Before I had my son I was working in communications in a fast paced role in the construction industry.
I worked in a different city each day with multiple delivery and client/stakeholder teams and at the time I loved it. However, after having my son things changed. I initially returned to work 3 days per week, but within 8 weeks of returning there was pressure for me to increase those my days and travel. As a result in March 2020 I took the decision to leave employment and set up The Executive Solutions Agency to provide outsourcing solutions for small businesses needing support in various areas of administration, delivery and marketing.
Over 3 years later we are a team of seven who about support neurodiverse business owners, enabling them to maximise their time and feel empowered to run the amazing businesses they have.
I am extremely passionate about what we do and I am often asked what drives and inspires me to work in this field?
I grew up with a loving and supportive family with my mom, dad and younger brother. School for me was great, I had a large friendship group, loved learning and breezed through my exams. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my brother. He often struggled making and keeping friends, had lots of hobbies which he spent most of his time doing alone including Lego, war hammer, gaming and was in his own head a lot of the time. His journey through school was tough, he didn’t enjoy it, he had minimal friends for short spells of time, he struggled academically and he was bullied for most of his school years, it was awful but I’ll leave that there.
It wasn’t until he was in his final years at school, studying for his GCSE’s that it was suggested that my brother may have dyslexia which he later got a diagnosis for. I was amazed that after 12 years in education no one had even thought about this, even us his family.
After his diagnosis my brother understood himself much better, we were able to research tools and coping strategies to assist him through the remainder of his education and into the workplace. He is now a team leader and electrical maintenance engineer for an international machine manufacture, and travels alone internationally to learn and train about world leading technology and engineering, he is super clever and I’m incredibly proud of what he has achieved.
When I first launched my own virtual assistant business in 2020, a client of mine disclosed that they had ADHD. I had been working with him for almost 6 months and knew that from that point on, I could understand and support him so much better.
I knew the impact that support and understanding had made to my brother’s career so I went down the rabbit hole of researching and learning everything I needed to know about supporting neurodivergent business owners.
Every week I have conversations with people who aren’t aware that a service like ours exists and I am passionate to promote the support available and change many more lives in the future.