For most of my life, “too many interests” was presented to me as a problem.

Teachers hinted at it. Career advice books warned about it. Well meaning friends suggested I should probably “focus on one thing and get really good at it.”

That sounded reasonable. It just never worked.

My brain has always been the kind that gets excited about a lot of things. Business ideas, creative projects, community building, gardening, writing, learning systems, exploring weird rabbit holes on the internet. If something catches my curiosity, I want to understand it. And maybe build it.

For a long time I assumed this meant I was scattered.

Then eventually I noticed something interesting. The very thing I thought was holding me back was actually the thing building my life.

My career looks chaotic on paper

If someone tried to summarize what I do in one sentence, it would probably sound confusing.

• I operated a flower farm.
• I own a coffee shop.
• And an ice cream shop.
• I write a blog. Actually 2.
• I run a women’s business community.
• I host events.
• I build digital products.
• I help entrepreneurs with strategy.
• I experiment with content and ideas online.
• I host a podcast.

To some people that list sounds like a lack of focus. To me it looks like a web of connected interests.

None of those things appeared because I sat down and designed a perfectly logical career path. They happened because curiosity led me from one thing to another.

Flower farming came first.

Mad Lizzies’ Flower Farm started out as a way to utilize the land we purchased. (All of my ideas start with a practical purpose.) I scoured the internet for weeks, signed up for a flower farming intensive with Erin Benzekein of Floret in Washington, planted 4000 tulip bulbs, started a bouquet CSA and built my email list to over 1500 subscribers.

Then something interesting happened. The things I was learning about business started spilling into other areas.

One curiosity led to another

As I built Mad Lizzie’s, people began asking questions.

How did you start a business?
How did you figure out pricing?
How do you organize everything?

Answering those questions, and subsequently opening 3 other businesses in the next 4 years, slowly evolved into mentoring other entrepreneurs. That eventually became coaching, community building, and the creation of The Grove, where women who are building businesses come together to learn and support each other.

Meanwhile my curiosity about writing kept pulling at me.

So I started blogging.

At first it was just a place to think out loud about ideas I was exploring. Business lessons, creative projects, manifestation experiments, sobriety, curiosity, the strange ways our brains work.

Over time the blog became its own ecosystem of ideas and resources. Now those pieces all talk to each other.

The blog feeds ideas into the community.
The community creates conversations that inspire new writing.
The business lessons turn into guides and tools for other entrepreneurs and scanners.

None of it would exist if I had forced myself to choose just one interest.

Specialists go deep. Scanners go wide.

There is a long tradition in our culture of celebrating specialization.

Pick a lane.
Master it.
Stay there.

That approach works beautifully for some people. For others, forcing themselves into that mold can slowly wear them down.

But there is another type of brain that operates differently.

Scanner personalities tend to explore widely. We follow curiosity, learn quickly, and move between ideas. Instead of drilling into one narrow area forever, we gather knowledge from many places.

At first that can feel chaotic but over time something interesting happens.

All those experiences start connecting.

• Lessons from running a café help with community building.
• Marketing skills transfer into blogging and digital products.
• Writing clarifies ideas that help entrepreneurs.

The pieces that once looked unrelated begin forming a larger picture.

Curiosity creates unexpected advantages

When you explore many interests, you develop a skill that is hard to teach.

Pattern recognition.

You start seeing connections between things that other people miss because they only live inside one field.

An idea from gardening might inspire a new business system.
A marketing experiment might spark a teaching opportunity.
A conversation in one space might turn into a blog post that helps someone else.

Your brain becomes a bridge between ideas.

And bridges are incredibly valuable.

The real challenge is not curiosity

The challenge is usually organization.

Most scanners don’t struggle because they have too many interests; they struggle because no one ever taught them how to manage those interests without feeling overwhelmed.

When every idea feels exciting, it becomes hard to decide where to focus first. Projects pile up. Possibilities multiply. That’s when curiosity starts to feel like chaos.

But when you learn how to capture ideas, organize them, and work on them in seasons, everything shifts.

Curiosity becomes fuel instead of stress.

A different way to think about your path

For scanners, life rarely unfolds in a straight line. It looks more like a constellation.

Different interests light up at different times. Some fade, some grow brighter, some combine into something completely new.

The path becomes visible only after you’ve walked it for a while.

When I look back now, the pieces of my life make much more sense than they did when I was in the middle of them.

⌄The coffee shop taught me business.
⌄ Business led to mentoring.
⌄ Mentoring led to community.
= Writing connected all of it.

What once looked like “too many interests” was actually a series of stepping stones.

The truth about curious people

The world often frames curiosity as distraction.

In reality, curiosity is one of the most powerful creative forces we have.

It pushes people to start things.
It sparks new ideas.
It builds unexpected connections between fields.

Without curious people, very few new things would ever exist. So if you’ve spent years thinking your many interests are a flaw, it might be worth reconsidering that story.

Your curiosity may is not be a problem.
It might be the entire point.

And if your brain constantly produces more ideas than you know what to do with, you’re definitely not alone.

One of the simplest tools I use is something I call the Scanner Idea Parking Lot. It’s a way to capture ideas, organize them, and decide what to explore now versus later.

Because the goal isn’t to have fewer ideas.

The goal is to have a place to put them.