Have you ever stood in the middle of your own front yard, leaf blower roaring, wondering how in the world you got there when you were supposed to be driving to work?
I have. This week. Probably again by the time you finish reading this.
Let me paint you the full picture, because it explains everything you need to know about me and about this book. I keep my truck keys in my truck. On purpose. Because if I set them down inside the house, they are gone forever, swallowed by the same void that eats my sunglasses and my patience. So I grab nothing, walk out to the garage, and there it is. The leaf blower. Not put away. And my brain says, “Well, I cannot leave that out.” So I grab it. Then I open the garage door. Then I see leaves in the driveway. And since I am already holding a leaf blower, what kind of man would I be to walk past those leaves?
So there I stand. Middle of the yard. Blowing leaves. Meanwhile my actual job waits patiently twenty minutes down the road.
That is ADHD. Not the cute Hollywood version. The daily, multiple-times-a-day, “wait, why did I walk in here” version. And Penn and Kim Holderness wrote an entire book about it that made me feel like someone finally installed a mirror in my brain.
So How Did This Book End Up In My Hands?
Great question. I have no idea.
I mean that. When I finish a Book of the Week, I open my Kindle wishlist to see what is next. Then, for reasons my brain refuses to explain, I also open my Audible wishlist. Now I am bouncing between two lists. Kindle. Audible. Kindle again. Somewhere in that bounce, this title caught my eye. So I tapped it. Then I thought, let me listen to the Audible teaser first. Penn started talking, and here is the thing about listening to another person with ADHD. They speak the way we all speak. Fast. Words tumbling out ahead of the thoughts, thoughts sprinting ahead of the words. I heard about ninety seconds of it and my brain lit up like, this guy is one of us.
And then, mid teaser, a new thought crashed the party. Wait. Is it on Kindle too?
So I stopped the teaser, jumped back to Kindle, searched the title, and there it was. Both formats. Which meant I could listen and read at the same time through the app. For an ADHD brain, that is not convenience. That is a jackpot. Two inputs at once, which somehow helps me focus instead of scattering me further.
Winner. Bought. Done.
Do you see what just happened there? I ran down a rabbit hole of distractions in order to not be distracted. I keep two wishlists so I do not forget the first wishlist. I look at one, look at the other, come back, and then, ooh, squirrel. Oh wait, this book looks interesting. That is not a bug in my process. That is my process.
The Brain Runs At Twenty Five Miles An Hour
Here is something wild. As I write this, I am rushing. I cannot get the words out of my head fast enough. And yes, I took my ADHD meds this morning. That is the crazy part.
Let me explain how this feels, because I think most people have no idea. If you process a thought at one mile an hour, calm and orderly, one idea politely following the next, then I process that same thought at twenty five miles an hour. The problem is my brain cannot actually keep up with itself at that speed. So I rush. I try to get it all in. I try to remember all of it at once. And it is almost impossible.
This is exactly what drives our spouses crazy. “I forgot.” Why did you forget? Because your one simple action item did not stay a simple action item. My brain grabbed it, started analyzing it, and before I knew what happened it had turned that little task into a rocket ship. It is like handing me an electric screwdriver and watching me soup it up into something Tim the Toolman Taylor would build in his garage. More power. More grunt. Way more than the job ever called for. And somewhere in all that souping up, I completely forgot to take out the trash.
That is the ADHD brain. Too fast for its own good, and too creative to leave anything alone.
Fifty Years Old And Finally Understanding The Why
Here is something I do not say out loud very often.
I was fifty years old when I got diagnosed. Fifty. That is a long time to walk around wondering why you are the way you are. Why the trash did not make it to the curb. Why you started four things and finished none. Why sitting still in a meeting felt like a physical sport.
And then the diagnosis lands, and it does not feel like bad news. It feels like relief. Pure relief. Because for the first time in half a century, there is a why behind you. You are not lazy. You are not scattered on purpose. You are not broken in some mysterious way no one can name. Your brain is simply wired to run hot, and now it has a name, and a name changes everything.
Penn writes about this same moment, and reading it felt like he had been reading my mail. That is the magic of this book. You are not alone. You never were. You just did not have the words yet.
Why Five Golden Squeegees, And Why I Mean It
Here is the honest truth. If you have what Penn has and what I have, this book is a five.
What makes it work is not just that it is funny and witty and a little all over the place, though it is all three. It is that the book has flow. And anyone with ADHD knows we live and die by flow. We have to find what works for us, and even when we find it, it never fully satisfies us. We crave better. We crave more. It is just how we are built.
We also need space that is not cluttered, because a cluttered room is a trap. Our brains will work their way through every single item in it. A stack of paper on the desk? That is a five minute distraction. A framed family photo on a client’s desk? Oh boy, now that is fifteen minutes of questions and conversations that poor client never wanted to have with me. A TV playing while you are trying to eat dinner with friends at a busy restaurant? It is a good thing there is food in front of my face, because that plate is the only thing holding me in my seat.
Penn gives practical, real advice about living and working with an ADHD brain, and that is the magic of the book. He makes you laugh and then he hands you something you can actually use. And then Kim steps in and tells you what it is like on the other side of the table, what she lives with every single day. That is the part that elevates it. You get both perspectives.
Which, if I am being honest, sounds a lot like Melisa and me. She gets it. She has to live with it too. She understands how hard it can be on me, and I understand how hard it can be on her. That mutual understanding is everything.
How This Shows Up At Window Ninjas, And Why I Am Telling You
This part is personal, so I am going to trust you with it.
Here is how I run a growing franchise brand with a brain that wants to chase every leaf in the yard. I hire people. I give them clear duties and clear expectations. I write down everything, and I mean everything, so I can follow up. Notebooks and notepads are my best friends. And here is the piece most leaders would be too proud to admit. I told my leadership team about my ADHD. Out loud. I asked for their help. They keep me on task so I can keep them on task.
Think about that trade for a second. I gave up the illusion of being the flawless founder, and in return I got a team that actually helps me steer. That is not weakness. That is the best hiring and delegation decision I ever made.
I can sit through a meeting now. I could not always say that. The difference is I finally found the right medicine. I used to think that medication was a joke. An excuse. A crutch for people who would not just try harder. Penn thought the same thing about himself. I think most of us do.
Then you try it and your brain fires correctly seventy five percent of the time instead of leaving the connection untied, and you realize two things at once. One, you made life so much harder on the people around you than you ever knew. Two, seventy five percent is a miracle when you have spent your whole life at less.
The Part I Did Not Expect: Kim
Penn’s stories made me laugh because I have lived them. Hair gel in the fridge. A full carton of ice cream melting on the counter because someone got distracted between the freezer and the bowl. That someone was me.
But Kim is the reason this book earns its place on my shelf.
Kim speaks for the loved ones. The people who live with the ball of energy instead of being the ball of energy. Listening to her opened my eyes to what Melisa and my kids actually live with. It can be funny. It can also be tiring. Taxing. Thirty years of living beside a brain that never announces what it will forget next, or which rabbit hole it will chase today.
“Did you take out the trash?” turns into “YOU FORGOT TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH.” Not because they are cruel. Because they are worn down by loving someone whose task list keeps slipping through his fingers. Kim named that experience so clearly that I sat there thinking about my own house, my own people, and the continuous sense of the unknown I hand them every single day.
If you have ADHD, read Penn’s chapters and laugh. Then read Kim’s chapters and grow up a little. I did.
Is It A Superpower Or Is It Broken? Yes.
I believe ADHD is a superpower. I also believe it is broken. Both are true, and Penn nails why.
When an ADHD brain locks onto something it loves, we devour it until it is dead. Then we move on. But a few things we never fully devour, no matter how long we chase them. Love. Friendship. Business growth. Maybe because those are the things we genuinely enjoy, so the synapse connects and refuses to come untied. Most people do not worry about lost connections in the brain. We do. And we never know when one is about to slip.
But here is the flip side, and it is a big one. When we find something that works, we keep doing it. Habits are salvation for the ADHD brain. Get us into a good one and we are unstoppable. Knock us out of it and the wheels come off the bus.
That is exactly why entrepreneurship fits us so well. Franchising, building a brand, growing Window Ninjas, all of it rewards the person who can hyperfocus and create and run toward the fire when everyone else runs away. We just do it in an unorthodox way. The leaf blower guy in the front yard is the same guy who will out work, out create, and out care every competitor in his market. Same brain. Two very different mornings.
A Word On The Meds, And A Word To The People Who Love Us
Meds help. Let me just say it plainly.
And fortunately, they have come a long way since the 1980s, back when the experts were still experimenting with what to hand parents to give their kids. What we have today actually works. Not perfectly. But well enough to change a life. Mine included.
Now here is my message to you if you live with or work with someone who has ADHD. Embrace it. I mean that. These people are creative and smart and they see things nobody else in the room can see. If you can help them focus, and take the time to learn how their brain actually works, you will be mining gold. So to say.
That is what Melisa figured out about me, and it is what I try to do for the ADHD brains on my own team.
Scary, Or A Superpower? You Get To Choose
Here is the thing about ADHD. It can be scary if you let it be. The forgetting. The rabbit holes. The sense that your own mind is a car with a loose steering wheel.
Or you can do what most of us with ADHD eventually learn to do. You look at it from a different angle and you use it to your advantage. Same brain. Same wiring. Completely different life, depending on which way you decide to hold it.
So if you are wired like me, here are a few things that actually work. Not theory. Stuff I do.
Keep your keys where you cannot lose them. Mine live in my truck. Find your version of that for the things you lose most.
Write everything down. Notebooks, notepads, phone, whatever you will actually look at. Do not trust your brain to hold it. It will not.
Build habits and protect them like gold. The ADHD brain thrives on rhythm. When you find a good groove, guard it.
Clear the clutter. A messy space is a distraction machine. The cleaner the room, the fewer rabbit holes waiting to swallow your afternoon.
Tell your people. Your spouse, your team, your business partner. Say it out loud. Ask for help. The shame lives in secret, and it dies in the open.
Get evaluated. If any of this sounds like your life, go talk to a professional. Fifty years is a long time to wait. Do not wait as long as I did.
And find your medicine, whatever that looks like for you. Sometimes it is a prescription. Sometimes it is a system. Usually it is both. Seventy five percent is a gift when you have spent your whole life at less.
What I Am Taking With Me
If you lead a business, odds are good your brain runs a little hot too. Or someone on your team does. This book gave me language for something I have carried my whole life, and more than that, it gave me permission to stop apologizing for it and start building around it.
Name what already works. Systematize it. Ask for help out loud. Find your medicine, whatever form that takes for you. And remember that the same wiring that leaves ice cream on the counter is the wiring that builds something out of nothing.
ADHD is not the thing holding you back. It is the thing that got you here. You just have to learn how to drive it.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to go find my keys. Just kidding. They are in the truck.
Five Golden Squeegees.
Penn and Kim did a great job with this one. It is a must read if you struggle with ADHD, or if you have a deep relationship with someone who does. And honestly, even if ADHD is not part of your world at all, give it a read anyway. You are probably going to laugh and learn a little. And what in the world is wrong with that?
We ADHD types tend to look at our wiring like it is a superpower. It is just how our brains work. And to be honest with you, I would not change it for the world.
Follow my journey at gabesalinas.com, subscribe on Substack, and connect with me on social media. If your brain works like mine, come find me. You are not alone, and you are definitely not broken.
Keep Shining.
