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Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

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Hello and welcome to this show. Today I am talking to you about how to be the best CEO with ADHD. Now, before I get into the nuts and bolts of it, let me come with a disclaimer. I’m not pretending to be the best CEO. However, I do strive for excellence, and ultimately, I wanted you to do what you’re doing right now, which is listening to this show. So forgive the clickbaity title. What I want you to know is, if you are neurodivergent, I am undiagnosed ADHD and autistic. I have two children, both with diagnoses. No, that doesn’t make me qualified to say I am, but certainly everyone around me at some point or another has reflected, oh yes, Polly, I see what you’re saying about the ADHD so. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, perhaps you’ve already identified it in me too. But anyway, I think that’s by the by there’s many of us who’ve got diagnoses. There are those of us who just suspect, and we all have our different reasonings.

The most important thing is, if you feel like you have a brilliant brain, but it’s also very attracted to chaos, and you find yourself kind of not feeling in charge half the time of what’s going on with your brain. Then forget diagnoses. This is an episode for you, okay, and I do think us who choose to be self employed, perhaps that is part of the reasoning. We know we’ve got brilliance to share, but we find the idea of being boxed in suffocating. We want to stand on that box and make a difference to the world, and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Okay? So I’m going to be breaking down the three things I’m talking about, time, big piece, right? Team and self management, those are the three core areas I’m going to be addressing today. But if you enjoy this theme, I’m happy to bring it back like one thing I will share with you guys transparently is that my two most popular episodes that have generated the most feedback, people actually kindly sharing with me that they were adding this episode to their ADHD resources, etc, was the ADHD episode, and following on from that, the episode I did last week on mindset, just Yeah, I was so touched by the responses I got to that episode. So let’s dive into this. This is going to be very raw, very real, very rooted, by the way, in my own experience, I’m not claiming to be an expert here. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not an ADHD expert. This is just from my own lived experience, and I know from supporting my ADHD clients and sharing these bits, these bits of advice with them, that they have equally found it valuable. So hopefully you will too. Okay. Without further ado, let’s get into it. So yeah, this is a love letter to my fellow ADHD entrepreneurs, leaders and creatives, and anyone out there trying to run a whole damn business with a brain that resists structure, defaults to chaos, and also happens to be brilliant. I’m sharing how I run my company with minimal hours, maximum creativity and just enough systems to keep the wheels on without crushing my soul under productivity hacks or pretending I’m somebody I’m not okay. So if you’ve ever felt like being the CEO of CEO of your business, kind of say the word. And by the way, if anyone’s watching the video of this and I’m sweating, my goodness, it’s so hot and bright right now, I hope I don’t melt while delivering this. But anyway, if you’ve ever felt like being the CEO of your business feels more like herding caffeinated cats than driving a sleek productivity machine. This one is for you, so let’s get into it.

So the first point I want to make is the obvious one, right? Like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or attention deficit disorder. What is that often taking away from us time, and what is the thing that everyone says is the most valuable thing we have time so it’s very easy to feel shame. It’s very easy to feel like we want to hide this stuff away. And that’s all the more reason why I felt this episode is important to record, because I do not want you looking at me and thinking That woman’s got her stuff together. Because one thing I’ve already shared in this episode is that I do not have a diagnosis, so regardless to say, I also don’t have medication. So you know, I do work with clients who you know have medication, and it does make a huge difference to their focus. I see the difference in those who’ve started with me not on medication, and when they’ve gone on to it. So I mean, that’s a whole other conversation. That I’m again, I’m not an expert on so I’m not going to dive into but I’ll just say I know it makes a difference. I do a few natural things. Look at me. I’m already being very ADHD and going off on a tangent here, but I guess, yeah, let me just put this at the forefront. I do a few natural things, like, I don’t drink black coffee anymore. I once did that, and my poor client was like, Polly, slow. Put on the brakes, slow down. I cannot receive information at the rate that you are delivering it. And that was a big wake up call for me. Thank you. Michaela, if you’re listening to just avoid, you know, I have coffee on the weekends now with friends who will put up with that shit. Not my clients. They’re not, they’re not having to deal with that anymore, you know. So I avoid caffeine. I generally speaking, have a very low sugar diet, and I do a few things that essentially just help me keep clarity and focus in the evening. I take things like CBD, which really helped me rest. I have a whole evening routine. I talk about that on other podcast episodes, so I won’t go into it now, but essentially, my wellbeing is my priority, and I really monitor my state and honor that state like it’s my priority, like before anything else. But let’s get into time.

So I have designed my business around how my brain works and not how productivity. Bro on YouTube thinks it should okay. So the whole cancel Netflix, no, thank you. That is how I regulate sometimes. And, you know, working weekends, no thank you, that is the fast track to burnout. Are things I do not subscribe to, because if I were to do those things, I would just burn out. What I’ve come to recognize, and maybe you recognize this too, is that my brain works at two to three times the speed the average brain works at, which means I can work two to three times less, okay? And I think a lot of people don’t recognize that. I was walking to school today with one of my friends. I was about to say his name. Probably shouldn’t say that. And, you know, one of the things he said to me is, I’ve got a whole day full of meetings. And I was like, Oh yeah, I remember that back in the day, water cooler chat, sitting in boardrooms, listening to people talking about stuff like that was time to really kind of not switch off, but your brain could enormously slow down. And

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I want to remind you of that, because I think we are soon to forget that those eight hour working days we used to work. We were not working eight hours. We were maybe working three or four, the other three or four was filled with water cooler chat, going to pointless meetings, chasing like just a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually constitute work. So we can actually do a lot with very few hours. So when mothers come to me and say, Oh, can I make this work around parenthood and everything else? Yes, you can. You can when you have focus on what you’re doing, which, again, can be a challenge for us. So I work minimal hours by design, not by accident. That means delegation is a non negotiable. So when I say by design, that is one element of it, okay, I delegate the stuff that I don’t need to be doing, because I’m a perfectionist, and I can get really in the weeds with totally pointless tasks that aren’t getting me anywhere, and that is not a good use of my time. That is not, you know, like a when we talk about $1,000 task, that is not $1,000 task, right? I also have created revenue models that don’t need me 24/7 so I have my group program that, you know, I’m in 20 minutes, about to host an hour long call. I check in every single day for about 30 minutes to respond to any messages that are coming in that’s very low touch even my one to one clients, they have one call with me per month. So the number of hours I’m working in my business are very few compared to the hours I can be working on my business, which is what ensures there is a constant flow of clients and money and all the good stuff, okay? And obviously it means that I do have the capacity for overflow where my clients need it, and can do it from a place of generosity, not like, oh, I can squeeze you in here, squeezing in, not the vibe, okay.

So I have clear containers for work and actual space for play and recovery. Playing recovery is not like a Oh, if I have time, it is in the calendar, my manicures, my massages, my afternoons at the beach with the kids, my day like my Friday, which I always keep free the last week of every single month, which I don’t have a single call in, not a podcast interview, not a sales call. Nothing happens in that week so I can use it as I desire. If I have the capacity, sometimes I work on something that requires deep focus. If I don’t have the capacity, I give myself that time off and allow myself the space to come back with the energy that my clients and myself deserve. Oh, look how I deviated them, led with my clients. They are really important to me, as you probably gathered by now, but it is really important that we look after ourselves too, because ultimately, they are going to suffer if we don’t look after ourselves, and we deserve it regardless. Okay, that’s what I was trying to get to see the work is ongoing, okay? So my demand avoidant brain thrives in a setup that invites experimentation over. Digity by having a few hours where it is structured, like, you know, I need to be at my calls for my clients, that is, you know, I’m not messing around with stuff like that, you know, I need to be there for my team meetings and all those kind of pieces. But outside of that, you know, I do have structure around, like, I will have a day normally where I’m recording podcasts. Today is a good example of I was ill recently, so I’m squeezing it in before a coaching call. But normally I try and create structure, so I do high up activities all together on the same day, and follow it up with a soft day where I can approach things more organically and just see what needs to come through. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s a walk in the park and an iced coffee like I honor that essentially, by creating enough spaciousness in your business, you get to honor who you are and not push through. Okay?

So you know, the moment I realized I could structure my week around my energy instead of around the clock, that was the game changer. So Fridays are now like my think days my go and have a sauna, go hang out with their friends, maybe catch up, but most of the time, it’s a day purely for me, and even if I am catching up, I ensure that I do it in a different environment that feels like an absolute treat, okay? And I ensure that I don’t do it for more than two hours, and make the majority of that day about me, because I’m a mum, I then spend the weekend running around after my children. In fact, I say running around. They’re usually running around after me. I don’t really get private time on the weekend, so I make sure I recharge every Friday and that Mondays are a gentle kind of transition into the week in that I Voxer catch up with my one to ones. I catch up with my team briefly. But aside from that, that day is just purely there for whatever I need to focus on in the business. Okay? So, yeah, no calls, just vibes and visions. Okay, so point two, let’s get to point two of this podcast. Because I’m already, I’m already doing the ADHD tendency of just kind of, you know, freewheeling team management. This is a huge one. Okay, even if you just have a VA, this still matters, okay? And if you ever plan on having a team, which I hope you do, if you are a CEO, you need to have a team. You know, learning how to translate your brain into something your team can actually use is really important. And I experienced this the hard way, both through being the CEO, but also through being the ads manager on various teams. And some of those team calls would be absolute chaos, running from 60 to 90 minutes. People hearing information they really didn’t need to hear.

People here getting chaotic instructions that contradicted one another, people hearing a kind of internal monolog that was going, neither here nor there, and then frustrated CEOs, going, why are you not getting what I need? And it’s like, well, because you took a long time to get to that, darling. So yeah, how do we know? And I knew the moment I was on the receiving end of that I didn’t want to be that. And then I’m going to be honest, I accidentally fell into being that, because it was all new. In 2022 I went from having one VA, or maybe 2021 it was somewhere between 2021 and 2022 I went from having one VA to a VA Podcast Producer, a social media manager, a tech assistant. And I’m trying to think, I feel like there was one more in there. But anyway, basically, at one point I had a team of six, and we’d all meet every Monday, and I fell into the trap of being like, Oh, well, this is happening, and this is going great, and this is what I want to focus on. And can you do like this gargantuan, massive ball of tasks just in this one week? And I could see it in their faces. Fortunately, I had the capacity to see that, and I was able to turn the ship around. So let me share with you how. Okay, so now I have systems that translate my vision into action without me needing to repeat myself 47 times or wonder if I’ve, you know, said the thing that they needed to hear, which is equally like on both ends, not fun. So we have weekly slack check in forms that go out on a Friday where we check in about are we on track with our tasks? I mean, I say, are we this is more what they fill in. Are we on track with our tasks? Are we working in our zone of genius? Is there any hidden opportunities that they’ve identified, that they feel there’s something we could be working on, essentially, just a really clean way to communicate what is and what isn’t working, so that we don’t spend 20 minutes discussing these things on the team meeting, because they can all be processed ahead of time, so we can just get into the meaty stuff when we have a meeting the following week. The other thing I’ve started doing is if I find myself wanting to send a long, rambly voice note on slack to my assistant, I instead send it to ChatGPT and say, Please, can you summarize this for my VA so it’s really clear what the deadlines are, what’s required, and any kind of troubleshooting tasks that I want her assistance with, something along those lines. And then I just record it, and it usually comes back with information that’s bang on the money, which is exciting.

Rest in no more than five bullet points, and is therefore very easy for my team to take and run with. And honestly, I’m just so happy for her and happy for me, because that also creates a nicer kind of working relationship between the two of us where she’s not looking at Slack going, Oh God, another voice note from Polly like you know, because at times I have had team members come back to me and be like this. All sounds great. Sorry, what was the thing you needed from me again?

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And you know, that’s not helping anyone. I want you to know, right? Like, I’m not this slight, tidy, put together person like that is, that is how I can, can and have operated and can still occasionally accidentally fall into if I’m feeling a bit too relaxed. The other thing we have, of course, which helps immensely, is SOPs, yes, actual documents where my team members know what they need to be doing so that they’re not demanding too much from me. Because focus is really important. And one thing I recognized really early on is that slack is great because it gives us the ability to get each other’s attention really quickly, and that’s also its downfall. And so I really quickly recognized that we needed to have processes around how we use Slack to ensure that I’m not kind of getting distracted from writing a day of emails. And to be honest with you, some of that’s just come with a kind of sense of being able to be with the discomfort of the FOMO of like, yes, there might be something on Slack, but it can wait. And telling my team ahead of time, right? Today is one of my deep focus days, where I’m bashing out all the emails for next month and responding to my social media manager on the content that’s going out next month. So you will not hear from me till five o’clock. And quite frankly, we have enough processes in place that nothing that urgent can happen. You know, I’m not brain surgeon here, it can wait till 5pm right?

So there are things like that that sometimes our kind of corporate condition brains can feel like, oh, I need to respond immediately. No, you don’t Okay. And when you organize your business, well, nothing should be that urgent. Like take a moment to think, is there ever anything that urgent that it needs to be dealt with within the same hour? And if there is, create a freaking process for it that doesn’t require you okay? Because that’s not if you’re struggling to switch off in your business, it’s no wonder, like nothing should be that urgent. Okay? The other thing I do is structured meetings, which I don’t even run anymore, okay, bless pass me for setting that one up that was actually something inspired by one of my clients back in the day, when I was running ads, she had her OBM running the meeting, and I was like, wow, why wouldn’t you they’re the bloom in OBM? Why wouldn’t they be in charge of the meeting? And that makes such a huge difference, because it just keeps your eyes on the prize. Because when you’re being paid by the hour, and yes, I have been in those shoes, no, you do not need somebody’s back history every time you’re starting a meeting. Yes, it’s lovely to catch, catch up and, you know, all that stuff, but it doesn’t need to be done when you’re on the clock. You know, I used to do calls in the evening because I work with us clients. And I’ll be like, I’m missing dinner time with my kids right now for this. Like, I’m not enjoying this as much as you we need to remember this. We want Mo, you know, motivated team members are the best team members, and there’s nothing that’s going to faster demotivate them. Then you making it the poly show or the, you know, insert your name here, show, right?

So ADHD often means, and this is definitely the case for me, that we think out loud, hence why podcasts were a great idea. But that also can mean that, you know, that’s kind of exhausting for everyone else involved. So learning to capture that in ways that serves the team has been crucial. And what’s been really lovely with chatgpt is I’m not denying that part of me I’ve simply created a process that create puts a buffer between the two so you can have a beautifully chaotic brain and a structured business, the magic is in creating those translation layers between yourself and the team, creating those processes, creating those structures. And to be honest with you, I also have invited my team and said, Look, I know I can be incredibly optimistic about what we can achieve in a certain length of time. I know that I can waffle and not really get to the point. So if you ever see me doing any of those things, I will not take offense. If you turn around and say, Ah, Polly, that ain’t. That ain’t happening in one week. That’s happening in a month. Okay, I will say, since I’ve got a much cleaner, tidier business system and strategy and structure, that comes up less because we’re already planning what we’re doing six months ahead. We’re no longer flying by the seat of our pants like we were earlier on in business.

So there’s less of that. Can we do this in a week? Which definitely helps, helps a lot, but in the earlier phases, that was definitely true, and it did help to empower my team to not feel like they were going to lose their job if they challenged me on something which, it may sound obvious, but I have worked in team dynamics, where I have seen that the team are scared to push back and have potentially been gaslit when they have that is not happening in my space, okay, and it shouldn’t happen in yours, because you. Team that communicate the best, that have the best rapport, achieve the best things. Okay? Respect is a two way street. So finally, let’s go into self management, also known as making my brain a place I want to live. So you know, being a CEO with ADHD isn’t about time or team. It’s about how we manage ourselves. Or isn’t just about time or team, I should say, right? Because ultimately, that’s the most challenging thing about all of this. I know there are things like access to work out there. I know there are productivity apps and tools.

I regularly get DMS from my clients saying I’ve just discovered this. I’ve just found that. But ultimately, none of those things mean anything if we download the app with enthusiasm and ditch it a month later. Ask me how I know, or, you know, have the VA, but then send that VA chaotic information, which, again, they are not empowered enough or experienced enough to say, that’s all great, but you know, like, what’s the outcome you desire here? You know, what’s the goal we’re working towards? How are you going to measure if this is successful or not? How are we going to measure that? And how will you know all these kind of things that, to be honest with you, I’ve not seen the average VA ask. No offense if you’re a VA listening to this, you do God’s work. But you know, it’s not, you know, once someone’s asking questions like that, they’ve normally, what’s the word I was about to say, gravitated that’s the full word gone up to again, ADHD, brain, brain fog, but they’ve, you know, gone up to being an OBM, because that’s the kind of question an OBM generally asks, right? Okay, so knowing how to manage ourselves is so important because, as I often share with my clients, nobody’s going to care about your business as much as you do. So learning how to manage ourselves is important because ain’t nobody else is invested in doing that, as you will be. So I use frameworks for absolutely everything, even this podcast. As you can tell, I deviate from it from somewhat, but there’s a clear introduction, a clear why you should care, a clear three points that you take away from the episode, a clear summary and recap, and then a clear CTA, that is usually one thing, so I’m not overwhelming you, okay? And that is to avoid the 40 minute waffle, which has no through line, you know the ones? Because I know I find those challenging to follow. I know I’ll listen and think that person sounds perfectly charming. But what was I meant to learn from this? And I know that’s not going to help you. And so that you know, as you can tell by listening to this episode, yes, my brain goes a little off tangents, but I have something to pull me back in, and I use that across the board, from my like trainings to my marketing to absolutely everything, so that my brain isn’t overwhelmed with all the different directions it can go in. There is a core framework that still allows enough room for play, but also enough to kind of keep me disciplined and create something that people actually want to consume. Okay? So similar to like, learning how to communicate in a way that your team can actually act well and do all the best things. Similarly, it’s the same for clients, right and and leads and marketing.

So I learned how I learn and how others learn, and I create content with that in mind, I’m a very visual learner. I also don’t like too much fluff, so I incorporate that in how I not only teach inside my containers, but how I market too. I also build in recovery time after high output tasks, not because I’m lazy, but because my brain demands it, and I honor that. You know, I know that in the days I’ve pushed through, I’ve been no good to anyone, and I’ve often made myself ill. So back in the day when I started doing webinars, and they were energetically draining for me, then not anymore, I think I flex that muscle enough that it doesn’t take it out of me. But if I were to, for example, go and talk on a stage tomorrow that 100% I would be like, probably scheduling Thursday and Friday off if I was like, doing it on a Wednesday to, you know, maybe do some work, but have no pressure to do it, and the Thursday probably not allow myself to even think about work and do all the things that fill my cup up. Okay, so this is a combination of honoring my neuro divergence and practicing chosen discipline. It’s a, you know, it’s not an either or. It’s a both and, okay. And the truth is, it’s understanding that when I do these things, like following a structure, it’s harder for my brain than it is for perhaps a neurotypical brain, but it’s honoring that and allowing the buffer time, the play time, and everything else around it to ensure that a, I’m not becoming a masked version of myself that is not true to me, and B, that, you know, I’m honoring the fact that, yes, my brain has been guzzling fuel, so let’s take time to replenish. Okay, so you don’t need to become less ADHD to be a great CEO. You just need better tools, kind of structures, and permission to do it differently, and the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll really enjoy business, your team will really enjoy it, and you’ll get the best results. So if you only take one thing away from today, I want you to know that being a CEO with ADHD isn’t a liability. It is a creative superpower. If you build your business in a way that plays. For your strengths, okay, time, freedom, team, clarity and self management aren’t out of reach, but they do require intention and a lot of experimenting. I also want to caveat here again, as I mentioned earlier, that I am speaking from my own lived experience and what I’ve witnessed in the ADHD clients I’ve supported. I want to be really transparent here that you know one ADHD person. You know one ADHD person. So if any of this you’re listening to and it’s not resonating or it’s bringing up hostile feelings in you, I want to just acknowledge that, you know, we all have our own unique challenges. I hope that even if you don’t resonate with what I’m sharing today, it is at least triggered some useful questions to think about how you relate to time, how you relate to your team, and how you relate to yourself, and the kindness and curiosity you show yourself in how you manage your business, because nobody here is broken. We’re just working with a different operating system. And that’s not just valid. It’s valuable the different way we see the world, the different way we move through the world is like, I genuinely believe the world needs it like we are the innovators. We are the visionaries, but we also need to take care of ourselves on the journey, because I also see some of the most brilliant brains burning out on a regular basis.

So learning how to support ourselves on this journey is so important. So if this episode resonated, if you want more behind the scenes of how I run a business that works with my ADHD slide into my DMs, I could talk about this forever, and honestly, I might just do a whole series if you demand it, if you have the questions I’m available for it okay? And if you’re building your own way of leading and you’re craving permission to do it your own brilliant way. This is your sign. So thanks for listening. And yeah, I’ll be in your ears next week with a guest. Oh, my goodness, the next three guest episodes lined up. I mean, actually, all the I was going through them recently, I’ve actually, by the way, created a Spotify list purely just with guest episodes. So if you’re like, I’m not in solo episodes, I just like listening to the guest ones. You can now wrap your ears around that and listen to them back to back. And honestly, I was just blown away by the caliber of incredible guests I’ve had recently. And the ones coming up are amazing too. So keep your ears out for the next guest episode dropping soon. I promise to be organized enough soon to say who is coming. But today is, you know, like I say, flying by the seat my pants are what’s doing. If I’m being honest, don’t tell anyone that I’ve just done an episode on ADHD and I’m admitting that. Too Cool. Okay, so I’ll be in your ears next week with a guest episode. If you love this episode, please like, please share, please DM me and tell me what you loved about it. I always love hearing from you. And yeah, as I already said, I’ll be in your ears next week.