From Overwhelm to Revenue: How ADHD Strengths Drive Entrepreneurial Success

GUESTS: Skye Waterson, Founder of Unconventional Organisation

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Summary:

How can founders and revenue leaders achieve revenue growth without burnout, especially when ADHD symptoms are shaping their workday? In this episode of The B2B Revenue Executive Experience, Cory Cotten-Potter sits down with Skye Waterson, ADHD strategist, coach, and Founder of Unconventional Organisation, to break down practical, science-based systems that help entrepreneurs and B2B sales leaders reduce overwhelm, sharpen prioritization, and build consistent revenue engines.

What You'll Learn:

• Why entrepreneurs with ADHD get stuck in urgency mode and how the waiting-room test cuts through the noise
• The AI-assisted delegation system that turns chaotic processes into clear SOPs your team can actually follow
• How to identify true needle-moving tasks when everything feels important
• Why starting a task is the real barrier for the ADHD brains
• How to break down huge strategic projects without getting overwhelmed
• Why 7-week execution cycles help ADHD teams move faster and stay aligned
• How ADHD strengths translate into unfair advantages in leadership

Skye Waterson is an ADHD strategist, coach, and founder of Unconventional Organisation, a firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and executives build consistent revenue and scale sustainably without overwhelm or burnout. With a background in academia and extensive experience working with clients ranging from solopreneurs to Fortune 500 companies, Watterson brings both research-backed insights and practical, real-world expertise to the neurodiversity conversation. As host of The ADHD Skills Lab podcast, she shares actionable strategies for managing ADHD symptoms while leveraging the creative thinking and problem-solving strengths that often characterize high-performing leaders.

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Key Insights:

1. [04:23] - Why Prioritization Breaks Down

People with ADHD aren’t struggling because of a lack of effort. Their strengths lie in creativity, problem-solving, and unconventional thinking, but the everyday executive tasks most businesses run on are exactly where the friction hits. This mismatch creates a constant sense of urgency: everything feels important, nothing feels sequenced, and the day easily spirals into checking off low-impact tasks while strategic work slips. Remote work can either ease or intensify this cycle, depending on the individual.

2. [11:21] - Delegation for ADHD Brains

Effective delegation breaks down not because leaders lack capable people, but because they lack clear, shared processes. Skye’s framework reframes delegation as a co-created system: record your rough process verbally, use AI to draft the initial SOP, hand it to your team immediately so they can refine it, and let them take ownership by identifying gaps, questions, and improvements. This removes perfectionism, exposes hidden inefficiencies in your own workflow, and empowers your team to think critically rather than follow steps blindly.

3. [27:14] - How Companies Can Become More Neuroinclusive

ADHD-friendly systems are executive-function amplifiers that help entire organizations operate with more clarity, consistency, and focus. Skye highlights that the most effective B2B teams stop creating separate rules for ADHD vs. non-ADHD employees and instead adopt universal workflows that support how all humans actually work. When leaders map their revenue engine end-to-end, assign true ownership, and shorten execution cycles, they remove ambiguity, reduce overwhelm, and unlock meaningful growth.

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FAQs

1. Q: Why do entrepreneurs with ADHD struggle with prioritization even when they’re highly motivated?

A: ADHD brains often experience urgency distortion, where everything feels equally important. Because working memory is overloaded, tasks compete for attention. A simple reframing, like Skye’s waiting-room test, helps identify what’s truly urgent vs. what only feels urgent.

2. Q: How can leaders with ADHD delegate effectively when their processes feel messy or undefined?

A: Instead of writing a perfect SOP, record yourself explaining the task, run it through AI to generate steps, and hand that draft directly to your team. They refine it by asking questions and updating the process, creating shared ownership without overwhelming the leader.

3. Q: What makes ADHD a strength in leadership and revenue growth roles?

A: ADHD often comes with exceptional creativity, big-picture vision, pattern recognition, and resilience. When paired with systems that support executive functioning, these strengths help leaders innovate faster, solve complex problems, and drive strategic growth.

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