I was diagnosed with ADHD in late 2025, I'm currently 47 years old.
That means I've spent nearly thirty years building a career selling phones, training thousands of staff, running divisions, becoming a CEO, and now founding an AI company, all without understanding why my brain worked the way it did. For most of that time, I thought I was just weird. And honestly? I was OK with that.
The diagnosis changed everything. Not because it fixed me. But because it gave me a framework to understand why some roles made me soar and others made me self-sabotage. It explained the overcompensation, the burnout, the nights I couldn't sleep because I was convinced I was lazy. And it gave me permission to stop apologizing for how my brain works.
If you're reading this and you feel like you can't concentrate, like you're struggling with focus, like success isn't in the cards for you, I want you to know something: you might not have found the role that actually suits how your brain works.
The Years Before I Understood
I didn't come into tech through strategy. I walked into Phones4U to buy a phone in the early 2000s, had a conversation with the store manager, and she hired me on the spot. For nearly a decade, everything fell into place.
I sold a lot of phones. Then I rewrote the sales process for thousands of staff. Then I led a massive project that saved the company millions in stock loss. I kept getting promoted, kept winning, kept moving faster than the people around me. My "weirdness" the way I could spot patterns, jump between ideas, hyperfocus on problems that interested me, wasn't a liability. It was an asset.
I didn't know it was ADHD. I just knew that variety kept me alive. If a day looked the same as yesterday, I'd start to suffocate.
But then I got asked to take over customer service training for the entire group.
The Wall
This role was different. Hundreds of staff in a regulated environment. The same building every day. The same faces. The same training scripts in the same rooms. For the first year, I was completely lost.
I was self-sabotaging. I was unconsciously creating chaos just to feel something. I'd miss deadlines. I'd lose focus halfway through projects. I was underperforming in a way I'd never experienced before. And then I got pulled in front of the Operations Director and dressed down.
That had never happened to me.
Looking back, I wasn't lazy. I wasn't incompetent. My brain was literally starving for stimulus, and the role couldn't provide it. But I didn't have the language for that yet. So I did what I'd always done: I overcompensated. I built systems. I created to-do lists and daily routines. I white-knuckled my way through it.
I got better. But as soon as I had things under control, I left.
I didn't consciously understand why at the time. But I knew it wasn't right for me.
The Silent Cost
What I didn't realize was the price I'd been paying for years.
I was burning my batteries hard outside of work to keep up inside it. I was worried. Genuinely terrified that if I wasn't constantly visible, constantly achieving, constantly standing up to be counted, someone would realize I was actually lazy. So I took on more. And more. And more.
By my late twenties and early thirties, I was using food and alcohol to chase dopamine hits. I was spending hours alone after work recovering. I was tired in a way that sleep didn't fix.
Then I was on a business trip. Melbourne, with a stopover in the Middle East. I was walking back to my table with a plate full of free food and a couple of beers, and I caught myself in the mirror.
I looked unwell. Out of shape. And I had a horrible realization. I was going to die young if this didn't change.
The Turning Point
That moment changed everything. Not overnight, but genuinely.
I changed my diet. I stopped drinking like I was running from something. I started running. Actually running. I lost 50kg. I got healthier.
And something remarkable happened. My ability to focus improved massively.
I'm not a doctor. I don't know if it was the physical health, the reduction in anxiety, the dopamine from exercise, or all of it combined. But the relationship between my body and my brain became undeniable. When I was healthier, I was sharper. When I was sharp, I could regulate myself better. And when I could regulate myself, I stopped needing to overcompensate.
Then I became a founder.
Why Startups Suit My Brain
Here's the thing about ADHD: it searches for dopamine. And a startup—even a compliance SaaS startup, which sounds boring but absolutely isn't—gives you something corporate environments don't: no two days are the same.
You're doing strategic planning one hour, fixing a critical bug the next, having a client call, dealing with fundraising, making product decisions, writing code. Your brain never gets bored. And when your brain isn't bored, you stop fighting yourself.
I also learned something crucial: I'm not good at everything, and that's OK.
I have an aptitude for numbers, but I'm never going to be a CFO. When I'm hyperfocused, I can do anything. But the moment that focus breaks, I miss fine details. It's not sustainable in a role that requires relentless precision.
What I am good at is seeing patterns. Connecting ideas that don't obviously connect. Before diagnosis, I called it a "linky brain." Now I know it's ADHD pattern recognition. And I've been lucky enough to build a team—my co-founder Sam included—who are brilliant at the things I'm not.
I'm not hiding my weaknesses, I'm leaning and architecting around them.
The Diagnosis Changed Everything (And Also, Nothing)
When I got diagnosed in late 2025, I was 47 years old. I'd already built a successful career. I'd already achieved things I'm proud of.
So what changed?
Everything shifted through a new lens. Suddenly, I could look at my successes and failures and understand why. I could be nicer to myself. Less judgmental of others who seemed to struggle with things that came easily to me.
But there was grief too. I fell apart at A-levels and university. No one was on my shoulder keeping me on track. I didn't have the systems. I failed not because I was unintelligent, but because my brain needed structure and support I didn't know to ask for.
When I went back to academia in my 40s, after I'd learned to build those systems, I graduated suma cum laude. That's a great achievement, but I could have done that 20 years ago.
And that's where my grief lives. Not for me. I've had a brilliant life, and I wouldn't change my path. But for the 20-year-old version of you, reading this right now, recognizing yourself in my A-level story. What if you understood this about yourself now, instead of at 47?
What Still Doesn't Work
Here's the part I need to be honest about: diagnosis didn't fix everything. I'm still unmedicated. I'm still a cluterfuck of disorganization.
If you follow me into the kitchen, there's a 90% chance you'll find five unfinished jobs and a kettle on, and I won't remember why I'm in there. I have shiny object syndrome. If I'm not careful, I'll flit between the exciting parts of different projects and then get annoyed because we haven't hit our deadline; my business partner is similar and sometimes it's a comedy of errors.
I have to be super disciplined with to-do lists and notes. I live and die by my calendar. Being a new parent adds to the chaos. I need to protect time for the people I care about too. All of this means I have to actively watch my energy levels to prevent burnout.
But here's the thing: it's work I'm willing to do, because the alternative is going back to grinding in a role that fights my brain.
The Framework That Actually Works
If you're feeling like you can't concentrate, like you can't focus, like you won't or can't succeed—here's what I'd tell you:
- First, trust your gut. Listen to the feedback you're getting. Keep your eyes on opportunities to do things that make you feel alive.
- Second, score your role. If your job has ten aspects to it, score them on two things: how much you enjoy them, and how good you actually are at them. Then ask yourself realistically: is there an opportunity to reshape this role toward those high-scoring areas?
- Third, be honest about what you are. You might just be in the wrong role. Or you might need different systems. Or your brain might need a different kind of support than you're currently getting.
There are always going to be aspects of any role you don't enjoy. That's life. But being happy in a role and in life is literally the point, isn't it
The Beacon
I spent thirty years not knowing I had ADHD, and I still managed to build a career that most people would consider successful. But I did it by accident, by trial and error, by burning myself out and then slowly learning what worked, you don't have to do it that way.
You can understand yourself now. You can look for roles that exploit how your brain actually works. You can build teams around your weaknesses instead of pretending they don't exist. You can be healthier, happier, and more effective, and you can do it without waiting until you're 47.
The diagnosis didn't make me successful. My brain—the "weird" one, the ADHD one—did that. But understanding it? That's the real power. That's what changes everything.
If you're looking for someone who gets it—who's lived the corporate grind with an undiagnosed ADHD brain, who's built systems that actually work, who's honest about the failures and the grief and the ongoing work of it all; that's who I am.
And if you're feeling like you don't belong in the corporate world, like you can't focus the way you're supposed to, like maybe you're just not cut out for this: you might be right. This particular world might not be built for your brain.
But that doesn't mean success isn't in the cards. It might just mean you need to find the role, the team, and the framework that lets you be brilliantly, unapologetically yourself.
