About the episode
In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Jessica Covington discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.
Jessica is a mom, wife, dancer and ADHD coach in Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly after beginning to learn about ADHD for her son, she dug deep into the research from a body-mind perspective and realized a new approach: body first, to activate the brain and leverage the strengths of the ADHD mind.
Her work now, at fit-ology, serves women with ADHD (anywhere in the world) using a 4-part framework to support individual goals and needs from a strength-based perspective.
You can connect with Jessica on her website and Facebook.
—–
Tired of business as usual? Join a community that’s rewriting the rules.
- Proven strategies to attract more clients and boost your income
- Free weekly networking events to expand your reach
- Authentic relationships and support from fellow entrepreneurs
All the details are here: https://ritasuzanne.com/community
P.S. Listen to more interviews at https://momownedandoperated.com and learn about working with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/
Listen to the episode
Show Notes
SPEAKERS
Rita Suzanne, Jessica Covington
Rita Suzanne 00:01
Welcome to the Mom Owned and Operated Podcast, the podcast about moms and for moms, where we have candid conversations about running a business, raising a family, and remembering ourselves. I’m your host, Rita Suzanne, a single mom of four, digital strategist and provider of no nonsense business strategies and tactics.
Rita Suzanne:
Hi, I’m Rita Suzanne, and today I have my guest, Jessica, with me. Jessica, I’m so happy to have you on. Please tell everyone all about you, your business and your family.
Jessica Covington:
Well, thank you, I’m really happy to be here. My name is Jessica Covington. I opened Fitology health coaching for ADHD several years ago.
Jessica Covington:
After discovering my son’s diagnosis, I jumped into all the research I could find, trying to figure him out and how to help him, and quickly realized a number of things.
Jessica Covington:
The first was how familiar it all sounded, which is what led to my own diagnosis about a year later. The second was that I was looking at all of it through sort of a physical fitness, body, mind connection lens. And the third thing that I realized is that everybody else in the ADHD field was going about the whole thing brain first to get the body cooperating, and I had a hunch, since they’re always connected, that I could go the other way get the body moving to get the brain online. So many experiments later, many clients later, several years later, I’ve come up with a four-point framework that I use now in my coaching for adult women with ADHD. The framework consists of exercise, nutrition, metacognition and mindfulness, and then systems, habits and tools. So every client is unique and their goals are unique, so every coaching plan is unique, but that framework fits for everybody and addresses the whole person inside of a whole life.
Rita Suzanne:
I love that. And how and how old are your children?
Jessica Covington:
They’re 15 and 17 and full of character, full of personality, and it will be a miracle if we all make it out of teenagerhood alive.
Rita Suzanne:
So how long have you been in business? Because we talked a little bit before and we talked about how you started out in fitness and then you just kind of transitioned over to what you’re doing now. Yeah, exactly.
Jessica Covington:
Well, let’s see, I got out of the corporate world. I had been in law firm recruiting and human resources for many years. Prior to that, my first career had been in dance and health coaching and fitness and wellness. So when we found out we were expecting our first, I decided to make the leap into entrepreneurship. Then decided to make the leap into entrepreneurship. Then so many people told me oh, that’ll be great, you can work while the baby sleeps. Babies sleep all the time, but my first didn’t sleep a wink. He never slept a full night until he was four years old.
Jessica Covington:
So I wish I could time travel back and just kind of slap all those people who told me it would be so easy to start a business and a family at the same time. Anyway, that said, my first venture was in corporate wellness and health coaching. But when my son was diagnosed, that sort of consumed everything and became my life, partly because of him but partly because I found it so interesting. It was fascinating. And then my own ADHD sort of explained everything about my life and how I had gotten to that point, feeling the way I felt, thinking the way I thought, and what really struck the chord for me was the shame and the stigma that so often come along with ADHD, especially if you don’t know you have it and you go for so many years unsupported. So once I realized that that was so critical, that early intervention was key and that taking a strength-based approach was key, that sort of changed everything for me and gave me a real mission and a purpose, and so that’s how I ended up starting Fitology as an ADHD coaching business in 2007.
Rita Suzanne:
I have so many things I want to say. So my youngest, he’s 13. Okay, so he started having seizures well, probably six years ago, and oftentimes when, when a child or somebody starts to have seizures, a side effect is ADHD and they will often have that as like a byproduct. And he was diagnosed with ADHD and but because he was on so many medications for his epilepsy, I didn’t want to put him on medication for his ADHD. And you know, because it was just, it was just too much as it was. And you know, cause it was just, it was just too much as it was. And now that his epilepsy is kind of improving as he’s getting older, which is good, he might hopefully grow out of it.
Rita Suzanne:
We’ve started the ADHD medicine because he had came to me and he said that he had expressed how he didn’t feel very smart, he couldn’t focus, he was struggling in school and he was just feeling so, I guess, inadequate. And I didn’t realize, until you just said that about the stigma that may surround somebody with ADHD, how he was possibly feeling. You know, because I just I always would say it’s okay, he has IEP. I wasn’t putting a lot of pressure on him in order to, like you know, like his siblings. So yeah, that’s really and I could see like, do you feel like adults? Maybe feel that same pressure?
Jessica Covington:
Absolutely. Especially as we get a little bit older, our hormones start to change and that creates a cascade of changes in neurotransmitters and other functions of the body. It even changes in terms of circumstance. What I find is a lot of times women will come to me and say I was functioning fine until my baby was born, whether they knew they had ADHD or not. I mean, it’s no surprise to anybody here that motherhood itself is an identity change and it changes everything about your whole life, not the least of which is your executive functioning, because all of a sudden you have to do executive functioning skills for a whole new person. So a lot of times they find themselves overloaded, unable to to handle even self-regulation, much less co-regulation with another tiny human. So yeah, it’s pervasive.
Rita Suzanne:
What? Because I know that I’ve heard a lot of people say that a lot of entrepreneurs have signs of ADHD. What are some of the signs of ADHD? Because I feel like you know we probably have them just because we are all over the place.
Jessica Covington:
Yeah, I think there’s a huge overlap there. I like to think of it as being born with the. How hard could it be, jean? Because we tend to, in some cases, minimize the risk that’s involved and maximize the potential benefit. Maximize the potential benefit that can have its downsides, but it can be a great benefit. When it comes to starting a business, we tend to have multi-track minds instead of single-track minds, so we have a real strength in being able to manage various parts of the business, whether it’s the marketing, the finances, the you know the client contact, this and that and the other all the pieces that have to go together. Somehow we’re able to keep all those plates spinning, sometimes better than others. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but not only are we able to do it, I think it gives us kind of a charge. It gives our brains enough jobs to do that. We don’t get bored and we’re super motivated to keep going and going, and going and going. Sometimes.
Rita Suzanne:
So do you think that? I guess. So what you’re saying is that it could be an asset to some, for the ADHD could be an asset in some ways. So with your four tier approach to dealing with ADHD, how is how does that work for women? It’s not just for entrepreneurs, it’s just for you. Work with women specifically. Right, right yeah that’s right.
Jessica Covington:
You know, the first thing we do always is to take a deep dive into where they are now versus where they want to be and figure out how we’re going to address that gap. A lot of times people feel like they have one of those four areas pretty much in good control already. So we’ll spend most of our time in the other three areas or where they feel like they could use the most support. What works even better is to start where they already feel competent and capable. So several of my clients are athletes already. We use that basis as an athlete that discipline, the perseverance, the tenacity and we take that and sort of spread it into other parts of their lives where they’re not feeling so strong. So what starts out as maybe the discipline to get up and go for a run every morning drifts into meal planning every week. You know, something that she already felt pretty good at can translate into something that she didn’t feel so terrific at just because the skills can carry over.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I feel like those are. Those are important things for moms, even without ADHD, right, because we have so many things, there’s so many things going on in our lives that are and especially like for me as a single mom, like I feel pulled in so many different directions often that I don’t have ADHD, but I feel like sometimes that I, you know that I might I’ll self-diagnose, but no, I just I think that it’s definitely better to be prepared, although it’s so hard sometimes, and having someone coach you along the way is definitely more helpful, especially when you have ADHD, because your attention is maybe drifts from one project to the next. Is that how it works?
Jessica Covington:
Yeah, that’s a huge part of it.
Jessica Covington:
Is that how it works? Yeah, that’s a huge part of it. Another piece I think, especially for women who have been diagnosed later in life, is that all our lives we’ve been told you’re so smart, you have so much potential. If only you would apply yourself, you could do so many things. So we internalize that message, we start to believe it and then, when things get difficult or they get frustrating, we start beating ourselves up about it and thinking things like if I’m so smart, why can’t I just get this one simple thing done? So I think I lost track of your original, but the basis of it is being able to understand where somebody is feeling strong or where they’re not feeling strong and then build on that in ways that help them balance the life wheel. You know that diagram I’m thinking of.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, I love that because I like to use that in lieu of you know, when talking about balance, right, instead of talking about the scales, we use the wheel of life to really just kind of delegate what’s the prevalence. You know what’s important in your life right now.
Jessica Covington:
Yeah, exactly.
Rita Suzanne:
So let’s talk about how you work with your clients. Do you have group programs? Do you do one-on-one? What do you do?
Jessica Covington:
Right now it’s one-on-one. I am so excited because I’m just on the verge of launching a group program. It’s going to be really exciting, not only because it brings people into community and gives them support of a group of like-minded people just like them, but also it makes it more accessible to a greater number of people, something that’s really important to me. I don’t want coaching just to be for you know, the top right top earners or whatever.
Jessica Covington:
Um, and it’s gonna have I’m gonna have a fantastic library of content that is accessible anytime to anybody, so, no matter what their schedule is, it’ll be short, little bites of information that they can take, grab onto and use right then. And there I’m a huge fan of practicality. I don’t I don’t like to include a bunch of fluff. I want you to be able to take something and act on it right away.
Rita Suzanne:
I love that, I’m, I’m, I’m like that too. I like no sugarcoating and I like to be very succinct and let’s just get to the point. And you know, let’s make it happen. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about you know, let’s make it happen. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about you know, it’s a lot, it’s a lot different because, you know, you and I have kids that are teenagers, so we have a lot more freedom in our, in our lives and our businesses with, versus someone who has younger kids. So let’s talk a little bit about balance. And since we already just kind of hit on the wheel of life, let’s talk about what. What you’re doing for your self care and what are you doing, um, to kind of, for you?
Jessica Covington:
That’s such a good question. I have to keep it front of mind all the time, otherwise it just so easily slips to the back burner. Yeah, I have a solid morning routine that really keeps me grounded. I make sure that I’m not looking at my phone for at least the first 30 minutes of the day. First thing I do after I grab my coffee is go outside and try to get a look at the sunrise If it’s up by then. Sometimes it’s not, but that early morning light viewing is really important to me. While I’m there, I like to do a visual focus exercise. That helps improve my perception of time.
Jessica Covington:
That helps improve my perception of time and from there, usually there’s at least one person awake. If there’s not, I can go straight into meditation. If there is, then I have to take a break to do breakfast and so on, because I really do. Even though they’re teens and they say they don’t need me, I want to be present, you know. I want to be there when they head off for school or off to their days. Beyond that, a lot of my self-care is exercise, which sounds crazy to some people, because for so many people it feels like work, but for me it’s fun. So I just came from a workout, actually, and managed to fit in a dance class right after. So that’s about what it looks like for me.
Rita Suzanne:
I love exercise too. It definitely releases a lot of my stress. So, you know, whenever I have a moment, that’s what I choose to do in my spare time. So I completely understand that I love listening to people’s morning routines because they’re always so different and, you know, it’s always so intriguing to hear what people do. What people do. And night you know, nighttime routines are cool too, to hear what people are, you know are doing outside of. Like, this is the skincare routine that I do, which I love to hear too. Okay, so since A lot of the moms who listen to this podcast are business owners, but some of them are aspiring business owners I like to ask a question about if someone came to you and they wanted to start their own business. What would be your advice for her?
Jessica Covington:
I think the most important thing is really to connect with your big why. You’ve probably heard Simon Sinek talk about that. I think it’s so important to find a bigger reason outside yourself and a bigger reason outside the paycheck. In fact, I was just talking to my son about this the other day.
Jessica Covington:
He’s very business-minded, he’s an entrepreneur at heart and he was stressing about well, you know, how am I going to do this and how am I going to make money? And I said just for a minute, forget the money, find out what you love to do, get really good at it and the money will come. The money follows because people will always pay you for something that you are really good at and passionate about. So if you can find that bigger reason outside yourself and outside the paycheck, I think that just covers so many things. It keeps you going through the rough times, it gives you purpose and passion, it gives you an instant connection point with people who need what you do or have or make, and really just it makes the whole thing a whole lot more fun when it actually means something to you more than just the money.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, you know I always say that the main driver is typically time and financial freedom, but there has to be a why underneath that right. There has to be a reason, a driver for you, especially in the hard times, right, because time and financial freedom both take time right, and so they are. It’s such a long journey and it’s such a hard journey, and so if you don’t have that why in the background kind of driving you and pushing you forward, then I think that that’s a reason why a lot of people are not able to sustain a business long term, because they’re not able to kind of push through those harder times.
Jessica Covington:
That’s true. Our grandparents were right there really is no free lunch. You’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to work for it, and that, that heart centered reason, is what gives you the fuel to do that.
Rita Suzanne:
Yeah, running a business is so hard it is, you know. You know people sitting on the beach or by the pool and they’ll think, oh my gosh, that looks like the dream life. Or they’ll see somebody saying, like you know, create digital products, you’re going to be a millionaire and you know, digital products are the last thing that you create, because you have to create an audience first. You have to do all of these things beforehand and so, yeah, there’s. It’s such a journey, and I think that if people were really honest about how long it actually takes to get there, then then I think it would be a lot easier for people to understand, you know, and not come in with unrealistic expectations of what it’s going to be like when you start a business. Anyways, my rant is over. So, jessica, tell everyone where you are online, where are you on social, where’s your website, all of the things.
Jessica Covington:
Oh, my goodness, the best place to find me is fitologycom, so that’s F I T, hyphen, o L O, g, ycom, and that has links to every place else. On Facebook it’s fitology, no, hyphen, adhd coach. I don’t even remember the others but okay, I’ll link them.
Rita Suzanne:
I’ll link them all below for you. Yeah, so where do you spend the most most of your time, though? Where are you at online On Facebook? Yeah, probably.
Jessica Covington:
Facebook. My kids tell me I’m an old lady, but that’s the way it goes. That’s where my people hang out.
Rita Suzanne:
I was going to say you go where your audience is and if they’re on Facebook, then that’s where you are. So, um yeah, thank you so much for hanging out. It’s been um so great chatting with you and learning more about, you know, adult ADHD and just kind of, you know, thinking about it from a different perspective. I appreciate you coming and sharing with us.
Jessica Covington:
Thank you so much. I’m loving the podcast and so excited by the work that you’re doing in the world, so thank you for being here. Thank you.
Rita Suzanne:
And there you have it. I want to encourage you to remember that being a mom who runs her own business is not easy. We all struggle, but just keep moving forward. And don’t forget to make time for yourself. As moms we are usually the first thing to go to the bottom of the list. If your business is overwhelming you and you need real solutions, not just some sugar coated suggestions apply to work with me at ritasuzanne.com/apply
