Shiny Object Syndrome
Shiny object syndrome is not just a personality quirk. For a lot of home service business owners, it’s the exact reason quotes go unsent, team systems never get finished, and profit keeps slipping through the cracks.
I sat down with Skye Waterson, founder of Unconventional Organisation, to dig into something I have never covered on the show before. Skye works as a fractional COO with service business owners who have ADHD symptoms, and what she shared about how those symptoms show up in day to day business operations is something I think a lot of you are going to recognize immediately. Keep reading to find out what to do about it.
What You’ll Learn…
- Why shiny object syndrome costs you more than focus, it costs you finished jobs and real money
- How time blindness makes it nearly impossible to plan ahead in a service business
- What working memory gaps do to your quotes, follow ups, and job flow
- Why transition time between job sites creates a cycle that keeps you reactive instead of profitable
- How to do a brain dump that cuts a 50 item to do list down to five real priorities
- The quote bottleneck that was costing one home service owner jobs he had already earned
- Why the owner being the single point of contact is one of the most common profit leaks in a service business
Key Moments…
[1:38] Skye’s ADHD Diagnosis and How It Built Her Business
[2:51] What Shiny Object Syndrome Looks Like In a Service Business
[4:47] Time Blindness and Why Owners Only Think About Today
[12:44] Why Visual Business Maps Help ADHD Owners and Their Teams
[16:20] The Prioritization Filter and How To Do a Real Brain Dump
[30:09] The Challenge of Leading a Team With ADHD Symptoms
[38:01] The Quote Bottleneck Profit Leak and How One Business Fixed It
What Shiny Object Syndrome Actually Does To Your Business
Shiny object syndrome is not just a productivity problem. It is a pattern wired into how certain brains process stimulation. Skye explained that business owners with ADHD symptoms are constantly seeking dopamine, and a new idea delivers that hit in a way that a working system no longer can. That is the cycle. The idea feels exciting. The follow-through does not. So the next idea wins, and the current one sits unfinished.
The strength that helped you start your business, that willingness to jump on an opportunity and make something happen, is the same thing that can keep you from ever finishing what you started. Good entrepreneur time management is not about working harder. It is about building structure around those instincts so they work for you instead of against you.
The Four Symptoms That Show Up Most In Service Businesses
Skye walked me through the four ADHD symptoms she sees most often when she starts working with a new owner, and I kept thinking about people I have worked with over the years who fit this description exactly.
- Impulsivity: chasing the next idea, the next acquisition, or the next opportunity before the current one has paid off
- Working memory gaps: information falls out of your head the moment you step off a job site, and things get dropped without you even realizing it
- Time blindness: three months from now and six months from now feel about the same, which makes ADHD time management feel nearly impossible
- Transition time: moving between job sites takes more mental energy than it looks like from the outside, and it leaves you reactive instead of proactive for the rest of the day
Any one of these is manageable. All four together, without systems to support them, can quietly drain your profits without you ever seeing where the money went.
The Brain Dump That Actually Works
Most prioritization advice tells you to dump everything out of your head and then sort it. Skye takes that a step further with a method built around how to prioritize tasks in a way that actually fits how an ADHD brain works. Start with the brain dump, then ask yourself one question: what on this list has a significant negative external consequence if it does not get done in the next 24 hours?
Not what feels urgent. Not what is stressing you out. What actually has real consequences in 24 hours if you are stuck in a waiting room and cannot get to it.
For most owners, that list goes from 50 things down to about five. Then you do the same filter for seven days. Once you can see what truly has to happen versus what just feels loud, you block the high-value business tasks on your calendar like real appointments. That shift alone, Skye said, gives most people more sense of control than anything else they have tried.
Why Hiring Someone Does Not Always Fix the Problem
One of the most common moves I see home service owners make when they are overwhelmed is hiring an assistant or even a COO and expecting things to smooth out. Skye was direct about why that often does not work. An assistant is trained to help you do what you want to do. They are not trained to recognize when a pattern is a dopamine issue or a working memory gap, and they will not push back the way someone who understands ADHD symptoms would.
The same is true at the COO level. Most COOs have never managed an ADHD entrepreneur and do not know how to read those patterns. That is why Skye’s approach starts with building a visual map of the business before adding any people. The map shows the owner and the team exactly where the flow breaks down, which bottlenecks are costing real money, and what needs to happen in what order. When the team can see the same map, the constant friction between what the owner meant and what the team did starts to go away. Business owner burnout often starts right here, in the gap between what you expect your team to do and what they actually understood you to ask for.
The Quote Bottleneck Profit Leak
Skye’s answer to my profit leak question was one I had never heard before, and it made complete sense the moment she said it. She worked with an owner who had done everything right on the front end. He had ads running. He was visiting job sites and doing the quotes in person. The process worked perfectly up until the moment he needed to actually send the quote. That is where it stalled every single time.
Quotes were sitting for five to seven days before going out. In some cases, they were not going out at all. Customers were moving on to competitors, and the business was losing jobs it had already earned simply because of a speed bottleneck at one point in the process. The fix was straightforward once they could see it on the map. Train someone else to send the quotes. Let the owner review them if he wants, but take the sending step out of his hands. Once that handoff happened, the quotes went out on the same day and the bottleneck closed.
If any of this is sounding familiar, you are not behind, and you are not broken. You are just running a business with a brain that needs different systems than the ones most business advice is built around. Skye’s approach is practical, research-backed, and built specifically for the way service business owners actually think. Connect with her at Unconventional Organisation on Instagram to grab her free prioritization filter, or head to unconventionalorganisation.com to book a free Business Build Out call and find out exactly where your bottlenecks are hiding.
About Skye Waterson:
Skye is an ADHD strategist and the founder of Unconventional Organisation, a multi-six-figure business that helps entrepreneurs and executives build systems that work with their ADHD brain, not against it.
When Skye was diagnosed with ADHD during her PhD, she quickly found that mainstream productivity advice wasn’t built for her. So she did what any researcher would do: she studied the problem herself, tested strategies, and built her own framework. Today, she uses that same research-backed approach to help coaches, consultants, founders, and executives cut through the chaos, focus on what actually moves the needle, and grow without burning out.
She has worked with Fortune 500 executives, lawyers, healthcare professionals, and government organizations. Her articles have reached over 250,000 readers, and her podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab, has over 150,000 downloads. She has been featured on top shows like The Productivity Show, Faster Than Normal, and The Writer Files.
Skye is based in New Zealand and works with clients all over the world.
Connect With Skye Waterson:
Visit Skye’s Website
Follow Skye on Instagram
Connect with Unconventional Organization on LinkedIn
Follow Skye on Facebook
Book a free Business Build Out with Skye HERE.
Diane’s Resources:
🎫 A FREE LIVE WORKSHOP –
How To Add $200,000 To Your Bottom Line Profit Without Selling More
For HVAC, roofing, plumbing, electrical, and other home service business owners.
Register here https://taxcoach4you.com/hotline/
Profit Impact Call
☎️ Let me find $45k in hidden profit leaks in your home service business in 45 minutes during a Profit Impact Call. https://taxcoach4you.com/profitimpactcall/
Schedule a free Profit Impact Call with me where we’ll go over 12 main areas of your business together and save you $45k!
