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<title>Personal Story – Michel Fortin</title>
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<title>Personal Story – Michel Fortin</title>
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<title>10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Fractional Executive Michel Fortin</title>
<link>https://michelfortin.com/meet-michel/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michel Fortin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Mar 2026 20:21:31 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Personal Story]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[35 years in marketing, a bankruptcy at 21, a drum kit, and one guiding principle. Here are 10 things most people don't know about Michel Fortin.]]></description>
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<h2 id="article-summary" class="wp-block-heading">Article Summary</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Behind the frameworks and client results is a person who learned to code at 12 on a 300-baud modem, set the Canadian national powerlifting record at 48 with a 485-pound deadlift, played Jesus Christ on stage, and keeps three bands going. This post covers ten lesser-known facts that explain the thinking behind his work: a lifelong pattern of combining technical obsession with human empathy, and treating every discipline as a lens on how people make decisions.</p>
</div></div>
<div role="navigation" aria-label="Table of Contents" class="simpletoc wp-block-simpletoc-toc"><h2 class="simpletoc-title">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="simpletoc-list">
<li><a href="#article-summary">Article Summary</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#1-my-name-is-not-what-you-think-it-is">1. My Name is Not What You Think It Is</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#2-i-grew-up-bilingual-in-a-town-that-was-technically-supposed-to-be-frenchonly">2. I Grew Up Bilingual in a Town That Was Technically Supposed to Be French-Only</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#3-my-first-social-network-ran-on-a-300baud-modem">3. My First “Social Network” Ran on a 300-Baud Modem</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#4-my-first-job-paid-254-an-hour-canadian">4. My First Job Paid $2.54 an Hour Canadian</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#5-i-was-a-competitive-powerlifter-who-once-walked-with-canes">5. I Was a Competitive Powerlifter Who Once Walked with Canes</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#6-i-played-jesus-christ-on-stage-and-later-an-italian-mobster">6. I Played Jesus Christ on Stage (and Later, an Italian Mobster)</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#7-personality-tests-say-i-shouldnt-exist">7. Personality Tests Say I Shouldn’t Exist</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#8-i-play-in-three-bands">8. I Play in Three Bands</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#9-ai-is-my-obsession-and-i-run-a-masterclass-on-it">9. AI is My Obsession (and I Run a Masterclass on It)</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#10-seo-changed-the-way-i-think-about-everything">10. SEO Changed the Way I Think About Everything</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#frequently-asked-questions">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
</li></ul></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People sometimes ask about my background. Not the professional credentials, but the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a resume. I’ve been doing this for over 35 years, and I still get new readers and subscribers who don’t know a thing about me. So here are ten things about me, in no particular order.</p>
<h2 id="1-my-name-is-not-what-you-think-it-is" class="wp-block-heading">1. My Name is Not What You Think It Is</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My name is “Michel,” formally pronounced “Mee-shell.” It’s the French-Canadian spelling of Michael but without the “a.” For a decade, people kept asking me: “So which is it: Michel? Michael? Mike?” (I always say I prefer “Master Overlord,” but that’s a longer conversation.)</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When I introduce myself to English-speaking audiences, particularly Americans, I pronounce it as “Michael.” The reason is practical. The first time someone introduced me to an American client, he responded with genuine confusion: “But you’re not a girl!”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In French, the absence of an “e” at the end (in Latin-based languages, it’s is like an “o” instead of “a”) makes it unmistakably male. But in spoken English, the French pronunciation sounds identical to “Michelle Obama.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My French-Canadian parents actually nicknamed me “Michael” when I was a child. They even bought me my first vinyl record of the song “Playground In My Mind” by Clint Holmes, whose chorus goes, “My name is Michael, I got a nickel.” So the nickname was already baked in before I ever had to explain it to a confused American.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you’ve ever wondered how to say it: “Michael” works. “Mike” is fine, too. “Mish” is what my late wife called me. My middle name is Guy. And the high school nickname that stuck for a while was “Spike,” which I’ll leave unexplained.</p>
<h2 id="2-i-grew-up-bilingual-in-a-town-that-was-technically-supposed-to-be-frenchonly" class="wp-block-heading">2. I Grew Up Bilingual in a Town That Was Technically Supposed to Be French-Only</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was born and raised in Aylmer, Québec. It’s a small, mostly bilingual French-Canadian town that has since become a suburb of Gatineau. Gatineau sits directly across the Ottawa River from our nation’s capital.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Growing up bilingual gave me an unusual advantage. I can write and think in two languages simultaneously, which turns out to be useful when you’re trying to understand how people search, how they phrase problems, and how they decide whether to trust someone.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Years later, I also learned Portuguese well enough to recite my wedding vows after marrying a Canadian-Portuguese immigrant named Barbara who works as a nurse in labour and delivery at The Ottawa Hospital. I wanted to say something in her language on our wedding day.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yes, it sounds like a scene from Love, Actually. She confirms this.</p>
<h2 id="3-my-first-social-network-ran-on-a-300baud-modem" class="wp-block-heading">3. My First “Social Network” Ran on a 300-Baud Modem</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Long before the internet existed as most people know it, I was online.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As a child in the late 70s, I surfed Bulletin Board Services (BBS) through a dial-up modem so slow you could watch individual characters appear on screen. By age 12, I had learned to code and was playing <a href="https://dwheeler.com/scepter-of-goth/scepter-of-goth.html" data-type="link" data-id="https://dwheeler.com/scepter-of-goth/scepter-of-goth.html">Scepter of Goth</a>, widely considered to be the first multiplayer online role-playing game.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="2048" height="2048" src="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid.png" alt="Michel Fortin (1974)" class="wp-image-5330" style="width:500px" srcset="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid.png 2048w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-300x300.png 300w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-150x150.png 150w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-768x768.png 768w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-1536x1536.png 1536w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/Michel-Fortin-1974-Polaroid-600x600.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Michel Fortin (1974)</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s where I fell in love with what would eventually become the internet. The network wasn’t impressive by any standard. But the idea of connecting with strangers, solving problems together in real time, and building things in a shared digital space stuck with me.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When the commercial internet arrived in the early 90s, it didn’t feel new to me. It felt like something I had been waiting for.</p>
<h2 id="4-my-first-job-paid-254-an-hour-canadian" class="wp-block-heading">4. My First Job Paid $2.54 an Hour Canadian</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My first job was at McDonald’s in the early 80s. My wage was $2.54 per hour Canadian, which, at the time, was less than two US dollars.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Two lessons I carry from those early working years: rejection at scale teaches you nothing about your value, only about your targeting. And the right words, delivered to the right person, at the right time, beat all the hustle in the world.</p>
<h2 id="5-i-was-a-competitive-powerlifter-who-once-walked-with-canes" class="wp-block-heading">5. I Was a Competitive Powerlifter Who Once Walked with Canes</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For years, I walked around with canes. I had two herniated discs and was obese. The kind of situation where most people scale back their ambitions. I went the other direction. I took up powerlifting to strengthen my back and lose weight. I ended up losing about 100 pounds and competing at a national level.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">At 48 years old, I set the Canadian national powerlifting record with a 485-pound deadlift. That record still stands. I can no longer lift heavy due to a mild heart condition, so I’ve shifted to bodybuilding-style workouts. But the discipline stays.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The mentality of adding weight to the bar one plate at a time is the same mentality I bring to building revenue systems. Incremental, consistent, compounding.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" width="576" height="1024" src="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-576x1024.jpg" alt="Older man deadlifting heavy weights in gym" class="wp-image-8050" srcset="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-576x1024.jpg 576w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-169x300.jpg 169w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-768x1365.jpg 768w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-864x1536.jpg 864w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-1152x2048.jpg 1152w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813-338x600.jpg 338w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_3813.jpg 1290w" sizes="(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Lifting 405lbs preparing for a powerlifting meet.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<h2 id="6-i-played-jesus-christ-on-stage-and-later-an-italian-mobster" class="wp-block-heading">6. I Played Jesus Christ on Stage (and Later, an Italian Mobster)</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was into acting when I was young. I performed in many school plays and even won awards. My favorite role was playing Jesus Christ, which is about as far from “marketing consultant” as you can get.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">More recently, I played an Italian mobster specializing in “family cleaning” in a weekly murder mystery theater in Ottawa. That ran for a couple of years.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" width="960" height="960" src="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up.jpg" alt="Person mixing ingredients in glass bowl on kitchen counter" class="wp-image-5401" style="width:500px" srcset="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up.jpg 960w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up-300x300.jpg 300w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up-150x150.jpg 150w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up-768x768.jpg 768w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/michel-fortin-murder-myster-theater-tied-up-600x600.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Playing a mobster in a local murder mystery theater.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People who know me as a strategist are sometimes surprised to learn I spent years performing on stage. But the skills overlap more than you’d think. Reading an audience, controlling timing, adjusting delivery based on the room. Those translate directly to presentations, client meetings, and sales conversations.</p>
<h2 id="7-personality-tests-say-i-shouldnt-exist" class="wp-block-heading">7. Personality Tests Say I Shouldn’t Exist</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’ve taken nearly every major personality assessment available, and the results are consistently unusual.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My APT Career Path Assessment identified me as a “Discerning Innovator” with three workplace superpowers: Strategic Futurist, Empathetic Architect, and Decisive Troubleshooter. My DiSC profile shows a rare high-D/high-S combination (the “Producer” or “Achiever” pattern) that appears in only 3-5% of the population.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most people are either dominant and fast-moving or steady and methodical. I’m both.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Working Genius assessment by Patrick Lencioni’s Table Group labeled me “The Discriminating Ideator,” a pairing of Invention and Discernment. That means I get energy from creating original solutions and evaluating whether those solutions actually work. My frustration areas are Enablement and Galvanizing, which means I’d rather build the strategy than rally the troops.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you put it all together, you get someone who sees problems before they surface, builds frameworks to solve them, and has zero interest in cheerleading. That profile confuses people who expect leaders to be either visionaries or operators. It makes more sense when you realize some people are both.</p>
<h2 id="8-i-play-in-three-bands" class="wp-block-heading">8. I Play in Three Bands</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People know me as a strategist. They may not know that the strategist needs a drum kit to stay sane. I play in three bands. <a href="https://nelsoncoltmusic.com/" data-type="link" data-id="https://nelsoncoltmusic.com/">Nelson Colt</a> is a professional country band. <a href="https://dividedhighway.ca/wordpress/" data-type="link" data-id="https://dividedhighway.ca/wordpress/">Divided Highway</a> is a classic rock band. The third is a more recent project covering 80s through 2000s rock.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My biggest drumming influences are John Bonham from Led Zeppelin and Ian Paice from Deep Purple. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with II from Sleep Token, who is doing things behind the kit that shouldn’t be possible. In short, music is not a side hobby for me. It’s the thing that keeps everything else in balance.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-1024x683.jpg" alt="Michel playing drums on stage (2019)." class="wp-image-8038" srcset="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-300x200.jpg 300w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-768x512.jpg 768w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/img_0574-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Michel playing drums on stage (2019).</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<h2 id="9-ai-is-my-obsession-and-i-run-a-masterclass-on-it" class="wp-block-heading">9. AI is My Obsession (and I Run a Masterclass on It)</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’ve been a technology nerd since I was 12 years old on a 300-baud modem. So when AI started reshaping how businesses operate, I didn’t panic. I leaned in.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I now run a monthly AI masterclass at <a href="https://www.consultingsuccess.com/ai" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.consultingsuccess.com/ai">ConsultingSuccess.com/ai</a> and manage most of the company’s AI-driven workflows. My approach is rooted in what John Naisbitt called the “high-tech, high-touch” paradigm in his book Megatrends.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The idea is simple but counterintuitive. The more automated and roboticized we become, the more we seek out human relationships, human interaction, and human judgment. AI doesn’t replace the human element. It makes the human element more valuable.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s the lens I bring to every AI implementation. Not “how do we automate this?” but “how do we use automation to make our human work more impactful?”</p>
<h2 id="10-seo-changed-the-way-i-think-about-everything" class="wp-block-heading">10. SEO Changed the Way I Think About Everything</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When I moved from freelance copywriting into an agency role as SEO manager and director of marketing communications, I expected to feel like I was starting over. Instead, I felt like I had arrived somewhere I had always been heading. SEO is not a technical discipline. At its core, it’s an empathy discipline.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Know your market. Know the problems they face. Know the exact language they use when they describe those problems. Answer them as clearly and credibly as you can.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s copywriting. It’s also SEO. And done at the strategic level, connecting visibility to pipeline to revenue, it’s what I now call <a href="https://michelfortin.com/revenue-architecture" data-type="link" data-id="https://michelfortin.com/revenue-architecture">revenue architecture</a>.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you want the full career story, including the bankruptcy at 21, the industry I left behind, and the losses that shaped everything, I wrote about all of it in my <a href="https://michelfortin.com/career-story">Career Story</a>.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>
<h2 id="frequently-asked-questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<div class="wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2 is-layout-flow wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2-is-layout-flow">
<details id="how-do-you-pronounce-michel-fortins-name" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How do you pronounce Michel Fortin’s name?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Michel” is the French-Canadian spelling of Michael, without the “a.” In French it’s pronounced “Mee-shell,” but with English-speaking audiences Michel typically uses the English pronunciation — “Michael” — to avoid confusion. His parents actually nicknamed him Michael as a child. “Mike” works too. His late wife called him “Mish.”</p>
</details>
<details id="where-is-michel-fortin-from" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>Where is Michel Fortin from?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Michel was born and raised in Aylmer, Québec, a bilingual French-Canadian town now part of Gatineau, directly across the Ottawa River from Ottawa. Growing up bilingual gave him an early advantage in understanding how people phrase problems and express trust across different linguistic and cultural contexts — something that turned out to be directly relevant to his later work in copywriting, SEO, and market positioning.</p>
</details>
<details id="did-michel-fortin-really-set-a-national-powerlifting-record" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>Did Michel Fortin really set a national powerlifting record?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yes. At 48 years old, he set the Canadian national powerlifting record with a 485-pound deadlift. He had previously walked with canes due to two herniated discs and obesity, and took up powerlifting specifically to rehabilitate his back. He lost roughly 100 pounds and competed at the national level. The record still stands. A mild heart condition has since shifted his training toward bodybuilding-style workouts.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-personality-type-is-michel-fortin" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What personality type is Michel Fortin?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Assessment results put him in rare territory across multiple frameworks. His DiSC profile shows a high-D/high-S combination — described as the “Producer” or “Achiever” pattern — found in only 3–5% of the population. His Working Genius profile is “The Discriminating Ideator,” combining Invention and Discernment. He gets energy from creating original solutions and evaluating whether they actually work. His APT Career Path Assessment identified him as a Strategic Futurist, Empathetic Architect, and Decisive Troubleshooter simultaneously.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-does-michel-fortin-do-outside-of-work" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What does Michel Fortin do outside of work?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He plays drums in three bands: Nelson Colt (country), Divided Highway (classic rock), and a third covering 80s through 2000s rock. His primary influences are John Bonham and Ian Paice, with a current obsession with the drummer from Sleep Token. He also performs in community theater — recent roles include an Italian mobster in a weekly murder mystery production. Music isn’t a side hobby; it’s described as the thing that keeps everything else in balance.</p>
</details>
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</item>
<item>
<title>How I Learned the Hard Way That Real Business Is Built on Service, Not Snake Oil</title>
<link>https://michelfortin.com/career-story/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michel Fortin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Mar 2026 19:52:32 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Personal Story]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Career]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Copywriting]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Growth Strategy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Integrity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Lessons Learned]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Revenue Architecture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://michelfortincom.bigscoots-staging.com/?p=4471</guid>
<description><![CDATA[From bankruptcy at 21 to fractional C-suite executive. The career story behind how I developed my approach to revenue architecture, and the losses that shaped it.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<div class="wp-block-group article-summary"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<h2 id="article-summary" class="wp-block-heading">Article Summary</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Michel Fortin’s path from bankruptcy at 21 to fractional CMO/CRO spans direct response copywriting, early internet marketing, and nearly a decade of personal loss. The through-line is a single conviction: real business serves people rather than exploiting them. That principle shaped his departure from the internet marketing pitchfest era and now drives his revenue architecture work with growth-stage firms.</p>
</div></div>
<div role="navigation" aria-label="Table of Contents" class="simpletoc wp-block-simpletoc-toc"><h2 class="simpletoc-title">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="simpletoc-list">
<li><a href="#article-summary">Article Summary</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#bankruptcy-at-21-taught-me-more-than-any-course">Bankruptcy at 21 Taught Me More Than Any Course</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#from-insurance-to-infomercials">From Insurance to Infomercials</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-accidental-career">The Accidental Career</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-seedy-side-i-didnt-see-coming">The Seedy Side I Didn’t See Coming</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#when-the-world-turned-upside-down">When the World Turned Upside Down</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-losses-that-shaped-everything">The Losses That Shaped Everything</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#what-i-actually-believe-about-growth">What I Actually Believe About Growth</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-pattern-ive-spent-35-years-documenting">The Pattern I’ve Spent 35 Years Documenting</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#frequently-asked-questions">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
</li></ul></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I got married at 19. My wife, who was a little older than me, had a two-year-old daughter, and I essentially adopted her. She’s 40 years old now and still calls me Dad.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was young but I also wanted to be a father, and a better father than mine. My father was an alcoholic who abused me when I was young. After my mother left him, the state institutionalized him. He had Korsakov’s Syndrome, a degenerative brain condition caused by years of alcohol abuse.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I carried that weight for most of my life before I understood what it actually was. That context matters because it drove everything that came next.</p>
<h2 id="bankruptcy-at-21-taught-me-more-than-any-course" class="wp-block-heading">Bankruptcy at 21 Taught Me More Than Any Course</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Wanting to fight my fear of rejection, I went into sales. Insurance, specifically. It seemed like the right kind of exposure therapy. And of course, I failed, spectacularly. Working on straight commission in a rural territory where I knew no one, I accumulated debt on eight credit cards just to buy groceries. So I declared bankruptcy at 21. Young, foolish, desperate to provide.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But failure has a way of making you resourceful. Instead of cold calling doors that slammed in my face, I tried something different. I wrote a letter and mailed it. A simple offer: a free policy audit. Only a few people called. But those calls didn’t feel like rejection. They felt like permission.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That year, I became the top salesperson in my district, then in all of Canada. It didn’t last long. But something had clicked. Copywriting, writing words that move people to act, piqued my interest in a way that nothing else had.</p>
<h2 id="from-insurance-to-infomercials" class="wp-block-heading">From Insurance to Infomercials</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I left insurance and took a job at a hair replacement clinic, working on commission again but in a growing industry. I wasn’t satisfied with the volume of leads coming in. So I quietly took over the clinic’s marketing. I wrote the newspaper display ads, the direct mail pieces, and the scripts for their late-night TV infomercials. Bookings skyrocketed. I was 22 and making more money than I ever had in my life.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When the clinic expanded to multiple locations across Canada and the US, I handled marketing, copywriting, advertising, and training their sales and marketing staff. That’s also when I built their first website in 1992, applying the same direct response principles I had been using offline.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I had figured out, without anyone telling me, was that the Internet was just mail-order marketing in a faster medium. The channel changes. The human psychology underneath it does not.</p>
<h2 id="the-accidental-career" class="wp-block-heading">The Accidental Career</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">None of this was planned. After spending so much time building marketing systems for other clinics and neglecting my own commissions, my income dropped. So I did the logical thing and hung out my own shingle as an independent marketing consultant.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In the early 90s, I put together a booklet called <em><a href="https://michelfortin.com/power-positioning-pillars/" data-type="post" data-id="414">The 10 Commandments of Power Positioning</a></em>. It was originally a marketing tool for my services. By the mid-90s, I split it into standalone articles and submitted them to online publications. One caught the attention of The Internet Marketing Chronicles, and they hired me as their editor and main writer. At its peak, the newsletter had 120,000 subscribers.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The late Corey Rudl, who owned The Internet Marketing Center, eventually acquired the magazine. He kept me on as editor and hired me to write his marketing materials, website content, and an autobiography as a ghostwriter. That opened the floodgates.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I incorporated as The Success Doctor, Inc. in 1997. Speaking gigs followed, from a few hundred people in New Zealand to 10,000 in the UK. I shared stages with Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Jay Conrad Levinson, Russell Brunson, and many others.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And that’s where things started to go sideways.</p>
<h2 id="the-seedy-side-i-didnt-see-coming" class="wp-block-heading">The Seedy Side I Didn’t See Coming</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To understand this part of the story, you need to understand what the “internet marketing” world was in the late 90s and early 2000s. It wasn’t what most corporate professionals would recognize as digital marketing today. It was a parallel ecosystem, largely built around direct response copywriting, email marketing, and live seminars.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Some of it was brilliant, led by people who deeply understood persuasion, positioning, and conversion at a level most agencies still haven’t caught up to. And some of it was predatory.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The seminar circuit looked like education. But it was mostly a pitchfest in disguise. Speakers sold courses on how to make money. Some were legitimate. However, a growing number were packaging business opportunity schemes, “businesses in a box” that essentially taught people to replicate the same scheme they had just bought. Pyramid schemes dressed up as education. Snake oil wrapped in testimonials.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was young, naive, and broke enough to find it all exciting at first. I wrote salesletters for some of these promoters. I spoke at these events. I was part of the machine without fully understanding what the machine was.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The first time I spoke at one of these seminars, I didn’t know I was supposed to sell something from the stage. The promoter took a 50% cut of speaker sales. I made nothing for him that day. Other speakers criticized me for it, some teased me for years afterward. With ADHD comes <a href="https://michelfortin.com/adhd/" data-type="link" data-id="https://michelfortin.com/adhd/">rejection-sensitive dysphoria</a>, and the pain of that public humiliation was real and lasting.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But a few years later, the same promoter gave me a second chance. I came back prepared. I broke the event’s sales record and was named the top speaker. My pitch was for a copywriting critique course. Genuine education, real skills, real delivery.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The difference between embarrassing failure and success is often just deciding to try again when the fear is loudest. That distinction would matter more to me later.</p>
<h2 id="when-the-world-turned-upside-down" class="wp-block-heading">When the World Turned Upside Down</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In 2003, I met my second wife. She was running a customer support business that served many of the same clients I did. We merged our businesses, and eventually, our lives.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then, shortly before our wedding in 2006, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Over the next nine years, her disease became the center of our lives. We stopped speaking at seminars, stopped attending, stepped back from the industry entirely.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I saw from the outside, once I stepped back, was disturbing. We were hearing more and more stories of people refinancing their homes to buy $20,000 “coaching programs” that delivered nothing. Boilerroom telemarketers were closing deals using whatever credit remained on a card. Some of the very people I had worked with were being investigated by the FTC for deceptive practices.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And when my wife was in the middle of chemotherapy, a handful of these same marketers hounded her with pitches for “natural cures” and pseudo-scientific nonsense. One accused me of being a shill for Big Pharma for supporting her medical treatment.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That was the last straw. My wife wrote a report called Internet Marketing Sins. It made us enemies. We stopped receiving speaking invitations and affiliate partnership offers. We were completely fine with that.</p>
<h2 id="the-losses-that-shaped-everything" class="wp-block-heading">The Losses That Shaped Everything</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In 2008, my mother was diagnosed with the same disease as my wife. Breast cancer. She became terminal in 2011. We set up a hospice in our home. She died the morning after my birthday.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Just a few months later, my wife’s cancer returned and spread to every major organ. Just a month before she passed in early 2015, my father died in his sleep at the institution. His heart had weakened from the same disease that had destroyed his mind decades before.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">2015 was the worst year of my life.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Two years later, my sister, my only sibling, who had struggled with multiple health conditions her entire life, also died in her sleep.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’ve done grief in a lot of ways. The one that works best for me involves a drum kit. I’ve played drums since I was young, and for the past several years I’ve been playing with a band on a regular basis. It’s not a metaphor or a productivity hack. It’s just the thing that quiets the noise.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I didn’t have the headspace or motivation to return to freelancing after all of that. I took a position at a digital marketing agency as SEO manager and director of marketing communications, working with a team of content writers and developers at a Google Premier Partner shop.</p>
<h2 id="what-i-actually-believe-about-growth" class="wp-block-heading">What I Actually Believe About Growth</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Grief changes your relationship to work. It clarified mine.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I no longer believe in teaching people how to make money. Not directly. Money is a byproduct of running a business, serving a customer, and solving a real problem. The business opportunity industry had it backwards. It sold the byproduct as the product, and charged people dearly for the privilege of chasing it.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The quote from my late wife’s report still guides how I think about this: “Make money at the service of others, not at the expense of others.” That principle is the foundation of everything I now do as a revenue strategist.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">SEO, it turns out, is not so different from copywriting. Both are about understanding your market, identifying the problems they face, and answering their questions as clearly and credibly as possible. The channel changes. The medium changes. The underlying discipline does not.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">David Garfinkel once asked me on his Copywriters Podcast, “What topic makes your heart beat a tad faster these days?” My answer was SEO. It surprised him. I think it would still surprise some people.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the discipline itself never surprised me. It felt like the natural next chapter. Know your market. Know their problems. Know how they talk about those problems. Answer them better than anyone else. That’s copywriting. That’s SEO. That’s content strategy. And done at the C-suite level, that’s <a href="/revenue-architecture/">revenue architecture</a>.</p>
<h2 id="the-pattern-ive-spent-35-years-documenting" class="wp-block-heading">The Pattern I’ve Spent 35 Years Documenting</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">After remarrying and returning to independent consulting, I went back to my roots in working with service businesses and professional practices. I added fractional executive work, stepping into <a href="/fractional-cmo/">CMO</a>, <a href="/fractional-cro/">CRO</a>, and <a href="/fractional-cso/">CSO</a> roles for growth-stage firms that needed the strategy without the full-time overhead.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I keep seeing, in every engagement, is the same pattern the internet marketing industry had in a more refined form: businesses investing heavily in tactics without a system, chasing short-term conversions without building long-term authority, and measuring success by metrics that don’t connect to revenue.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The reason I can spot this pattern quickly is that I’ve already lived through the extreme version of it. The internet marketing world was a laboratory for every growth mistake a business can make: overpromising, underdelivering, optimizing for the wrong metrics, and mistaking activity for progress. The companies I work with now aren’t running pitchfests. But the structural problems are the same. They just wear better suits.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The fix is not a new tactic. It’s a different way of thinking about growth, one that treats marketing and revenue generation as a single, integrated system rather than a collection of disconnected campaigns.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s what I built my career trying to articulate. And after everything it took to get here, I’m finally in a position to deliver it without compromise.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Lesson learned. And lesson earned.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>
<h2 id="frequently-asked-questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<div class="wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2 is-layout-flow wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2-is-layout-flow">
<details id="how-did-michel-fortin-get-started-in-copywriting" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How did Michel Fortin get started in copywriting?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It started out of necessity. After declaring bankruptcy at 21 while selling insurance on straight commission, Michel switched from cold calls to a mailed letter offering free policy audits. The few people who responded were qualified and receptive. That year he became the top salesperson in Canada. The experience made clear that written words moving people to act was where his real aptitude lived.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-was-the-success-doctor" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What was The Success Doctor?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Success Doctor, Inc. was Michel’s consulting company, incorporated in 1997. It grew out of his work writing for major internet marketing publications and serving direct response clients. At its peak, the practice included speaking at events across the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, sharing stages with figures like Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, and Gary Halbert, and producing copywriting and marketing systems for clients across dozens of industries.</p>
</details>
<details id="why-did-michel-fortin-leave-the-internet-marketing-seminar-world" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>Why did Michel Fortin leave the internet marketing seminar world?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The industry had shifted from genuine education toward predatory business opportunity schemes — courses that taught people to replicate the same schemes they’d just bought. When Michel’s second wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, they stepped back entirely. From the outside, the picture became undeniable: people refinancing homes for $20,000 coaching programs that delivered nothing, FTC investigations, and promoters pitching unproven “natural cures” to a woman in chemotherapy. His wife published a report called <em>Internet Marketing Sins</em>. They lost speaking invitations and affiliate partnerships. They were fine with that.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-principle-guides-michels-approach-to-revenue-and-growth" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What principle guides Michel’s approach to revenue and growth?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The line from his late wife’s report: “Make money at the service of others, not at the expense of others.” The internet marketing industry had reversed this — selling the byproduct (money) as the product, charging people dearly to chase it. Michel’s work as a revenue strategist is built on the opposite premise: revenue is a result of genuinely serving customers and solving real problems, not a goal to optimize around directly.</p>
</details>
<details id="how-did-michels-background-in-copywriting-connect-to-his-later-work-in-seo-and-revenue-architecture" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How did Michel’s background in copywriting connect to his later work in SEO and revenue architecture?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He sees them as the same discipline at different scales. Copywriting requires understanding your market, identifying their problems, and answering their questions as clearly and credibly as possible. SEO requires the same. Content strategy requires the same. Revenue architecture at the C-suite level requires the same applied across an entire business system. The channel and medium change. The underlying discipline — know your market, meet them where they are, earn their trust — doesn’t.</p>
</details>
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</item>
<item>
<title>The Pitfalls and Blessings of ADHD</title>
<link>https://michelfortin.com/adhd/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michel Fortin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:29:58 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Expert Leadership]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Personal Story]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ADHD]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Leadership and Mental Health]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Neurodiversity]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://michelfortincom.bigscoots-staging.com/?p=636</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I was diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Here's what it costs, what it gives, and how the same traits that made conventional work exhausting became the foundation of how I operate as a fractional executive.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<div class="wp-block-group article-summary"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<h2 id="article-summary" class="wp-block-heading">Article Summary</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Diagnosed with ADHD Combined Type at 52, Michel Fortin recounts what the diagnosis explained about a lifetime of struggles and strengths. The post covers the real costs of living with undiagnosed ADHD, the coping systems built over decades, and how traits that made conventional environments difficult, including hyperfocus, rapid pattern recognition, and context-switching, became the foundation of an effective fractional executive practice.</p>
</div></div>
<div role="navigation" aria-label="Table of Contents" class="simpletoc wp-block-simpletoc-toc"><h2 class="simpletoc-title">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="simpletoc-list">
<li><a href="#article-summary">Article Summary</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#how-i-found-out">How I Found Out</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#what-adhd-actually-is">What ADHD Actually Is</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-challenges-i-live-with">The Challenges I Live With</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#what-ive-done-about-it">What I’ve Done About It</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-gifts-on-the-other-side">The Gifts on the Other Side</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#if-you-think-you-might-have-adhd">If You Think You Might Have ADHD</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#frequently-asked-questions">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
</li></ul></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was 52 years old when I was formally diagnosed with ADHD. More specifically, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Combined Type. The attention-deficit side is a restless mind. The hyperactive side is a restless nervous system and body. Combined type means both, mental and physical restlessness running simultaneously, all day, every day.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I lived with this my entire life without knowing.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’m sharing this because a friend and colleague wrote about her own late-life ADHD diagnosis and I found myself nodding at every symptom she described. It inspired me to write one of my own. I was reluctant at first. But after seeing how many people in my professional circle discuss their mental health openly, I decided to take the plunge. It’s also a little therapeutic.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So strap yourself in.</p>
<h2 id="how-i-found-out" class="wp-block-heading">How I Found Out</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The reason it took me so long to get a diagnosis was a bit of a fluke. Up until about ten years before my diagnosis, I assumed I was just normal or simply restless. I was often fidgety, easily distracted, hyperfocused when immersed in work I loved, and easily triggered when interrupted during those hyperfocused moments. I thought everyone was like this.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then one day, I had a serious blowup with my adult stepdaughter. I got angry over something that, to a neurotypical person, would have seemed trivial. A week later, she sat me down, along with her mother, my late wife, for what turned out to be a difficult conversation.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“I think you have… something,” she said. She had been listening to a podcast about autism, and the behaviours described reminded her of me. Autism and ADHD share several traits: explosive reactions to overstimulation, hypersensitivity, the tendency to lecture, and so on.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For the next ten years, the possibility that I had ASD sat quietly in the back of my mind. I did various online tests, some more credible than others, and eventually decided to get properly tested. Mostly out of curiosity.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The result surprised me. Not autism. ADHD.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">At first, I was bummed. But then came the flood. With every symptom I read about, I thought: “This is so me.” For weeks, my mind replayed memories going back to early childhood, things I’d said, done, and struggled with my entire life, and suddenly they all made sense. The fidgeting in class. The boredom in jobs. The explosive moments. The broken projects. The forgotten promises.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then it crashed. I realized that many of my business failures, broken relationships, and years of self-blame had roots in something neurological, something I had no name for, let alone tools to manage.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As a fellow late-diagnosed ADHDer said to me: “One of the hardest parts of a late-life mental health diagnosis is knowing how many bridges you burned while you were still on fire.” That hit hard.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But almost immediately alongside that grief came something else: relief. An enormous weight lifted. All those years of teachers berating me in front of classmates for tapping my feet or daydreaming. The boss at my very first job, selling life insurance door-to-door in the 1980s, who declared in a staff meeting, “Stop being such a fidgety person.” The college I dropped out of because I was bored to tears and too afraid to ask for help.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I wasn’t broken. I was wired differently.</p>
<h2 id="what-adhd-actually-is" class="wp-block-heading">What ADHD Actually Is</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ADHD affects executive function. It’s caused by a shortage of specific neurons that transport dopamine and other neurotransmitters to different parts of the brain. The result is that the brain can’t access sufficient dopamine to function the way it needs to.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Dopamine drives arousal, including motivation, concentration, and attention. Without enough of it, the result is inattentiveness, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and mood instability.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One important note: everyone experiences these symptoms occasionally. We all get distracted, impulsive, or restless from time to time. With ADHD, the frequency is abnormally high. It’s high enough to meaningfully affect your life, your relationships, and your work.</p>
<h2 id="the-challenges-i-live-with" class="wp-block-heading">The Challenges I Live With</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here’s an honest look at the symptoms I’ve grappled with my whole life.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Staying focused is a constant effort.</strong> My mind wanders constantly. But when I’m engaged in something that genuinely stimulates me, I go the opposite direction entirely: hyperfocus. I zone in completely, block out everything around me, lose track of time, forget to eat, and tune out people trying to reach me. It’s both a superpower and a liability.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I struggle to finish reading books.</strong> My mind drifts and I have to reread the same page multiple times. I switched to audiobooks at double speed years ago, and never looked back.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>My short-term memory is unreliable.</strong> I lose my keys, forget names seconds after being introduced, and can walk into a room with a specific purpose and have no recollection of it by the time I arrive.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I get bored quickly.</strong> I’m constantly busy with work, drums, theatre, learning. But sustained engagement with anything routine is difficult. If something loses its novelty, it loses me.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Multitasking is a trap.</strong> To switch tasks effectively, you need to remember where you left off on each one. If I don’t finish something before switching, there’s a real chance I’ll forget it entirely.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I need reminders for everything.</strong> And I mean everything, from client deadlines to taking out the trash. My calendar and reminder systems aren’t optional extras. They’re how I function.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I’m an impulsive buyer.</strong> Especially with gadgets and technology. I get excited, acquire, and move on. Rinse and repeat.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I work best independently.</strong> Open-plan offices are difficult. I can’t get anything done with all the noise, the interruptions, the social maintenance. Remote and autonomous work isn’t just a preference for me. It’s a functional necessity.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I’m deeply sensitive.</strong> Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is one of the less-discussed symptoms of ADHD, and it’s one of my biggest. I tend to read too much into emails, texts, and offhand comments. I overthink, overanalyze, and catastrophize, especially around perceived rejection or criticism.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Understanding this has been one of the most useful things to come out of my diagnosis. For a long time, I blamed this sensitivity on my childhood and on growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father. And that wasn’t entirely wrong. But when I learned that RSD is neurological, not just biographical, it reframed everything. It also made me wonder, for the first time, whether my father had struggled with something similar, and turned to alcohol to quiet a restless, undiagnosed mind.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I talk fast and interrupt.</strong> Both for the same reason: if I don’t say what I’m thinking the moment I think it, it’s gone. Waiting to speak means I spend the waiting time repeating the thought in my head to hold onto it. The result? I’m not actually listening to the other person. I’ve been working on this for years.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Relaxing is hard.</strong> Lying on a beach doing nothing? Physically uncomfortable. I need input. Podcasts, audiobooks, music, movement. Stillness feels like absence.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Sleep is a negotiation.</strong> Shutting my brain off at night takes effort. I work best with white noise or ambient sound, like a busy coffee shop, rain, or instrumental music. (I’ve literally written two books in Starbucks.) TV in the background is a problem because my brain latches onto it and won’t let go.</p>
<h2 id="what-ive-done-about-it" class="wp-block-heading">What I’ve Done About It</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I’ve built a set of coping strategies over the years. Some through trial and error, some through professional support, some through sheer necessity.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Voice dictation has been a game-changer.</strong> When I can’t hyperfocus enough to type, or when ideas are coming faster than my fingers can keep up, I record myself and transcribe later. Tools like Wispr Flow let me capture ideas while I’m walking, driving, or just waking up. More than a few good articles started as a voice memo at the gym.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Text-to-speech tools made reading accessible again.</strong> Tools like Speechify let me turn long articles, emails, and documents into audio. Combined with 2x speed playback, I can consume more information in less time without losing my place or my mind.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Music and background noise are tools, not distractions.</strong> Instrumental music, chillhop, ambient, binaural beats, helps me focus. Vocals are off-limits while working because my brain latches onto lyrics. White noise and coffee shop sounds create a kind of mental container. Quiet environments, paradoxically, are where I struggle most. My brain fills the void.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>My workspace is deliberately visible.</strong> Out of sight is out of mind for people with ADHD. I keep tabs open, use digital sticky notes, and run three monitors. If a task isn’t visible, it doesn’t exist to me. I’ve stopped fighting this and started designing around it.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I use reminders without shame.</strong> I have alerts for things most people would consider automatic. The reminder isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s how I make sure things actually get done.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>I explored medication early on.</strong> Before my diagnosis, I was drinking three to four pots of coffee a day. I was essentially self-medicating with caffeine. After my diagnosis, I tried prescription stimulants, and they helped. But for personal health reasons, I no longer take them. I’ve built my coping toolkit around systems, structure, and professional support instead. These days, I might have an espresso or two in the afternoon. That’s usually enough.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Therapy has helped more than I expected.</strong> I’ve worked with CBT principles for years, the core practice of stepping back from a reactive moment, observing your thoughts from the outside, and challenging the pattern. My approach to personal work has evolved since then, but the foundation of self-observation that CBT builds is valuable for anyone with ADHD.</p>
<h2 id="the-gifts-on-the-other-side" class="wp-block-heading">The Gifts on the Other Side</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ADHD is more commonly discussed in terms of what it costs. But there’s another side. People with ADHD are often drawn to creative, strategic, and entrepreneurial work: writing, design, consulting, marketing, building things. The traits that make conventional environments exhausting are often the same ones that make us exceptional in the right context.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hyperfocus is a superpower when pointed at the right problem. Pattern recognition, unconventional thinking, the ability to make rapid connections across unrelated domains. These aren’t incidental to ADHD. They’re part of the same neurology.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Looking back, I can see how directly ADHD shaped the way I work as a fractional executive. The rapid context-switching that made conventional jobs exhausting is exactly what lets me move between a CMO engagement, a CRO diagnostic, and a content architecture project in the same week. Each one requires a different frame, and the ADHD brain is built for reframing.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The pattern recognition is the one I rely on most. When I walk into a company and start “<a href="/diagnostic-advantage/">Sherlocking</a>” their growth problem, I’m pulling connections from 35 years across hundreds of different businesses. That cross-domain wiring, seeing how a SaaS retention problem mirrors a consulting firm’s positioning gap, is something ADHD makes easier, not harder. The brain that can’t stop making connections is the brain that finds the root cause everyone else missed.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The boredom intolerance has been surprisingly useful too. I don’t do maintenance work. I’m not the person to hire for steady-state execution. But if you need someone who will tear into a complex diagnostic, build a system, train your team to run it, and move on, that’s a working style ADHD practically designed for. It’s also why the fractional model is a better fit for me than a full-time executive role ever was.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Thirty-five years into a career built on exactly those traits, I can say that ADHD has cost me a great deal. But it’s also been the engine behind most of what I’m proudest of. The diagnosis didn’t change who I am. It just finally gave me language for it.</p>
<h2 id="if-you-think-you-might-have-adhd" class="wp-block-heading">If You Think You Might Have ADHD</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Get evaluated. The sooner, the better.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I know there’s a temptation to avoid it. The fear of what you might find, the disruption of a label, the uncertainty about what comes next can be daunting. I understand that.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the weight that lifts when you finally have an explanation, and a path forward, is unlike almost anything else I’ve experienced.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Having ADHD doesn’t excuse anything. But understanding it changes everything. It changes how you design your work, structure your environment, communicate with the people around you, and talk to yourself when things go sideways.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It also changes how you interpret your past. That part is hard. But it’s also, ultimately, a gift.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You’re not broken. You’re wired differently. And in the right environment, that wiring is extraordinary.</p>
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<h2 id="frequently-asked-questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<div class="wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2 is-layout-flow wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2-is-layout-flow">
<details id="when-was-michel-fortin-diagnosed-with-adhd" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>When was Michel Fortin diagnosed with ADHD?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Michel was diagnosed at age 52 with ADHD Combined Type, meaning both the attention-deficit and hyperactive components were present. The diagnosis came after a decade of wondering whether he might be on the autism spectrum — a question raised by a family member who noticed overlapping traits. Testing ultimately pointed to ADHD, not autism.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-is-adhd-combined-type" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What is ADHD Combined Type?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">ADHD Combined Type means a person meets the criteria for both the inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive subtypes. The result is a restless mind and a restless nervous system operating simultaneously. It’s not a matter of occasionally losing focus or feeling fidgety — the frequency and impact on daily functioning, relationships, and work is what distinguishes it from typical distraction.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-are-the-biggest-challenges-of-living-with-adhd-as-a-professional" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What are the biggest challenges of living with ADHD as a professional?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The most disruptive include unreliable short-term memory, difficulty finishing tasks once novelty fades, sensitivity to interruption during hyperfocus, and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) — an intense emotional reaction to perceived criticism or rejection. Open-plan offices, routine work, and anything that requires sustained attention without stimulation are particularly hard.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-coping-systems-work-for-adhd-in-a-professional-context" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What coping systems work for ADHD in a professional context?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Voice dictation, text-to-speech tools, visible workspace design, and a non-negotiable reminder system are the foundation. Instrumental music and background noise improve focus; silence actually makes concentration harder. The key principle is designing the environment to match how the ADHD brain works rather than forcing the brain to fight its wiring.</p>
</details>
<details id="how-does-adhd-connect-to-the-fractional-executive-model" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How does ADHD connect to the fractional executive model?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The traits that made conventional employment exhausting — rapid context-switching, impatience with routine, pattern recognition across unrelated domains — are exactly what the fractional model rewards. Moving between a CMO engagement, a revenue diagnostic, and a content strategy project in the same week requires a brain built for reframing. The boredom intolerance that made steady-state roles painful becomes an asset when the work is always diagnostic, always new.</p>
</details>
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