Ready for her closeup Entrepreneur Kat Willson harnessed ‘superpower’ of ADHD to help design her photography studio By: Gabrielle Piché Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/10/2022 (688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lois Janz carried her clothing and camera equipment past the bowling alley, up the stairs and into heaven.

At least, that’s her description of Earthling Studios.

“You feel like you’re kind of transported,” Janz said.

White walls, white floors, white furniture and white bedsheets greeted her as she set up a photoshoot for her children’s clothing company, Kindly.

There, in the third-floor St. Boniface flat, she and her Kindly team flitted from the white faux marble tables to the Mario Bellini-style couch, to the white fabric backdrop and the papier-mâché sculpted shelves.

“There’s something about shooting in this room… it’s really magical,” Janz said. “You don’t really realize that you’re in this little bowling alley building.”

Kat Willson is the brains and brawn behind the partial transformation at 255 Taché Ave. She credits her attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which she said gives her some traits that lend themselves well to entrepreneurship.

Her studio is unlike any Janz had worked in.

However, the path to officially opening the doors in October has been quite winding — and laced with ADHD-related challenges, Willson said.

“Elementary, junior high, high school was pretty tough for me,” she said.

She was a social kid, and her ADHD symptoms were not obvious, she said. She was often written off as flighty, inattentive and a poor student.

“People just don’t know. They think it’s just a little kid running around super-hyperactive,” Willson, 39, said.

She was acting out at 16 years old; her parents got her tested. When the ADHD diagnosis arrived, there was little direction, Willson said.

“I think maybe at that time in the world, it wasn’t as talked about,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s some pills.’”

Willson said she stopped taking medication shortly after. University “didn’t pan out,” so she enrolled in Toronto’s Humber College for fashion.

“I was very lost. I didn’t know what to do,” Willson said. “I knew I was creative.”

She also loved fashion. Grandma Willson would wear pantsuits and pearls at her cabin as the grandkids ran around.

“I feel like that’s where I get that side,” Willson said, laughing.

She did well, she said. But the fashion industry in Winnipeg — where she’d returned post-graduation — was lacking at the time.

So, she signed up for photography courses and booked weddings. In 2015, she moved to Vancouver, where she shot photos for fashion and jewelry brands.

The pandemic and her dad’s declining health brought her home.

“You kind of re-evaluate your life and what’s important,” Willson said.

Because photography was also, for the most part, on pause, Willson began thinking about different income streams amid lockdowns.

A photography studio — for herself, and for others to rent — came to mind.

“I trolled Kijiji,” Willson said.

The roughly 600-square foot St. Boniface space came up — former Frontier College rooms, complete with brown carpet and mauve walls.

Still, Willson went for a viewing. She fell in love with the light coming through the south-facing windows.

“It’s almost spiritual in here,” she said. “It sounds weird… but when the sun’s going down and there’s, like, twinkles of pink coming in here, it’s incredible.”

“It’s almost spiritual in here… It sounds weird… but when the sun’s going down and there’s, like, twinkles of pink coming in here, it’s incredible.”–Kat Willson

She signed the lease last Remembrance Day and got to work. She ripped out mounted corkboards, sanded down walls, moulded shelves out of papier mâché (which she’d never used before) and scoured Facebook Marketplace for white furniture and accessories.

“I would type in ‘marble’ every day for two months,” Willson said. “I knew I would find something.”

She became a painter, an interior designer — labels she hadn’t given herself before. Hyperfocus helped her start and finish, she said; she locks in to projects, “on a mission,” as someone with ADHD.

“I used to see (ADHD) as… such a hurdle and was bummed about it when I didn’t understand it,” Willson said. “Now I see it… kind of like a superpower.”

She began taking medication again while in Vancouver, which really helped, she said. Pills have worked for her but may not for others, she added.

“I don’t know a lot of people that could do this,” Willson said, looking around the bright white studio.

She spent months renovating and building, she said. Each prop is intentional, from the plants to the hardcover copy of a book by fashion photograher Peter Lindbergh.

“I just felt like life was hard… until I really embraced having ADHD and using it to my advantage,” Willson said. “I always felt like I had to try a lot harder, because my brain is not really built for this… world.”

She’d been accepting studio bookings while renovating during the year. Now, the facility is fully launched.

Willson plans on hosting pop-up shops on site.

People with ADHD tend to be creative, which is an asset for entrepreneurship, said Ivan Poturica, director of Winnipeg’s ADD Centre. They also typically problem-solve in a non-linear way, unlike folks without ADHD.

“It can be much more efficient (than step-by-step problem solving),” Poturica said.

“I just felt like life was hard… until I really embraced having ADHD and using it to my advantage.”–Kat Willson

Hyperfocus — zeroing in on something for hours and days at a time — is another trait.

“(It) ends at some point,” Poturica said, adding some entrepreneurs hop from creative idea to creative idea, another sign of ADHD.

Successful entrepreneurs with ADHD find others — bookkeepers, lawyers — who can help with areas, such as math, that are usually challenging for those diagnosed, Poturica said.

Women with ADHD may be undiagnosed until young adulthood because they’re more likely to have internalized symptoms, he added.

Willson accepts bookings for Earthling Studios on the company’s website, earthlingstudios.ca.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com