The ADHD Skills Lab

If the word accounting makes your attention disappear, this episode is for you.

Skye sits down with Joe Dunaway - founder of Vici Financial, accountant, business owner, and ADHDer - to talk about why so many ADHD entrepreneurs avoid their numbers, and how to understand them without overcomplicating things or forcing yourself into systems you won’t maintain.

This isn’t about becoming good at accounting.

It’s about knowing enough to make decisions, reduce background stress, and stop guessing about your business.

We cover:

• Why accounting causes shutdown for ADHD brains
• The real cost of avoiding your numbers
• The fastest way finances get messy (and how to stop it)
• How to separate signal from noise in your financials
• When numbers actually become useful instead of overwhelming

If you’ve been telling yourself “I’ll look at it later” — this conversation will help you finally look, without spiraling.

Connect with Joe:

https://www.vicifinance.com/

Instagram: @vicifinancial

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Looking for the Bottleneck Reset Workshop?

Click here for details:

https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/bottleneck-reset-workshop-wednesday-jan-21st

Kids with ADHD are not just more likely to struggle academically. They are more visible, more misunderstood, and often less liked by peers and teachers.

In this Research Recap, Skye and Will unpack a study on ADHD, social status, and bullying, and talk honestly about what it felt like to stand out in school for reasons you did not choose.

This is not a conversation about extreme bullying or obvious cruelty. It is about the quieter experience many ADHD kids grow up with. Being noticeable. Being different. Being picked last, corrected more often, or feeling out of sync with everyone else.

If school felt harder than it should have, even when you could not explain why, this episode will likely hit close to home.

What we cover:

• Why kids with ADHD are more visible in the classroom, but not for positive reasons
• How peer likability and teacher relationships shape vulnerability over time
• The difference between obvious bullying and subtle social exclusion
• Why being “the noticeable kid” can quietly rewire how school feels emotionally
• What this research helps explain for adults still unpacking their school experience

If you want a copy of the paper we discuss, just ask us and we will send it to you.

Want more of Will’s work? Go check out HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to his YouTube channel

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Looking for the Bottleneck Reset Workshop? Click here for details:

https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/bottleneck-reset-workshop-wednesday-jan-21st

Growing a business is hard.

Doing it with ADHD - while raising five kids - can make you feel like your brain is actively working against you.

In this episode, Skye talks with Tiana Sutton, a fitness instructor, community builder, and mother of five, about realizing she had ADHD later in life - not through childhood struggles, but through business, memory issues, and the feeling that she couldn’t keep up with herself anymore.

They talk honestly about working memory falling apart, starting things with energy and losing momentum, learning how to sell without pressure, and what it looks like to keep showing up even when progress feels invisible.

This isn’t a success story or a hustle episode.

It’s a real conversation about understanding your brain after you’re already overwhelmed - and deciding to keep building anyway.

Connect with Tiana

Tiana is the founder and instructor at Bluebird Wellness, where she helps people reconnect with their bodies through movement, community, and care.

Website: https://www.bluebird.life

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluebird.life/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BluebirdWellnessTexas

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Looking for the Bottleneck Reset Workshop? Click here for details:
https://unconventionalorganisation.circle.so/checkout/bottleneck-reset-workshop-wednesday-jan-21st

If you have ADHD, you probably know this pattern. You’re foggy, scattered, or stuck… until a deadline hits. Then suddenly, you’re laser-focused, productive, unstoppable. And afterwards, you’re wrecked.

In this episode, Skye and William Curb from Hacking Your ADHD unpack why hyperfocus feels like the only way to get things done, and why it quietly creates more stress, burnout, and long-term chaos than most people realize. 

Using research on university students, we explore how executive function difficulties change the way ADHD brains access focus, why more ADHD symptoms often lead to more hyperfocus (not less), and why relying on pressure is not a sustainable strategy, even if it looks productive on the surface. 

This episode is for late-diagnosed adults, professionals, and business owners with ADHD who keep asking themselves: 

“Why do I only function when everything’s urgent?” 

“And why does it always cost me afterwards?” 

What we cover:

- Why hyperfocus shows up most when things feel critical or overwhelming 
- How executive function difficulties push ADHD brains into last-minute intensity 
- The difference between intense focus and sustainable focus 
- How hyperfocus borrows energy from your future self 
- What this pattern means for productivity, stress, and burnout long-term

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Ads are overwhelming for a lot of ADHD business owners, not because they are bad at marketing, but because the information is scattered, noisy, and contradictory.

In this episode, Skye talks with ads expert Jeremy Pogue, founder of Summit Acquisition, about how ads actually work at a high level, what they are and are not responsible for, and how to think about them without spiraling into complexity.

This is a grounding conversation designed to help you understand the landscape before you decide anything.

What we cover

• Ads as awareness, not instant results
• Why starting small matters emotionally and financially
• The role of time and patience in ad performance
• Common misunderstandings that create anxiety
• How to tell if ads even belong in your business right now

Connect with Jeremy: Instagram: jeremy_pogue. YouTube: @Jeremy_Pogue

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Video is everywhere, but very little of it is designed with ADHD in mind.

In this Research Recap, Skye and William Curb from Hacking Your ADHD unpack a qualitative study exploring how people with ADHD actually experience video content. From captions to pacing to visual overload, they look at what helps, what hurts, and why one size never fits all.

They also talk about why many ADHD viewers adapt by speeding up videos, multitasking, or using video as background stimulation, and how those habits make a lot more sense once you understand the research.

This is a grounded look at accessibility, attention, and why flexibility matters more than rules when it comes to ADHD and learning.

What we cover

• How ADHD viewers experience video differently
• Why captions help some people and frustrate others
• The impact of pacing and playback speed on focus
• Why redundancy can improve comprehension
• What accessibility really means for ADHD

If you want a copy of the research paper discussed in this episode, DM VIDEO to on Instagram to @unconventionalorganisation and we will send it to you.

Want more of Will’s work? Go check out HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to his YouTube channel

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Skye sits down with Carly Braker, founder of Avialan Blue, to talk about building a high tech areospace engineering consultancy while navigating ADHD. Carly shares how she masked symptoms growing up, why the “real world” hit harder, and the adjustments she had to make when deep focus, sensory overwhelm, and impostor feelings collided with entrepreneurship.

What we cover:

• Why gifted kids often miss their own ADHD signs
• The crash that happens when school structure disappears
• The identity shift from employee to founder
• What it took to create stability in a high focus consulting business
• How behaviour mapping helped her create systems that actually work

Curious to see more of Carly’s work? You can find it here: https://www.avialanblue.com/adhdskillslab/

Connect with Carly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlybraker/

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

People love to say ADHD comes with superpowers. The research is more nuanced.

In this Research Recap with William Curb from Hacking Your ADHD, Skye and Will examine two papers that look at ADHD strengths in careers. They discuss the themes that appear across 79 studies, the stories from qualitative interviews, and the complicated truth about strengths that can help and hurt depending on context.

What we cover:

• Why creativity and idea linking appear across ADHD career research
• Hyperfocus: strength, liability, or both
• How environment can support or sabotage ADHD strengths
• The emotional side of ADHD achievement before diagnosis
• The role of humor, resilience, and adaptive altruism

Want more of Will’s work? Go check out HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to his YouTube channel

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Most people with ADHD have one moment that stops them in their tracks. For Laura, it was finding her childhood journals filled with the word “focus” scribbled in every possible way.

In this conversation, Skye talks with Laura Key, host of the ADHD Aha! podcast, and VP of content at Understood.org. After interviewing more than 120 people about their ADHD stories, Laura shares her own. From finding her childhood journals to understanding how ADHD shaped her leadership, parenting, and emotional load, this is the moment everything starts to make sense.

They talk about late diagnosis, invisible overwhelm, the pressure women carry, and what Laura has learned from listening to so many ADHD journeys. It is warm, thoughtful, and full of the moments that make ADHD adults think, “I have lived this my whole life, I just never had the language for it.”

What we cover:

• The moment ADHD finally comes into focus
• Why so many women overlook their own symptoms for years
• What Laura learned from interviewing 120 ADHD guests
• Why recent research shows women trust ADHD podcasts more than any other medium

Where to Find Laura Key

Connect with Laura and explore her work here:

Instagram:

@understoodorg

LinkedIn:

Understood: https://www.linkedin.com/company/understood

Laura Key: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-key-720b7436/

Podcast:

ADHD Aha: https://www.understood.org/en/podcasts/adhd-aha

Research Mentioned in the Episode:

Study on why women trust ADHD podcasts:

https://www.understood.org/en/press-releases/new-study-finds-podcasts-help-women-with-adhd

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.

Can TikTok actually teach you about ADHD - or is it just feeding you misinformation?

In this Research Recap with William Curb from Hacking Your ADHD, Skye dives into a 2022 study analyzing the quality of ADHD content on TikTok. They explore how much of it is accurate, how much is personal storytelling, and why the most relatable content often isn’t the most reliable.

What we cover:

• Why #ADHD is one of TikTok’s biggest health hashtags
• The 3 types of ADHD videos researchers found
• Why “personal experience” and “misinformation” often overlap
• How even healthcare professionals get ADHD content wrong online
• How to spot credible ADHD information before you share it

Want more of Will’s work? Go check out HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to his YouTube channel

Disclaimer:

The information shared in this message, including any examples or stories, is for educational and illustrative purposes only. It’s not professional, medical, or financial advice. Every person’s ADHD journey is different, and results will always vary depending on your individual situation, effort, and circumstances.

While we share research-based tools and strategies, we can’t promise specific results or outcomes. Your progress will depend on factors like your goals, consistency, and environment.

Unconventional Organisation and its coaches are not responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content. Always seek guidance from qualified professionals before making significant personal, medical, or business decisions.

P.S. If you’re a founder who’s tired of the mad scramble of disorganized systems and stressful HR, and you want a business that feels as easy as plugging your headphones into an iPod shuffle, I’ve got something for you.

Want to grow your business? 

My Focused Balanced Growth Program has everything you need to build consistent ADHD-friendly routines and processes to grow. Click here to learn more.

Looking for a coach who's also an operator who'll turn your business into a finely-tuned profit and peace machine designed for your brain? 

I work with one company a month as a fractional consultant and COO, learning about your business and implementing systems that allow both trust & transparency with your team. Click here to book a call and discuss.