I was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade. I was the slow test taker, the class clown, the kid who talked too much. A teacher told my mother I should aim for Bs and Cs. Another told me not all kids are meant for college.
I buried the diagnosis. For decades. I had been ignoring my ADHD brain for years. Pretending it didn't exist. Never talking about it at work, not sharing it with people, hoping I never needed to worry about it again. Scared of anyone discovering this secret part of me.
And somehow, while hiding all of that, I built a career at Apple that most people would envy. Three promotions in two years. Recognized by Steve Jobs personally. Called "the face of Apple" by my leaders. Told I had the "IT factor," the thing you can't teach and can't fake. I was the golden boy. But I felt broken and unfixable.
In 2016, my boss called me and told me I no longer had what it takes to be a leader at Apple. She wanted me fired. I sat in my car for three hours, crying, furious, feeling like the walls of my life were closing in on top of me. The golden boy. The guy they called "the face of Apple." And in that moment, every ounce of confidence, everything that made me who I am, felt shattered.
That was the moment I stopped hiding. I searched the country for ADHD specialists. I found a coach named Phil Boissiere. I started cognitive behavioral therapy. I optimized my medication. I read 35 books in a year. I ran toward the thing I'd been running from my entire life.
Six months later, the same boss who wanted me gone sat me down and apologized. She told me she'd misjudged me. That I had proven her completely wrong. That she was lucky to have me on her team.
I didn't just survive. I got recruited to walk into a chronically underperforming Apple store with a toxic culture and turn it around. Over the next two years, I rebuilt that team from the inside. The Genius Bar I inherited became the highest-rated in the market. The store earned recognition it had never seen.
I did all of that with the same ADHD brain that nearly got me fired.
I didn't learn to cope with my ADHD. I learned to weaponize it.
That's when I knew. The version of me sitting in that car, shaking, ashamed, hiding a diagnosis since second grade, is still out there. Still pretending. Still scared of anyone finding out. Still wondering if they're broken.
They're not broken. They're playing by the wrong rules. And I've spent every day since building the playbook for the right ones.
