Why You Skipped Your Workout: With Author Coach & Consultant Seonaidh Jamieson

Seonaidh is an author, coach, and consultant who makes it easier for her clients to take action. Across her dual industry career (sports coaching and managing conservation projects) she's had a particular interest in the unnamed and unquantifiable problems faced by everyone with a big goal on the horizon.

 Since her ADHD diagnosis, she's dug deep into invisible barriers in her book 'Why You Skipped Your Workout', taught project management skills to ADHD business owners, and now she is bringing the two together to make running a business easier when you've got ADHD!

Show notes:

• In this episode, we have the pleasure of hosting Seonaidh, a multifaceted individual whose career spans diverse fields of expertise. Seonaidh is not just an author, coach, and consultant but a guiding light for those navigating running a business
• Drawing from her unique background in sports coaching and managing conservation projects, Seonaidh has honed her skills in tackling the intangible challenges that often accompany big aspirations. It's her keen eye for the unnamed and unquantifiable obstacles that set her apart in her field.
• Sionaidh's journey took a pivotal turn with her ADHD diagnosis, propelling her into a deeper exploration of the invisible barriers that impede progress for individuals with big goals on the horizon. 
• We talk about her experience of burnout and her medication journey while she was writing her book 'Why You Skipped Your Workout', 
• How this chain of events caused her to re-evaluate her workaholic tendencies inspiring her to reconnect to friends and hobbies once again, creating a more balanced and intentional living 
•  At the heart of Seonaidh's work lies a fusion of coaching prowess, people skills, and a solid foundation in project management. This potent combination equips her to address the invisible problems faced by ADHD business owners with precision and empathy.

Tune in as Seonaidh shares her insights, experiences, and strategies for making running a business more manageable in the face of ADHD. Whether you're grappling with the complexities of entrepreneurship or seeking practical solutions to personal challenges, Seonaidh offers a beacon of hope and guidance in such an open and honest way for anyone striving to turn their dreams into reality, by identifying the missing pieces of the puzzle that others might have missed.

Find Seonaidh Jamieson at :
https://www.seonaidhjamieson.com/
support@seonaidhjamieson.com

 Find Katie Stibbs Here:
 Email: info@katiestibbs.com

Website:https://www.katiestibbs.com/

Powerful change work to return you to your most empowered resourceful state 
Practical protocols: To change any habits behaviors and thought processes and beliefs
that are holding you back, from experiencing your desired life

Tools to simplify your life and achieve happy success by embracing your authentic self.

Transcript

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the podcast Ambitious ADHD, where we aim to change the conversation around neurodiversity, to talk about our challenges, our strengths, but to really learn to finally be ourselves because everyone else is taken. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Now, I am absolutely thrilled today to have a wonderful woman on here that I'm really excited to talk to and her name is Shona Jameson and she is an author, a coach and a consultant who makes it easier for her clients to take action. It sounds good, doesn't it? Across her dual industry career, which is sports coaching and managing conservation projects, she's had a particular interest in the unnamed and unquantifiable problems faced by everyone with that big goal on the horizon. Since her ADHD diagnosis, she has dug deep into invisible barriers. In her book, why you skip your workout, she has taught project management skills to ADHD business owners and now she is bringing the two together to make running a business easier when you've got ADHD. Welcome, Shona.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. Listening to that intro, I'm like, that sounds like it's about someone else I know.

Speaker A: And you know what? I'm just like, oh yes, bring it on. I cannot wait to hear what you've got to say because obviously I'm an ADHD business owner and struggle with all the things everybody else struggles with. So firstly, it's good to know that I'm not alone, but it's also brilliant to have somebody on that kind of understands this whole process and I'm really excited to hear about it. I have read your book. I've just literally got a few pages to go and can I just say, amazing, incredible work. I think because you have managed to include everything that I love, I also skip my workout and I'm in a period where I am doing so. But it's more than of. I just love your metaphorical language and your work in conservation and also all the kind of self development work within that the mind and the NLP, which is everything that kind know I use as well. So I'm really excited to hear about it. What provoked you to write this book?

Speaker B: I mean, first off, thank you. I'm still not used to hearing people say the phrase, I've read your book. I'm like, oh, what? But yeah, the inspiration was I just needed to, I needed this book and I was so fed up. So at the time I was working in the fitness industry, I was running a business that was all around strength and conditioning for pole dancers. And even though fitness was my entire life, I still couldn't stick to my workouts. And I knew all the theory, and I was so sick of my clients struggling as well, because I was the only one. I am the master of skipping workouts, and so were plenty of my clients. And we could all weasel out from the usual strategies that people gave us from, like, well, just go first thing, set an alarm, get a workout buddy. We could all find ways to get outside of that. And I just needed to start digging. And when I started digging, it grew arms and legs in the way that these things usually do. And at one point, I had about 95,000 words in a document. The book is not 95,000 words, you'll be pleased to know, because there was so much and there were so many nuances that were missing from the discussion, usually. And I started writing the book before I knew about ADHD, before I knew that it was something that could be possible for me. And it was actually two of my clients that I was listening to them talking about things they struggled with. And I was relating just a little bit too hard. And I started asking them questions and I started thinking, oh, that does sound very familiar. And this has been going on for a long time, and I gradually kind of pieced things together and during the course of writing the book. So I think I was about a third of the way through when I got my ADHD diagnosis, and then I was about two thirds of the way through when I started my medication. And the whole I get emotional talking about it because so much of the shame that we feel about skipping workouts is echoed in so many other areas of people's lives. When you're living with undiagnosed ADHD, it's not just the workout, it's the thing you said you'd put in the post. It's the email you said you'd reply to. It's the unrealistic to do lists you haven't finished ever because they've never been realistic, but you still have that shame associated with, well, why can I not do this? Why am I not trustworthy? And going through and starting my medication? And honestly, I think one of the side effects of having the right medication is unending rage at how easy everything is. Like in that first little adjustment spell when you can just get up and start doing things and all of that, it just kind of came together and galvanized into the books that's there now.

Speaker A: Well, that is incredible. And I literally had a little tear shed when you talked in that chapter. I think that was chapter nine about the emotional challenges that have plagued you and me and many others with undiagnosed ADHD. ADHD, the emotional response and navigating that and all of our lives and thinking we're too much and being on a roller coaster. I am really keen to know about your experience of this when you started taking the medication, because obviously, other people don't always try the medication. Some people choose not to, for whatever reason. But I just would love for you to explain the difference for you personally that that has made in this area, because I was just like, people need to hear this so they can kind of discover for themselves, potentially.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I always caveat talking about my experience, medication, as I have had such an overwhelmingly positive experience of everyone I know who is on medication. I think I've had one of the most straightforward starts. So I'm on lvans. I take 50 milligrams most of the time, but then for a couple of days before my period starts, I up it to 60, 70 milligrams just to take the edge off that kind of weapons grade pms that I seem to get on the Alvans. So the Alvans does make my PMS work if I stay on the 50 milligrams. But if I top it up a little bit, I stay quite level. The first day I took my medication, I was traveling with a friend of mine, and I was in Wales in this gorgeous house in the countryside of this big garden. And I remember when the med started kicking in. So you take like, 30 milligrams, and I looked outside and there was a gap between my thoughts for the first time ever.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And I was like, this is unreal. This is insane. And over the next kind of six to eight weeks, I did have some trouble with my appetite. That's mostly resolved itself now, but initially I had to get smoothies, and I was adding avocado and protein powder and everything I could, like yogurt. I was trying to get these, all of these really calorie dense smoothies and things in because my appetite just wasn't there. But I just found I was so worried that I would lose my personality because so many of us, that quirkiness, that energeticness, that spark is such a big thing. And I think if I had been younger, I probably wouldn't have liked the medication as much, because that spark and the kind of the chaos meant more to me.

Speaker A: Yes. The franticness, which we associate with just being our identity of who we are.

Speaker B: Yeah, completely. And I felt like I was at a point where I was just kind of done with that. Not that I was done with myself, but I was ready to be content and not always be trying to do something or be somewhere. I just wanted some still. And I feel like that is one of the things that medication has given me, because my emotions were, frankly, dangerous. I was called emotional a lot in my life. I'm pretty sure the people who've called me emotional and oversensitive, if they felt the same way I had, they have not been living with that their whole lives. I think actually seeing the difference in my emotional regulation on and off the medication is night and day. And I talk about that in the book, because if you start medication and it works for you, you essentially have this before and after, where you have these two distinct emotional lives. One, where I felt like my emotions happened to me and on my medication, where my emotions are part of the data I collect about my experiences. I still feel. I still cry at everything. Initially, I cried at more things because it felt safer to feel my emotions. They weren't going to run away from me, of course.

Speaker A: And I love the part where you say about the emotional response where you kind of had to. I can't remember the words. It's like, stop not being an *******, but because you were so sensitive to other people's feelings, I can't remember exactly.

Speaker B: I'll give everyone the story. So, basically, when your emotions are really big and you're a people pleaser, as many of us are, I was very driven by making sure I didn't upset the people around me. And I was talking to a friend who was having a difficult time, and I was just a complete ****. I was awful. And he had to go. And I got off the phone, I was like, why did I say that? I was so harsh. And it was when I was reflecting. It's because my emotions weren't there, keeping me scared of him being mad at me.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So that filter was missing. And then I had to recalibrate to be like, well, how do I want to work in line with my values, not in line with not ******* people off? And honestly, I was such an *** that day. Like, this friend of mine, he is a wonderful human, like, one of my favorite people in the entire world. And we spoke about this afterwards. Unfortunately, he is very understanding and he gets that. He's neurodivergent as well. He gets it. But, oh, my God, I cringe inside when I think about like, oh, God, I was such an ***.

Speaker A: But that is one instance, and you kind of recalibrating and having the self awareness to navigate that is amazing. But what a change. I mean, when I read that, I just thought, gosh, that is like a perfect example. And like you said, it doesn't happen for everybody, but definitely worth people kind of maybe having a think about that because that is just.

Speaker B: Totally. And I'm huge about bodily autonomy and all of these sorts. And if medication doesn't feel right for someone, I will always respect that. But if you're worried about medication, about, well, what will people think of me? Why are their thoughts more important than your well being? Yeah, and that's kind of the only thing that I would ever say. If someone is worried about other people's perception of them being on medication, they don't need to live in our brains and our bodies. So it's that unique thing. But yeah, I've had a really positive experience. But on the flip side, I'm going to just jump ahead. So that was the very early days. I've been on my medication almost two years, and last summer I burned out astronomically. I'm sure you will have been on the burnout cycle yourself and many of your listeners will. But as well as my medication allowing me to be an *** to my friends unless I think about it first, it also allowed me to completely ignore my needs and my feelings. So if I was getting close to burnout before, my emotions were a very effective no, stop, you can't keep going. But because my emotions weren't so loud and I wasn't listening, I put myself in the position to so astronomically burnout that I am six months into my recovery and I think I've got about another year to go.

Speaker A: Wow. See, this is something that I'm hearing quite often. So this is really important, isn't it, for us to take on board? And do you think because we're so excited about the new level of being able to be competent and get things done and have and let go of the shame. It's so exciting that we just overextend ourselves in a different way.

Speaker B: 100%. This is part of the whole pills don't teach skills. And I was so amazed at what I could focus on and what I could do, and I suffered a lot with fatigue, which really surprises people because I've always been very energetic and very up. And when I said to people I was yawning all the time, I feel like there's two types of ADHD people. The ones who never sleep and the ones who always sleep, and I was always sleeping and not having that fatigue. But I couldn't take days off because I didn't trust that I would be able to focus tomorrow.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I didn't trust that I would still be on the medication. It felt too good to be true.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And then last year, with the burnout, it felt like my medication wasn't working. And that was my big red flag for, like. So what the medication was doing was taking me from absolutely broken back to my old baseline, okay? So I hadn't quite clocked how broken I had got myself. I really did get myself into a bad place. And I think this is just like a word of caution, of enjoy. Like, if you're starting medication, enjoy what it gives you, but don't think all it can give you is the ability to do work.

Speaker A: Yes, it's the balance, isn't it? And listening to these conversations and really acknowledging that within ourselves. And do you think it's because of the adrenals just being so kind of, well, burnt out, in effect, for you? How did you sense it in the end? And then what have you done to address it?

Speaker B: Well, last year was. Last year was a year, so when you're finishing writing a book, you're not usually earning a great deal of money. So I moved back into my mom's house eight days before I turned 30, which that's a bit of an emotional thing in itself. That's something quite significant. So I moved back into my mum's house. I turned 30. So last year I released the book late January. I lost most of February to recovering from the book, but didn't really give myself the time to recover fully because I was running a business. As the year went on, I had a house move, I was in a car crash. I dissolved a company. I had to basically change my entire way of working. So me and my former business partner, we worked together so well right up to the end. If you're going to have a business that doesn't work, we did it the way to do it, where when we made the call to dissolve the company, we were on a Zoom call, cracking jokes and laughing. So even though it was a stressful thing, I had a great person to be in it with me. But we ran a fitness business. We had a team that I let go because we weren't earning what we were during lockdown, because the pandemic was a wild time for the fitness industry. So that had been quite stressful in itself. The business hadn't been performing well for about a year before this point, but we wanted to give it time because it was weird circumstances, and I had put my all into it because I wanted to make a good go of it. My business partner, it was mostly her business. And then she split her company in two and I ran part of it. And it was such like a vote of confidence in me that I felt like I had to make her proud. I had to prove that I could do what she thought was possible. So we chatted on the Sunday night, on the Monday morning, we got on a Zoom call. By lunchtime, we had divvied up all of the tasks that we had to do that week so that by Friday, I would hand my remaining clients over to her. It was more associated with her brand. It made more sense for her to run everyone down off their programs. And that afternoon, I was starting my new business, what I do now. And by the Friday, I had two clients and I handed back the clients from my previous business. About three weeks after that, when I was financially in a more solid place, I just folded. In the backdrop of all of this, I had revisited my conservation life and I was doing bat surveys. So I was getting home at 230 in the morning. A lot of the time I was starting work late, but I still had this really disrupted sleep schedule. I was covering pole classes at my friend's studio. I was looking after a friend's dog as well as my own.

Speaker A: Shona. Literally, I'm just like, oh, my goodness me.

Speaker B: Yeah. So when I look back, I'm like, oh, it really makes sense that I burned out. Okay. So I reached this point of just. I couldn't function. Did you know that if you get to a certain point of burnout, your breath can be bad?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I so burned out that I needed to pee, like, every 30 minutes. My body just went completely. Absolutely not. And I had a bit of an unstable living situation at the time. So I was staying in a family, like a family member's house, and it was just all very up in the air. And this crash. I've been working with a burnout coach called Katie, who was recommended to me by Bethan, who spoke a few episodes previous. And Katie, I'm still working with her absolute game changer for helping me understand how I got into that cycle. And I've seen myself stepping back onto that cycle. And because I spotted it, I could step off.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: This was summer, and it was November, December that I spotted myself getting back on this cycle. I think because of the shame that comes in not doing what we say we will, we put so much pressure on ourselves to prove that we can actually do the thing that we start ourselves on that cycle, like, every day.

Speaker A: Yes. And literally do three times the amount of work that just kind of. I don't want to say neurotypical people that I know do. Anyway, that's the thing that we forget.

Speaker B: Yeah. And this is where I'm a total nerd, and I did a lot of physics and chemistry at school, so I'll keep this to minimum. But in physics, you've got speed and you've got velocity, and speed is just how fast are you going in any given direction, and velocity is how fast are you going in a particular direction. And I think we're really good at speed. Like, we're very good at being very fast and going lots of places, but we don't capture that momentum because we're distractable, or we forget what we've done, or we don't remember our resources. So where a neurotypical person might have a slower, like, instantaneous speed, they might be moving slower. If they're going in a straight line, they're going to get further in terms of their velocity will be higher than ours because we could be zigzagging.

Speaker A: Yes. That is such a good analogy.

Speaker B: And it's so hard to recognize that when you're in it, because nothing is more compelling than a new idea. Yes, and new ideas are fantastic, but they're so dangerous sometimes.

Speaker A: Gosh. Brilliant. That's such a brilliant explanation of exactly what happens. So how did you get better? Or how are you finding ways to get better? What are the details of this?

Speaker B: Well, this is where. And I think burnout recovery is so complicated because there's some things that you just have to do. You have to earn enough to survive. So I was burned out beyond all belief, and I still had to start a new business or get a job, and I didn't have the mental capacity to do a job at that point. I needed the flexibility from self employment, so I allowed myself to focus on the money for a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because I was dissolving a company, my income was gone within a week. All of that was not that I was making a huge amount from it anyway, but my income was gone. So I had to focus on that bit first, because, and I say this in the book as well, if you're worried about money, it's this most insidious thing that's sitting under your skin all the time. It's in all of your decisions, it's in all of your planning, it's in all of the things that you do. Staying in the house, leaving the house, doing this task, doing that task, going online, staying offline, whatever it is you're doing, money worries are there. And I had to sort that first, kind of almost at my own expense. And while I would love to have not been in that position, that ultimately was where I was.

Speaker A: I love that honesty. And I loved reading that, actually, because you say, listen, if you can't get on the horse and get back into your routines of exercise, and it is because of money. I hear you. And that's what you should be focusing on.

Speaker B: Yeah, completely. I've been self employed or working in the charity sector. I've never been flush. Really. Like now I'm in a much better place than I have been at any other point in my life. And I think those money worries, we discount them, especially if we are in the self employed world where there's more uncertainty, or if you're in the charity sector, where it's not about the money. And I think those messages and that kind of the exposure we have to this uncertainty, but people getting on with it anyway, I'm not one of those people. I need to know my money is okay, so then I can do other stuff. Once I was kind of on a better, on a more even keel with my money, I moved into my own house in November. Once I knew that was on the cards, I started working with Katie, this burnout coach, and a lot of it was. I had a lot of resistance for having a personal life, which is bonkers, because I'd withdrawn so much into work that I basically didn't work out. I didn't exist outside of work, which a failing company is going to do that to you sometimes.

Speaker A: Oh, you know what? I hear you on this. And I have made the same adjustments myself recently, realizing that I have been so obsessed with working and all of the things that I've isolated myself. And it is just the biggest mistake ever, isn't it?

Speaker B: It completely is. And you don't see it until you're out of it, because when you're in it and you're the one that's so close to it, it doesn't matter what you know you're going to do what feels the closest to survival.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And when you're in that place, with hindsight, I would have made much different decisions. I've had other businesses that I've decided to close because they weren't working for me. But with this one, I was so invested in the people I was working with that I didn't make that call. As soon as I could have and probably should have. So, yeah, money and those obligations we have to other people and all these things, it's so complicated. But once I was able to start detaching myself from that, it was really simple things, like speaking to friends, making simple plans, looking after my nutrition, starting to do some yoga again. I'm a yoga instructor, and I hadn't done any yoga for, like, six months. All of these little things. And I think actually the biggest change was allowing, not pushing. Not forcing, allowing. And I think I don't have much chill anyway. I am way more chill than I used to be, and that allowing has started to help me recover. And I'm still recovering. I've been unwell for most of February. I had tonsillitis, then I was on astritics, then I've had a cold, and I've had cystitis, and I've had all of these things just back to back. So I've been unwell for most of February, and I just know I'm not recovering the same as I did before. So it's kind of allowing myself to need more time.

Speaker A: Yes, I love the word allow. It is literally, I often meditate on that word. I'm doing more allowing, surrendering in the body work and stuff. So that is just so spot on for me, honestly.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is where. So your introduction of me, obviously, that included a whole lot of really good sounding professional attributes. But you know what? While I was writing this book, my personal life was a mess. I didn't date for, like, two years at all because I was just like, I don't have the headspace for another human being in my world. I totally disconnected from so many things, and now I have much better balance than I have. But I think it's taken the kind of the extremes of the experience of starting your medication to pull me into a more middle ground where I wasn't coping without the medication. I started the medication, I was coping. I coped a little bit too well at my own expense. And now I'm kind of bringing myself back into a life that I want to live. And it feels very fitting that I burned out astronomically when I was 30. It's almost like the weight of my 20s landed on my shoulders.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And it's that now it's making decisions about how I want things to be going forwards and who I want to work with and how I want my work to be part of my identity, but not my whole identity.

Speaker A: Yeah. And this only comes, I suppose, with hindsight and with experience.

Speaker B: Hindsight and being a douche to your friends and occasionally making mistakes. I am such a lover of, like, as long as there's no lasting harm done. People's mistakes, I kind of love them because they're so important for how we learn. And I think when you're so used to feeling shame because you've not done things or you chased the wrong idea or all of these things, while we might not have the same velocity as someone who's going in a straight line, how much more are we learning on the journey?

Speaker A: Yes. And we change and we grow, and we're allowed to change our opinion and our trajectory, because as humans, we don't go in the same direction all of the time.

Speaker B: No, not at all. And I think while there needs to be a degree, like, for your business to work, for example.

Speaker A: You need to.

Speaker B: Have a direction of travel. You need to know where you're going, but that doesn't mean you have to. Not every single step on the way there needs to be prescribed. And it doesn't mean that destination is the only destination that's available to you. And it's that balance that is so difficult to find. And I think that is what I'm finding now, which is mind blowing, to be honest. Having gone from all of the things all of the time to none of the things none of the time, finding the right things at the right time is baffling, but it feels a little bit like someone's put glasses on. Yeah, if that makes sense. And I wouldn't be here without having. So if you have dissolved a company, or if things aren't working, or if you're avoiding looking at your finances for your business to see if it's actually viable, I have 100% been there. And whatever decisions it is you have to make, the only way is through. And whatever decision you make is the best decision you can make at that time. And whatever you learn from it is going to help you make better decisions next time.

Speaker A: Yeah. They are such wise words. Do you mind me asking, what does your average day look like at the moment, in terms of well being and work and, well, everything. Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. So really interesting. I'm basically getting to design how I work from scratch right now because I started a new business seven months ago. While I've been self employed for a long time, I'm in the startup stage again. So a lot of what I do is, well, what do I want to do? I've got deadlines for clients, I've got work that I have to be doing. I've got proposals to write, I've got people I need to book calls with. But the other day I decided to go to B and Q and buy paint for my bedroom because I just didn't want to be sat at my desk and I gave myself that space. I looked at my deadlines and I was like, do you know what? You can do this. My bedroom looks great now, by the way, but equally some days. So on Sunday, I had a wave of inspiration about something. So I sat and did maybe three, 4 hours work on a Sunday, but I probably won't work much tomorrow afternoon. So my average day, while I would love to say, oh, I have this routine and that routine, at the moment, I am allowing myself to go with the flow and trusting that I will do the work.

Speaker A: Yes, I concur with that, and I have come to peace with that. Because if I do have inspiration on a Sunday, which I often do actually, then why wouldn't I want to do it? Because I enjoy it, and it means that I can be more in the flow structure in that way. Doesn't necessarily work for me. Totally. Yeah.

Speaker B: And also I think if I work a nine till five, I get frustrated at being at my desk. If I do tasks that I want to do and want to do is a funny one. So I'm still very motivated by people being happy with what I've done, and I'm very motivated by producing something good. So my want might not be, I don't want to do this research project, but I do want to do a good job for my client.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I find that leaning into that and trusting that that will get me to my desk when I need it to, that is hugely healing after me living at my desk and burning myself out.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: I'm doing better work.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not surprised.

Speaker B: Sorry.

Speaker A: No, sorry. I'm jumping in over you. I just really want to know, to let listeners know what exactly how you help people, because I think it's really important.

Speaker B: So basically, I solve the problems that people can't describe. So the things that, there's just something wrong here. I don't know what it is. And it could be a system problem, it could be an emotional block, it could be that niggling thing about your marketing or your website, your messaging, or about your onboarding process or about the tools you use behind the scenes in your business, but there's something that just isn't working for you. And I help people find, first off, what the invisible problem is, why it's not working. So I had a client a little while ago. Who? Me and her went through her project management system, like her task management system in her business. We did some work with her project management skills, and she'd been feeling really loads better about everything except her marketing. And we had a catch up call and she was like, it's working for everything else, but not marketing. And I don't know why I'm getting the system wrong with marketing. And I was like, okay, that's interesting phrasing. Did some prodding around, and it was an emotional block that she had to marketing. So it didn't matter what the system looked like, the system was working everywhere else. But for her marketing, there was a step missing, and that step was taking care of her emotional needs, giving herself the security she needed to put herself out there, aligning her messaging, making sure she knew what she was wanting to tell people and that she felt confident in telling them. So it was looking at that bit where on the surface of it, well, it's working everywhere else. What's your problem? It's like, well, there's. The problem is that you don't feel like you can say this. Let us explore that. So I've got a mixture of coaching and project management experience, and I tend to use them together because projects don't run themselves. They need people. Businesses don't run themselves, they need people. And we need to see how the systems and tools and processes we have in our business interplay with us as individuals.

Speaker A: Yes. Element.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it's the how and the human. And so I work with those tricky to find things, and then I give people actionable steps to overcome them. So depending on what the issue is, we will work together to pull together their next steps and make sure they can step out of the invisible problem. I've also quite often been the other set of eyes. So if people have something that they're working on, that they're just like, I am too close to the detail in this, and I need someone else to look at it to bring it to the next level. I will also do that. So it's very much the things that we can't see for ourselves.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: That's kind of where I live, and it's only because I've got such, like a range of experience. So this is where I'm a specialist at, being a generalist.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's perfect, though, isn't it? Because how did your work in conservation start? Is that what you did your study in?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I studied zoology. The work I did my dissertation on actually got published, which is always a bit of a.

Speaker A: Well, what was that on?

Speaker B: Oh, it was awful. It was about inbreeding and parental care and beetles. If you look me up and the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, you can read this horrible paper. I was in a lab with a lot of beetles, and it was a weird time of my life. Even weirder than last year with the burnout. No one needs that many beatles. I still remember how they sounded when were moving. Oh, yeah. So I did zoology. I had some really good holidays while I was studying, so I spent time in Madagascar and South Africa and Ecuador. So the Beatles was not the highlight of my degree. I did a research project for science and advice for Scottish Agriculture, a government agency in Scotland. Then I've worked for wildlife trusts, I worked for RSPB, I've been involved in rivers trusts, and I've done a lot of bat work. So my conservation life was split in two between bats and rivers, essentially, rivers and wetlands. And the thing I love about rivers and wetlands and people and businesses is you poke one place, something happens somewhere else.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: So same with bodies as well. So all of the things I've done have all been around about some system, something's happening somewhere that isn't right. So, one of my favorite bits of work, while I worked for a wildlife trust, I was on a river restoration project and we were felling beach trees, which aren't native this far north. We're in Yorkshire, so beach trees aren't native this far north, and they shade out all the understories, so you end up with lots of exposed soil, which when it rains on slopes, it gets washed down, the sediment gets washed down into the river. And when it was getting washed into this river, it was going downstream and then it was plugging in the gaps in the gravely soiled out and stream that trout used for spawning. So we were felling trees and replanting with native broad leaves and reestablishing the understory to protect habitat for trout.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So we were tree planting for trout.

Speaker A: That is brilliant.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I love all of the. You do something in one place and it has a completely unexpected result. That's the thread. And through my conservation work, learned loads about project management. I have never started a job where I've known anything about what I was doing beforehand. I'm very much an on the job learner, so that's something that I still do. I have very few clients where I understand their industry when we start. And just that thing I love is you move something one place, something else happens. What's the link. That's the main skill that I got from my work in conservation and in personal training and in working with pole dancers. There are some really surprising things that happen in your body that are connected and it's like, oh, this is happening in my wrist. I'm like, well, how is your rotator cuff in your shoulder? It's all of these things. And I think that's what I do, is I help people who are having a problem find the link between the problem and the root cause. Because if you are a trout who isn't sure why your spawning grounds are all sedimented up, you can't even see that there's a tree upstream. Whereas I will help find the tree and then find the solution to the wrong tree in the wrong place. That's the bit that I do, but I would do it with business. But we can talk about trout as well because trout are quite cool.

Speaker A: That is just brilliant. I just love that description. It just makes so much sense.

Speaker B: No, it does.

Speaker A: And I just love the way you describe it because you put all your skills from different sectors and actually, do you find that because you don't necessarily know about the sector, you come at it with totally fresh eyes, with a new perspective? I just think that's so helpful sometimes if you don't, it's not entrenched in your kind of. Oh, I know this.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think because of the range of places I've worked, I've got enough experiences to spot patterns. But even when I'm places where I, in theory, should know what I'm doing, I still ask lots of questions, because that's just how I am. You know how most children stop asking why when they're like maybe seven, eight, and they move into other questions? I didn't. I just kept going straight on. But I think there's no questions that are off the table. I think actually working with the poll industry for so long is really helpful because we have had some wild discussions and things that wouldn't necessarily be considered appropriate. And I was working with people like, my business partner was a lawyer. Before she was a solicitor, I was a project manager, she was a lawyer. We had one of our members of the team who ran the UK arm of another company for years before moving into her self employment. We'd all been in more, me less so, because I think when you work in an office where someone brings a pigeon in and you just accept that they've got a pigeon, you're not in a proper office. But all of us had been in these environments where there was more weight to conforming and poll is very non conforming and very counterculture. There's a lot of people with ADHD in the poll world and I think that kind of helped shake out some of the constraints. So I do ask some weird questions of my clients. So if anyone who is listening ends up talking to me and I ask you things that you're like, where did that come from? There is usually a rhyme or reason.

Speaker A: I love that. I'm presuming that you can pole dance.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I've had a bit of time out, but my plan is to get back into competing. So I am, as I'm recovering, building back in my own training again because someone else dropped out. I did make it to the final of the Yorkshire pole championships in the professional category in 2022.

Speaker A: You must be brilliant. I mean, and it's literally unbelievable.

Speaker B: If I'd made it to that state, I was in Stornaway, so I was on the Isle of Lewis. I wasn't going to make it back to Yorkshire for it, but if I'd performed that, I wouldn't have placed. I'm good, but I'm not good enough to place in that world, but, yeah. So I have made it to the final in the professional category once, which is kind of big achievement for me, achievement for anybody. Yeah. But this is where, for most of my clients, most of the people I end up working with, we usually bond over something completely random and then they have a problem later that they're like, oh, wait, I need a you for this. So I've got a few clients who are poll based. I've got a couple of clients who I know through kind of ADHD communities. I've got a few clients that I know through the conservation world and it's all chaos.

Speaker A: I love that. It's just perfect. That is heaven. Absolutely brilliant. Absolutely. Yeah, I totally get that. And so have you got any ideas about how you want to grow and develop? Any burning ambitions?

Speaker B: So, burning ambitions? There's a couple of things. There's a few irons in the fire. I think what I want to do first is initially understand more about ADHD business owners and where these invisible barriers are and these invisible problems and how they tend to manifest, because why you skipped your workout? This book took me two years, I want to say. Yeah, I got obsessed with it and I want to do the same for business. So book two is why you skipped your workout, but business this time?

Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to say, surely that's on the cards, that was the question I was going to ask you, can you see yourself writing a second book? Seen as the first one was, how many pages to start with, did you say?

Speaker B: So? It was 95,000 words at one point. It is not that much now. It is not that much. Although one thing I am doing at the moment I'm working on very actively, is I'm making a card deck to go alongside the book, because I know that it is still longer than I think I would like. Book two will be shorter, but I'm making a card deck to go alongside the book so that people can pull out a card and it'll direct them to the relevant bit of the book.

Speaker A: I think so useful with my kind of brain, particularly. I just love card decks and anything that can quickly remind me completely.

Speaker B: I mean, I don't read books myself. I'm an audiobook person. So the fact I actually wrote more books cover to cover the year the book came out than I read cover to cover because I listened to them. So I wrote a book that I probably wouldn't read, which the irony is not lost of me. Audiobook is on the cards for.

Speaker A: Yes, I was going to say, you must record an audiobook.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely on the cards. The problem with that is the editing. So actually, if there's anyone listening who really wants to produce an audiobook, please get in touch, because. Good God, I do not want to.

Speaker A: No, absolutely not. And I've heard that the editing process is absolutely huge.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that is kind of it. So that card deck, that shouldn't be too long, but if anyone wants to keep in touch with me, I'm sure you'll share links and things in the show notes.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: If people want to know when the card deck is going to be available, go and visit me there. And equally, I think my burning ambition is to settle into a rhythm with this business and start collecting information for book two while giving myself the space to be a human outside of work. Because work, I love my job. I don't know about you, Katie, but when I have something that I'm like, oh, my God, this is a fascinating problem, I lose myself in it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Also trying to do other things. I could make really good brownies. I had no idea I could bake. So I'm going to learn other things?

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Like, I've just started creating and making things again this year, and it's just such a breath of fresh air because I've just been so perfectionist about painting. And then I thought, actually, I can make things. I don't have to just paint. And it opened up a whole new universe for me, which is just so nourishing completely.

Speaker B: I think we almost need a hobby that we're bad at.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So for me, I got singing lessons during lockdown because I wanted something that would scare the **** out of me. And I don't know if anyone who's listening, I'm quite good at talking. It's not really something I've had a problem with. I forgot the words for Twinkle, twinkle, little star in my first singing lesson. I was sweaty, my knees were weak. My singing instructor, on Zoom, she had to sing it with me because I.

Speaker A: Was totally here on this.

Speaker B: And I love having a hobby that I will always be a bit **** at because there's no expectation, there's no perfection.

Speaker A: Healthy thing to do for us.

Speaker B: Find something that is just an outlet where the results don't matter.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is the thing, isn't it?

Speaker B: I need to message my old singing teacher, actually, because I tell people about my first singing lesson and I really don't think she gets how scared I was. I horse ride. I haven't for a little while, and I've had, like, a horse that wore a seven foot six rug take off with me through two fields. Did get him stopped eventually. This guy was like 17, three x hunter for the horsey folk out there. He was a big lad. Got him pulled up and I was fine. But singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, terrifying. Oh, God, I love this.

Speaker A: This is brilliant.

Speaker B: I'm going to just ask you a.

Speaker A: Few questions that I've written down to ask you. What would you tell your teenage self if you could speak to her now? Is there any kind of words of wisdom that you would impart?

Speaker B: It's ADHD.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So, in Scotland, our second to last year in high school is when we set our hires, and I'm pretty sure my school attendance was 74%. And those are the exams that we need to get us into uni. So I did get into uni. Academically, I've always done all right, but no one noticed that. No one kind of flagged up that my attendance was a problem because my grades were still good. I still got unconditional offers to uni based on those results. But that year set up a pattern of not trusting myself to be able to do a full time job because I didn't feel like school was sustainable. So how was I going to work?

Speaker A: This is such a repetitive story. That's me as well, and so many other people. I can't tell you. Yeah.

Speaker B: I think I would just go with, it's ADHD. That would be. Everything else would fall. Like, things would fall differently, but things would fall into place with the ADHD thing a lot easier. Obviously, my life might be better as a result of the lessons I've learned before my diagnosis, but I can never know that. But if I could help teenage me out, that's how I would.

Speaker A: Yeah. And is there anything you wish others knew about you? I quite like this question.

Speaker B: I was thinking about things that I wish. So this is something that a friend of mine said recently that I find really funny. Is it? He said, you are the hardest soft person I know. So on the one hand, I think there's a lot of people who would expect me. I can be quite blunt when I'm in the doing, I'm in the doing. When I'm looking at academic research, I can be very black and white. When I'm trying to work something out, I can be very like, no, I don't think that's it. But I am so soft. If someone says, I've done a good job, I will live with that for the rest of my life. I remember compliments I got when I was, like, 13 that are still like, yeah, that was a good day. And I fundamentally want people to have a pleasant experience and have a nice time and all of these sorts of things, but I please see the size of the horse that I was riding. I also have this complete, like, if someone gets to the edge of the limit or anything, I have, like, mum voice squared. I don't have any children, but I have the no voice where it's like, that will stop. And my friend referring to me as the hardest soft person he knows, really made me laugh. Yeah.

Speaker A: And just. That sounds wonderful to me. I would take that as just such a huge compliment. And obviously, I don't know you really, but I would say, just from talking to you, that, yes, I can totally see what he means by that. And you're a badass. And you're so courageous.

Speaker B: Equally a massive wimp. So I can be very brave in some settings. But, I mean, the wind was blowing and the letter box was moving on the front door and I had to get someone else to go and look at the letter box for me. Everyone has their places. They can be brave. Letter boxes and singing lessons are not mine.

Speaker A: Yeah. Final question. When do you feel most alive and energized in your life?

Speaker B: So there's kind of two answers. Alive and kind of simmering. Energized is just walking somewhere new. I could walk for days when I was traveling with a friend of mine. I'd be like, I'll be back in about an hour, about two and a half hours later. Usually phone me and be like, sean, of where are you? And I'm like, I found a deer track. So I followed know going somewhere new and seeing new places and just being out in the wild and seeing just trees. I get excited about fungus that is, like, alive and kind of just pleasant. Alive and energized. That is when someone brings me a problem and I can start getting stuck in. I love my job now, and I get a real buzz from people bringing me puzzle pieces that I don't understand, because then I get to understand them. And that is like, oh, it just lights me up. That's why I'm quite grateful for everything that happened last year, because it's put me on a path to asking what I want and then me asking for it and putting myself out there to work in that way, which I wouldn't have given myself permission to do when I was younger and without the experiences that I've had. So either out somewhere taking pictures of fungus to send people who don't care about fungus, or being given a puzzle to solve with someone else's business, or an idea that they can't get off the ground, that is, oh, give me a slice of that any day.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. And I've absolutely, honestly loved this conversation. I just think you are a real amazing human, actually. And yeah, honestly, I really do. And it was just an absolute pleasure to learn more about you. And yes, I can't wait to read the second book.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, just as a slight aside, if anybody is planning on writing a book, choose your editor based on who you think will be most gentle with you when you hand them the contents of your brain and just say, please take this. I can't anymore because that is the hardest bit I found of writing a book. So if anyone else is on book two, if anyone's on book one wants to join me for book two, like, let's get sleeping bags and hot chocolate and just sit in a pile and have a cry when we realize people have to read what we've written.

Speaker A: Yeah, and you know what? It's such a vulnerable mating. You are literally putting your heart on your sleeve, aren't you?

Speaker B: You know, oh, it's so much worse. You're putting the contents of your brain on a page, heart on your sleeve for ADHD. Or if that's okay, but yeah. Contents of your brain where someone else can read it.

Speaker A: Mad, you did it. You did it, shona.

Speaker B: Well, not ready to do it again yet, so that's probably a life lesson. Waiting until you're actually ready to do things that could probably be an entire if you know anyone who's good at waiting until they're ready to do things, let me know when you interview them.

Speaker A: I will. Because I just don't know they exist. Thank you.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: Pleasure.

Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaker A: Speak to you soon.

Speaker B: Speak to you soon. Bye.

Speaker A: Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you would like more of this kind of stuff, join us at we love pupil school. For people that want to create last in relationships, great communication and build a life that means that they can be fully themselves. Thank you for listening.