I’ve always struggled with things that seem obvious to everyone else. Simple instructions confuse me. Standard processes feel like reading a map upside down. In meetings, people explain straightforward concepts and I’m the one asking the “dumb” questions.
For most of my life, I thought something was wrong with me. Turns out, I was playing in the wrong rooms.
I see patterns nobody else sees. I connect ideas from completely different fields and find something new in the middle. I pick up on things that are invisible to others. And I do that because of how my brain works, not despite it.
Two years ago I got diagnosed with ADD, and something clicked. Your value isn’t inherent. It’s defined by context.
A violinist in a metro station
In 2007, someone ran a social experiment with Joshua Bell, one of the finest violinists alive. He plays with the world’s best orchestras. His performances sell out concert halls where tickets cost hundreds of dollars. I’m not much into his music, but that doesn’t matter.
For the experiment, Joshua took his $3.5 million (wtf) Stradivarius into a Washington D.C. metro station during rush hour and played for 45 minutes.
Same piece he was going to play at a concert a few days later. Same instrument. Same skill.
A few people paused briefly. Some dropped pocket change. Most walked right past without a second glance. Total earnings: around $32.
Three days later, the same Joshua played the same music on the same violin in Boston. Tickets sold for over $100 each. He sold out the theatre.
Quality doesn’t speak for itself
I think about this experiment a lot, because it captures something I’ve experienced myself, and something I see in almost every professional I work with.
We want to believe quality speaks for itself. That if we’re good enough, people will notice. That expertise rises to the top on its own. But it doesn’t work that way.
Joshua’s genius didn’t change between the concert hall and the metro station. The notes were identical. But in one place people paid $100 to hear him, and in the other they threw quarters.
The difference wasn’t him. It was everything around him.
When I got my ADD diagnosis, I started looking at my own career through the same lens. I’d been playing my violin in a metro station.
My ideas weren’t bad, or at least not all of them. But I was in rooms full of people rushing to get somewhere else. People who weren’t looking for what I had to offer. People who valued things I wasn’t good at and overlooked the things I was.
The problem wasn’t my brain. The problem was the room.
If you’re struggling in your business, or to get recognition for what you’re good at, I want you to consider something.
Maybe your problem isn’t quality. Maybe you’re a genius playing the wrong room.
The context
Where are you presenting yourself? Joshua Bell, in the metro station, was surrounded by rushed commuters. The environment said: this is background noise, keep moving.
The concert hall said something else. Elegance, comfort, a program explaining what you were about to hear. Pay attention. This matters.
Are you trying to build authority in spaces designed for quick consumption and endless scrolling? Are you pitching to people who are mentally rushing somewhere else? The same message gets a completely different response depending on where you deliver it.
The packaging
How are you presenting yourself? In the metro station, Joshua’s music was free, so it read as worthless. No ticket, no program, no seat assignment. Nothing that said “this is premium.”
The concert hall had a ticketing process and a dress code. People were probably excited for days. So by the time Joshua started playing, everyone was ready for something special.
Are you selling your work, your services, your expertise as a commodity? Are you interchangeable with a dozen other options, or worse, with AI? Or have you thought hard about your own point of view, the thing that says: this is worth your full attention? The packaging tells people how to see you before you say a word.
The audience
Who are you presenting yourself to? The metro commuters were in a rushed mindset. Get to work, hurry up, don’t be late. They weren’t in the market for what Bell was offering.
The people going to the concert had planned their evening. They’d bought tickets, dressed up, maybe booked dinner nearby. They showed up wanting to be moved.
Are you pitching to people hunting for the fastest, cheapest option? People who want to tick a box as quickly as possible? Or are you spending time with people who want exactly what you’re best at?
I’ll admit, coming to this realisation sucks. Sometimes we’ve spent years building relationships in rooms that will never value what we do best. Some people even feel disloyal walking away. But staying in the wrong room isn’t loyalty. It’s a slow professional death.
Find the concert hall
The answer isn’t to get louder. It isn’t to dumb down what you do. It isn’t to compete with people who don’t have half your skill. The answer is to change rooms.
Looking back, I spent years trying to position myself in rooms that weren’t meant for me. Rooms where I was constantly trying to fit a brain that works differently into processes built for brains that don’t.
Then I figured out there are other rooms. Yes, you’re right, I’m a bit slow getting this at 44.
Rooms where the “weird” questions were valued. Where connecting unexpected dots was the whole point. Where “how does your brain even work?” became a compliment instead of a criticism.
The internet is full of these rooms. Heck, even on LinkedIn there are tons of them.
There are audiences waiting for exactly your perspective. Spaces where your kind of genius is precisely what people are hungry for.
Don’t make yourself smaller. Find the concert hall. Build one if you have to.
The people who need what you do are out there. They’re not the ones rushing through metro stations.