ADHD planning, punctuality and the power of bite-sized tasks with Conor Doyle

Hi, we are the ADHD Skills Lab podcast. My name is Skye. And my name is Sarah. And we will be your hosts, chatting to you about practical ADHD strategies you can use, the research behind some of these strategies, as well as interviewing other professionals with ADHD about how they've developed skills and working through struggles in their lives. You might know us from Unconventional Organization, where we talk about this kind of stuff all day long. So we're super excited to have you along and we're going to chat through it together. 

So today we're going to be chatting with Connor Doyle. Connor is a hairstylist, a L'Oreal color specialist, and three-time winner of the Color Trophy. His work has been featured internationally across magazines, and he has a six-figure following as a content creator where he shares pretty hilarious, I was going through some of them the other day, educational hairdressing content. Connor is also one of our unconventional organizations, ADHD coaching clients. He started working with us last year, specifically working with one of our really amazing Australian coaches. So yeah, I'm really interested to hear more about you and more about the ADHD strategies that you've used. So welcome, Connor. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I can't wait to share. It's one of those things that the more I learn, the more I wanna learn. It's been such an interesting topic and the organization has definitely helped push me in that direction. So I'm really excited to chat about it for sure. Awesome, that's great. Yeah, so why don't you start just by saying, where are you based? So I'm based in Wicklow in Ireland. I basically live in the mountains, tucked away from the busy kind of city life. But I do, I travel an enormous amount of work. So I be in London quite a bit. I'm sometimes in Copenhagen, but Europe, sometimes America. So everywhere, which is a great thing to try put a routine to. Yes. I'm like, okay, we're definitely, definitely asking about that. Yeah. So how did you come to be diagnosed with ADHD? What was your experience like? It was something that I didn't really consider. Essentially within hairdressing, it's an industry that naturally has a lot of people with neurodivertities, particularly ADHD and things that lean a bit heavier on creative, practical mind-body type kind of kinetic work because it keeps us engaged. With hairdressing, you get those mini hits of dopamine every time that you finish a client, every time that you're in time. So it's sort of like it's on inbuilt dopamine you. And that's what I did for years and years. And then I went to education and everything was always sort of like systematic and structured because it's just how it always was. And then COVID hit. And I'm sure COVID kind of led to the diagnosis of a lot of people because our routines were kind of stripped away. And I lost quite a lot of money because of COVID. And all of my education and stuff had to be canceled, all my trips, things that couldn't be refunded. When I turned to an online model and very quickly that grew and I was doing all this admin that even the most neurotypical person would be kind of swallowed up by. It was something that I'd never done before. I had to become really structured and strategic with planning, organizing, punctuality. I had to have this long-term forethought, all this vision and stuff that built up very quick. So like emails, text messages, dates, times, deposits, invoices, all this business side of things. It was something that I wasn't used to. And very quickly I started to feel overwhelmed. And very quickly I started to feel like I was back in school, that sort of panic that like I'm drowning under all this work. And it just got worse and worse to the point that your executive function gets affected and everything then. So I started to find daily tasks quite challenging because the stress activated, you know, so much that even like a friend texting me would be stressful or even I became really forgetful to the point that I thought that I had Alzheimer's at the age of 27. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I've heard that before. Yeah. Yeah. But honestly, I was like, how is this happening? I'm also diabetic, which again, takes organization. And it's really important to be on top of that. And that started to slip by the wayside and everything kind of just, I felt it was just like becoming out of my reach. And I was talking to a client about it who actually was a child psychiatrist and was like, Oh, I'm having the worst week. How's your week? She was like, it sounds like you have ADHD. Have you ever been diagnosed? And I was like, No, because I didn't realize adults could even have it at this point. It was kind of right before the dawning of all the awareness that's happening now. So I took her advice, I went to my GP, who then referred me on to a psychiatrist. And from there I was like, no, even when I was sitting in the office, you know, obviously it's a really intense assessment and it takes a really long time. It was hours and hours. Even I still had that thing of being like, am I just making this up? You know, you kind of almost have that imposter syndrome yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you get told as well growing up, you're like, oh, everyone has something. And also it can't possibly be that because that's an excuse. There's like a lot of things that we just kind of hear through the ether that can make you feel like I can't really have ADHD. Of course. And it was sort of I didn't realize how much the stereotypes was ingrained in me about I thought it was because I was kind of reflecting on my school experience and in my head, I thought ADHD. as a child would be really disruptive, would be really, you know, the stereotypical kind of harmful things that were told that it's associated with. Whereas I was very quiet, but I was very introverted, I was very in my own head, I was a daydreamer, so it was actually all the signs there. And yeah, so at the end of it, he genuinely was like baffled. He was like, I can't believe you've gone this far without being diagnosed, because I had a really long history of mental health diagnoses that never fit. I've been diagnosed OCD, bipolar, I've been diagnosed with... general anxiety, any letters that you put together. I just never felt like they fit, but I knew something was up and this just kind of made it all come together for me. And how long did it take you to get diagnosed? What was that process like for you? So I'm really lucky because the shortage in specialists in Ireland at the minute is dire. It's very difficult even to go private. I was referred and I was on a waiting list for two years. And then just coincidentally, I started Googling. Surely there has to be somebody else because there was only really two people at the time. And a new guy had just started to practice in Dublin. So I reached out to him. I just called my GP straight away and was like, can you please swap my referral over? I think this person might have a bit more availability. And again, I'm quite privileged that I'm self-employed. I got a call one day and they're like, any chance you can come in tomorrow. I know it's a long shot and I was getting there. So I was quite lucky in that because I know for a lot of people, it takes a really long time. Yeah, no. And that's, that's one of the reasons I asked. That's really interesting. So when you initially reached out to unconventional organization, then what stage were you at in your diagnosis? What kind of support were you looking for? I had basically gone down the route of medication and thought, oh, this is going to fix everything. And, you know, for two weeks, that placebo is coming in strong. And you're kind of like, oh, my God, everything is working out. And then you realize, well, for me, anyway, nothing actually changed. I kind of felt like things had, and maybe it was a bit more, because obviously it's novel to you as well, right? You're like, oh, this isn't as awful, it's here, it's tedious. But all my systems are wrong. All my structures are wrong. And this is what I say to people whenever I'm chatting about it as well. I'm like, when you get to the adult stage of ADHD, it's not just the ADHD you're sort of managing. It's all your whole life up to this point of trying to fit into routines and systems that don't fit you. And now that I've taken the medication, I sort of almost start to panic then. I was like, oh my God, well, my baseline now is even worse. And I started to become really concerned of like, what are the steps? And I couldn't really find any accurate information. And even though I was privileged in getting the psychiatrist a bit sooner in terms of the actual holistic or the more cognitive work that needs to be done, that was impossible. The specialist here I just couldn't find. So I started listening to podcasts, Packing Your ADHD, and sure enough, yourself was chatting away on it. And I just was like, I need to talk to these people. This kind of seems like this is exactly it because I have a lot of work. My workload is really high. I have good capacity. I just don't know how to do it. And I don't know where even to start with the basics. And it was just such a breath of fresh air to one, hear that was a common thing. And then two, to hear that there are solutions and it can be so tailored and so custom. So what I was looking for was to really just pair back everything, see what worked, see what didn't, and then rebuild my systems going forward. Just rebuild everything you ever learned from the ground up. My whole life. For ADHD. Yeah, essentially. Just that. And that's exactly what it was. And it was really challenging, you know, but it's still the best thing I've ever done for sure. And I guess now that you've, you worked for quite a few months, developing a lot of those strategies, how did you find figuring out what worked for you? What are your go-to strategies now? It definitely took a lot of trial and error. One thing I definitely would advise for anybody going into it, because I've talked to a lot of people. And I know everyone's different on their journey, but it's that you have to give it everything. You know, you can't just go in and be like, Oh, see what goes. And it's like going to the gym, right? Or it's like one hour a week. If you go to the gym, isn't going to do anything. You're probably just injuring yourself more than anything else. It's putting everything around it. So we literally started from the ground up. And it's funny because, you know, obviously a lot of it is self-assessment. And you're sort of saying at the very start, what are your areas of executive function? And there was areas that I was like, oh, amazing, because I didn't know any different. And only as I continued to develop. and other areas improved, I was like, oh, actually, I kind of suck at that bit. Yeah, it was really eye-opening. So definitely it was going through everything really meticulously. I'm sure people will tell you, I literally would be like, this particular thing happened this week, what do you think? And really putting the lens on yourself. Yeah, you bring everything, you're like, is this ADHD as well? Yeah, what do I do about this? And for me, the biggest changes and the biggest structure is where are those simple things? Where are those things that we do automatic as habits? but they were catered to the neurotypical. So when I started to examine those, so for example, just starting tasks, when I get into a task, I can go forever. And it is, I then learned obviously that's hyper-focused, which can be very harmful as well. It's definitely something that has led me down a workaholic life. And so breaking that for sure, but like starting tasks, just breaking that down to the most basic level of what needs to be done, because I either wasn't able to start tasks, or when I finally did, I was in such a stress and a panic that I do it for days on end. So really just acknowledging that actually you can do things in little bits and pieces throughout a week, acknowledging that sometimes that won't always work and being able to have like that kind of self-talk and then really figuring out how to use time properly. Because I never did that. I'm as timeline as anything else. I'm either slightly late or extremely early. I can't do anything in between. And figuring out how to harness time effectively and use it as either a motivator or a kind of... indicator of when I should stop or start. Yeah, that's really interesting. For you now, you've got a very complex job. There's lots of different pieces going on. Is there a couple of things that you do that really fit with that? Now, I always do this in the morning. This is part of my routine or I always have this schedule system. What have you kept and continue to use? Well, for one, and just to give a small bit of context for anybody listening, who is a bit unsure of what I do. I work a lot with brands. I travel quite a lot work. I do a lot of seminars. I still do a few clients and then we do like trade work, photo shooting, shooting. The reason I'm explaining that is that every single day is completely different. I mean, honestly, I'm glad you explained it because I wasn't a hundred percent sure everything you did. So I know. And it's one of those things that when people ask me, I'm like, Okay. So I do a bit of everything. So every day is different, which is why I really struggled with routine and why when I was doing more conventional salon work, it was predictable and I thrived a lot better. What really worked for me is having a base structure. And honestly, it can be as simple as how you systematically start your morning in terms of make your bed, brush your teeth, use skincare. This is really where you put skincare to me is really therapeutic, but because it's that dopamine, it's a system, right? It's your following something, you got a little dopamine hit at the end. So I make sure I do skincare in the morning. And essentially I make sure that no matter how chaotic or unpredictable the next few days are going to be or the next whatever, that I carve out an hour in the morning that I'm fully in control of, that I can set certain tasks outside of work that I can tick off that will reward me later in the day and that I feel like my day started off with a good foundation. Yeah, definitely. I can imagine the process that we usually go through with developing those routines that probably involved a lot of trauma and error, a lot of coming back and being like this morning routine was good, but then this needed to be adjusted to kind of get exactly what level of stimulation and what kind of thing was working for you, given how many things you had going on in any one week. It was definitely a challenge for us because I'm probably one of the more difficult clients in terms of the routine doesn't exist in other elements of my life, you know what I mean? So we definitely really had to examine them, like, but what's attainable and what's achievable? And also, I also had to really accept that there were certain things I would try that wouldn't work and that was okay. You know, whereas I could kind of at the start, I try to put these routines together and they'd be really complex and intricate because I sort of had that all or nothing mentality, which I know a lot of us live with. And it would be, I'd have these outrageous like 20 step morning routines that if one thing was off, I was like, the whole day's ruined. Whereas I just kind of almost now have these. as simple as like, I know the first thing I do is brush my teeth in the morning, as opposed to, oh, just brush them later when I'm in the shower or whatever. It sounds stupid, but I'm like, it's structure, it's routine, and it's the thing I did. Making your bed. I'm like, okay, now the room is clean. And then the more complex one, which I know isn't something that everybody can do, was recognizing my strengths as somebody who has a neurodiversity, figuring out where I had weakness, I guess. And I then hired somebody to compliment that. I then just acknowledged that I'm like, I'm never going to be good at this. But I'm really good at this stuff. I'm really good at like ideas. I'm really good at problem solving. I'm really good at putting concepts together. I'm really bad at emails. I'm really bad at scheduling. I'm really bad at long-term thinking. I'm just hiring somebody and that just removed that stress out of my brain and gave me more time to focus on everything else. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. In fact, I think I spoke to one of the people that you hired this afternoon. They were just like, I'm responding for Connor today. Yeah, that's a hundred percent. Yeah, no. No, it's a huge factor and I've actually now had the privilege of speaking to quite a lot of people with ADHD who have these sort of complex jobs and have the privilege of being able to do that. And it is interesting how much of a difference it makes being able to say, yeah, I'm going to find a way to make emails not as much of an issue, particularly because especially with you, given your job, there's a lot of people I imagine speaking to you all the time. Yeah, that is one of the things. Because I am independent and I work with like content creation and stuff, I have a lot of different companies that I work with. So it's sort of like having a lot of different jobs, but they all also usually hate each other and cause nobody's communicating, right? There's no like, Oh, he's working this side. So you're sort of juggling all these different parts, plus my own business, my own stuff. And yeah, it definitely really helped having somebody in the middle who could do that. But it also. One thing that I found, and this is relevant to everyone, whether you're self-employed or you work for somebody, when I did the work on myself, I learned the language of how to communicate those needs a lot better. So instead of just having a meltdown, I mean, like, this is really stressing me out and not really being able to offer solutions for the other parties or myself. I now can really strongly say, oh, this isn't accessible to me. If somebody delivers it, like I go into all my contracts or all my business stuff now being like... We use Trello, everything needs to go into that. If you're going to have a big meeting with me, that's fine, but I'm going to create a visual aid and I'm going to send it to you. So I need to make sure that that's online. Don't send me loads of voice notes. Don't send me loads of random WhatsApp messages. I need everything to be in one place. And because of this reason, because it's not accessible to me. And when you get comfortable with that language, your professional relationships get way better. You do better in work and you can kind of stand up for yourself and advocate for yourself a lot better. Yeah, it's really interesting actually, because what you can end up doing is basically sounding professional in your advocating for yourself. Because one of the things that can happen is that when you don't understand, and we get a lot of people wanting to talk about workplaces or they work for themselves, and there's a sense of, I don't even know what to do. I don't even know what kind of help I need. Once you know what kind of help you need, you can be very, you know, these are my boundaries, essentially. these are the things I'm going to do and these are things I'm not. And then you can show up in a way that's very professional, but also very neurodiverse. You're kind of doing both and that can be awesome. And it's also often like a lot of the companies that I work with or people that I work with, they benefit from that knowledge as well, because it's, it makes their space a more inclusive space. And it does, it's exactly that. It makes you sound professional when you cannot, first of all, identify your needs, which takes time. And then when you're equipped to talk about it, it changes it from sounding maybe princessy, because that's what I felt like sometimes. I was like, this is really freaking me out. And I don't know. Or like, there's these loads of times I'm like, I just can't understand what you're trying to do here because I wouldn't be able to understand. It's always that why, like all these parts. And I would just get stressed. And then I'd probably just be like, I don't want to work with these people. Whereas now I can just say, how I best receive information is if like, after this, if you send me a summary, give me some bullet points, hit me with some dates, I then know exactly what to do. I need to condense and then I'll go forward. And other than that, I will not be able to function accurately and properly in that. and then it's in writing or it's officially been said, so they fall into that. At least you've stood up for yourself and you can fall back on it. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. And it kind of actually did, I wanted to bring up another point, which is that you have been open about your ADHD. So not only have you been able to advocate for yourself in these settings and say what you need, but also on social media, and I'm now imagining it in these kinds of spaces as well, you've been honest about having ADHD. When did you make that decision? How did that go? I made it kind of shortly after. I left a few months after I was diagnosed because I wanted to really be aware of the language and be sensitive to everyone else's experience. Literally a couple of months after that, it became a real hot topic. And you know, there's the whole TikTok self-diagnosing culture, and it's that kind of been kicked off. So I wanted to be very gentle and very delicate with it because I didn't want it to appear like that. And I also didn't want to be almost like a self-appointed. speaker of it while it was still so new to me. So I kind of very gently teased it out while I was researching and then actually the more I kind of worked with you folks, the more I got confident in discussing it through socials and stuff. It became something that I was really passionate about within our industry because it's something that isn't really recognized the way our learning systems are done even though we're a creative industry, can still be very archaic, can still be very school-based, can still be that sort of thing. So I started to advocate for it in our industry. I started to advocate it amongst the bigger brands to introduce this sort of awareness into their teachings or their systems of doing things. And then I actually closed down part of my business and began building it back up to be more sort of neuro-inclusive, would be kind of the language that I learned. So it sort of was a slow process where I started to talk about it. And then as it's built, I've since done seminars, I've done talks around it, and still always pointing out that I'm no expert. But just the more I learn about my experience, the more that I feel comfortable sharing my point of view. And if it resonates or relates or helps anyone, that's always a bonus. Definitely, definitely. And it's always good to have somebody come out and say that they haven't. I mean, I think it's becoming more and more common, but one of the privileges we get working at unconventional organization is we work with so many people who have ADHD and a lot of people choose for a lot of very legitimate reasons, not to disclose that outside of their coaching sessions. So it's always good to see. Because I'm always like, such cool people have ADHD. You know, everyone's got these amazing stories and that kind of thing, but people are always like, oh, these people have ADHD and these people don't. And it's like, no, everyone has ADHD. I can tell you that right now. It's just, people aren't always disclosing. So it's very, very cool. When you become more aware of yourself, you sort of can see it in people. You find yourself just almost identifying, you're like, this person definitely has a lot of traits that I can relate to. And they're always really fun, quirky people as well. Yes, yeah, I think there's some research that indicates that people who are neurodiverse tend to communicate more easily and people who are neurotypical tend to communicate more easily. So we just have a shared language that often is part of the reason why it's so easy to pick that up. Yeah, totally. 

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I wanted to kind of go a little bit more into your role as a business owner because I know a lot of people, like you said, with ADHD will take on this kind of freelance role and then want to develop it. So what was that process like for you? Because it sounds like there were quite a few ups and downs. Oh, significant. Yeah. So I have my own business now about seven years and I only went fully into it as in like I quit my sort of employment job about three years ago now and that was the scariest thing ever. The major down was. right before I got diagnosed when all of a sudden I started to be like, why can't I deal with this? And what happens is that ingrains a very damaging set of talk of, I can't do anything, right? Because I started to feel like the most bare minimum was just an absolute nightmare. It was like everything was Everest, you know what I mean? Even the most, as I was saying earlier, the most basic tapas. So for me, one of the first steps is just acknowledging that all of that, it just happens, right? For neurotypicals, neurodiversion, anything in between, you hit these walls where you can only go so far and you have to have some sort of next step, which... involved doing something different than you did before. And that's kind of the same for everybody. And for me, it was that step of being like, I need to talk to them. I need to, you know, I sought that diagnosis and then I went on to continue to get diagnosed and continue to do the work. And, but as a business owner, it's essentially like, you kind of have to be kind to yourself a little bit. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that business owners with ADHD are, as adults, are workaholics because. It's sort of like always chasing, it's always chasing that dopamine, right? It's always, yeah, it's always, we never know when to stop. It's the hyper focus. And something that I talk quite a lot about is we all have a sort of chip on our shoulder and it's not a bad thing. It's that we were told, maybe growing up that you didn't work hard enough, that you so much potential, but you're not using it because we were trying to be crammed into this neurotypical model. So the first thing was definitely acknowledging that, yeah, you hit these bumps in the roads and when you do, it's not that you need to quit, it's that you need to say, what am I going to do different? you do something different until you hit the next one and that's how you progress. It's persistence always overruns. And then the other thing is carving out time and recognizing recovery time, which I didn't for years, I used to work every single day, nonstop, and didn't prioritize other elements of my life, my health, my relationships, and recognizing that as being just as important. So when I'm looking at my calendar, I put in my time off, I put in my holidays, I put in my recreational time, I put in time with my boyfriend. I put all of that in as importantly as I put in meetings. And the more you do that and the more recharged you feel and the more you give yourself that space, you'll start to see the payoff, you'll start to see your work becomes more enjoyable again, you start to see that you're more productive. And you also start to realize that there is more to life. Balance doesn't happen, you force it to happen. And it's uncomfortable, it makes you feel some days when you're taking off, that you're sitting there and you're like, I really should be doing something. And that's just gonna be the reality until it becomes normal, but that's just as important. Definitely, definitely. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so good. You said at the beginning, not having a really strong sense of time, that lack of time, it cannot just affect our productivity. It can also affect our ability to take time off because if you don't have a calendar or some kind of thing that you can block the time off and the time with people into any more than you can block your appointments and the other things, then it just becomes a blur. And that can be so common with ADHD and time blindness. Yeah. And that's exactly, and I felt like the days are going really fast, the months, the weeks, everything. I felt like time was just speeding up and I was just getting lost behind. It's only by forcing myself to put in this recreational time, this downtime, it almost mends your relationship a bit with time and it makes you feel a bit more like you're in control and that it's on your side because that's mindset, right? It just moves away. It wants to move, but you can make it be on your side. What would you say to others? people who with ADHD who are in that position and they're kind of drowning a little bit. They've either want to start doing freelance, they've just started, they've quit their job and it's all kind of becoming a bit much. What would your advice be or just what would you say to those people? Biggest lesson I've learned is around a solid foundation. So right before I got diagnosed, I had this really successful online, I had like a subscription service that people could join and I had education and it was... It grew really quickly because of COVID. COVID was quite good to me in that respect, it's bad to me in every other respect. But it was built on bad foundations. It was built on by somebody who didn't know they had ADHD, who didn't have good structures or systems, who didn't even have a basic level of balance and self-care. I kind of compare it when I'm talking about, it's like building a skyscraper out of matchsticks. You can get there, but at any moment, the whole thing can go. And when it does, everything goes at once. And... That's what it felt like. And I got so far with it. And no matter what kind of business milestones I hit, and I hit great successes with it, I just kept getting buried down. And it was because I didn't have that strong foundation. I didn't have the basic routine of I wake up in the morning, I have an hour, I brush my teeth, I make the bed, I have a coffee, I go to the gym, whatever it is. I was just waking up every day with a knot in my chest being like, what do I have to do? And having no idea. Not having the tools to approach that the right way. So if you haven't started yet, As in, if you haven't gone into freelance or haven't gone into business or if you are, and it's just starting to feel like it's getting on top of you, build that foundation first. Invest in yourself. The time is going to pass anyway, but you might need to just take a pit stop and look at how can I protect myself and protect my space as I go on to this business venture? How can I keep it safe? And how can I make sure I'm reading control of even the most basic things in my life? As much as you feel like you can be before going on that business venture. And if you're already in it, and if you're in the situation that I'm in. that I was in, where you feel like it is getting on top of you. If you can walk away from it, if you can take a break, or if you can downsize, do. When I did it, I had to close business. It cost me a lot of money. It was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make. And there was that doubt, was this definitely the right thing? But it's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done because it gave me space to go back and reevaluate those foundations and start rebuilding that skyscraper, but with solid blocks of actual things that I could do. And it took time, it took patience, but it's one of the greatest lessons I've ever had in life and I'm confident now, no matter what I do next, whether it succeeds or not, I'll be fine and I can just rebuild. I can keep going until something works, but at the core of it all, I'll still be good. Yeah. I think that's very, very powerful for sure. I'm curious actually. So when you started working with us, had you closed the business at that point? Yeah. At that point I closed it. Yeah. I closed a lot of stuff, um, about two months previously. So that was kind of where I was at when I started doing the coaching. And the more I got into the coaching and the more those life stressers started to go away and the more, the more I started to just appreciate just day to day life and how different it could be, the more I started to feel like excited again, about going back into that workspace. And the more I felt like I was mending that relationship at work, because I was getting all these ideas of how I can make it more sustainable for myself and make it more balanced. Yeah, wow. Well, thanks for coming. I have to say, like, thanks for the privilege of you. I know it's taking that risk and actually and investing that time and energy into it. I'm glad that it was positive and things like that. But I do acknowledge the risk feeling that must have had to go ahead and do that, to trust us to do that as well. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. I really appreciate it. The experience. Yeah, awesome. So. I've just got some last questions for you. So tell me about the one sort of professional achievement that you're the most proud of. The one professional achievement that I'm most proud of is probably figuring out my direction that I want to go in what I do, because again, I work in hair and there's not a huge amount outside of, these are the techniques, these are the trans, these are whatever. I wanted to find and identify. and sort of resonate with people that maybe had my experience. We are an industry that has been talked down on a lot. I'm not sure what it's like in other countries, but for here it was certainly always that dropout option. It was like, you know, you're never really gonna make much money or like you should have gone to college, that kind of thing. And that always bugged me anyway. But then when I kind of started to resonate and see more people who identified with me, again, neurodiverse or not, that sort of feeling of not feeling good enough or that like... their skills as maybe more of a creative thinker or more kinetic thinker or whatever was not recognized as intelligence. It sort of like lit a fire underneath me. And in the last year, I've done a lot more in terms of feeding that into what I do, feeding that into the brands I work with, into the education that I deliver, the consultancy that I do. And I've started to do a lot of talks around it. As again, a whole topic, I featured in quite a lot of magazines about it. I've done talks of rooms for hundreds of people. I've contacted by like people who work with government and stuff, because they want to, they want to link it in with the public training that accesses. And for me, the biggest professional achievement, and funny enough, it's the one that doesn't necessarily make me money. It's just the one that I'm proud of because I feel like it's authentic and I feel like it's starting conversations. And I feel like when people come up to me and they're like, you know, and I've had people cry and stuff in like talks and everything, because they're like, Oh, I actually have never heard someone talk about this like that. That never gets old. Seeing somebody. feel heard and seen, that for me is just such an accomplishment. Yeah, totally. Oh, that's awesome. And then on the other side, is there a professional failure that, you know, maybe it was a bit embarrassing and how did you deal with that? It was probably closing down the business and my relationship with that decision has changed. So when I first did it, it was a sort of out of like, I can't do this anymore. Right. So there was no feelings around it. It was just like, this has to go. I can't sustain this. And then. A lot of people thought I was insane. Like my accountant was like, Lata. And even like, you know, really close friends and family were like, are you sure? Like, if you stick with this, you could really have financial security, you know, you could work towards a lot of financial goals and stuff. And I was fraught with doubt when I did that. And I wouldn't say I was ever embarrassed about it. I'm not someone who gets embarrassed easily, but I felt a little bit of that inherent disappointment. I felt a bit ashamed. There was always that little bit of me that was like, did I give up? Could I have actually kept doing that? Did I overreact? Was that a wrong thing to do? And again, as a business owner, you do learn this every single failure is just an opportunity to get you one step closer to success because you learn so much from the bigger the failure, the more you learn. If it's a colossal failure, you look at every single thing you did there and that could be 20 plus whatever things just to quantify it. And you now know those 20 things. You're like, that doesn't work for me. I'm now 20 things closer to my goal. Whereas, you know, like small failures, you might only learn one or two things. They hurt less, but you still progress, right? Whereas the bigger ones, they really sting. It's just like... What did I learn from this and how excited am I that I can progress on to the next thing, knowing I'm closer to achieving those goals. Yeah, definitely. And if you had an ADHD life motto, what would that be? Accountability, because I think it's one of the most important things and I think it's something that everybody can struggle a little bit with. Everybody has their own ADHD journey, of course. And it probably sounds a bit tough-love-ish or something, but something that I say to people, considering seeking a diagnosis or if they have just been, I'm like, but what is it that you want that to do for you? Because it's a tool. It's a tool to help you better understand yourself. And the rest of it is 100% up to you. And the hard lesson I learned early on was circling back to what I was saying is that when I was prescribed medication, everybody's experience is different. But for me, I quickly learned that this is just to support me while I figure things out and to make that maybe transition a bit easier. And if you are seeking sort of a diagnosis or if you've been diagnosed, and you start to sort of lean on that and sort of have this inner voice that's like, oh, that's why I can't do this. Or it's okay, I can't do, or I can't achieve X, Y, Z. Because I have this, that's going to be my cushion to lean on. I think you're in a bit of hot water and actually you'll find it a bit more challenging, a bit harder to mend those relationships that you might've had with that negative style talk. And I just think the most important thing is to acknowledge at one point that, especially the later you are diagnosed, the more work you're going to have to do. It starts hard. It gets more difficult at points, but the more you figure stuff out, it's like you're chipping away at this wall and it actually starts to get easier. And then it gets enjoyable. And then you start to become excited to implement the next things that really work for you. So if it's just one word, accountability, you need to be like, okay, what am I going to do with this? Because all that it is, is helping you crack the code on yourself. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Connor for coming onto the podcast and sharing your story and your experiences. I know that a lot of people are going to get a lot of really useful information out of it. Thank you. So how can people find out more about you and what you do? So I can be found on socials at Connor JMD. So it's CONORJMD. I'm on Instagram, TikTok. We are trying the YouTube situation, but my goodness, it's floundering around. It's so hard to crack. Especially if there's any hairdressers listening. Specifically what I do is I feed sort of neurodiversity conversation into education. I do a lot of talks and seminars around that. So by all means definitely you can follow me and you shout, say hello. And yeah, we have websites and stuff, but mostly you'll find me most active on social media for sure. Yeah, definitely worth a follow. It's good fun, even if you don't want a hairdresser. I know, and it's funny. Or a stylist. Yeah, I'd say about 40% of my demographic are, I call them civilians. So there's a lot of non hairdresser in there. We like to keep the conversation relevant across the board. We're very pro-focused, but we like to also include topics and kind of lift the veil behind the pro situation as well, because I think it creates a nice bit of transparency. So yeah, it's a good time. Yeah. Well, really great to have you on. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. 

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