ADHD and Your Business: How to Work With Your Brain, Not Against It

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Kyle: Welcome to the Remodelers on the Rise show. I am with a a special guest from I don't say that to everybody, Skye, but it is a special guest because you're from the other side of the world. her name is Skye Waterson. She's the founder of Unconventional Organization. She's the host of the ADHD skills lab podcast. Ooh, we already have some people's attention of like, wait, this is kind of different. This is unique. tell the people, Skye, where you're from and a little bit about yourself.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so I'm from the beautiful New Zealand and I am a former academic. I got diagnosed with ADHD at the beginning of my PhD, and it threw me into researching how everything works, putting it on the internet, and now I work with wonderful business owners in the US who are looking to grow their business, but they know that they need some help with their ADHD. symptoms and traits to be able to scale because we see from the research that that's a big struggle for us.

 

Kyle: Interesting. one fun fact about New Zealand, I was Googling New Zealand quite a bit about a month ago. Because I have a plan that before I turn 50, which is seven years from now, I am going to get on a plane and I'm going to fly to either Australia or New Zealand. You can tell me which. And on the plane ride there and back, I'm going to outline/slash write a book that's in my head that's been needing to happen. I love to write and work on airplanes, so I figure I'm just gonna get on there, fly for however many hours, and then maybe play a nice round of golf or two and then get back on the plane and head home.

 

Skye Waterson: I know people from Australia who travel to New Zealand to play golf. So maybe

 

Kyle: Hm.

 

Skye Waterson: we're your we're your person. You're welcome to come on our podcast when you get here and tell us what you wrote. Yeah.

 

Kyle: Hmm. live. then it can be a write-off. Can be a write-off. Now, just with that fragment of information about me, do I have ADHD? Does that sound like something a guy

 

Skye Waterson: Well,

 

Kyle: that

 

Skye Waterson: Peter Shankman is a very well known ADHD

 

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: business owner in New York, and he likes to write books by getting on planes. So do with that information what you will.

 

Kyle: There you go. I I know I know Peter. I've been on his email list for years and years and years, as a matter of fact. very cool. So tell us a little bit more. you you hinted at your background there, but you're going, you know, I was going for my PhD PhD and then all of a sudden kind of got diagnosed with this. Is it something that you had never really considered before? Or where did where did that kind of come from? And then it put you down this path of working with business owners. Unpack that a little bit more.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so I was an academic. I was going down that route. I finished my master's, burned out so hard. I was working like three jobs, finishing my master's, just trying to do it all. And I hit that point where I was like, okay, I don't even know if academia is for me. I took a year off, literally went and worked in a bakery, went to art school, like just totally different life. And When I decided to come back, because I'd actually gotten a scholarship for my PhD, I was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, I need to figure out what's happening. And so I went to my university's learning center and I just said, Hey, I think I'm a bit weird. Do you know why? And I just let them do like all of the tests, all of the stuff. And I had no idea. I thought maybe dyslexia, maybe this, maybe that. And they came back and they said, Well, we don't know about these other ones, but you we definitely think you should go get tested for ADHD. And that was when I really found out that you could have ADHD in adulthood. Cause when I was diagnosed, it wasn't really discussed that much. And I had to go on the internet and look up like, how does this even work? Like what even is adult ADHD? And that really led me into because I'm an academic, I started researching it. I started learning about it, going to the getting some dusty books out of the library and that kind of thing. And and I started writing about it on the internet. I had a blog. and I would post about what I did to hold myself accountable. And that really grew and grew until when COVID hit, we couldn't teach anymore. It was all online. So I was looking for something to do. And yeah, I found I found coaching and I really loved it.

 

Kyle: Hmm. Awesome. My son and my nephew both have been diagnosed with ADHD. My son is one who it's very much just in his mind. He's not very active physically, but you can just tell of like,

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm.

 

Kyle: Thomas is no longer with us this during this conversation. very much somebody who in six-month sprints will like get super obsessed over this topic. And just like learn everything.

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm.

 

Kyle: He had his NBA basketball season. He had his Marvel season. He had this and that. My nephew, Bennett, is a little bit more on the active ADHD side. When he walks into the room, you know it. and is much more on the vocal and loud side of that. So I've seen that kind of in there. And as I think about their

 

Skye Waterson: So I've seen that kind of

 

Kyle: career paths in the future, yes, that diagnosis is going to impact, I can see kind of how they go about their work. And how they tackle work. I would say in for for my listeners in the remodeling side of things, these are men and women who are using their hands, they're on the field a lot, they're juggling so much. Frankly, I think as a business owner, maybe a little bit of that ability to jump from one thing to the next may be a benefit to us. I want to kind of talk through a few different things. One is just how to you use the word accountability and how some of these tools to have practical strategies. I wanna kinda dive into those. and then also kind of talk about you know, delegation, leading a team. Where would you like to start? Where would you like to start, Skye? What's your favorite topic? Go ahead.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Well, I think the best thing to Well, I think what we want to talk about, especially with entrepreneurship, is the idea of the strengths and weaknesses of ADHD. Because entrepreneurship is a very unique space. And we talk about this a little bit in the research, where you can kind of make your own world a bit more than you can in a job. So One of the things we know is that the strengths of ADHD really do fit well in the entrepreneurial world. The ability to come up with creative ideas, to always feel like you're moving, to hyperfixate, you know, that kind of thing can be really, really helpful. But we have the strong weaknesses, the executive functioning, the working memory, the time blindness. Like these things don't go away. when you start a business and when you lead a team. In fact, they get worse. So the strategies that you need are really around what what I teach is how do you focus? So how do you go from overwhelmed to focused? How do you get your time back? And how do you do that in an ADHD friendly way? Because there's traditional ways that don't really fit us. And then How do you get consistent revenue? Because we can have inconsistent revenue. And a lot of times the consistency comes from habitual set and forget systems that will bore the heck out of somebody with Andre with ADHD who wants to blow everything up and start again. And I totally get that. but we need that consistency in order to scale.

 

Kyle: Interesting. All right. So let's break those, let's break those down. Overwhelm to focus. How do you focus? Then let's get into kind of the the time back part. So talk to us about how does somebody and and I would imagine whether you have ADHD or does it is it also fair to say, or you're just somebody that gets distracted easily? Maybe it doesn't control you or or you're not as strong propensity to some of these things. I think a lot of us are just juggling so much. Talk to us about the how do you focus part.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, yeah. And you know, ADHD is very common in people who are entrepreneurs, but also, you know, we talk about subclinical. You know, you might have some traits, but not enough for a full diagnosis and this will still be helpful.

 

Kyle: Hm, interesting.

 

Skye Waterson: Or maybe it's just a Friday afternoon and it really gets ya. So when we're talking about this idea of focus, the first thing we want to understand is we wanna understand what is our twenty percent that's gonna get our eighty percent return. Like what's the game changer thing in your business? I think this is something that we always have because I'll have clients who come to me and they'll say, Look, everything's on fire. Everything is burning down in my life. I I don't even know. I start my day and then I just like answer, you know, respond to things that are going on and then that's the end of my day. and then I'm just trying to, you know, survive until the next one. So when we have all of these different things. It's usually about prioritizing rather than about focus. And then once we've prioritized, we can focus on the things we're not we're not doing that are sometimes being

 

Kyle: Mm.

 

Skye Waterson: pushed a little bit more. You're like, I'm too busy. I'm so busy. so I could take you through the prioritization filter if you'd like.

 

Kyle: Please. Yeah, please.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, awesome. So this process, we've built it out over the past five years. I've tested this with literally hundreds of people and business owners. with ADHD at the moment. So this way this works is you start by going, okay, let's take everything that's in your head. Don't ignore the task list that you wrote down on pieces of paper just for the minute and your emails, but just focus on what's in your head. We want to start by putting that somewhere you're going to reuse. So do the brain dump. Yes, it's really helpful. We have working memory struggles. So do the brain dump. But once you've done that, you want to look at that list and you want to go, okay, What do I need to do today, or there will be a negative external consequence, like a real consequence? And for people who are struggling with that, because a lot of times it feels like everything is on fire, I use the waiting room metaphor, which is if I got stuck in a waiting room, if my day went sideways, what would I still need to do on my phone? Or I would need to call someone and say, hey, I can't come in tomorrow because this isn't prepped. That's urgent. Today. Nothing

 

Kyle: Okay.

 

Skye Waterson: else is urgent. And I've worked with people who have two hundred things on their urgent list. And most people, when you do that exercise, they end up with less than five.

 

Kyle: For for example, well, yes, I need to do marketing. That is something that's in my head. I need to put that out there. But I have leads we're working on this and like it's not negative external consequence immediately as far as prioritization

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm.

 

Kyle: goes. Okay.

 

Skye Waterson: Exactly. And so what that allows you to do is it allows you to go, okay, everything else isn't actually urgent today. So if I knock off those truly urgent things, I have time in my day. And I can spend that time on what is the most important thing, what is that game changer thing that if I did it, it would change my business. For example, the higher. that's gonna get you more time. Or maybe you need to actually start producing some content so people know that you exist. You know, that

 

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: kind of thing. That's what you can spend the rest of your time on. So usually and then we expand the exercise out to like a week and there's other systems. You guys can just DM me prioritize on Instagram at unconventional organization and I give you the prioritization filter. I always love to give that one away. But what this allows you to do is it allows you to say, okay, I don't have a million things on my plate. That's what it feels like because I have time blindness and wokey memory struggles and a whole bunch of ADHD things. So now I can actually get to grips with the fact that there is something that is important that I do have time for that I just don't want to do.

 

Kyle: Hmm. I think it's down to that. Tell me about just define time blindness and working memory issues.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so working memory is essentially the ability to hold information in your head and manipulate it. So if someone says, Hey, can you you know, remember this and then also can you do another exercise and then remember it later? So it's the classic, like, as you're running out the door, someone says, when you go to the shops, can you remember to grab milk? And you go, sure. And you don't write it down. You just hope that you'll remember. That's that's working memory. And then time blindness.

 

Kyle: Or or for example or for example, my son who needed to take things to the student painter's headquarters this morning, but he had something else, an errand he was running before that. And maybe he ran out the door, drove the hour to headquarters, and then recognized that he left it on the counter. That's maybe why I was smirking

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, yeah. We've all been there.

 

Kyle: while I was, yeah, with working memory. Okay. And then time blindness is what?

 

Skye Waterson: Time blindness is an interesting one. I didn't even know about it until I looked into ADHD in more depth. When we look at the research, if you struggle with ADHD, you do not have a very good sense of the scale and reproduction of time. You don't tend to really understand how long something takes. You don't have an internal clock in your brain. If you do, it's not very accurate. And so what that means is we can be like, This is gonna take three hours, it takes two minutes. And we could say this is gonna take two minutes, it takes three hours. The way I like to describe it to to business owners that I work with is you live your life in what needs to be done today and what needs to be done next week and the future. And that's kind of it.

 

Kyle: Hm, interesting. Very interesting. And then you also mentioned weakness and executive function. that side of things,

 

Skye Waterson: Mm.

 

Kyle: define that maybe.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so executive function is your ability to it's sort of associated with the prefrontal cortex, and it's your ability to plan and execute on goals. And so working memory and time blindness are one of the are two of the struggles that affect it. We can also have impulsivity, which is more of the classic ADHD thing that people talk about, where we I call it pivot chasing when it comes to business. We'll be like, I want to pivot. AI is really, should we start an AI branch of this thing? Should we do this? Should we do that? You know, like people will pivot around and and never quite go deep. so that's a really common struggle with ADHD. But the ones that that I find people don't talk about as much are the working memory and the time blindness. Those will kind of trip you up.

 

Kyle: Interesting. I'm kind of smirking as you go through because again, my son is coming to my mind. Last week he comes up to our room and he's talking about this or that and and the topic of tattoos come up. Well, remember when I was when I was gonna turn 18, I was gonna do a tattoo. And there's some reasons that he didn't at that point, but it it came back up. And I in my head I'm going, I just need to pivot the conversation to something else. And I just started talking about something totally else. And he just totally forgot that he was a He was trying to pin us down on a decision related

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm.

 

Kyle: to the tattoo thing. so that was that was when you were talking about that was interesting. So the the how do you focus? You said, look, to go for into prioritization filter is the 20% of what we can do that's gonna net us the 80% of return. going back to your own personal example, you're going, you know, I figured out I needed to get some accountability around me. So Was that the was that the learning of the prioritization filter? Was that plus some accountability? What's some more of that 20%, or even just share kind of your story?

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so that was a interesting one. I knew that I've always learned in public. It's actually one of the reasons I have a podcast. I was very committed to continuing to read academic research once I finished my academic career and I wanted to be able to do that and so I started a podcast because I needed to read papers in public or I was never gonna do it. The amount of times I've been like an hour before a podcast being like, right, time to read this academic article right now. Like this is when it's happening. This is when I have the dopamine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Kyle: Because your brain works in today or right now, next week or long term is what you were describing, okay.

 

Skye Waterson: Exactly. But when you're trying to focus, I one of the things that I wrote about that it still to this day I get messages about is the dopamine dial, where we're going, okay. I have to focus, but I don't want to focus. Like this is the reality of the ADHD experience. And it's okay. It's totally normal. And the way I like to describe it is okay, imagine you had to do that thing, what it is. You had to fill out a document or you had to read a paper or whatever it is. In my case, you had to read some articles. And you don't want to do it. Now imagine I said, look, you have to do it, but you can do it in a hammock. By the beach. It's the perfect amount of sunny and windy and everything like that. The music that's playing from the bars nearby is your favorite kind of music and you have the exact drink that you want in your hand. But you have to do the work. Would you want to do it now?

 

Kyle: Sounds great. Yeah, sounds great.

 

Skye Waterson: What do you think? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, respond that way. They're like, okay, that's perfect. Yes, I I would love that. And that allows me to say, well, what you're doing is you're upping the dopamine around what you're doing. So when you don't want to do something, what we really want to do is we wanna say, Okay, let's figure out how to make your environment a space where you do want to do that task. And I have a whole bunch of there's I have a process that I teach where you step into focus. So usually we go from a higher dopamine state where you're like doing something that you want to do at your desk and then we dial it down to just sort of being able to focus. and I teach that process. But essentially the idea is you don't want to not do the thing because it's boring in its entirety. You want to do it because it's boring and nothing about everything, your environment, the whole system retort this dopamine detox model, which I don't agree with based on the research, which is to say, and then you gotta do it in the most boring place possible with no lights and, you know, you just gotta grind it out. And now you're like, well, this really sucks. I'm definitely not gonna do it.

 

Kyle: Hmm, interesting. All right, so we got prioritization filter, we got dopamine dial. I feel like you need to give us another how do you focus part and then we'll move on to

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah.

 

Kyle: getting the time back.

 

Skye Waterson: Well, okay, so if we're talking about the step into focus routine, which is the other thing that I teach around this, the key is you wanna go in and you wanna say, what is what is the thing that's going to get me to my desk? That's the first thing, a part of the step into focus routine. And so for a lot of people, you know, this is the conversation of, okay, maybe my desk could be outside. Like that's the first one. Could we improve We talk about the the five senses. There you go, the five sensors stack, sensory stacking. And, you know, if we think about the your environment as one, what you can see, what you can touch, what you can taste, but it doesn't have to be a ton of ice cream every time. We're not asking you to do that. but you know, some people really love LaCroix drinks or things like that, something really sour.

 

Kyle: I think I think LaCroix drinks are lame. It's like either give me

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah.

 

Kyle: a pop either give me a pop, we call it pop soda, whatever, or just give me water. What is this bubbly barely taste in it? Anyways,

 

Skye Waterson: Ha ha ha.

 

Kyle: stay focused, Skye. Five sensory stack.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, so we're thinking about how do we start? You know, the first step of the step into focus routine is what do you need to get to your desk? And eventually, if there's enough different sensory benefits to coming to your desk, I get to look at this and see this, and I'm doing this at a coffee shop and someone's bringing me my favorite coffee. So, like I'm taking the whole thing outside. Eventually you get to a place where even the most unfocused person, because I I've taught this many, many times over the years. will be like, Okay, fine, I'll set up my disc and that is the start of the statement of focus routine.

 

Kyle: And the more you practice it, the better you get at it.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, well, one of the interesting things that I find is that the biggest reason people will struggle with systems and they actually won't do the thing they need to do isn't that they can't. It's that they don't want to put themselves in a situation where it's easier. They feel like they're failing. And this is the thing. They

 

Kyle: Hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: feel like they have to do it the neurotypical way. They feel like, if I

 

Kyle: This is a crut if I do it this way, it's just a crutch.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, it's a crutch, you know. Like if I if I turn on some music, I listen I I'm I watch Twitch, you know, like I'll listen people playing video games, that'll be kind of my like high dopamine activity, you know, eat some dates, drink some tea, like all that kind of stuff. And, you know, there's lots of people who are like, that's a crutch. I feel like I shouldn't need it. And as a result, they literally will fail out of their greatest dreams. Because that is the practical steps to get you into the position where you build the systems that build the business that build your goals.

 

Kyle: Hmm. So Skye, I knew this was gonna be interesting, but it's it's very interesting because yes, we're focusing on the weaknesses part. We're focusing on this. Some people listening to this are going, that's kind of crazy, guys. Like, I have an idea. Sit down at your desk and knock out the work that you need to have done. And hey, that's a gift. If you're able to do that and it's not hard and it's not strenuous and it doesn't wear you out to do that, wonderful. That's a gift. at the same time, there's a lot of people listening to this going, that's me, man. Like I do need to really focus more on prioritization filters. I kind of relate to that dopamine dial and that whole step into focus routine. While it sounds a little wild and weird to some people, it actually could be the thing that gets me into better focus more consistently. And if you have ADHD, you need that. You need that. We were joking a little bit at the start. My my wife goes, Yeah, you got some ADHD. And she says it's my superpower. And Cassie and I, my my producer and and employee Cassie and I were talking about a little bit. And I thought, you know, I I definitely have a decent amount of distract. I'm very easily distracted. I think there's some of this, like you just mentioned subclinical. I would diagnose myself as subclinical, maybe ADHD of of that. But I have different things. Like I have this little thing in my thing where I can click here, and every time I get an email done, I can click that and go number five. I get excited

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Kyle: to click that. You know, I have a timer here. Okay, Kyle, just trick yourself into 10 minutes or eight minutes and push the start key, whatever it's gonna do. We have a thing that we're doing multiple times a week. have you ever heard of focus mate?

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, I used it. Mm-hmm.

 

Kyle: I bet you, I bet you it's it's great. and we've kind of made it our own little remodelers on the rise focus mate on Friday at 10 a.m. Cassie Bailey and I go on there and go, all right, hey, we're on Zoom. What are you gonna do for the 15 minutes? What are you gonna do for the next 15 minutes? And we just have our videos open on our other screen, but it helps us focus. Whatever works for you, do more of it. And by the way, if you have more propensity or you are ADHD, you're gonna have to work a little bit harder on the focus side. And to your point. You don't have to. You cannot work on these skills, but you're going to miss out on some of your dreams and some of the things that you want to build and grow. At the same time, don't forget there's wonderful strengths to this. Your creativity, your ability to hyperfixate on things, the fact that you're moving and grooving and that doesn't wear you out. There's people that would love that gift, right?

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean, that's one of the funny things about, you know, when we get into the side of getting your time back and then growing consistent revenue. Sometimes people say, Right, I need to grow consistent revenue. I need to hire a creative to figure it out. And I'm like, guys, you're the creative. Don't do that. Like, yeah, you know, like hire somebody who's gonna keep you consistent. Like, don't hire somebody else. Who's like you, and this is when we get into the the hiring process. I have a very specific hiring model that I recommend and we do with our own clients when we provide operational support. Do not hire somebody who is like you, who you're like, man, it's so great. We can just toss ideas back and forth because that is another creative person who has your strengths, and we do not need

 

Kyle: Hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: more of those.

 

Kyle: so that so the getting your time back has to do with kind of as you're growing your business, hiring to support some of those weaknesses that you have and playing into your team's strengths.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, exactly. This the stages that we talk about when it comes to getting your time back is the ADHD hiring method, trusting your team, making sure nothing drops, and then giving getting everything on as close to a single system as possible to support your working memory. And when

 

Kyle: Hm.

 

Skye Waterson: we talk about the hiring side of it, I call it test first hiring. We've done this with a number of clients now and it's been very successful. Where we don't Do an interview first. People I I often work with recruiters. They don't love this. So I apologize. But really what we don't want to do is we don't want to get you in fr in a room with somebody and you go, Hey, can you do the job? And they go, Totally. And then you guys have like a fun chat. Like that's not really helpful for anybody. What we want to do is we wanna say, Okay, cool. Can you just send us a video of yourself, you know, letting us know what you do? Amazing. Very easy to watch if you have ADHD. So you'll

 

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: have lunch and knock out like 10 videos and you'll be like, this person like really sounded like they knew they what they were talking about when we said, How did you solve this problem? You know, they didn't look at anything else. They were really like engaged and and I felt that they understood what they were doing. And then from there, the people that you like, we say, okay, well, let's give them a test project. We build our own test projects specifically to catch. Are you consistent? Can you catch mistakes? Like we build our test projects and we pay people for them as well to specifically identify whether they're going to have the skills that will match ADHD. So then we like, are you do you have the weakness skill match of ADHD? So you're going to

 

Kyle: Mm.

 

Skye Waterson: be able to support people? Can you catch mistakes? Can you double check? You know, a little bit of that. So we'll give them a test in general, but with those little additional pieces. in it and then when they're when they pass that test then we know okay this person is great you know they know what they're talking about they're gonna have though that that adjustment that's gonna work really well for our ADHD founders we had one client we we looked for eight hundred people to find somebody for she ran a catering company and you needed to be the kind of person who could read three unrelated emails and catch that in one of them somebody said, someone's allergic, and go, someone's allergic. Like put that in this document. And we ended up getting someone from Montana. sorry, not Montana. Where did you say you were from?

 

Kyle: Michigan

 

Skye Waterson: Michigan. We got someone from Michigan. I apologize. I

 

Kyle: Skye sky Montana's not even close to Michigan.

 

Skye Waterson: know. Please cut that out.

 

Kyle: No, we ain't cut we ain't cut n none of that out. Yeah.

 

Skye Waterson: gosh. Okay. So yeah, so we ended up getting someone from Michigan and they were great. And the person that I ended up working with only met my founder after they'd gone through that process because then I could come in and I could say, Look, you guys might not like get along immediately. It might feel a bit awkward right off the bat. You might be like, This person

 

Kyle: Hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: isn't like fun. And I wanted to work with somebody fun. But very quickly you will find that this is gonna be, this is, you know, hopefully gonna be the person who really, really supports you to reach your goals. And and that's what happened. They recently switched over to to full time. You know, it's been amazing and really helpful for the building out the systems. And that's like that's step one of getting your time back is actually getting a team that's gonna support you and not just another person who struggles with the same struggles you have.

 

Kyle: Yeah. I think the way you're one thing that one thing that I think a a lot about and that I think all of us need to continue to grow and skill in is having really strong self-awareness. And I think sometimes if we're like you mentioned earlier, the more that you are clear with the strengths and weaknesses of whether it's subclinical ADHD or full out ADHD, and the more you embrace that and then start to build business and systems around that, you just unpack the hiring side of things of going, look, we've got a custom hiring method for supporting these specific types of business owners who have ADHD. at even at the start of this interview, I think I was like, well, Skye, you know, we can we can talk about ADHD, but it's kind of like the same thing for all of us. We all lack focus. Well, no, not necessarily. As you're unpacking this, it's like, no, there's unique things About somebody who truly has ADHD or close to that on the sub clinical that is super unique. so trusting your team looks a little bit different. Even the other things you're mentioning of don't make, you know, make sure anything drops and that side of things. I'm guessing that each one of those have some specific aspects of them to better support somebody with ADHD. That frankly, some of those steps might not even be necessary if you are a business owner. And a leader who doesn't struggle with some of this. Is that fair?

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, one hundred percent. I always say, look, neurotypicals are different and I ha I don't work with them, so I have no idea. Don't come to me for advice on what neurotypicals should do. because yeah, I'm looking for the people who are in that space where they're like, I have three ide three ideas every kind of ten minutes and I need to find a way to channel this energy in a direction. and that's a really interesting group of people and it is a challenge. Like one of the things that kind of comes up a lot, and we were talking about this yesterday, is if you have ADHD or you have ADHD traits and you've managed to organize yourself well enough to get to a place where you have a team or you need a team, it's very frustrating to figure out that none of the things that you learned were useful now.

 

Kyle: Mm.

 

Skye Waterson: Because Yeah, it's great that you have a timer and you figured out time blocking on your calendar and you like to spend Sunday planning out what you're gonna do and then act on it on Monday. But now you have other people. You have other people, you have other people's tasks, you have other people who have, you know, who are gonna forget things, you have other people who you know, are gonna have things in their own task list, and you can end up in this really weird and very uniquely ADHD situation where you go, hey, Did I give you that task? Can you remind me if I gave you a task? Like that's a very, very significant tell.

 

Kyle: Hmm. That is yeah, that's a problem. So the unpack that don't make don't make sure. Yeah, don't I wrote down, I was typing as you went, it says don't make sure anything drops. In other words, how do you make sure that nothing drops is kind of what you're getting at. unpack that one and then I

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah.

 

Kyle: wanna I wanna take us in a different direction.

 

Skye Waterson: So how do you make sure nothing drops? One of the things you want to do, I mean, first you want to make sure you hire someone who's gonna be great and making sure nothing drops. That's like number one. Number two is you wanna move everything into a transparent place. So when we talk about this, we talk with your team, you wanna have trust. So you wanna do all the great team building things, you know, meet with them, ask them what's working, what's not working, make sure you get that temperature check, all that kind of stuff. But you want also want to have transparency. So it's not micromanaging, but you do want to be in a position where you can see all of your team's tasks, everything that they're doing all together. So this is kind of where we do an elevated version of the prioritization filter. And we also give this one away. So if you want to DM me prioritize on Instagram, I give this one away too. We give away all the prioritization filters. but essentially what we're looking at here is saying, okay. How do I build a system where my team are going to be able to also like put their tasks? This is what I'm working on. This is my priority. This is the thing I have to do first for a couple of reasons. One, you will forget what you gave somebody. And it's very frustrating to have to constantly message them and be like, hey, did you did I give you this task? Because I took it

 

Kyle: Mm-hmm.

 

Skye Waterson: off my task list and now it's gone. Because that's how it works. It also allows you to identify obsolete tasks because again, you know, you're pivoting, hopefully not too much, but you are going to be pivoting. So there will be things that people are doing and you'll go, Why is this taking so long? Like I thought they had time, but they seem really busy because they're doing something that you no longer consider important and you forgot that that's what they were doing.

 

Kyle: Mm.

 

Skye Waterson: So that's the other one that you wanna have. and then also just making sure that the person who manages these systems isn't you. So you find your most consistent team member, and this will become important as we go. We wanna have systems that work for us and for our brains, but then we want them to be run by our most consistent team member. You're using the situation and you're using the skills and you're bringing that together to not have to worry about it at all.

 

Kyle: Got it. Got it. you mentioned consistent revenue. We're gonna count we're gonna couch that for for another time. I'm I'm wanting to respect your time. I had till for 45 minutes here. We started a little bit late because my internet wasn't working. so I wanted to not go that route. but just wanted to go a little bit more digging into your mind and also you sharing a little bit about specifically how you help people and what you do. So if I were to say, Skye, two things. One, what are some of your other favorite things that you teach related to this topic. And then two, give us a little peek at like how you work and how you interact with business owners, whether they're in Montana or Michigan.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah. Working memory struggles, guys. It's real.

 

Kyle: Nah.

 

Skye Waterson: so I would say that one of my other favorites is the decision making process. A lot of times we will ruminate on decisions and not even remember that we ruminated on them or come back and be like, I think I'm gonna do this. And you'll look at the person and they go, Yeah, you already decided this. Like, why are we even having this conversation still? And you know, so I I teach a process specifically to help you. make decisions you're confident with, understanding nothing can be perfect, and then move on. So that's one of the one of the s things I teach that I love. And in terms of working with me, I mean there's three sort of levels to working with me. Either way, you get the model. Like we teach the focus balance growth model. We want you to be able to understand how to work with your ADHD and and you know be really successful, make money, hire people, do all of those things. We believe that people with ADHD should be able to scale. Like we should be able to do it. We just need the systems and the strategies. And we have three options. You can work with us in a community where I actually in two hours I'm going to start teaching. I teach once a week. You can also add on one-on-one coaching. So you can meet with me one-on-one. We can go through things together. And my team, my wonderful team, including my husband who's a former programmer and a bunch of other people can help with some of the operational support as well. So if you're somebody who's like, this is great, but I would like you to hire for me and I would like you to build the system for me. I don't want to do it by myself, then we can actually do that for you as well, which is something that we are really proud to be able to do.

 

Kyle: Very cool. you guys can look in the show notes or wherever you're watching this, the link to unconventional organization.com or Instagram unconventional organization.com. Now, you Americans, we spell it with a Z, organization with a Z. Sky's fancy and spells it with an S, organization. So type that in correctly. S-A-T-I-O-N

 

Skye Waterson: I'm so sorry. Yeah.

 

Kyle: at the end. so you look that up, look up the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. and you have a super unique vein of coaching and focus. And my hope is that there's a handful of folks listening to this specifically that are going, wow, here's somebody that has gone deep into understanding the ADHD side of things. She's working with business owners, and hopefully there's a few, a handful of people that. are going to reach out to you and by working on these skills, I can imagine that it will be the unlock for a lot of folks who are struggling to kind of combat some of the challenges that come with having ADHD.

 

Skye Waterson: Amazing. I'm excited.

 

Kyle: Yeah. So people, if you have ADHD, don't move on to your next thing. Hyper focus and stay focused on clicking on the link and then don't get distracted. Fill out the form and reach out to her before you move on to your next thing because you're probably thinking of an awesome other idea. Was that fair or was that a low blow was that a low blow sky?

 

Skye Waterson: There's a reason that it's really easy to get to know me and I would say number one, binge binge the podcast. If you binge the podcast,

 

Kyle: There you

 

Skye Waterson: you'll you'll have a good idea of whether this is gonna work.

 

Kyle: There go. I like it. Cool. Skye, thank you so much for your time for dialing in from New Zealand. you got you're basically so it's coming up on winter, it's the fall here, so it's the spring there. And then when it's winter here, it's gonna be summer. It's crazy.

 

Skye Waterson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

Kyle: Does the when I flush the toilet, does it really go counterclockwise there?

 

Skye Waterson: I wouldn't know. I'd have to go to America to find out.

 

Kyle: No, up here it goes clockwise. Down there, I hear it goes counterclockwise.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah. I don't know. I haven't checked.

 

Kyle: Okay. All right. I will research on my end, you research on your end and we'll report back our findings. Or just

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah.

 

Kyle: leave it be. Actually I prefer it to be a total mystery for me. Then when I get on the plane, when I fly down there, I can be surprised.

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah, I was about to say, when you fly down here and you do a podcast with us, we can do a live checking.

 

Kyle: There we go. There we go. And people listening will go, Wow, these two don't have any ADHD tendencies as they're getting up from their podcast to check

 

Skye Waterson: Yeah.

 

Kyle: the toilet flush. Good. Keep on keep up the good work. Thank you

 

Skye Waterson: Ha ha ha.

 

Kyle: so much for what you're doing.

 

Skye Waterson: No worries.

 

Kyle: All right, take care.

 

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.