do any diagnosed autistics here own a business?(or have U?)

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just truly diagnosed autistics please!!...but do feel free to join in if you aren't for your opinions

do any diagnoseds want to start one?...elaborate please

i started a financial services business from scratch when i was 28

one of my obsessions is proper money management and teaching the simple concepts of it

i have counseled tens of 1000's of people from all socioeconomic backgrounds from the very rich to the working poor for the last 22 yrs

i do commercial mortgages....home mortgages...car/recreational loans....mobile home loans...personal loans

i do life, health, disability, and accident insurance for businesses and individual consumers along with annuities

i invest in commercial and residential real estate

i have hired , trained, progressed at least 100 professional associates over that time..many have gone on to go farther than i ever did..god bless them


autistics should be very good in business, or at asssiting in running one....our attention to detail and seeing things from a different double reverse angle, lol.......our ability to learn things differently and learn from past mistakes

I own two businesses. Like most autistics, I am not a good manager. So my best friend, who is neurotypical, is the Operations Manager, and I am the Director. We've been working together for many years. I work pretty hard.

I have owned my own business as an artist, although I wound it down last year because the art and painting _ my special interest - went on a sabbatical and I don't know when it will be back! It has gone walkabout and I am currently pursuing another special interest and am the happiest I have been in a very long time.
I am not a good people person, and I struggled with the people side of things a fair bit. Luckily I worked from my home and didn't have to see people and i did most communications via email and phone. I made some REALLY good money for a few years, and yet it got too tiring for me and too overwhelming. A lot of the fun went out of it because I learned if I wanted to keep developing the career more I would HAVE to engage with people more and network, and that was not possible for me. I loved the painting and hated the career machinations and the social crap and the corruption of it all. yucky.

I had a LOT of help with the paper trail stuff. THe most organisation i could muster with regards to the figures and the number crunching, was throwing crumpled receipts and dockets into a BIG envelope stuck next to the computer. Someone else did ALL the bookwork and paperwork. If i had needed to do that, I could never have managed.

thats real cool man....you know your limitations and what you are superior at, a good autistic trait

hi mill, thanks for the post...it seems once we hit 35 plus it gets a lot easier

HI also.
It is certainly still difficult for me, but SO MUCH BETTER than it was in my earlier years. Gosh. i think about the struggles back then - and I am amazed I got through.

I do enjoy seeing other people with AS find happiness and ways of fulfilling their potentials.

Great to hear you're successful in business! I'm starting a software business at the moment and hope to rich one day! Actually, no, let me rephrase that: I know that I will be rich one day!

If anything, Asperger's/autism is a good thing to have when starting a business! We can be extremely motivated, we can work for ourselves easier than we work with others in jobs, and we have good attention to detail like you said!

I have wanted to own and operate a business all my life and still hope to. I'm not there yet. Don't know if I'll ever be atm. I need to be able to hire but I don't have people skills and my confidence is dwindling rather than improving with age. I have to wait and see what happens. I was more capable when I was younger than I am right now.

You don't need too many people skills, in fact IMO you need less than you do working in an office. Plus, once your business is at a decent size, you'll have other people talking to clients etc anyway.

That's what I have been thinking. I'm hoping the Uni process will also help facilitate the process to some extent so I can better get things started. My verbal communication skills are shoddy but they may improve as well.

good for you...write down all the things you are good at for the biz, write down all the things your not

do you know someone in your industry that can fill those voids

most successful businesses start out in a basement or garage part-time......see if you can make it part-time and ease into it...if it doesnt work out you wont drain everything you have, and at least you tried

I run a successful business, and have financial ( but not operational) part-ownership of a couple other businesses.

I am not great at running a business, as far as the administrative and people-oriented aspects of it go. I am awful at advertising. I am really, really good at providing te goods/services tat the business is about, because that is what i am focused on.

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i would beg to differ, autism and entreprenurialism are not an automatic pairing, "the very-rich recent philanthropist and his wife" notwithstanding. i know i am the only one in this thread who is NOT financially successful- this said, i resent blanket statements [from folk who should know better] such as "autistics should be very good in business..." because this marginalizes those of us who struggle every day to stay afloat. IOW, it is insulting.
p.s. - any member of this forum should eschew "purity" tests [expounding on "real versus phony" aspies], as this is very rank and not becoming of us, as a group.
i should expect flaming from you, and you know what, i really don't give a rap.

I also have a background in art, but I would have felt insufficiently stimulated if I had to do ONLY that all day long. My work provides me with many different types of activities, from graphic and information design (and now even cartooning, which I hadn't done for years) through to programming and teaching, and I have a number of divergent hobbies. I know other aspies who have a similarly wide set of interests.

I'm naturally gregarious, so don't mind the networking, except when my anxiety and sensory processing problems get the better of me (like last year, when I was avoidant for much of the time). But I am well-supported now, and on decent medication, so it's going OK (although I do still have some messy meltdowns sometimes). I'd say I have strong people skills (better than most neurotypical people), but with a significant number of autistic traits in the manner in which I relate to people, and I do make typical aspie faux pas. My (neurotypical) mother set a good example of how to deal with embarassment, so I didn't develop any social anxiety in the regular sense of the term, but I am very avoidant when stressed.

I can handle being around weird people for much longer than I can hold my pose amongst those who prefer social norms. I don't like to sit on chairs, and when my work requires that I do that, it eventually makes me tense and tired. I once attended a staff meeting at a university where I am part of the 'virtual faculty' (part-time lecturers) and I was sitting on my knees at this long shiny boradroom table, rocking back and forth slowly and occasionally asking questions and making comments while all the other people in the meeting were sitting decently on their bums . (Had a meltdown when I got back to the office.) I try to RESPECT norms rather than follow them slavishly, which would usurp my sanity.