Turning Difference Into Strength - Dan Armitage and the Neuro-Sparks Story

In this episode of It’s Your Business, Kath is joined by Dan Armitage, co-founder of Neuro-Sparks Business Solutions, for a powerful and eye-opening conversation about neurodiversity, identity and building a business from lived experience.

Dan shares his journey from school, where he always knew he processed the world differently, through a successful career in banking and financial services, to later being diagnosed with ADHD at 32, after already having a dyslexia and dyscalculia diagnosis from the age of 16. 

He speaks openly about the challenges of trying to fit into workplaces that were not designed with neurodivergent minds in mind, the burnout that followed, and the moment he decided enough was enough.

Together with his mum, Dan founded Neuro-Sparks Business Solutions to help neurodivergent people feel understood, supported and able to thrive at work. Through Access to Work support, coaching, screening, workplace training and awareness sessions, Neuro-Sparks is helping individuals and organisations better understand neurodiversity, make meaningful adjustments and create environments where people can succeed as their true authentic selves.

Kath and Dan also talk about the strengths that often come with neurodivergent thinking, the importance of focusing on what people can do rather than what they struggle with, and why businesses that get this right are not only more inclusive, but often more productive too.

This is a hugely important episode about self-understanding, workplace culture, late diagnosis, and the power of building something positive out of personal struggle. Dan’s story is inspiring, honest and full of practical insight for individuals, employers and anyone interested in creating better workplaces for everyone.

To contact Dan or find out more here is their website https://neurosparksolutions.com/

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to It's Your Business with me, KLG, your fairy podmother. This is the podcast that shines a spotlight on inspiring UK businesses, the mindset behind their success, and the practical tips that could help you too on your business journey. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of HDO Business with me, KLG, and today in my studio, I'm delighted to have Dan Armitage of Neurosparks Business Solutions. Hello, Dan. Thank you, Kath. Thank you for having me. Very welcome. Now you're co-founder of Neurosparks Business Solutions. So let's just have a quick word about your co-founder and you. Who's your co-founder? So we're not leaving anyone out. My co-founder is someone very close to me, and that's my mum. Oh, lovely. We started the business in May of 2023, and that was back off my own struggles in employment. And mom, as most males do, you know, always go and sort of vent to your mum. And my mum said, Well, you know, well, what do you want to do about it? And I said, Well, you know what? If I could do, I'll start a business that helps people like me that actually are misunderstood, that can't really live their true authentic self in the workplace because of all the barriers that are put in the way. And she said, Fine, well, we'll do it then. And that was where it was kind of born three years ago, and and things have evolved rapidly since then. So yeah. I absolutely love that. I love that that you co-founded your mom. Perfect. So damn, let's just go way back. Like you said, this is three years old, this business, and you've not always been in this sort of business solutions business at all. In fact, you were in financial services banking. So let's go back to then. So when you left school, you went into banking. Do you know what? I let's go back even before that. So I always knew at school that I was really different because I knew that I processed the world, the outside world, completely different from most other people. I found that I could spot problems, solve problems that other people couldn't, and I thought it was really easy. But then there was really simple things like maths, really simple things like spelling the word because or remembering where to put a full stop and a comma and stuff that other people just did because it's like a rules-based system when it comes to spelling grammar and numbers. I really struggled with that. And it didn't matter how many times I would do it, I could never remember it. When I was 16, I got diagnosed with dyslexia and dyscalculea. And that would really explain why a college, you know, I went there to do media, film, theatre, and performing arts. Because when you've got ADHD or dyslexia, you tend to use the creative side of your side of your brain rather than your logical left. And you'll find that there's a higher propensity of people with ADHD and dyslexia in the creative industries, but also things like sales, business development, entrepreneurship, all of that stuff, and you would associate with ADHD dyslexia. Whereas on the other side of the coin, autism. So my partner Luke is autistic, you know, you look at sciences. So Luke did a master's in chemistry. You look at accounting numbers because everything is binary, it's a rules-based system when you have autism. So things are either right or wrong. So that's kind of the way that we absorb the world. And then so I went to college and I remember setting my theatre exam, looking at my paper, and I couldn't decipher what that exam was trying to ask me. So I got that work talked about it. I just stood up and walked out, and I vowed never to return to education ever again. And I kind of just went out into the world of work. I was really, really good at speaking to people. My ex-wife, we were together since I was 18. Her auntie gave me a job at the bank. I won't name them, but it was a red bank with a flame. And ultimately, you know, they really gave me a chance as a cashier on the counter. People would come up to me and say, Can I pay some money off my mortgage? £610. I'd count it out, I'd write £610, but what I would type into my keyboard would be £160. And that is where the dyscalculia would start to come in and creep in. And they were very, very good with me because they would say, you know, it was a reasonable adjustment, come off before everyone else. You know, if there's any errors, find them. We would normally find them within, you know, minutes because we could see where it was gone wrong. But it kept happening and it kept on delaying things in the working day. So ultimately, they promoted me to get me off the counter. Um, at the ripe age of 19, I was a personal banking advisor. I had my first daughter, and again, that's pretty old for Burnley. Um at 19. And then by the age of 21, as all my friends were coming out of university, uh, I was a bank manager. So I had managed Paddy and Branch, Haslingdon branch, these are all little branches around the Northwest and Preston branch of the Red Bank. So yeah, I was a bank manager there probably about 18 months, and then boredom started to set in. And then I went across to regulated financial planning, which was a whole new ball game. Because when you become a financial planner or a financial advisor, you have to do a lot of exams, a lot of studying. And that's when I really started to struggle because I really then started to notice that I was very different from everybody else. Because people would just study, take information in, read textbooks, things like that, whereas I would read it 10 times over and I still wouldn't be able to absorb the information. And so ultimately, you know, it's about making sure that we can learn in a way that is conducive to how that sports our way of learning, you know. So the Chartered Insurance Institute, they have got a very good program, they will help and support you. So they'll give you auditory stuff, they'll give you, you know, allow you to record things from their PDFs. And ultimately I passed it and it was great. So as a financial advisor for 10 years and then went into learning and development because I've got a very, very good uh way of taking very complex subjects and making them very simple for everyone to understand. And I think that's one of the key gifts that comes with certain neurodivergent uh ways of thinking in the fact that you can make things stupid simple because that's how we like to think. So when did you get diagnosed then yourself? Because it was a late diagnosis. Yeah, so uh dyslexia dyscalcula was 16, and then uh my ADHD was at 32. So, what took you so long to wait in between? Did you not recognize it? Did you think it was to do with your dyslexia, etc.? Was that the problem? Did you not think there was something else? So for me, it was actually I split up with my wife and I got into a relationship with my ex-partner, and it's the first time I've ever been dumped. Ever. Ever. And I really struggled with it. I really struggled with it because I didn't know what to think, I didn't know what to process, I didn't know how it even felt because I'd always been in relationships and it's always been on my terms. And so ultimately I took that pretty bad. And I actually saw a clinical psychologist and I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder, which is quite a common misdiagnosis for ADHD. I need to be careful what I say because it's not always. But actually, I did question it and said, is it potentially to do with emotional dysregulation when it's a symptom of ADHD? Yeah. Because I've always been a very impulsive, um, always very creative, but also uh constantly dopamine mining, you know, very, you know, but impulsive. I used to be very impulsive when it comes to spending. You know, I didn't drink a lot, but when I did drink alcohol, that would be it. I would go and binge. Really, really forgetful. My short-term memory, I've got post-it notes everywhere. My short-term memory is in the bottom bottom 99th percentile of the population. So I'm in the bottom 1% of the population. So when it commits to long-term memory, I'm really good, but short-term memory, I'm really poor. And that's why I have an assistant that helps me to remind me about appointments, meetings, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So when you got your diagnosis at 32, were you still the bank? So no, I wasn't actually. So I was I was working in still financial services. I mean, sorry, yeah, still financial services. I was a national training manager for a large uh insurance organization, international, and I looked after about 12,000, not directly, you know, the learning needs about 12,000 financial advisors and multi-advisors up and down the country. Now, for me, that job was absolutely fantastic because my manager was group operations manager, and she didn't have any direct experience with learning and development. But when I got that job, she said, Dan, I trust you to do your job. These are the things that we need to do as part of our learning and development offering. Do you think you can do it? And what it was almost like was saying, here's autonomy to achieve the results that we need to achieve. There's going to be no micromanagement. Now go and spread your wings and fly. Yeah. And it was fantastic. It was absolutely fantastic. And one of the things that I really, really liked is that, you know, we would have a Monday morning meeting and then we would have a Friday celebration call. So it'd be, what have you got on for this week? And then let me know if you need any help during the week. And then let's have a look at what you've achieved at the end of the week with the other group managers. And it was fantastic because that level of accountability kept my focus, kept my dopamine going to actually go, right. I need to do all of these things as quick as I can to a very high standard to meet the company requirements. So I can then tell my manager about it because I'm very externally referenced, love recognition, love to be told that I'm doing a good job. But unfortunately, with many things, I would then stay up very late at night to try and finish tasks, work weekends to try and actually complete stuff because it would take me a lot longer to process information and write information and deliver information. And ultimately, I was getting really, really burnt out. And then at the same time, I got my ADHD diagnosis. And for the first time, I really started to understand who I was for the first time in my life. And I didn't want to mask that anymore. And I got access to work support, which is a government program to support people to keep them in work. And I got coaching, I got some software and some hardware to help me with my dyslexia, dyscalcular, and ADHD, and also workplace training. And unfortunately, the the HR team there, because it was such a large organization and they'd not really come across access to work before, they were struggling to get procurement to be able to purchase the stuff to claim stuff back, and it just wasn't in their processes. Yeah. And that's ultimately what I went and spoke to my mum about. And that's when she said, Well, what do you want to do about it? And I said, Well, I want to go and help people that are like me to go and live their true authentic lives in the workplace. And that's where we started. So you set up Neurosparts. Yeah. And what does that do for other people? So first and foremost, I wanted to help and support people who were neurodivergent or suspected neurodivergent through the access to work process. And we are paid in the main by access to work through people's awards that they get in terms of support worker. So they will get awards of say five to 15 hours a week to help somebody to stay in work. So if it's an entrepreneur or a business owner, they might need support with emails. It might be if they're dyscalculic, helping them with the finances, it might be helping them with the social media scheduling because I struggle with dates and times and stuff like that. But most importantly, it's about supporting them with their emotionally dysregulated. It's about the ugly side of neurodiversity. It's about trying to avoid meltdowns, trying to stop from getting overwhelmed. And sometimes that also means that we have to talk people literally off the edge of taking their own lives because they just don't want to be here because they just don't know where they're fit in the world, you know? Yeah. So we take our job incredibly uh seriously. So we've got a team of 15, 14 of us are neurodivergent. And ultimately, it's really important for us that our team are mental health for stadiums. So everyone is a mental health first aider. We all have qualifications in ASD and an ADHD from the Open University. But for me, it was important that I had some sort of validation for myself that I could actually go out and make a name for myself. So we also do workplace training, coaching to uh bring awareness to the workplaces of actually neurodiversity is something to be celebrated. It's something that actually gives the competitive edge when it is supported correctly. But also it's about that we're all as different on the inside as we are on the outside. And actually, if we learn to just take a step back in the workplace before we start pointing fingers or we start to berate people because they just can't, you know, go to social events in the workplace because they get burnt out, you know, it's not about that, it's actually about evaluing people as individuals and actually supporting them to be the very best person that they can be, whatever that looks like for them. Okay. And what employers will then find is that, and there's a statistic on this, that people are that are supported in the workplace are between 38 and 144% more productive than their neurotypical peers. Wow. That's a start and a half. You know, so when employers start to wake up and start to smell the coffee, they actually start to go, well, actually, this isn't a bad thing. You know, yes, we might need to communicate slightly differently, and yes, we're gonna have to give workplace adjustments, but ultimately we're potentially gonna get more out of it. Yeah. So if the workplace has got a lot of people in it and they don't know if they've got neurodivergent people in it or not, do you do like workplace training that says, look, we'll come in and train everybody? Because there could be somebody there that hasn't been diagnosed or doesn't want to particularly tell people they are because a lot of people still have that feeling that, oh my god, if I say this, I might lose not they're gonna lose the job over it, but do you know what I mean? Treated differently, they might lose the job if people are uh being let go, do they let that one go first kind of thing? Do you know what I mean? Now we've spoken about this before. There's everything you said about being neurodivergent resonates so much with me that it's just unbelievable. And people listening that know me will be going, Oh well, we thought you were. I know that because people keep telling me. I do think that if if you were offering this to employers that don't know, because it's not like it's only now that you say, Are you new divergent? It's only now that it's on forms, isn't it? There'll be a lot of people in workplaces that they don't know if they are or not, they haven't ticked that box anywhere, and HR haven't come round and said, by the way, anyone got uh ADHD diagnosis recently, we better update the system. Do you know what I mean? I think there's so there's so much I want to say to this. So, in in terms of neurodiversity, you know, we want workplaces with that are neurodiverse because the term neurodiversity was only born really in the early 90s by a woman called Judy Singer, and she was an Australian sociologist, and she basically m observed that everybody is neurologically diverse in their thoughts and the way that they process the world. And if you put them two together, you get neurodiverse. Right now. Then you get neurodivergent, which is basically an individual that has the thinking and processing that differs from the typical norms, okay? But what Judy Singer actually said in the early 90s, which we didn't really get internet until you know, early to middle 2000s, when people started to hear more about it and studies were becoming more and more relevant, but actually we focus too much as a society on the deficit model of disability. So what people cannot do. And that's where a lot of organizations still are. So, for example, oh, you know, you're dyslexic, you know, you work in financial services, so you can't be client-facing because it's totally unprofessional to use spelling mistakes in emails. Okay. When actually, you know, uh dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence. Yeah. Okay. It's basically just the phonological processing of words, letters, numbers, and grammar. Okay. And that's what's frustrating. But ultimately, we need to move towards a societal model of disability where we focus on people's strengths and what they can do. Because I firmly believe that every single person in the world can find the right bus that they need to be on. And that bus is the company that they're going to work for or they work for the company they're about to start. If they're an entrepreneur, you will have the ticket to your right bus. But you might not be in that right seat. So it might be that actually you work for the right company, but the job that you do it quite isn't right for you. And if you are neurodivergent, you will know because you try your best day in, day out, with the masking to try and make sure that you can ultimately still get paid at the end of the day, but you might be suited to something better in a different team, you know. And that's the bit that employers are quite afraid of because there's all sorts of legal ramifications potentially around that. Yeah. If you think somebody might be neurodivergent and they've not approached you before, you might go, Well, for me, it's quite obvious that somebody is presenting as very hyperactive, very forgetful, you know, they are the life and soul of the party and all of this kind of stuff. And ultimately, but they are really, really poor at some aspects of their role, but really amazingly good at others. So it might be that they might be too scared to actually say, look, have you thought about the fact are you dyslexic? Or you thought that, you know, you might have ADHD. And ultimately, that's normally where we get called in. And I will go in and do like a lunch and learn session, tell people about my story, tell them about the work that we do, and then that will then lead on to inquiry. So people, I'll always stay behind so people can ask me questions. And it's normally at that point that people go, okay, I might be that. Yeah. How do I get help? So we we do a screening, we don't do diagnostics, but we do screening. And then we also, you know, it might be that we do a foundation session around neurodiversity for staff in a workplace. We do people manager training to support people managers and hiring managers around inclusive recruitment. But more importantly, where in an organization is a culture set. Well, it's set at the top. Culture always comes from the top, and this is why it's really important that senior leadership within organizations are trained around neurodiversity. Because the harsh reality is that the people that are doing the do on a day-to-day basis are potentially so far removed from those executives within an organization, actually, they may just be numbers within the actual balance sheet. Yeah. So I have to go in and do the training slightly differently. It might be look, if you're not going to do it for your people, do it for your shareholders. Because the largest payout for an ADHD discrimination case at a tribunal two years ago was 4.5 million. Oh my god. As an organization, what would that mean? Would that mean you, Mr. CEO, Mr. CEO, losing your bonus for that year? You know, HR director, would that potentially be questioning your job? So actually, if you're not going to do it for your people, do it for your shareholders. Yeah, exactly. And then all of a all of a sudden the financial director goes, Yep, let's get behind this, you know. Let's go and do it. Suddenly a whole chain, because that's it. There's all different like you were saying, you might be in the j wrong job at the moment, but the right job's there for you even within that organization. The last time we spoke ages ago, I was telling you about like when I was a news correspondent, for example, my deadline was every hour. Yeah, every single hour. It was perfect for me. I would go and get the news, get it sorted, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, bang, done. I was as high as a kite, my news was out, done. Then the next hour, that fitted with me perfectly because I liked the rapidness of it. The the deadline was an hour. If I had three hours or a week, I would do it 30 minutes before the end of the week, procrastinate right up to that last minute. I'm always on time, I always get everything done. But if I can wait till the very, very last minute, perfect. So to keep me on track, being a news correspondent every day, every hour, you were on, and it had to be news and refreshed and da da da. That completely fitted with me because I couldn't procrastinate it. I had an hour and I had that very last golden hour that I have with everything that I do every single hour. So that was perfect for me. And lots of people and high adrenaline and all of that. It was like ticking every single box and high reward. It was like, oh, that was great, Kath. Oh, that interview you did with so-and-so was amazing. All of that was just lighting me up. And do you know what? I think this is a really, really good point, you know, that you make. And one of the things was for me, I knew that I wanted to go to university, but I was really, really scared because ultimately I've never been to, I've never completed college, let alone university. What am I doing? Am I am I able to do that? And so last year I went to university, did a PG cert in neurodiversity, and it was then I actually realized what the neurochemical reactions were that are going in the brain that actually you're describing now. So you've got your dopamine, you've also got your neuroadrenaline, and you've also got serotonin. I call it the holy trinity. When you've actually got all three in good levels and they're all singing together and they're working together, actually, that's where you've got good, good mental health, good well-being, you know. But actually, it's that fight or flight that you describe, that neuroadrenaline, that actually kept you going. But if you do that and sustain that over a long period of time, your cortisol levels will start to speak, and then you've got other implications like burnout, you know, and and and overwhelm, and and your window of tolerance becomes a lot smaller. So it's about being able to manage yourself and how you work in a way that is conducive to you, but also your your role in what you're doing. And I think sometimes those deadlines, and you are right, that if you've got something that needs to be done in six months' time, you're not even gonna look at it until five months, 29 days, and 23 minutes, you know? Yeah. Because it's that is the the enough neuroadrenaline, the fight or flight. If I don't get this done, I'm not gonna get paid. If I can't get paid, then oh my word, what's gonna happen, you know? So it's it's that kind of stuff, but actually there are means and there are ways like accountability, tracker coaching, body doubling, you know, using a prioritization matrix, all of this kind of stuff which are proven to work with with people with ADHD. Yeah. Explain body doubling. Okay, so body doubling it plays on the fact that you are being kept accountable by somebody else. All right. So body doubling effectively, they don't need to necessarily even interact with you. They might just be in the same room. So, for example, if you were to go to a co-working space, you might start to notice that there's because there's lots of people around you working, actually, you are able to work a lot more efficiently and hyper focus when that environment is a lot better. Yeah. So, for example, uh my team will body double with our clients, and our clients will set aside an hour or two hours. And what we will do, we'll set the intention at the start. So, what do you want to get out of this session? What do you want to achieve? And then we will just do a call like this. We'll put yourself on mute, but you can do you can listen to music and things like that, because there are certain music tracks that will help you to concentrate without words and stuff like that. And effectively, about halfway through, we'll ask you to go and take a break so you can actually uh go and rest your rest your mind for a little bit, go and grab a coffee, come back, and then we then go on for another sort of 25 minutes. And then what we do is we then look and see what you've managed to achieve from those intentions at the start and and have a bit of a celebration. Because sometimes in those hours of body doubling, you can probably achieve more in those focus hours where you're not being disturbed by other people, and you're not being disturbed by just going and cleaning the house or just going mopping the floor because you can't start responding to that email because your dopamine levels won't let you. Actually, you can probably get one to two days' work done in a two-hour session because it's an intense focus. Yeah, exactly. That I do work well in that way as well. Unfortunately, I've taken too many boxes. No, but if people say, Do you want to come and we'll just all focus on something, I'm like, Yeah, because otherwise I'll leave it. That's it. I'll leave it too. Yeah. When you all do it with the same goal and the same intention, you know, that's when work gets had to happen because there's nothing worse than you working and trying to get to work someone, and then someone just keeps interrupting you. But actually, when you're all there to do the same thing for the same purpose, to focus and to actually get work done, you're actually a lot more conducive to that environment to complete a lot more tasks. Yeah. Can I ask you? You said that I think you said there's 15 employees, 14 are neurodivergent. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. How is it with all of those working together that are the same way incline? So when you are neurodivergent, you are born neurodivergent, you don't know anything different, okay? Not always, there are some exceptions like traumatic brain injury and stuff like that. So I don't know what it's like to be neurotypical. Yeah. I know what I know, okay. So ultimately, I'm very cognizant of my own needs and working with other neurodivergent people, I'm also very cognizant of what they need and what support they need to work the best in their way. So, for example, you know, we ask people to work from the office two to three days a week. Apart from that, you can work wherever you want. Some people will come in the office five days a week because they need that support. Some people just come in for the three days and work from home for the two days, you know. And we also have things like wellness cards where we know for a fact that people are going to be overwhelmed and people are going to potentially face burnout. It's the fact of life. Well-being cards for us, you can have two every six months where you go, do you know what, Dan? I'm really, really struggling today. I've been working at such a high capacity with my clients, I just need a day off. Fine. Let me know and let Kat know who's our head of funded services before half past eight. Have the day off, do a spa day, a sofa day, whatever day you need, you'll get paid for it. It's not part of your annual allowance for your leave. And ultimately, you know, people are then feel psychologically safe to talk about how they're feeling, yeah, about their well-being and about their mental health. Yeah. Because in the world of corporate, it's all about actually you're paid nine till five, Monday to Friday, you need to be there, you need to be on time, and you need to produce results. But what if, so for example, for me, I don't really do meetings after three o'clock, okay? Because for me, my mind is best suited between say half past seven till three o'clock. Yeah. So why would I push my staff when I'm paying them, but they're not going to be conducive in terms of their brain power. So we all play to our strengths. Some people start later than others. You know, I have one member of staff who is an insomniac and she will start at four o'clock some mornings because she can't she can't sleep. Yeah. You know? And then she'll do her. We're very fortunate, you know, if we was to work in a shop, we wouldn't be able to do that because we would need to be there when this customers are there. But we're very fortunate that with some of our roles, actually, it's non-client-facing. So actually, as long as the work gets done, the hours get done over the time, then it's absolutely fine. Perfect. Sounds like the perfect place to work. And is this why you've won awards then? Tell me about this. Yeah, so we've won uh Forbesitors Trailblazer Award recently. We've been nominated for the Bebers, which is a regional awards. We've got, I'm just looking at them all over there. In fact, we've won for two years on the running Neurodiversity Support Platform of the Year from uh Innovation and Excellence Awards. And we've just been finalists nominated for the Burnley Business Awards, which is really important to us. You know, you've got the national awards and things like that, which are great, but actually, if we were to win a Burnley Business Award, I will be over the moon because it means that we're able to make a local impact in our community that not only we work, but we live as well. Absolutely. I absolutely love that. So, Dan, anybody who's listening, if they're an individual, a business, how do they get in touch with you? So you can go to our website, neurospark solutions.com. You can actually book directly in with us from there. Uh all you do is you click book demo slash call and you'll go into either mine or Kat's Diary, depending on what support you need. And then from there we'll have a chat with you, and then we will be able to do an access to work application if that's what you need. If you want to talk about training within your organization, it'll be myself. If you want to talk about coaching or screening, it'll be myself. And ultimately, you know, it's very easy. If you go to our website, we have videos on our website so that if you struggle to absorb information, each of the web pages has a video of me explaining exactly the process, what it is, and what we do in a short space of time. You can also ring us on 033388 0558 and you can get straight through to us there as well. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today. It's absolutely fascinating. Thanks, Kath. Thank you for listening to It's Your Business. If you want help with podcast training, podcast production, or support with your show, visit www.furrypodmother.co.uk. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow, and leave a review. It makes a huge difference and helps other businesses just like you find us. See you next time.