The ADHD Skills Lab

If you've ever tried to overhaul your finances in one weekend only to abandon the system a few days later, you're not alone. According to Diane Gardner, that's exactly why most financial systems fail for ADHD business owners.

Diane Gardner is a Mastery-Level Profit First Professional, certified tax strategist, certified cash flow strategist, and bestselling author who helps home service business owners build stronger cash flow and lasting profitability.

In this conversation with Skye, Diane explains why profit isn't something that's left over—it's something you intentionally build. They explore why ADHD business owners often approach money with an all-or-nothing mindset, how tiny 1% changes outperform complete financial overhauls, and why consistency beats motivation every time.

What We Cover

• Why revenue minus expenses equals profit keeps business owners living on what's left
• The simple 1% starting point that makes Profit First sustainable
• How to build a "profit muscle" instead of relying on willpower
• Why all-or-nothing thinking causes so many financial systems to fail
• The accountability habits that keep a money system working long after motivation fades
• Common profit leaks Diane sees in home service businesses

Connect With Diane Gardner

🌐 https://profitcoach4you.com

💼 https://linkedin.com/in/dianeberrethgardner

🎙️ Profitable Home Services Podcast (Apple Podcasts)

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.

Why does your ADHD feel manageable in one situation but overwhelming in another?

In this episode, Skye and Robbie explore a little-known 1997 review paper that challenged the traditional view of ADHD. Instead of seeing ADHD traits as fixed deficits, the authors argued that traits like attention shifting, hyperactivity, and impulsivity can become strengths or struggles depending on the environment.

Together, they unpack what the research actually says, why these ideas never became mainstream, and what they might mean for entrepreneurs and business owners navigating today's fast-changing world.

What You'll Learn

• Why ADHD can feel completely different from one environment to another
• The evolutionary theory behind attention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity
• What "response-ready" environments are—and why they matter
• Why school and entrepreneurship reward different ways of thinking
• Where the paper is compelling, and where the authors acknowledge its limitations

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.

You meet someone, become instant best friends, and a few months later they're gone. Then it happens again.

Most ADHD advice focuses on productivity, but Caroline Maguire believes we're missing something just as important: friendship. Caroline is a certified ADHD coach and the author of Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults.

In this conversation, Skye and Caroline explore why ADHD brains often rush into friendships, why traditional friendship advice falls flat, and how to build relationships that actually last without burning yourself out.

You'll walk away with a practical way to spot unhealthy friendship patterns before they cost you another connection.

What We Cover

• Why the impulsive friendship cycle happens
• Why traditional friendship advice doesn't work for ADHD adults
• The Ice Cream Scoop Method for balanced give-and-take
• How to spot one-sided friendships early
• Why interest-based activities make building friendships easier
• How to slow a friendship down without ending it

Connect With Caroline Maguire

• https://carolinemaguireauthor.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/authorcarolinem/?hl=en

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.

Meditation is one of the most common ADHD recommendations—but what does the research actually say?

In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and William Curb examine two studies on mindfulness and ADHD. The first explores an 8-week mindfulness program for primary school children, while the second compares mindfulness with structured psychoeducation for adults with ADHD.

The children's study found improvements in attention and psychological wellbeing. The adult study found something just as interesting: learning about ADHD in a structured group setting produced many of the same benefits as mindfulness.

The takeaway isn't that meditation doesn't work. It's that there are multiple evidence-based ways to engage with your ADHD—and the best approach is the one you'll actually stick with.

What We Cover:

• What an 8-week mindfulness program changed for 7- to 8-year-old children
• How researchers measured attention and psychological wellbeing
• How mindfulness compared with psychoeducation in adults with ADHD
• Where mindfulness showed unique benefits
• Why understanding your ADHD and connecting with others may matter as much as the specific technique

Want more of Will's work?

Visit HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe on YouTube.

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.

Every founder with ADHD has wondered whether they quit too early. A 2024 foraging study unexpectedly suggests the opposite may sometimes be true. Researchers built an experiment expecting ADHD traits to be a disadvantage, and instead discovered the average person stayed too long.

Skye and Robert explore what that means beyond the lab, why ADHD may be an advantage during the exploratory stage of entrepreneurship, why pivoting is not always a flaw, and why the same trait can become either a strength or a liability depending on the environment.

What We Cover:

• Why researchers expected ADHD traits to hurt performance, and what the data actually showed
• How "leaving too soon" turned out to be closer to the optimal strategy
• Why ADHD entrepreneurs may be overrepresented in the exploratory startup phase, but not in scaling
• The real costs of pivoting for teams, and when those costs are worth paying
• Why the same ADHD trait can be either a strength or a struggle depending on the environment

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.

She stared in the mirror one night, still wearing the workout clothes she'd put on that morning, and realized she couldn't remember if she'd had a sip of water all day.

Years before being diagnosed with ADHD, Sharon Pope was successfully leading startups while privately struggling with the basics of everyday life.

So she built the tool she wished she'd had: an AI task manager that follows up like a person instead of another notification.

In this conversation, Sharon shares how that breaking point became Shelpful, why she still relies on it every day, and what she's learned about building a company around a problem she still hasn't completely solved.

What We Cover

• Why doctors dismissed her ADHD because she was "too successful"
• The night she built the first Shelpful prototype in 24 hours
• Why human accountability didn't scale into a business
• How "Mega Remind" follows up until a task actually gets done
• Why she still depends on the product she built herself

Connect With Sharon Pope

Website: https://shelpful.com

Instagram: @shelpful

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.

You keep rereading the same task on your list. You know it matters. You still haven't started.

If that sounds familiar, it probably isn't a motivation problem. It may be because you're treating a project like it's a task.

In this episode, Skye and Robbie unpack why hidden complexity makes seemingly simple tasks feel impossible, why the ADHD brain mistakes importance for urgency, and how giving tasks a trusted "home" can dramatically reduce overwhelm. They also share practical strategies for breaking projects into manageable steps without falling into perfectionism or all-day hyperfocus. These ideas are grounded in the episode's central insight: urgency often comes from the fear of losing the task—not the deadline itself.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why some "tasks" are actually projects in disguise
• How hidden complexity leads to procrastination and overwhelm
• Why breaking a project down is progress—not procrastination
• The real reason everything starts to feel urgent with ADHD
• How to build a system you actually trust to hold your work
• What to do when you've stalled on a project and don't know how to restart

Whether you're running a business, managing a team, or simply trying to get through your to-do list, this episode will help you understand why certain tasks feel so much harder than they should—and what you can do about it.

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.

If planning your week, remembering the small stuff, or keeping up with admin feels harder than the actual work, you're not imagining it.

This week, Skye sits down with Mike Legett, an ADHD coach and executive functioning specialist who was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Mike studied molecular genetics at Emory before leaving graduate school when its vague, paperwork-heavy demands became unworkable. She went on to build a career as an internationally recognized swing and blues dance instructor and now helps adults with ADHD build systems that work with their brains instead of against them through the Center for Living Well with ADHD.

Together, Skye and Mike unpack why ADHD isn't a lack of effort. It is often a mismatch between the person and the systems they are expected to work within. They explore why planning, memory, time management, and admin can become the biggest sources of stress, and what actually changes when you stop relying on willpower alone.

If you've ever wondered why the "boring parts" of running a business seem to drain you more than the work you love, this conversation will leave you with a clearer understanding of what's really happening and what you can do to make life easier.

What We Cover

• Why planning and admin create so much friction for ADHD brains
• How paperwork and unclear expectations led Mike to leave academia
• Why "just push through it" usually makes things worse
• What changed when Mike stopped trying to manage everything alone
• How better systems reduce mental load without requiring perfect discipline
• Why working with your brain beats fighting against it

Connect With Mike Legett

https://www.mikelegett.com/

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.

Everyone says people with ADHD have "time blindness." But what does that actually mean?

In this Research Recap, Skye Waterson and Will Curb review a decade of research (2012–2022) on time perception in adults with ADHD. Rather than treating time as one skill, the research separates it into three: estimating how long something will take, reproducing a duration, and managing time day to day.

One finding stands out: many ADHD struggles begin with inaccurate time estimation. If your brain can't reliably predict how long a task will take, missed deadlines, last-minute work, and chronic lateness start to make much more sense. Skye and Will also explore what the research suggests actually helps—from visual timers and external cues to breaking projects into smaller pieces that are easier to estimate.

What You'll Learn

• Why ADHD affects time estimation, time reproduction, and time management differently
• The difference between circadian, interval, and millisecond timing
• Why visual timers often work better than clocks
• Why giving yourself "more time" usually isn't the solution
• How breaking projects into smaller steps improves time estimation
• Why external accountability is often more effective than self-imposed deadlines

Learn more from Will at HackingYourADHD.com or subscribe to the Hacking Your ADHD podcast.

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.

You don't need another productivity hack. You need systems that still work when your brain doesn't.

Cas Aarssen built the Clutterbug Method, hosted HGTV's Hot Mess House, and grew a global brand by stopping the fight against her ADHD and designing her home and business around how she naturally works.

In this conversation, she shares the hard lessons that came from burnout, why traditional organizing advice kept failing her, and how building systems around real habits instead of ideal ones changed everything. From running a team without endless SOPs to creating spaces that stay functional even on hard days, Cas explains what it actually takes to build systems that last.

If you've ever felt like you're constantly rebuilding your life from scratch, this episode offers a more sustainable way forward.

What We Cover

• Why burnout pushed her to rethink the way she worked
• Building systems around your actual habits instead of your ideal self
• The Clutterbug Method and why one organizing style doesn't fit everyone
• Delegating through ownership instead of endless SOPs
• Creating a home and business that work with an ADHD brain, not against it

Connect With Cas Aarssen

https://clutterbug.me/what-clutterbug-are-you-test

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.