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    • Aug 8

ep 49: Finding Your ADHD-Friendly Career Path with Rachel Gaddis


i know what to do so why can't i do it

Are you considering a career change or looking to align your work with your ADHD strengths? In this empowering episode, Rachel Gaddis, known as The Comeback Coach, shares her expertise on finding ADHD-friendly careers, especially for women over 40.


Discover how understanding your transferable skills, aligning your career with your values, and crafting a compelling career narrative can lead to a more fulfilling professional life.


What you'll learn:

  • The three-legged stool approach to career transformation

  • How to identify and leverage your transferable skills with ADHD

  • Strategies for aligning your career with your personal values

  • Techniques for crafting a compelling career narrative

  • The power of body doubling for enhancing productivity

  • Why it's never too late to make a career change, even after 40

  • How to overcome age-related doubts in career transitions

"Your ADHD brain has unique superpowers. Let's unleash them in a career that truly fits you." - Rachel Gaddis

Throughout this episode, Rachel offers practical advice and personal insights to help you leverage your ADHD traits for career success. By implementing the strategies discussed, you'll gain the tools needed to navigate career transitions and find work that celebrates your strengths.


Useful Links Mentioned:

No matter how challenging your current career situation may seem, this episode is a powerful reminder that change is possible at any age. Start embracing your ADHD strengths and aligning them with your career goals today, and watch as they become your assets in achieving professional fulfillment.


Share your biggest takeaways and "aha" moments from this episode with us in the comments or on our social media channels. We're here to support and celebrate your progress!


Remember: By understanding your transferable skills, aligning your work with your values, and crafting a compelling career narrative, you can transform potential challenges into strengths. Your current career doesn't have to define your future. With the right mindset and tools, you have the power to thrive in a career that truly fits you.




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Click here to read the transcript:

All right, guys. Welcome back. We have Rachel Gaddis with us today. And Rachel, I'm gonna let you go ahead and introduce yourself. yeah. Great. I help women over 40 find ADHD friendly careers. Very good. And then you do like you help them with some transition in there, right?


I do, yeah. A lot of times, you know, we find ourselves wanting to change from one career to another career and not really sure exactly how to make that switch. You know, sometimes it's it's not necessarily a clear way to do it. And I swear that's kind of my superpower is helping people figure out how to make that change.


And I got a late diagnosis of ADHD myself. And so I understand how it can kind of rock your world a little bit and how it makes you look for places that are, you know, more friendly, right, to those ADHD superpowers and ADHD brains that we have and how important it is to find the right fit in those very specific ways.


So that's why I kind of picked this as a niche. I just love helping women in particular to switch careers. The crazier the switch, the better. I welcome the challenges and, and yeah, ADHD brands. I love working with them because I have one now and something we didn't talk about, something we didn't talk about before. Actually it was I'm working with clients that are struggling with the structure of the structure at work sometimes, but also struggling since, you know, COVID and everything that happened, struggling with not having the structure of work.


How do you work where clients? Yeah, there are so many ways to kind of figure out what exactly it is that you need and sort of put that in there. You know, like one thing that I am doing lately is body doubling, which is immensely helpful, I find, and it's so funny because all you're doing is getting on a call with somebody and both working at the same time.


And yet I find that it really makes me I really get a lot done on this body double in call. So there are just a lot of different tools and tricks that you can use for yourself to kind of satisfy your ADHD brain's need for different things. It just depends on where exactly you're struggling. And I know that didn't really entirely answer your question, but it's like our brains just need very specific things.


We have very specific itches to scratch it, and then once we once we get that in place, we're kind of unleashed on everything and it's magnificent. But yeah, that's just one example. And for my listening audience, I did not pay Rachel to say body doubling is that when you talk about it all. But it's huge for me. Yeah, it's huge.


It makes a big, big, big difference. And there's so many ways to do it now. If you guys are struggling, working at home, you can make an appointment working with another person and you can probably even do it in the office place now as well because it's very it's very quiet, it's very contained. You can turn off your microphone, you can turn off your video even if you need to.


But I mean, I've had clients that are gosh, I'm forgetting at the moment what she did with the down. I can't remember. I can't remember what she did. But almost all of my clients, I've tried body doubling. I absolutely love it. And it just is really, really so effective. I mean, I always tell the kind of funny story that I took my laptop out to my barn to clean out my barn, which is usually like an all day thing and yeah, done in like an hour because I had some other person there that was that was working.


Exactly. Yeah, I was. I was full. What was I doing? Folding laundry or sorting through part of my closet. And I just asked my husband to just sit in there with me while I did it because it was taking me forever. And I'm telling you, I finished in like an hour and a half. That was crazy. Well, and that's I mean, of course, we want to, you know, stay cognizant of what our partner wants to do.


But so, of course, a day of that, I'm struggling. And I will say, would you mind if you just sit right over there? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I did. I was like, what if here and here? It's like, sure. Yeah. So that's that's very it's just funny. Like I talk about body doubling all the time and, and we did not mean for that to come up, but


something that's been coming up with my clients here lately, especially those that work in the corporate world is aligning with the values of the company. Can you tell us how how you do, how your work helps people with that? Yeah. And this is a big, big deal for those of us with ADHD. And that was kind of a revelation to me as I started getting into getting more into career transition coaching in particular for those of us with ADHD, because I had always kind of thought that this was just a me thing.


The way that doing the right thing was so important to me at work that I would go to the mat for it and I would sometimes be the only one kind of saying, No, we have to do the right thing here. And people would be like, you know, we just do the easy thing instead. And I'd be like, No, you have to do the right thing.


This is what's right. But that is an ADHD person quality. We have we have certain standards, certain moral standards, certain ethical standards, and we by golly, we will abide by those standards no matter what. And we demand that from our you know, from our work environment, from our career, from our employer. So finding a career and an employer in a workplace that has values that match ours, that's crucial.


And one way that I do that is when I first start working with a client, I have them look at a list of example values, and I tell them, you know, these are just examples. You don't have to use an example on here. If you think of a value, it's a widget value. It doesn't have to be on the list.


And then there's just a simple two column worksheet they fill out on the one column on the left is a list where they can put their own values like the top five or ten, whatever that they see on the list that they resonate with. Right? And they put those in priority order from like most important to least important for their own personal values.


And then on the right is the values that they seem to see are important to their employer on the right and in order of importance. And it's so illuminating to just see how much this match or how much they don't match, because sometimes, sometimes it explains a lot about the conflict that they might be feeling at work or the pain points.


The friction. Yeah. But you know, another thing I know that we were talking about is that you don't always know what your current values are or you think you do, and you're not necessarily being honest with yourself about your values for whatever reason. Like maybe your value, your real value is to do one thing, but what you have grown up believing your values should be with something else.


Like you grew up thinking that you should be climbing the corporate ladder or that your actual value is not that at all. So you're in conflict about it and you want to say it's one thing, but it's really the other. So that's her. I think working with a coach can be super helpful. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a coach.


I found this really helpful when I was working with the coach way, way before I even really knew what coaching was because they listened so faithfully to what you're saying and they will pull out little things that you're saying and go, I heard you just use the word, you know this to describe that. I thought that was interesting.


And you'll be like, Don't write that. I use that word because you don't even listen to what you're saying. Or they'll say, you really lit up when you were talking about X, Y, Z, and it seems to adhere to this other value that you were talking about earlier. How does that strike you? And it's just so interesting to have somebody listen that closely to you because no one will listen to you as closely and faithfully as a coach.


It is just a really fascinating experience. So, yeah, anyway, working with a coach can be helpful for that reason. I've never heard anybody explain it that way, but that has been my experience as a coach and as getting coached. They really can see like the whole picture that you're giving them. Not only that, I feel like one of my superpowers as a coach is I will remember something somebody said like six months ago and I could walk in and go, okay, this is how this adds to the bigger picture.


But another thing that we talked about with values is one way that I notice that our values things are going against our values is if you're getting annoyed or upset at things quite often, then it's probably not in alignment with your values. I had this experience where I was working with a person who just would irritate me and kind of rub me the wrong way.


And this is not my normal experience in life. Like it's it's not like this going around getting irritated by people that I had this close working relationship. And what I finally noticed is one of my values was personal responsibility and our values that we want for ourselves. We expect others to have. Exactly. And that person did not have personal responsibility.


Any time anything went wrong, it was my fault. And actually, I'm it's not just about me getting irritated that you're blaming me. It's against my value. And I own another business where I deal with like customers and and you know, then my well, but I would never do that to that. I would never make a mistake their fault.


Even if it is their fault. I'm going to write my personal responsibility. And so I totally, totally break that story out just to say like you're constantly having friction or irritation. It's probably because you are. You can find a value there. It's actually a really good thing. Like I think it's a great thing to have personal responsibility gives you a lot of power.


It is your life and you're going to show up as somebody that can be trusted. So watch for for like where you're having your pain points. And I think pain points was even over. I think that's such a great observation and it is so true. You know, when you are flaring up somewhere, it is a value and you're just getting stepped on it.


And it's one that depending on your level of response, it might be a really important value. Like you said, it's really Yeah, and it helps to know them. It helps to know what your values are a lot because then you can look for places that don't step on them. Yeah, and one thing that we talked about before as and you kind of explained this with the worksheet, but sometimes values can seem very vague, like how can we make yeah, when your values simple.


I mean of course there is the worksheet that tool. But I think one thing that we talked about before is you just get to decide like what kind of person do you want to be? Yeah, you do. I mean, you decide what kind of person you are. You get to sort of decide what you've been doing. I mean, it's not and it's not a super scientific process, you know, like you deciding which five are the most important to you, it's it's a gut feeling on your part, you know?


You know, nobody else gets to look inside your heart and say, no, that's not true for Mande. It's actually this whenever you're no, you're in charge of yourself. You're in charge of what you what you want to be, what kind of person you are and what kind of person you want to be. So, yeah, absolutely. It's up to you.


I actually just did some work recently on like beliefs in yourself and what I noticed, and I think it's very true for like values as well. What I noticed is the top beliefs I wanted to have about myself. I was already experiencing those things. I was already those things. And so oftentimes, I think with our values as well, you're probably already those things.


You just want to up level that. Or in the case of like working with Rachel, you want to find a match. So one thing that this makes me think of is with some companies, could it be not so obvious what their values are? How do you how do you deal with that? Yeah, I mean, what you are looking for, first of all, you want to identify what your current employers values are and should be is since you're already there when you're thinking about employers and careers.


Yeah, I mean, you're definitely going on more anecdotal evidence, people that you know who work there or Glassdoor reviews or, you know, writings about the companies, that's when you have to kind of do some research. And yeah, it can be hard to find out what their values are and, and really that's useful more when you get as far as like an interview or you're talking with them like it helps you kind of make sure you are about to commit yourself to a situation where your values are going to get stepped on.


But broad strokes, you can certainly avoid some careers that seem like they're going to respect your values. Like, you know, to use an example of an industry, I used to work in consulting and not to bash on consulting or anything because it's great, but it's like things like being authentic and totally transparent and super honest with people is like your top three values.


For example, you may not be very happy in consulting where you have to kind of navigate between being, you know, part of the team, being part of the other company, being like a sales person, being like a customer service person. It's kind of like this mishmash of roles that you're switching between all the time and it's like being super authentic at all times about what's happening with everybody across the board.


It's not always possible when you're a consultant because you're having to kind of straddle several worlds at once and depending on your values, that can be a really terrible feeling. And you mentioned before Glassdoor reviews. What does that mean? I was just thinking of like, you know, Glassdoor is a is a website where people talk about what it was like to work at a particular company, like from the employee's point of view.


But there are a lot of places where you can go to to get direct employee feedback on what it was like to work at a company. Like you could just search the internet for like Reddit comments on an employer or a Glassdoor comments on an employer or, you know, various forums, you know, like depending on what type of work it is you might know what subreddits to look and you know, or what what other types of forums selection, whether it was Facebook or something else.


But yeah, I mean there are so many new things popping up all the time that I don't even know what they all are, but there's always a place to look where people are going to be talking about it. And we don't want to leave out the entrepreneurs. I have absolutely a lot to They want to switch from corporate to entrepreneurship, and it's mostly because the values are not matching.


But one thing I notice that is so helpful when I'm working with clients and this is exactly getting down to their values, I'm just doing it and different way. What is the most important thing to them? I tell them like I like to garden a lot, and so I'm like, you know, five gallon buckets. And they're like, Yes.


And I'm like, okay, so how many of those five gallon buckets can you carry? And it comes down to about four because let's say these these five gallon buckets are like full of water. Well, once you start to carry them together, they tap, right? And so I get them down into four buckets. And that, like sharpens their values very quickly, because what I'm saying is there's room for four things.


And yes, lots of things go under this category. Sure, sure. But once they know these are the most important things to me, this is what I value the most. These are my values. What's a very simple way to put your values right? What matters most than when they are guiding their life towards that. They are so much happier.


And that's outside of it's not completely outside of work because one of those is going to be their work environment. Right? But I almost always. Yeah, yeah. Dating their families or, you know to me in their career but increasingly isn't it about your overall life picture anywhere. I mean it's all of these warm ups are about yeah it's well you you you want to


and maybe this is true as we get older more too.


I don't know. But, but increasingly you don't view your life as separated so much into these different compartments. Everything kind of bleeds over. Right? If you're working a job that stresses you out or has you working 60 or 70 hours a week or something, that it's your personal life, it sort of diminishes the pleasantness and enjoy ability and even quantity of your personal life.


Right. And maybe affects your health and maybe affects all these other things. So you start thinking of it as like a holistic picture of like, well, in order to have an overall life that I want where I have enough financial security, enough personal happiness, enough career happiness, I have to look at it overall so that everything kind of balances out well.


And it is just it's an undergraduate thing, right? All the buckets are. Yeah. You're the underachieving like status. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I can't even say the words out of vacation. Well, that's why I like your picture of like, you're carrying all these buckets, because that's the way that it feels, right? You have to figure out what you want to carry.


Yeah. And then you mentioned, like, later in life, your buckets change. They can change from exactly one month and they're not your own. And they do cross over. Like when you're putting things into certain categories. If you know this, I like to talk about like cornerstone goals. Like you. It's like if you're not taking care of your health, you're not doing well at work.


Exactly. So there are I agree it does cross over quite often. That makes a lot of sense. So I got


I wanted to talk definitely about how you're never too old until so yeah, people some people think that they're too old to, you know, change careers.


Right. Tell us about your grandfather. I believe it was. yeah. The story I always think about when I hear people talking about their their worry. Right. That they're too old to change. Careers are really too old to do anything. I always remember my grandfather, who learned how to play the violin when he was 75, and it surprised everyone, you know, that he was doing that.


But he just, you know, started learning how to play it. And he got quite good, actually. But yeah, I always think about that and I think, you know, how old are you again? You know, it's like, I'm 52. I'm like, that's nothing. You still have plenty of time. Now, there was a story that I write because I would always say, and I think that's such an ADHD thing to say and but you know what?


I don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I say yes until I fairly forties. But one thing that was so helpful was looking at people like Julia Child who, you know, you might know is like a famous cook. The Colonel Sanders I don't think that was his actual name was had, but I don't know it didn't start his you know, chicken business until much later in life.


There are all these examples of people that either make a big change or don't start something until very much later in life. And so, yeah, never too late. I even coaches, I've seen coaches that you know and they're like yeah and seventies just start coaching values your mind go we get to second third fourth wise guys I mean it's not it's and you know the other thing I think people imply sometimes when they say I'm too old to change, you know, to do something else.


I think there's like an era of resignation to like, well, I'm just going to do this and, you know, kind of wait it out, right? Yeah, it's awful. But I'm just going to kind of sit in the awfulness until I retire and whatever. And like, you don't have to do that. I mean, you can, if you want, no judgment, but you don't have to.


It's not you can you can get up and do something else. It's your life. You're in charge of it. Yeah. And I think it comes from an era of, you know, for people around my age, like our grandparents, where we had my my grandparents on both sides were basically entrepreneur guess in different agriculture businesses, oddly enough. But what other people did is they learned to go into a job and they were in that job for however many years until they retired and then they collected their retirement.


Yeah, Whereas I don't I don't think that's a thing we need to do anymore. We can do whatever we want to do in our careers. Yeah. And we have to change, right? Things are changing so quickly anyway that you really don't want to be too static anymore. I don't think.


So I like the way you explained your three three things. Let's go ahead and talk about that. Yeah. So what I like to do is focus on three things with my clients. I think of it as like a three legged stool with supporting that career transformation or career transition.


And what we do is we focus on transferable skills and strengths, right? What skills and strengths can you take with you from career to career, or even what skills and strengths have you already been taking with you from career to career that can often provide that through line, right, that you use to tell your story? So transferable skills and strengths, narrative or story, what is that story of your career that we just talked about so that you can be in charge of the story and then values, which, you know, we already talked about as being very important.


So transferable skills and strengths, narrative and values are supporting as a three legged stool about career transformation. And that way you have a strong platform to build on, you know, and I don't know if we said it after pressing record, so I apologize if we're repeating ourselves. I just think this is so important that Rachel said, which was if we don't have control of the narrative people, the people that are interviewing us are just going to fill in the blank.


Is that how you put it? Yeah, exactly. Like what I say to my clients is if you don't tell them the story of your career, they are going to make up a story about about how you know, why you changed jobs so many times, why you changed careers. And their story may not be accurate. It may not be.


It may not be in your favor. So you really want to you want to make a not make up, but you want to tell them the story of how you got to be sitting here in front of them. Right. It's so interesting. Mande, I majored in this, which is totally unrelated to what I do now. Like you want to hold an end to your life a little bit.


Tell them the story of how you got to be here. They'll remember the story. People like stories. People engage with stories, they relate to them. And then after your interview has been long over, they'll still remember you. They'll remember the story that you told them that'll stick in their minds much more than some random Joe Schmo off the street who majored in computer science.


Worked in computer science, Got another job in computer science. That's not a story. That's just that's normal. Who cares? Nothing boring. Yeah, Nobody's going to remember that. Yeah. That's so interesting that you say that because, you know, you're in like, you know, the career area. But that's true in our everyday life too, as something that is very much like an introvert.


I can stay very quiet in social situations. Yeah, here I am talking to you on, on YouTube. And it sounds crazy that I say this or on the podcast, but I am very much an introvert and my experience my whole life has been I keep my mouth shut and then people decide what my story is and what would get me in trouble.


Kind of a lot where people, because I didn't speak up or tell them maybe how I felt about something or who I am about, then they just make it up so I could see how in an interview situation this would be, you know, ten times as important that they're not looking at what do they call it now? Is it still called a resume?


Are they calling it a CV? This is how long I've been out of the so called their resume. They still call their resume and, you know, this is making me think of something else, because I don't want people to feel all paranoid, like I can't go out and not say anything because then people are thinking bad things about me.


It's not like that. It's more like after you leave, you know, after it's over. What do you want people to be thinking about you? What do you want people to remember about you? And that's more along the lines of like personal brand, right? Whether it's in terms of your career or something else, what do you want people to say about you once you've left the room?


Right. That's that's kind of what I what I tell people, personal brand and people remember stories and people like stories, you know? Yeah. People want stories. They respond to them. They're, you know, it's a universal language. Now I'm actually getting my website redone under have you ever heard of Donald Miller? yeah, I think I have, yeah. He's written a few books.


He talks about Story brand, and I'm working with a certified company that is going to do that's their own website for me. But why am I doing that? Because I want people to remember me. I want them to understand how they can how I can help them. And it's the same with a company I can't wait to see your website do.


That's going to be so great. I'm excited and I'm very excited. Okay, Well, is there anything else that you feel like we haven't touched on that would be helpful to people? I think we have covered everything well. I think the next stop would just be how can they get in touch with you? Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn.


I've got my LinkedIn thing right here on my on my website under Rachel got us or Rachel got us coaching, but also download my freebie, go on my email list because I send out tips and offers and interesting info all the time and it's a funny email list to be part of and I'd love to have you on it.


And you can do that by downloading my free career guide at Start Your Career, which is on my Website. And that URL is going to be on the show minutes but it's Rachel got us coaching dot com forward slash start your career today. All right Rachel Well I love the other ADHD areas and I love your specific field that's so needed and so helpful.


I have so many people coming to me in consultations that say what? What is the best career for me? What should I do? And I think you're you're doing some really good work here as far as helping people, especially later in life, make that transition and especially know their strengths. I think that's so important. Yeah, well, I love what you're doing as well.


I feel like we have a mutual fan club going here, Mande And so it's been really fun talking with you today. thank you so much, Rachel. I appreciate your time. Thanks. Take care.




 


















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