Fidgets, Function, and ADHD Community with Kody Lukens

Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on True Story FM. I’m Pete Wright and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.

Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.

Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki, it’s a good day. It’s a good day.

Nikki Kinzer:
It’s a great day.

Pete Wright:
The sun is shining, the birds are singing. The colors are brighter in the world today, and we are talking about a fidget and more. But we’re mostly talking about a fidget, and I have to tell you, this is a fidget that is on my stocking stuffer list for everyone this year. I don’t know, I hope it’s as good as our guest today promises, because my goodness, I want it in every pocket of every jacket that I own. I’m really excited to talk about that. But more than that, I’m excited to talk about community and ADHD community, what it means to find a community, sometimes how hard it is to find a community. And so we’re going to talk about all of that stuff this week and I’m excited about it. Are you excited about it? You good? You feeling good? Your kung fu is strong?

Nikki Kinzer:
I am. I am.

Pete Wright:
All right.

Nikki Kinzer:
It’s strong. Stronger than ever.

Pete Wright:
Okay. Well then let’s dig in. Before we dig in, head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list. Each week, we will send you a brand new little missive from us to you saying, “Hey, here’s an episode.” You can really connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD. And if you want to jump in and interact, head over to our Discord community. Super easy to jump into the general community chat channels. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/discord and you will be whisked over to our invitation and login screen.
But if you’re looking for a little bit more, particularly if this show has ever touched you, if you like the guests that we have, if you like the kinds of series that we’re doing right now, head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Patreon is listener supported podcasting. If you support the show directly through Patreon, all of those funds, the few bucks a month from you gets put into big bucket and put directly toward us making a great show and growing the show and giving new features and trying new stuff and spending more time producing the thing. So if it matters to you, if this show has a place in your ADHD heart, please consider supporting it at patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Nikki, we have some news.

Nikki Kinzer:
We do, we do.

Pete Wright:
As this show goes live to the world, it is October 5th.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh!

Pete Wright:
What? It’s ADHD awareness month.

Nikki Kinzer:
It’s ADHD awareness month.

Pete Wright:
Cue the Vuvuzelas. Nikki, this is fantastic. That’s news if I’ve ever heard it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Well, because we celebrate ADHD awareness all the time.

Pete Wright:
All the time. Good Lord, am I ever not aware of my ADHD?

Nikki Kinzer:
I know, right? But yeah, it is. So we have some special shows coming up this week or this month.

Pete Wright:
We do. We’re doing a lot of stuff. We’ve got a page over on the website, and if you visit takecontroladhd.com/… What do you want to call it? How about awareness 23? How about that? That’s good.

Nikki Kinzer:
I like it. It works.

Pete Wright:
Takecontroladhd.com/awareness23. Head right over there and you’ll see all of the litany, all the stuff that we’re doing. We’ve got stuff that we’re doing in Discord, we’ve got special shows, we’ve got all kinds of special shows. We’ve got special guests and special formats that we’ve never tried and frankly, I’m a little bit nervous about. So it’s going to be a lot of fun. ADHD awareness month, October at Take Control ADHD. So head over the site, link is in the show notes and learn more there. Kody Lukens is a lifelong entrepreneur, filing his first LLC at 15. Come on, showing us all up.

Nikki Kinzer:
I like it.

Pete Wright:
He’s a creator building tools for neuro divergent brains and lending his voice to the ADHD communities on TikTok and Instagram on ADHD, autism, anxiety and more. And he’s behind Stimagz, a magnetic fidget toy that he funded on Kickstarter and has since sold over 10,000 units. Once you see it, you’ll get why. Kody Lukens, welcome to The ADHD Podcast.

Kody Lukens:
I’m so happy to be here. This is my first podcast in months, so I might be a little rusty. I had to run around before this and put blankets on the floor to dole the echo, but we’re here. It’s 9:00 AM on a Friday, let’s do it.

Pete Wright:
We’re doing great. We’re doing great so far.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
Look, tell us a little bit about your relationship with ADHD.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah, so let’s see here. I had a list of anecdotes that I had written down a while ago when I was doing more podcasts. These are things that were answers to questions that I’d be asked frequently, and I didn’t want to forget the answers because I’m very forgetful. But I’ve since forgotten where I put the list, so I’ll do my best to remember some of the stories [inaudible 00:05:07]-

Pete Wright:
It’s just kind of an anecdote of itself.

Kody Lukens:
… across appearances. Going back to elementary school on my little… Not book reports. I guess they’re grade reports? Report cards.

Nikki Kinzer:
Report cards or-

Kody Lukens:
Those reports, yeah. It would always say at the top, “Should be evaluated for ADHD” or “Maybe should be evaluated for ADHD.” It was always borderline where they didn’t actually take steps to say, “Hey, he should be evaluated for ADHD. He needs to be evaluated, he’s causing distractions in class.” I would always go through these little cycles where I’d be a bit more disruptive, a bit more distractible, and then for some reason I’d really just ran it at the last minute without knowing that I was sort of on the cusp of being sent to a psychiatrist to be evaluated and subsequently very quickly diagnosed, I’m sure.
But then when I was, I think 20, this was during the pandemic, I was struggling with a lot of depression, anxiety, et cetera, along with a lot of the rest of the population, and I actually went to a psychiatrist for those issues, and he essentially came with the conclusion that likely those were caused by untreated, undiagnosed ADHD. Or not caused, perhaps very strongly influenced by, and that when we treated the ADHD, the other issues would subside. And he was very correct in that. I of course, still struggle with depressive bouts and anxiety as they’re very frequently comorbid with ADHD anyways, but by addressing that root cause, it really made a world of difference in my daily functioning.

Pete Wright:
How does your ADHD influence your drive to be an entrepreneur?

Kody Lukens:
I would say that it very much ties into the INCUP motivators of ADHD. I’m not sure if that’s something that you’ve talked about in your show before, but that’s something that I would talk about all the time on social media. It stands for interest, novelty, challenge, urgency and passion essentially being the main motivators for ADHD brains. And entrepreneurship ties into that incredibly well. Every day I’m doing something new. Even if I’m working on the same few projects, I’m still involved in different things every day. For example, yesterday I worked on some motion graphics in Blender, which is a 3D rendering platform. I updated our Shopify website with some of the new colors that we’re releasing in a few days, which by the time this is out, the colors will already be out. It’s our fall collection, very exciting.
And it’s a constant stream of novelty, challenge, urgency, and just all of the INCUP motivators every single day because I’m doing different things all the time. And if I ever get bored with something that I’m doing or if I’m not feeling it that day, there are a million other things for me to do because there’s always so much to do. Our company is very small. I like to think that we’re punching above our weight a little bit. There’s me and there’s one other full-time employee, there’s a few part-time employees and then a network of contractors for super specific things that we’re not capable of doing. But we’re trying to act in a way… Or we’re trying, I guess put ourselves forth as if we’re substantially larger than we are. Provide the best customer service, provide the best customer experience, have the best website. Sometimes I feel like I bit off a bit more than I can chew, but I also feel like if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be where I am now because there wouldn’t be that constant sense of, oh, if I don’t do this, everything’s going to go wrong.
And I think that that ends up being pretty helpful in the end, but it’s also a bit of a blessing and a curse. For example, I worked for I think 12 hours yesterday and just sort of flew by. I was just really excited about the stuff I was doing, looked down and realized, oh shoot, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything in solid nine hours and I’m getting a headache. That’s something that I don’t think I would be able to do without my ADHD. So I don’t view it necessarily as a superpower, but just sort of as it just is what it is. And it influences my life in pretty much every aspect of my life, but I don’t think it necessarily is a superpower, like some people might say. I don’t know your personal stances on that. I should have listened to more of the show before coming on.

Pete Wright:
No, no, we’re anti-superpower.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, no. No, no, no.

Pete Wright:
Recognizing the-

Kody Lukens:
[inaudible 00:09:19].

Pete Wright:
… power that it can have, we are anti superpower.

Nikki Kinzer:
What is so interesting about your story, Kody too, is it shows the interest you have in your work, right? I worked 10 hours yesterday and I thought about… It’s funny we’re having this conversation because yesterday when I was thinking about it, I thought if I was in my old job, there’s no way I would’ve worked 10 hours and not have it know that I was working 10 hours. But it was so different now because I love so much of what I do, that the time just went by so fast and it’s just different. It feels so different when you’re doing something that you really care about versus something that you don’t. Which is that entrepreneur piece too, right?

Kody Lukens:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
You get to choose-

Kody Lukens:
And you have ownership of your work. You know that everything you’re doing is contributing towards your future and the future of those that you surround yourself with, it’s not just punching in numbers and stuff for some boss to go take out another yacht at the end of the year.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right. Yeah. What were you going to say, Pete?

Pete Wright:
Well, I just want to make sure we reflect on INCUP. That’s a Bill Dodson thing. Bill Dodson, guest of the show. We love Bill, and I don’t think we’ve talked about it in the form of the acronym. I remember when he was here, he talked about interest, novelty, challenge, urgency, passion. He uses those words, but I don’t know that it had been adopted as an acronym, and it is so me and judging by the chat room, it is also others. And I think that’s a really handy way to frame the terms that motivate us. So that’s super, super useful and appreciate you reframing that for us.

Kody Lukens:
Of course. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about.

Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah. I want to talk about though… Part of the reason we’re here in addition to talking about entrepreneurship, is community. Because I think you originally reached out, you and Melissa had been communicating, and she had told us that you had said you were frustrated about the lack of resources made for adults with ADHD. And you were 20 when you got diagnosed, and discovering that there wasn’t enough, is what it sounds like. Can you talk about your experience of finding a community… And I should say, as someone who is a part of a thriving and wonderful ADHD community specializing in adults, my heart was a little broken for you, man. Why didn’t you find us?

Kody Lukens:
I wish I had. I wish I had.

Nikki Kinzer:
You are welcome to our community.

Pete Wright:
Yes, anytime.

Nikki Kinzer:
Come on.

Kody Lukens:
So at the time, it was a bit of a… When I say resources, I think I was mostly referring to sort of physical resources of something that I can buy to assist me in an area of my life, or I may face a struggle that is particular to ADHD or autism, anxiety, depression, et cetera, some form of neuro divergence. I don’t know how you feel about that term, but I use it as just sort of a nice umbrella to encompass everything so I don’t have to enumerate all of them every single time I speak about them. But an example that came to mind right off the bat was fidget toys. I looked up adult fidget toys, adult stim toys, and I found some results for adult stim toys that I wasn’t expecting, wasn’t looking for. So don’t search that, but-

Pete Wright:
[inaudible 00:12:43]. That’s risky.

Nikki Kinzer:
I was going to say, I can only imagine where that goes.

Kody Lukens:
Very quickly, yeah, everything was made of bright rainbow, cheap looking plastic, and it very clearly was not actually made with adults in mind, even if it was one of those Amazon headers where it had 70 terms in it to try to capture every single search possible. Say, okay, this was a fidget spinner that cost 3 cents to make overseas. And when I was a kid, I had this set of magnets. And I can’t say the brand just for legal reasons, but I had this set of magnets that I really thoroughly enjoyed. And this was well before I was diagnosed, but I carried them everywhere with me. Anyone that knew me in high school, knew that I had my magnets that I kept in the coin pocket of my jeans. And it’s funny, if I look back at some pictures of me now, I can see them peeking out the top from my little jeans pocket. This picture of me on Christmas, just casually holding them on, opening up another gift or something. I looked for those [inaudible 00:13:43] I’m like, “Is there any record that this is true?” There is.
But they weren’t made for fidgeting. And I used them pretty vigorously just all day, every day using them in my hands. And I’m holding Stimagz now, so I guess that wasn’t the best thing to hold up to the camera for anyone watching. But since they weren’t made for that, they would fall apart pretty quickly when you actually use them as a fidget toy. The ends would chip away, the magnets would fall out. And so the company stopped making them years ago because they were made as a kid’s toy, of course, and kids would play with them, they’d fall apart, kids would eat the magnets. It was a terrible deal.
But I thought that if this is so helpful to me, it stands to reason that it would be helpful to other people. Nothing like this exists now. Why doesn’t something like this exist? And so I set out to try to make a version of that initial toy, that was better in every way. Stronger materials, stronger magnets, higher attention to detail on surface finish, bill’s quality, all of that, and try to make something that was actually designed to be not just physically stimulating, like say a fidget spinner, fidget cube, infinity cube, all those things, but also cognitively stimulating. It’s pattern based. There aren’t a lot of pattern based fidget toys. So I guess for anyone just listening, not watching, I’m holding up my Stimagz right now and just sort of folding them in a different little routine just in my hands.
And that’s something I’ve been doing for this entire podcast, I find that it helps bring me to a good stimulatory baseline. For example, part of why ADHD people need to fidget or need to sway or pace while they’re talking, is just stimulation. And I won’t jump too much into the science of it because I’m not qualified to talk about it, but a lot of it has to do with essentially dopamine deficiencies within your brain, and you try to self stimulate through fidget toys, through swaying, pacing, tapping your fingers, whatever it is you do to make up for that lack of dopamine to self stimulate.
And so something that I think really sets Stimagz apart is that aspect of cognitive stimulation. You’re not just flicking your finger in one way over and over to spin something, and you can sort of adapt the amount of, I guess, stimulation that Stimagz give you, depending on the situation. For example, you could just roll them between your fingers if you don’t need much stimulation. If you need a little bit more, you can do a bit more of a complicated pattern in your hand. And I’m going off on a bit of a rant now, I don’t remember what your initial question was.

Pete Wright:
Well, the initial question was about community and you’re searching for community. But I actually want to focus on the Stimagz and just your general search for adult oriented fidget toys, because that is one of the things that I think has come up. All of the fidget toys that I have are either not designed as fidget toys, they’re designed as little objects of art. I have a little fancy… I’m holding up, it’s a wooden polished piece of wood, but it was sold as something to… A tchotchke to decorate a bookshelf. And for me, there’s a certain pattern I can get into where I’m rubbing it on my hands.
I also have a fidget spinner that again, was something that came as a result of my children and their ADHD, not something that is… I feel like there is a stigma around adult oriented fidgets. What is the message that the fidget will send if you are using it in a meeting or in a place where adults congregate? And I’m wondering if you’ve ever run into feedback like that, people are hesitant to embrace fidgets? No one in our community because they celebrate fidgets all the live long day. But I’m wondering if you’ve ever-

Nikki Kinzer:
And we all have them too.

Pete Wright:
We’ve all got them. Yeah, right. So what’s your sense of that? Is there anything that’s ever come up?

Kody Lukens:
That’s certainly been something that I have encountered, actually. When I was in seventh grade, I brought my magnets to school. And I doubt this girl remembers, if she does, I’m sorry, I forgive you. But I was just fiddling with it while I was working on my paper. And she said, “Why are you doing that? That’s so weird.” And then just sort of looked away. You know how cats look away all dramatic sometimes?

Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah.

Kody Lukens:
It was one of those moments. And I was a little insecure sixth, seventh grader. That rocked me to my core, I don’t think I brought a fidget to school for the next three years. And then after that, I guess I grew in self-confidence enough to bring a fidget to school after that. But even thinking about it now, it just sort of disturbs me that there are probably so many people even now, probably right this second, somebody is being told that they shouldn’t be fidgeting with something or that it’s unbecoming or unprofessional, et cetera. But it’s just a different way of… It’s just people’s brains work in different ways. Some people need to use fidget toys, stim toys, whatever you want to call them, in order to achieve peak focus, some people simply don’t.
And something that we’re actually talking about within our company right now, and this may or may not be reflected on our website by the time this episode sort of goes live in early October, is rebranding from fidget toys to stim tools or fidget tools. Trying to show that this isn’t something you just play with, this is something that is helpful to people. And that’s something that our reviews have been consistently stating is people saying, “I’ve bought so many fidget toys for my son,” or “I’ve bought so many fidget toys for myself. None of them last longer than a week. None of them hold my attention that long. These are the only ones that have been consistent enough in the level of stimulation they provide me, for me to actually hold onto them and make them an everyday item.” And it’s funny you mentioned that you want to have one in every coat pocket because actually, I was frantically looking around this morning for my favorite set. I have thousands of them in my apartment, but I still have a favorite set. I don’t know where they are. They’re somewhere probably in a pocket.

Pete Wright:
You know what it gets me thinking? So I’m throwing back to when I was a kid and I would go to my dad’s office. And he had an office with a big desk. And he was rarely at it, but when he was, you know what he had on his desk? A Newton’s Cradle. You know the Newton’s Cradle with the five balls that swing back and forth?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yep.

Pete Wright:
And I would go around to other executive manager’s offices, and they all had something. Whether it was the little bird that would go down on its thing, and they were always moving. And it only occurs to me right now that those were sensory tools, right? Those were the things that you get started, but they never called it that. It was just a desk accessory. It was just a decoration. But as soon as they pull that ball back to get the Newton’s Cradle going, it became a fidget. And they were grown adults who never in a million years would’ve said, “Oh, I need a fidget.” My dad lived his whole life without knowing that he had ADHD. Everyone else really did. But it just strikes me that that might be the wave of change. And I think rebranding around tools is the thing that might’ve helped guys my dad understand how to reintegrate his focus with his brain.

Kody Lukens:
It’s actually funny you mentioned that sort of executive desk toy, because that actually defines our design philosophy pretty well, of… I guess not necessarily what the color releases. Those are just fun for people that actually want to enjoy a bright, vibrant color or a nice themed color. But we always try to have black available as a color on our website.

Pete Wright:
Well, because black is the executive fidget toy.

Kody Lukens:
It’s the executive fidget. But also just designing things that people wouldn’t feel embarrassed to have on their desk and have their 60 year old, 70 year old boss walk by and be like, “Back in my day, we didn’t need any of that garbage.” But rather have something where he wants to pick it up and play with it or use it.

Pete Wright:
That’s it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right? That’s the thing, is that I can totally see it being on your desk and then having somebody sit across from you and they pick it up and play with it as they’re talking to you. That will happen.

Kody Lukens:
A lot of our reviews also just say, “I no longer have my Stimagz because members of my family have each taken four, and now I don’t have any.”

Pete Wright:
It’s fascinating. It’s really fascinating.

Nikki Kinzer:
It is.

Pete Wright:
I know we’re so off-topic, but welcome to The ADHD Podcast.

Kody Lukens:
I think that’s perfect. I don’t believe in topics.

Pete Wright:
I want to ask a little bit about the design philosophy because when I have seen other, will not name brands here, they’re either square or they’re round, right? They’re balls and you put them together and they make a square. You have little columns. How did you land on columns?

Kody Lukens:
So we actually did a lot of testing around that. I got a 3D printer and sort of learned some rudimentary 3D modeling to test different designs. And my roommates at the… I was still in college, my roommates at the time can attest to the fact that that 3D printer was running for several months straight just with new prototypes and then while I’d be printing, I decided I didn’t like the look of this one, I’d go back and make another one. And columns at the end of the day, made the most sense for what I wanted to create, which is that pattern based fidget toy. I actually think I need to go back and update some of our marketing terms around being pattern based. I’ve been talking about it and I feel like that’s something we should do more of, but besides the point.
With balls, there’s only so much you can do because they don’t really want to stick in a particular form or function. And with squares, it can be difficult to press on a certain point and have them move in a certain way because the surface area is the same across all of the points. But with a nice cylinder, it has two or four, I guess… Well, there’s a lot of different points of contact. It has a steel core, so you could just hang them off to the side of a different…
Sorry, I’m doing things that people just listening won’t be able to track. Look on our website, we have examples how Stimagz work. But it gives you many more options. I am not nearly egotistical enough to presume to know what our customers want. I like to give people as many options as they possibly can, to do different things with the toys that we create or I guess tools. I guess I need to get back into the habit of-

Pete Wright:
There we go, yeah.

Kody Lukens:
… into the habit of saying tools.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, tools.

Kody Lukens:
People surprise me every single day with videos or pictures that they’ll send, of the patterns that they use their Stimagz for. I saw somebody the other day that uses four of them. They have two that they have between one of their fingers and they flick it around and it sort of circles two of their fingers, then comes back in. I have no idea how they do it, but it was bizarre.

Pete Wright:
Oh, okay. So this is how they actually manipulate the thing.

Kody Lukens:
Yes. Sorry, I don’t think… I probably wasn’t clear enough about that. But everyone uses them in a different way. The only people I know that use them in patterns or in sets of nine are my brother and my dad, because that’s how I sort of taught them how to use it. Everyone else thinks I’m crazy for that, but I think that it sort of goes to show that everybody has a different pattern they fall into. And it creates a different kind of satisfaction where you feel like you’ve discovered something new and made something truly your own, because with say… I’m going to keep harping on fidget spinner, so sorry. I had a fidget spinner, still have it. I loved it for many years, but it’s so limited. All you can really do is spin it. Or if you want to do some tricks, you can do some tricks or whatever. But if someone sees you playing with a fidget spinner, they know exactly what you’re doing. They could pick it up [inaudible 00:25:25]

Pete Wright:
It is a signal. It’s a flag of ADHD, first of all. [inaudible 00:25:27]

Kody Lukens:
Yeah, that’s another one.

Pete Wright:
But second, yeah, you’re right. It has a function. There aren’t as many-

Kody Lukens:
Yeah. With Stimagz, you make the function your own.

Pete Wright:
It reminds me when I lived in Korea for a little while and I taught, and it’s one of the things that I was so fascinated by when I was teaching college students. The number and variety of patterns of using their pens as fidgets is extraordinary. It is a work of art. I’ve mastered one while I was there, and there were hundreds of different kind of combinations of how to use the pen, that they manipulate all through elementary, high school and university. And this is what that reminds me of. And I don’t think any of them would ever have said outwardly, I have ADHD because it was largely not talked about, but they absolutely talk about how it helps them stay centered and focused to have something to deal with. So ADHD or not, having something to manipulate is not a bad gig-

Kody Lukens:
Definitely.

Pete Wright:
… for the brand.

Kody Lukens:
And I feel like such a salesman right now. I apologize, I just get really excited talking about Stimagz, they’re my baby. But that is something we’ve heard from people as well, is you can just extend them out in a line like a pen and then use them in the exact same way that you would fiddle with a pen, so it feels very familiar.

Pete Wright:
They hold together strong enough to do some of that stuff?

Kody Lukens:
Very strong magnets.

Nikki Kinzer:
I was just going to ask about Kickstarter. So that’s a community coming together to support this. So how did that come about?

Kody Lukens:
Yeah. So I’m not sure if this… I don’t remember if I even really mentioned it that much in my guest bio, but for well over a year, closer to two years before the Kickstarter actually, I was creating content on social media surrounding ADHD, autism, anxiety, and just mental health in general. And I’d like to think that I formed a pretty strong community there. A place where people felt like their concerns could be heard and understood, and people weren’t downplayed, et cetera. I tried to really monitor the comments to make sure that it was a positive space for people to be. And through doing that, that was also when I was designing and building Stimagz and so I along the way, sort of checked in with people like, “Hey, does this look like something you would want?” And so one of the-

Nikki Kinzer:
Good business move.

Kody Lukens:
I tried, I tried. And that was something that I was very self-conscious about for a long time as well, was feeling like I was taking advantage of people by asking for their feedback and, “Oh, I feel like I’m just this businessman trying…” It’s like, “No, that the RSD.”

Nikki Kinzer:
But it’s so authentic.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah. That’s the RSD talking.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, it’s so authentic. Yeah. Because you want something for them, and the only way you know if it’s going to work for them, is if you talk to people who would be using it.

Kody Lukens:
Exactly. Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, absolutely.

Kody Lukens:
And then through that, I also built a nice community of other ADHD and mental health creators. A lot of them I still chat with to this day. One of my best friends actually met through that. Her name is Hayley Honeyman, she is wonderful. And she’s actually our community manager now for Stimagz. So I posted on my social media about the Kickstarter, and then I also sent out samples of Stimagz to a lot of those other creators that I had become friends with, and a lot of them, I couldn’t afford their usual rates because they work with larger companies that have these massive budgets. All of Stimagz was just self-funded. As we mentioned earlier, I filed for my first LLC at 15, and that was a video production company. I did that from when I was 15 until right up to when Stimagz started, and I saved up a good chunk of change at least for my age, during that timeframe. And that’s the money that went into funding Stimagz I guess. I also won an entrepreneurship competition through my school my senior year, that was a really nice boost in funds.
But anyways, back to the main story. I couldn’t afford to pay all of these wonderful creators their full rates, but they were generous enough to post for me anyways, and I sent them the scraps that I could. I like to think that it’s because they believed in my mission. They knew that I was being authentic with it, I wasn’t trying to take advantage of the ADHD community. I was trying to actually do something for the ADHD community, which I see a lot of brands and companies say, “Oh, this is the perfect thing for your ADHD.” And then I look at it and I can just immediately tell this was not made with ADHD needs in mind. This was made to turn a profit at the expense of ADHD people. And my philosophy is the antithesis of that, if I’m using that word correctly. Everything that we make and I guess… Can I show off the products that we’re launching in a couple of days actually?

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kody Lukens:
Is that okay?

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kody Lukens:
This is the first public disclosure. Let’s see. It is a sort of handheld mechanical keyboard fidget toy.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that looks like fun.

Kody Lukens:
And I tried to keep that same sort of philosophy of I don’t know what people want. And so there’s so many different ways you can hold it, and every time I give it to someone new, they have a different little pattern that they do with it, that I of course never thought of. But if I just… Whoops, a key fell out. This is 3D printed, so don’t judge me for that.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Right.

Kody Lukens:
The final version is not 3D printed.

Nikki Kinzer:
That is so cool.

Kody Lukens:
I’m just waiting for a sample from the factory.

Pete Wright:
I’m just saying this, I’m holding up what I use to type on, right? This is my keyboard. It’s a giant steel mechanical keyboard, and what you just gave me is a fidget with four keys that look to be as if they are off of my steel mechanical keyboard, to play with. For those who are listening, it looks like a grip strengthener tool, a spring thing.

Nikki Kinzer:
You’re right. That’s what I said.

Pete Wright:
But you hold it and under each finger is one of these big keys to fidget. Oh my God.

Kody Lukens:
Actually, we went and made some custom keys as well. So if you weren’t satisfied with the amount of press or the amount of press you could get in-

Pete Wright:
Switches.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, I didn’t say the term because not everyone’s familiar with it. I go off on these tangents about these complex mechanical keyboard things, and everyone around me is like, “What are you talking about?” But here’s one that’s like an extra clicky, extra pressure blue one.

Pete Wright:
So satisfying.

Kody Lukens:
There’s one that’s just a quieter extra pressure one. Really satisfying.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Wow.

Kody Lukens:
Anyways-

Pete Wright:
That’s great.

Kody Lukens:
… that’s the Kickstart that’s happening in about a week.

Nikki Kinzer:
So you’re adding. I mean, yeah, you’re just adding new things as you move along.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s really cool.

Pete Wright:
Well, and that gets to the next question that I wanted to ask you, which was how with being such a streamlined organization, right? Just a couple of you. How do you handle all of everything that you’re doing, including support? I’m reading your responses to customer reviews on your website. How do you handle that plus ideating on new things and bringing them to market? Because I feel like that’s one of the things that is a huge challenge, is I have lots of ideas. If I’m sitting here listening to this conversation, I have lots of ideas, but I don’t know how… I need the skills and the tools to focus them into reality. And it sounds like that’s what you’ve done quite ably.

Kody Lukens:
I’m glad that it seems that way on the surface. I like to think of myself as a professional generalist. I like to have a moderate amount of skill in every aspect of the business development process. So as I mentioned earlier, I learned 3D modeling to make the initial prototypes of Stimagz, but the final design, I took my initial model and gave it to someone who specialized in DFM, that’s designed for manufacturing. And they actually made it something that could be manufactured rather than just say, 3D printed. So as much as I can, I like to bring things maybe 60, 70% of the way and then hire a specialist to bring it that last 30, 40%. Whatever percentages I said before, I don’t really recall. I lost my train of thought.
I would say it’s almost against my ADHD nature, but systemizing things as much as I possibly can and actually sticking to those systems, not just making a new one every couple of weeks. So definitely a key instrument to the success of Stimagz. And actually, we just rebranded to Stimara. Keeping that sort of stim prefix as homage to our roots. But ara loosely translates to sanctuary, in Latin, which is sort of what we’re aiming to be for our community and for the neuro divergent community as a whole. A place where people can come and feel confident that what they’re buying was made with their specific needs in mind and with quality above all else.
But a key instrument to our success has definitely been our Director of Operations, Carys McCloskey shout out. She’s awesome, but she has a very different brain than I do. Still ADHD. But I can only worry about things when they’re right in front of me. I didn’t really start working on the Kickstarter that’s coming out in a week too much until probably about a week ago. I had so many months to do all of these things that I’m now doing now. I didn’t have to work 12 hours yesterday, but that’s how my brain works, I need that deadline to do my best work. I can do work before then, but I know it’s not going to be my best until it’s urgent.
She works the opposite way. She’s great at planning things out, say three months in advance. And so we’re in a constant battle of her wanting to plan things super early, me wanting to plan things super late. It usually lands in a nice middle ground of planning things at a reasonable length of time. And so through systemizing things like that, we are able to tackle a lot of projects simultaneously through sprints. I think it’s called Lean or Agile development. I don’t recall. I had classes on that in college, but I was not a very good student. Actually it’s funny, one of my entrepreneurship professors told me… Because that was one of my majors in college. He told me that I was one of his worst students, but one of his best entrepreneurs. And so I wear that as a badge of honor.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a compliment. Yeah.

Kody Lukens:
So I’m taking that. But I tried breaking things down by day for a while of, oh, this is my day for manufacturing. This is my day for working on this or that. But I just couldn’t really stick to it. I know it’s ironic, I just said that I stick to structures. I’ve been better about sticking to… We manage everything through Asana, which is a project management or task management software. We also have Slack channels. We try to keep our Asana projects and our Slack channels named the same thing so we can keep files organized.
But a big part of it has just been letting go of control and being willing to admit that I’m not the only person that can do this task, even though so far I am the only person that has done this task. And just being willing to pass that off to somebody else on my team and essentially trust that they’re going to do it, not necessarily in the same way that I would, but to the same level of quality. Yeah, I wish I could answer your question better. I don’t really know how we do it. Things just sort of work out in the end.

Nikki Kinzer:
I think you did, and I think you have such a true entrepreneur spirit, and I love that. And I love that you’ve supported yourself around the right people. And I think that that’s what really matters, is that you’ve got somebody else that you’re partnering with that is that balance. And I also think it’s really smart to know how far can you go with this idea and the development of it, and then when do you turn it over to a professional? Because I think that so many entrepreneurs try to do it themselves and then they fail or they get so frustrated, they give up.
And when I talk to new coaches about business and building their business, I always say, you have to think of it as a business. It’s not just coaching. It’s also a business. And you have to look at what can only you do and what can other people do, and not be afraid to invest in that because that’s what’s going to get you farther. And no, I absolutely love what you do. And if there’s anything we can do to back you up, I love it. We will definitely make sure that we’ve got all of the website information and everything, that people can go see what you do. I just love the authenticity and where you’re coming, your intention. It shines, Kody. [inaudible 00:38:31]

Kody Lukens:
Thank you so much. I get so self-conscious about it. Like I said, it’s that RSD of people are just going to see me as some businessman out to make stuff to sell. Especially because I struggle with tone, I tend to sort of default into that sort of business, almost robotic tone of talking about things. I just get excited about them and I forget to put things in nuances that might help whoever I’m talking to, better understand what it is that I’m doing. I also, on the topic of support really quick, I want to give a massive shout out to my girlfriend, I would not be able to do any of this without her. I would certainly be far skinnier than I am.

Nikki Kinzer:
She makes sure you eat during those 12 hours, right?

Kody Lukens:
She does. And honestly, it’s a different kind of ADHD medication, where… I guess now we’re going to relationship stuff, but I do think it’s an interesting topic of she makes up for all of the areas that I have shortcomings in, whether it be from my ADHD or just my personality. I tend to let things pile up, and so she’ll give me a nice reminder of, “Oh, this is looking a little cluttered. Do you want to work on it together really quick?” I’m like, “Yes. I would have left that for another three months.” Same thing with food of like, “Oh, it’s lunchtime, you haven’t eaten yet. Would you like something?” I was like, “Oh, that’s awesome.” And then we’ll go out and just sort of make it together in the kitchen.

Pete Wright:
Just lovely.

Kody Lukens:
I know. It’s a night and day difference between before I was with her and now after we’ve been together for several years now, but she’s lovely.

Pete Wright:
Well, this whole thing is lovely.

Kody Lukens:
Thank you.

Pete Wright:
I have two questions about the product.

Kody Lukens:
Of course.

Pete Wright:
One is, so I jump all the way to the bottom rung of people because everybody really likes the thing. So I look at the low reviews because there aren’t very many of them, and I want to know what people are complaining about. It sounds like the mail is really troublesome for you guys. So many of the things are, people don’t get it. Obviously totally out of your control. But one of the things that people say is either the photos make these things look too large, and I can’t figure that out. But then I went back after reading all those, looking at the product page, and I can kind of see they look like dumbbells, but then why would you order them if they’re that big? But second is they’re too small. So obviously you can’t help everybody at all. But you say in one of your comments, “Sorry, they don’t fit you. We’re considering making larger versions of these things.” And I would like to know how far along the process those are?

Kody Lukens:
Funny you mentioned that. The prototype, the first sample is actually being made today, September 15th. Something I’ve really learned throughout this process-

Nikki Kinzer:
Great timing.

Kody Lukens:
… is that everything takes longer than you want to expect. We started working on a carrying case for Stimagz in I want to say late February, early March. I thought it would take maybe two months, three months start to finish. And I guess maybe it could have if I was focusing 100% of my time on it. But that’s just not realistic. I have so many other things to attend to on a daily basis that unfortunately are more critical than sort of bringing out this new thing. So finally, just yesterday, received the first samples in the mail of the carrying case. So hopefully by the time this podcast is out, they’ll be available. If not, well, they’ll be available soon. With the reviews of people saying that they thought they were going to be bigger, we didn’t use to have any product photos on the website, it was just renders. We had two consecutive terrible experiences with product photographers where they essentially took our product, took the deposit, and then just completely ghosted us. Two in a row. It was awful.

Pete Wright:
Oh, dear.

Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that’s awful.

Kody Lukens:
So yeah, that [inaudible 00:42:23]

Pete Wright:
Well, the photos look great on the website. I think you have enough.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, you do.

Pete Wright:
One of the things that is on there that I think you cannot argue, you have videos of these things in people’s hands.

Kody Lukens:
Yeah, very true.

Pete Wright:
There is no way I feel like you can miss the sense of scale on these things because you see them in a hand. They are lovely. They are sweet. And again, stocking stuffers for everyone, including this guy right here. I’m really, really excited.

Kody Lukens:
Well, send me your address, I’d love to send you a whole bunch of them.

Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness.

Nikki Kinzer:
You just made his day.

Kody Lukens:
I try, I try.

Pete Wright:
I regret to inform you, you will receive it post haste. Thank you so much, Kody. You’re great. I had no idea what we were going to get into in this conversation.

Kody Lukens:
I didn’t either.

Pete Wright:
I’m so surprised. It’s fantastic. Thank you.

Kody Lukens:
Of course. Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.

Kody Lukens:
And if there’s ever anything else you want to talk about, feel free to send me another email. I love doing these. I feel much more comfortable now, than I did in the beginning. It had the pre podcast jitters, it’s been a while.

Pete Wright:
All it took was 45 minutes. We’re doing great.

Kody Lukens:
I guess so.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Kody Lukens:
Oh, one last thing is we also have our sensory friendly shirts releasing very soon, maybe by the time this podcast is out. So of course they’re tagless, of course, they’re made with the nicest material you could possibly imagine. Maybe not possibly imagine, that might get out of hand. But nicest material you could realistically imagine.

Pete Wright:
Wow, awesome. You’ve got good stuff.

Nikki Kinzer:
You’ve got some really great things coming up. That’s awesome.

Pete Wright:
All right. Stimara everybody, stimara.com

Kody Lukens:
We are over leveraged in R&D for sure, but it’s leading to exciting things.

Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. That’s right, that’s right.

Pete Wright:
Well, thank you everybody for hanging out and meeting Kody and listening to this show. We so appreciate you, your time, your attention, your presence in the livestream chat room if you’re members of our community. Don’t forget, if you do have something to contribute to the conversation, we’re heading over to the show talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level, or better. On behalf of Kody Lukens and Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.