigilance, thorough research, and getting professional advice cannot be overempha

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There are eight principles to be applied in DSDM. The first principle to be discussed is "Focus on business needs". The project manager must ensure that members of the project team understand business priorities using MoSCoW (Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Won't have) both during and after the foundation, with necessary adjustments made as solutions are created. MoSCoW should also be followed throughout each time box.

Delivering a solution on time is often the most important success factor,especially when market opportunities are involved. Hence, the project manager should ensure team members timebox the work while focusing on business priorities that have been set. Progress is measured by what is delivered in the allowed time, not how long it takes.

Teams with active cooperation perform better than teams that work in loose association. Collaboration increases understanding and speed so the project manager should ensure team members behave collaboratively by involving the right stakeholders at the right time.

Poor communication is often the biggest cause of project failure. DSDM practices improve effective communication and should be employed by the project manager to enable anyone to keep informed of activities by making these DSDM practices visible.
Demonstrate control; It is necessary to control the solution being created at all times. To show this, the project manager must ensure the team makes plans in progression visible to all. Progress should be measured with a focus on the delivery of products rather than merely completing activities.

The business sponsor is the most senior project-level role. This role is specifically responsible for this business case and project budget.

The business visionary is a senior role that should be held by a single individual to avoid confusion on the project vision.

The technical coordinator ensures that the solution technical role works consistently such that the project is technically coherent and meets desired standards.

Certain relationships should be addressed by the project manager. The first is the relationship between the project manager and the business sponsor; it is vital that the ownership of the project remains with the business sponsor, and this responsibility must be understood.

Another relationship is between the project manager and the business visionary; these two and the technical coordinator, are equal in authority.

The project manager a

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Neurodivergent copywriter & Entrepreneurship

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Our guest today is Andrew Mcdonald, a neurodivergent copywriter who helps other neurodivergent professionals launch and scale their businesses through marketing campaigns.

A major part of Andrew's work involves considering the personalities of the people he works with. For his neurodiversity which includes OCD, trauma, and Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, it is more challenging to use cold emailing because of the large number of negative responses that come with it.

The first requirement in building a mailing list is having a lead magnet using something that can be offered for free which also has value to potential clients but requires them to offer their email addresses.

Understandably, a lot of neurodivergent professionals struggle with finding the confidence to start a business because of the stigma and negativity often ascribed to their neurodiversity.

Delegating certain roles in the business to better-suited professionals can accelerate growth because it gives the entrepreneur more time to double down on aspects that are within their strengths.

Despite the challenges neurodiverse people face, one of the common strengths of neurodivergent professionals is the ability to build communities around their businesses organically.

The problem of stigma still lingers generally and is persistently at the back of the minds of neurodivergent professionals. This leads to fear of disclosing their neurodiversity.

Andrew has CPTSD which means Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It continuously affects thought processes in everyday life unlike PTSD which is linked more to triggers in high-anxiety situations where previously experienced danger seems present.

For neurodiverse professionals who want to build enough confidence to start a business, it is advisable to break big goals into smaller achievable goals. Growing slowly over time and taking notes of these small achievements helps to build the confidence to face bigger ones.

One of the negative aspects of Andrew’s neurodiversity is difficulty with cold emailing as a result of low confidence, however, he was able to turn this into a positive by figuring out a solution for other clients, and has also taken up opportunities to be a guest on podcasts as a means to build connections.

● Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn

Andrew's free book/website to help neurodiverge

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