Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode hi everyone, welcome back to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm here again with another compilation curated episode filled with my probably favorite wisdom insights takeaways from this year.

I'm really passionate about sharing this content and I know how life can feel so busy sometimes and it can feel that we sometimes miss out on episodes or maybe we're listening and we're multitasking.

And so for me to be able to bring these shorter, more edited episodes I hope is reinforcing the information and the knowledge that many of these fantastic experts bring.

So I wanted to share with you my experts today.

I never thought I would ever say this, but I found speaking to this accountant so interesting and so inspiring and her ambition and her passion for what she does, I have to say was was really contagious.

And that is the fantastic Rachel Harris.

Now Rachel is disrupting what it means to be an accountant, a business owner and an employer in 2024.

She's a TEDx speaker, a content creator, author, business owner and most importantly she is an account accountant and she is very passionate about free financial education for everyone.

And what I loved about Rachel is her understanding of neuro inclusivity and helping people.

She helps many, many clients who are neurodivergent themselves understand their neurodiversity and understand how they can still be powerful, prominent successful business owners despite the fact that they may have dyslexia or dyscalculia and really help and guide them to winning and being successful in their business and helping and giving them that support that so many of us have needed.

So let's hear from Rachel Harris.

It's my job to worry about the numbers and your job to be creative, do what you do best and lean into how your business feels because so many of us become self employed to make money.

But we're all terrified of talking about money.

And so outsource that, get help with it.

Work with somebody who you trust and who feels good and you can spitball ideas with and communicate in a way that feels good to you.

And so, yeah, the neurodivergent side of the consulting is very, very strong because actually these are, you know, it's a group of people who don't struggle with the ideas, but actually struggle with the implementation and the delivery.

And that's where I love that stuff.

Let me build a spreadsheet for you and you go away and be creative.

Win, win.

And I just wondered why you think what you do is so kind of aligned with the neurodivergent brain.

If I had to put it into one sentence, I think really I do a very serious job.

I own a million pound accountancy practice with 20 members of staff and 800 clients.

But I don't take myself too seriously.

And I think when you are neurodivergent, you've had to look so much at yourself to understand what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are.

Actually to be able to speak about your weaknesses, which for a lot of people is finance, whether that is interpreting it, understanding it, or tackling the anxiety around the finances, you have to have somebody that feels approachable, someone that you can talk to about this stuff without feeling like it's a limit and actually how you can lean into that to make it your superpower.

Yeah, you just told me before that you are actually profoundly deaf and you understand how important it is to have people's communication needs met.

And so for someone that has built so much, like what an incredibly successful business, knowing that you have this, you know, what other people would perceive as a limitation and you've managed to overcome this and create something so incredible.

What do you mean by communication needs and how, what do you do differently?

Like, how are you, like, what are you doing that so many other accountancy should be doing?

I think a really big part of it as well, which I like to talk about when we're talking about my hearing, is that I've been able to scale a business as well without making that my entire brand.

I think very often we're almost like encouraged to repeatedly talk about it and make sure everybody knows.

Whereas for me, my comfort zone is being quite private about it and doing it in spite of it, not because of it.

And knowing that my business is successful because of me, not me.

Plus constantly talking about a disability or some form of communication preference.

And so for me, not really leaning into that and Understanding who I am outside of that as well as inside of it has been a really important piece for me as a business owner.

It's definitely created a safe place.

And I see lots of neurodivergent people do that as well, whether that is autism, adhd, dyslexia.

I've seen so many clients almost go through the diagnosis process of either dyslexia or dyscalculia through conversations, financial conversations that we've had together.

And so our sort of neurodivergent practice journey stemmed from my communication preferences.

So as somebody who owns a business that has scaled from my dining room table to a million pounds in three years, I have had to rapidly scale myself as well as rapidly scaling my business.

And one of the difficulties that I was constantly encountering because of my communication preferences was the perfect example is trying to find a telephone provider while scaling a practice that wants to offer hybrid working opportunities for my employees.

So we come into the office one day a week, but we're at home outside of that.

I wanted to find a telephone system that was basically VoIP, so voiceover Internet.

And I could not find a telephone provider that would not speak to me on the telephone.

And I know that sounds mad because they're a telephone provider, but they must have encountered this before hmrc.

I can do text relay with hmrc, but I can't do it with a telephone provider.

Like, this is wild.

How is this the case?

And so I guess through my own journey of trying desperately to spend money with the suppliers, but actually not be able to do that, and to have pretty wild responses from people of the decision maker in your business needs to be able to communicate in this way, otherwise we can't engage with them or actually just asking to speak to somebody else who isn't the decision maker just because they don't have the communication preferences that I do.

And so the first step towards, you know, lowering the barriers to entry and making what we do more accessible to people that have communication needs, whatever they are, was to actually, whenever we take on a client, we ask them three very simple questions.

The first is, what is your 10 out of 10?

And that is, what do we need to do in order to sit here in 12 months time and for you to score us a 10 out of 10 as your accountants?

So that's the first question.

First question is, what's your 10 out of 10?

The second question is, what are your.

Communication preferences by being authentic and truthful?

And it's the same with you, that's when you magnetize Your tribe, your community.

And it's when we make that decision to think, I'm not going to do it the way other people are doing it.

And it feels wrong.

And just because we've been conditioned and told that's how things should be doesn't mean that I have to do that.

And the fact that even you did the apprenticeship, you didn't get to university and, you know, it's only a very new school of thought really, isn't it, that apprenticeships could be a better way of entering the workspace.

And I wondered what made you make that decision between uni and apprenticeship and where did it come from?

Yeah, good question.

And again, I feel like, I feel like if you listened to this episode, you'd then be like, oh, that's why her business works that way.

I was a young carer.

I'm an identical twin and my identical twin sister is disabled.

And so I have been a young carer from the moment I was born.

So much so that I didn't ever really realize that I was a young carer.

And so, yeah, for me, going to university and leaving an identical twin who has learning disabilities wasn't an option for me.

And so because of my home life, because I was a carer, yeah, going to university wasn't an option.

I had unconditional offers because my school made me apply to ucas.

They don't let you not apply to ucas.

And so I had unconditional offers and didn't, couldn't, didn't want to go.

And so for me, the apprenticeship route was the obvious one.

And so, yeah, I took the apprenticeship route.

I was earning three pounds an hour for quite a long time, which is why I refuse to pay the apprenticeship minimum wage now.

And we actually have a minimum benchmark salary which is £10,000 above the normal entry route salary, which is great.

And so, yeah, I feel like my journey into work life hasn't been straightforward and definitely has fueled a lot of the change that I'm driving to be.

The change that didn't exist when I needed it.

Amazing.

And have you got accountants, like in the family?

Is it, did you, you know, is there a parent or anyone that you can.

There is no accountants in my family.

My mum was a full time carer for my sister and my dad is a welder fabricator and I was, I think 14 or 15 years old when our household income went over £20,000 for the first time.

And so even that, like sharing that story, sharing the story of what coming from a lower income household looks like if you want to get a career in professional services, because most people that get work experience or a decent job in their early 20s, it's because somebody knows somebody.

And so for me, a lot of the content creation that I do is just lowering the barriers to entry for people who don't have those contacts or don't have that start in life.

And so in 2023, I launched the first ever corporate bursary scheme, which is where I fully fund somebody who wants to become an accountant but can't afford to do it.

And so last year we launched with one placement, but in 2024, we are launching seven fully funded placements for people who can't afford to become an accountant.

We have also got Jodie Hill.

Now, Jodie was on the podcast a couple of years ago and I always love going back to her episode because her story is again, also really inspiring.

And is a lawyer.

And she has set up her own unique employment law firm called Thrive Law.

I know it's won multiple awards and it's where her values around mental health and diversity and inclusion would be the foundations of this firm and have been embodied in everything she does.

I know she is leading the way and really paving this path for law firms to be more inclusive and more understanding and compassionate about mental health.

And it doesn't have to be the way they've always looked.

These sort of stayed environments and very corporate.

She is embracing a new way of working while also nurturing new young talent.

And she is passionate about creating an environment where both she and her team can thrive.

Jodie's mission is to educate and empower her employees to create their own cultures.

And I am delighted to be able to bring some of this conversation to you.

So let's hear from Jodie Hill right now.

You know, it doesn't matter what profession you are, when you have some form of breakdown, I know that you sort of referred it as your breakthrough.

And what I'm curious about is when this happened, and clearly it sounds really dreadful and awful.

Do you know what contributed?

Was it burnout?

Was it working in a.

In a way that obviously didn't suit your brain?

Was it pressure?

Was it overwhelm?

Or was there other things contributing from all angles which clearly sort of maybe led to this ADHD diagnosis a few years later?

So it was a combination of a few things.

I already had PTSD and anxiety, so I was being treated for that in the sense that I was on medication.

I'd had years of therapy.

And that compounded with the culture that wasn't the right culture and I suppose an unsupportive environment, but also an environment where, you know, especially in the legal sector, it's very much, how much do you bill, you know, how much work can you get done in a day?

And, you know, you don't really have the opportunity to have a bad day because everything is time recorded by the hour.

So it really created quite a difficult environment.

So when I was struggling with insomnia and I was unable to, you know, some days I was only able to sleep for like an hour, and I'd have to come in and draft really complex documents.

And that became such a struggle that, you know, that.

That concept of powering through when you.

When you simply don't have the energy to do that, that basically culminated in me having some time off, which is the first time I'd ever had any time off.

And then I realized I actually had to leave that environment because the guilt and the shame that came with having time off was eating me alive.

Like, it was awful.

And I get that.

That was my.

That's my brain doing that.

But equally, I definitely empathize with some of my clients who.

Who are in those positions, you know, as an employment lawyer.

And they say, oh, you know, this is how I feel.

This is how the workplace is making me feel.

I certainly can see, well, firsthand how that does feel.

And I think that's the.

That's really the catalyst for the change and also for the preventative stuff that people need to put in place in organizations rather than waiting for this point.

And albeit, yes, I've turned the adversity into something positive, but not everybody is able to do that.

And, yeah, you know, we want to avoid people getting to the point of a breakdown and try to create these cultures where actually it's more around how we can support people and avoid those things happening.

It feels like there's so much that needs, you know, this changing and evolving, and we're still sort of, you know, at the relative early stages when we talk about, you know, diversity and inclusion.

I wonder how many big law firms have got that, you know, set up.

I wonder how, you know, like you say, sort of lip service when we're talking about mental health and wellbeing and big corporates.

I mean, I speak to clients all the time who are desperate to leave their corporate jobs because they have got this ADHD diagnosis.

They've got a long history of having to take time out for.

For their mental health.

They've experienced burnout several times.

Their physical health is suffering.

They have anxiety, sleep problems and then they get the diagnosis of ADHD and they understand that.

They're like, you say that the culture and the work environment and the people, it didn't feel supportive, it felt totally alien to the way their brain wants to work.

And it's a massive shift, isn't it?

Because for you to then set up your own law firm and hopefully be able to feel it, that you're in a safe space and you're able to work according to how you work best and obviously then inviting other people in and hoping that they enjoy this environment as well, it feels very few and far between.

And I just wonder how, I mean, do you get people coming to you going, how do you do it?

Like, how can I do this?

I want to, I want to be you and I want to work in the law sector, but I don't want to be in the conformities and the boxes that the industry wants to put us in.

Yeah, we do.

We actually do get a lot of people asking that.

And so we've, I've started doing consultancy work helping people create these cultures within their own workplaces.

So if it's a business owner or someone wants to set their own firm up or their own business where they want this type of culture, I've just started helping people with it.

And a lot of it is, for me it just seems really obvious.

But clearly it isn't that obvious to some people.

And again, that's probably my ADHD brain just looking straight at it go, well, that's obvious.

Whereas most people are kind of going, well, where do we start?

And I personally think it starts with us.

Like we have to be super self aware, which doesn't come naturally when you're ADHD as well.

So we have to really work on that self awareness piece so that we're aware of our own, own triggers, what we need to do to look after ourselves, but also that in our colleagues and our clients.

So I think that awareness piece is really important.

But there are, there's definitely been a shift, you know, since lockdown, there's been a shift of the priority of looking at things like diversity and inclusion, neurodiversity and specifically mental health in the workplace.

There's been a shift in terms of that moving up the agenda for businesses and you know, allocating specific budgets to try and support with that.

So thinking about training and things like that, where you're educating people, because that's what this comes down to.

You know, a lot of the time it's.

People just don't understand why you're doing things differently or why you're behaving differently to how they would automatically respond or behave in a situation.

And I think when you build that awareness and understanding, it's a much kinder environment for everyone to work in.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you're sort of like, breaking down those.

Those barriers and being a bit more vulnerable and talking about, you know, your challenges and how you prefer to work and how your brain work wants to, you know, operate.

And, I mean, I.

I've noticed it over the past few years on LinkedIn, and I'm not on their loads, but I have noticed that on LinkedIn there is a lot more conversation now about neurodivergent vergence in the workplace that people are being more open about, you know, diagnoses, whether it's, you know, depression, anxiety, autism, adhd.

And it feels like, oh, my goodness, like, it has to take, you know, a global pandemic for people to kind of like, drop their guard a little bit and be like, you know what?

I am suffering and I am at the top of my game, but here's what, you know, what I'm dealing with as well.

Do you get people coming to you sort of, you know, telling you, you know, anonymously or, you know, on the.

On the quiet, you know, I've been diagnosed with, with neurodivergence, adhd, autism, whatever, and I'm scared to talk about it in the workplace.

I'm scared for people to know because I'm really successful or I'm running this or I'm running a team, and there's still not that acceptance there.

And I guess, what do you foresee happening in the future in this situation?

Yeah, it definitely happens still, I think, more so people are happier, happier.

And I say happier because there's still a lot of stigma around mental health, but there's a more openness and accepting kind of the stories around mental health, because we've been sharing those for longer, I think, because there are less people who are open about, say, ADHD diagnosis.

Even though it has increased recently, I still get that.

I get a lot of DMS where people will say, thanks to you, I've now gone and got a diagnosis and I'm getting the help that I need and.

But I'm still not there in the kind of realms of sharing this with my employer.

Have you got any tips on how I should deal with that?

And so it's interesting because people are at very different stages, and I think, especially when someone has a late diagnosis, because it's a change in their ordinary way of communicate with their employer, They've probably never mentioned it or even spoken about it before.

So now to come out with it, a lot of employers will go, oh, well, you didn't tell us about this before.

And it's kind of having to go through all of that.

And if someone's found the late diagnosis difficult, then that's quite hard to do because you're being judged basically for, you know, for having this diagnosis.

And it's not actually your fault, if anything.

I mean, I found the whole process actually quite positive.

And that was mainly because I've had a lot of treatment in the past for mental ill health, but I wasn't on any medication.

And when I went through this process, it's actually during lockdown.

So I saw someone on Zoom and did it online.

But the whole process just gave me a new level of self awareness that made me more kind to myself because I was, to be honest, I was being really hard on myself when I forgot certain things or interrupted people in a meeting or got to the point where, you know, Mr.

Flight or whatever, just due to organization issues.

So those things.

And I used to really be, why so stupid?

Like I used to say these things to myself.

It's like you wouldn't say that to somebody else.

But when I had the diagnosis and I read the report, it like something just like the penny dropped and it just made a lot more sense to me as to why I am the way I am.

And to be honest, I wish I'd known it earlier because I would have been able to put things in place to help myself earlier.

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.

I was exactly the same.

And for me it was like, oh my God, the relief, the relief of going, okay, there's, it's not me being stupid and exactly the same that this inner talk, the inner self critic was very, very strong.

And sometimes it just came back and I'm like, no, no, no, okay, you know why you're doing this and you know what's happening.

And the self awareness is, is there.

Sometimes it is.

You have to catch yourself and you do have to be like, no, no, this is why you're overwhelmed.

You know, this is why your nervous system feels the way it does at the moment.

And I do struggle with a jam packed diary.

And so as life is getting busier, work's getting busier, my diary's getting busier, and I notice it all happening in my body.

And so I have to be really sort of intentional and conscious about my diary because I know the impact that has.

And again, it's like those little things where before I'd be like, what's wrong with you?

Everyone works, everyone's got a jam packed diary.

You know, this is, this is just life.

And so now I kind of have a bit more compassion about that and kind of understand that myself nervous system is way more sensitive and that is why I need to have a lot more, a lot more buffers in my diary.

I need to have a lot more space, a bit more time.

And I try and take that pressure off myself from an ambition, ambitious perspective where I want to do it all and be it all and have it all and write the books and be doing, podcast and serve my clients.

And I know that I can't do that.

I know that that's just not possible.

So my restless ADHD brain which just keeps, wants to keep moving and doing and, and I can sort of see that maybe those tendencies in you that you have so much passion and you know, as we all know that we have a strong sense of justice and our morals and especially if you're working in law, you probably see yourself as this advocate, but we are so prone to burnout, aren't we, that we have to kind of almost pull the brakes a little bit and just go, okay, right, like breathe, okay, I know I want to do it all, but I can't do it all in one go.

And prioritizing, which again isn't easy for us.

So we have these amazing brains, but we often, we have to tame them in a way that's not going to have an impact on our mental health.

What scaffolding or what systems do you have in place?

As a female founder who's got adhd, running a busy law firm, how do you, you know, there's a lot of people there go, I can't run my own business, I can't start my own business because I forget things and I'm disorganized.

I'm this and that.

What would you suggest or what advice would you give to someone that's listening to this thinking, actually I'd really like to leave the corporate, run my own company, but I'm worried about all the things I can't do or the perceived things I can't do.

Absolutely do it and back yourself because we're our own worst nightmares in terms of the negative self talk.

And the reality is I can't do everything.

What I've done is I've surrounded myself with people who can and I'm aware of what my weaknesses are.

I'M aware of what my strengths are and I don't always get it right and that's okay.

But I've got people around me who can help me to function at my best because they do the things that I'm rubbish at.

So, you know, making sure other people are mindful of when they put things in my diary, like I've got the right information and you know, if I've got to travel somewhere, making sure that that's in there as well.

Otherwise you end up back to back and you can't travel to the next appointment.

So things like that, where, you know, perhaps we don't think about that because we just say yes and it's like everything is now, now, now that foresight and having people around you that think differently as well is really, really important.

But if anyone's thinking to set up their own business and they've got a real passion, then absolutely do it.

Because as you know, with adhd, if you're passionate about something, then you're going to do it more.

You're going to have that drive.

If you're in a corporate role and you're not enjoying it, it's probably because you're bored and actually you're not living your sense of purpose and you're not living to your values when you can align that.

It actually for me has been so life changing.

I actually don't feel like the same person that I was five years ago.

And it's taken me on such an amazing journey to the point that I've also released a journal where people can.

I suppose how I helped myself was I started journaling and I was getting bored with other people's journals because they were the same on every page.

So I created a journal called Thriving at Life that I've been using to help me focus on things like self awareness and gratitude and just generally keeping that awareness up from a personal perspective, but not just mentally, but physically as well.

So things like that, like find the tools that work for you because everything that works for me is not going to work for you, it's not going to work for the people.

But you might find little gleams of inspiration from other people, people's stories that help you kind of along that, along that journey.

And I do think it's really important to find your tribe.

So, you know, finding people that like on, even on social media, I don't follow loads of accounts that I know, that I know will upset me because what's the point of that?

And I know that's going to exacerbate my anxiety.

I know it's going to distract me because I want to defend everybody in that situation.

So, you know, surrounding yourself with like minded people so that when you need the support, it's there, but equally making sure that you've still got that diversity of thought so that you've got people who are very different to you but still share some values that are the same.

I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And please do check out my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.

I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.

Take care and see you for the next episode.