[00:00:00] Introduction to Today’s Guest: Pazbi Zavatzki

 [00:00:00] 

[00:00:08] Laurence: Hello and welcome to another episode of the ADHD Goals podcast. I’ve got a fantastic guest for you today. His name is Pazbi Zavatzki,

and he is a dynamic entrepreneur. Behind Kick Ass Online Limited.

A company dedicated to helping SMEs grow their digital presence and achieve increased sales through cutting edge website development, brand design, and AI driven solutions, as well as, traffic generation strategies. more interestingly, I think for the ADHD goals podcast, Pazbi is also very heavily involved in neuro. inclusion for, the workplace. And he’s the creator of the neuro Inclusive Standards, which is transforming businesses through practical neuro [00:01:00] inclusive frameworks. And he’s also the pioneer of the first UK’s, first exclusively British sign language poetry event, the BSL Slam. So I think we’ve got plenty to talk about today.

How you doing Pazbi? 

[00:01:14] Pazbi Zavatzki: Well, good. Thank you for having me, Laurence. 

[00:01:16] Laurence: You’re welcome. So, I suppose we, we tend to start the show by trying to find out a little bit more about, our guests. So I wonder if you could tell, the listeners a little bit about yourself

and your own, ADHD journey? 

[00:01:32] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure.

[00:01:33] Pazbi’s Early Life and Health Challenges

[00:01:33] Pazbi Zavatzki: So, I was, actually born in Greece. And I moved here when I was about five. So here, me being the uk. And when I was about 11, I, had stage four, leukemia. I got diagnosed. I had about three years of chemotherapy. During that time actually, had a complication during my treatment.

So it left me, wheelchair bound and the doctors were like, don’t expect to walk again. Wow. and basically just [00:02:00] through sheer determination, I would say, and not wanting to disappoint my parents, I had to learn how to walk again and, And then, fast forward, go to university, start my own business, all of that stuff.

[00:02:13] Discovering and Understanding ADHD

[00:02:13] Pazbi Zavatzki: And I get to my thirties and I was diagnosed with A-D-H-D-C, so combined ADHD. and I think that gave me a lot of clarity because, you always have, you’re aware of the traits maybe, but you just don’t have a name for it.

And so, my brother had been telling me for years. My younger brother had been telling me for years that I have ADHD and I didn’t really take it to heart.

And then, it started really, Like, I was getting overwhelmed with work and stuff. And so I looked into it and I got a diagnosis through a clinic and then a lot of stuff just started making sense. So I started learning, more about, ADHD, about myself, about neurodiversity, and in general.

And that’s why in 24, [00:03:00] 20 24, I spent like two years working on it. But I, launched neuro inclusive standards.

[00:03:06] The Birth of Neuro Inclusive Standards and BSL Slam

[00:03:06] Pazbi Zavatzki: And you mentioned BSL Slam? I did because, I don’t remember when exactly. Maybe 2000, 2016, let’s say. Something like that. I was dating, my ex who’s deaf. 

[00:03:19] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:03:19] Pazbi Zavatzki: And so I learned, BSL to communicate with her. And, I really liked. Nonverbal communication. and I’m like. I wonder why, and, would go days without, speaking. And just signing everything. But I really thought it was such an elegant way of communicating and it was something that wasn’t as productive as English.

You can really. Express a concept very visually and it’s a whole body sort of experience. And so I really love that, way of communicating with people. And I thought, I wonder if there’s. There’s poetry in this and I learned about pv, which was visual vernacular, which is that type [00:04:00] of poetry in sign language.

And so we didn’t have anything in the uk. and there was a big movement of a SL Slam, which is the American Sign Language Slam. We Do all over the us. And I thought, why not? Why not have one here? 

[00:04:15] Laurence: Why not? Yeah. 

[00:04:17] Pazbi Zavatzki: And. So I did that. That was my hyper focus obsession, back then. And so, in a matter of a few months, we ended up creating it. I recruited a bunch of friends to create content. And yeah, we sold out the BBC came to record it for us. Cause they were, wanting to cover it. We had a bunch of articles about it. So it was a really good event.

And we raised quite a bit of money for the Royal Association of Deaf. And hearing dogs, which is, like guide dogs, but for deaf people and 

[00:04:46] Laurence: Yeah. yeah. 

[00:04:47] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yeah. If there’s someone at the door or some, or if there’s a lot, fire alarm or something like that. So really good initiatives, and we raised some money for them as well.

That’s basically, I think that’s it. But typical I’ve gone on [00:05:00] a 

[00:05:00] Laurence: Well, I mean, just from what you’ve said there, I mean, you know, starting with. Your recovery as a child, and, learning how to walk again. And then, I mean, you talked about going to university and then just starting a business, but, brushed over that slightly.

And then obviously, starting the BSL slam, this is a, seems to be a lot of determination involved there with, having an idea or, being determined to. Pull, push through when things, these, the, all these things are really quite challenging things to pull off and you seem to do them.

[00:05:35] The Role of ADHD in Entrepreneurship

[00:05:35] Laurence: how does your ADHD do you think into play with, with some of those things? 

[00:05:40] Pazbi Zavatzki: So firstly, I think I got my diagnosis so late 

[00:05:45] Pazbi Zavatzki: I had, I was dealing with leukemia at the age where usually you would get diagnosed, These things. And so my parents’ priority was not, is he okay academically?

Because I wasn’t going to school, I was, fighting cancer. So, I think that [00:06:00] had an aspect to it, but I don’t know how much my, my upbringing and stuff like that affected it.

But I do know that people with ADHD tend to have a lack of inhibition.

And like impulse control issues. And that’s, and so a lot of the people that I’ve met in the 12 years that I’ve been in business. Neurodivergent people, they, often we hear about, successful entrepreneurs who have dyslexia and stuff like that, but people just weren’t getting diagnosed in adulthood for ADHD 10, 20 years. So that doesn’t really, come into the media much. But I’ve met a lot of people, uh, who just are, they’re very similar to the way I am, and they just maybe don’t identify as such.

And so. I think that helped with the, setting up all these things just is, It was, I had an idea and then I just didn’t have the mindset to be like, oh, but what if it goes wrong? It was like, [00:07:00] Ooh, let me follow this new idea. This will be great. And then I would just do it to the point where.

I couldn’t not do it anymore, it Like I had already invested too much time into it and, and I luckily I have a good support system, in terms of like friends and family and people that I network with. So they were invested in my success as well. I couldn’t have done the BSL Slam, for example, if I didn’t have, my friend Stephanie, who ran an events company at the time.

She volunteered her time to help this project, And so. I’m not an organized individual.

I’m not gonna pretend that I was doing floor plans and vendor list. I didn’t do all of that. But I had a vision of how I wanted it to be, and then I had the,

I think the experience of delegating stuff 

[00:07:55] Pazbi Zavatzki: to know that I can come up with the idea, but like the execution, that’s not me.[00:08:00] 

Like I need help. and 

[00:08:01] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:08:01] Pazbi Zavatzki: I think that’s where I’ve managed to succeed with a lot of these projects is that I knew when to ask for help from people. 

[00:08:08] Laurence: And I think that’s a really important, realization. I mean, you mentioned there that, people quite often talk about.

how whatever percentage of entrepreneurs are ADHD, and I think.

I think with those, I mean, this is a generalisation, but I think those entrepreneurs that are successful tend to extract themselves out of, the business enough to stop them being a roadblock for anything. There might be, tons of other.

People with ADHD that are entrepreneurial but are not able to ask for help, at the right time, to get that support and through lack of organisation really struggle. I mean, I know I, I can be guilty of that sometimes. In as much as I, I have a very, I’m interested in learning everything, [00:09:00] so when it comes to.

Starting businesses or projects, I tend to cover all the bases on learning how to do everything. But then once I’ve learned how to do it, I think I must do this. Otherwise I’ll, it’ll be a failure if I don’t, when really I should be saying my time needs to be spent on something else. More important and I need to.

Ask for help. But you know, that can be very difficult in and of itself.

[00:09:25] Challenges and Strategies in Business Management

[00:09:25] Laurence: how do you communicate to somebody what you need help with? And, you’ve gotta do a lot of the work to prepare the instructions or, setting the boundaries for what you need or the expectations rather.

And that can be a lot of work as well.

[00:09:42] Pazbi Zavatzki: I, I think with this, it’s about having. the, communicating the expectations of the people with your expectations, with the people that you’re working with? 

[00:09:52] Pazbi Zavatzki: So, I have a project manager in my company, at Kick Ass online and I [00:10:00] used to just send him tasks as WhatsApp voicemail messenger, discord, email.

Like I would send ’em all over and stuff would fall through the cracks.

And, then I would be annoyed at him because I’m like, I, said, I told you the thing. And then he’s like, bro, you told me like a hundred things in five different platforms. How am I supposed to track them? 

So we had to work around and then we use something called Clickup, which is like a task management thing.

And I have it on my phone, I have it on my tablet, I have it everywhere, so, I Just put it there and give it to him, and then he deals with it. And that’s. That’s how, so it’s not more work for me, I’m still just typing it, but at least I know where to type it. And then close there and I can do a voice note in there and put it in there as well.

So it doesn’t, it’s not like it limits my control on that now with. now With With a lot of people who have ADHD, I think, and I see this with my hobbies, right, is that we like the planning and ideation stage so much that we get all the tools and [00:11:00] everything, so we’re gonna be like the best at this hobby. I did this with War Hammer and I bought an airbrush.

I bought a kit to hold all my little pieces of stuff and like all the brushes and before I even painted the model, before I even knew if I liked this hobby, I still do it, but not as much as during that period of hyper focus. So I think a lot of people apply those same habits to business in that they have a good idea and then they plan it out.

They do the business plan and do the marketing plan, and they come up with a logo and all of that stuff, and then they just never launch it.

Because they’re like, it’s not perfect yet. And I think we hold ourselves up to such a high standard and there’s this expression, from Voltaire, I think, and it’s perfect is the enemy of good.

Right. and nobody ever launched it. Like Uber was crap when it launched. Like if you see their pitch deck, it was a pile of crap by today’s standards. Right? Yet they’re a massive company because they [00:12:00] knew you gotta just put something out there and then make it better. Whereas I think a lot of people with a DD try to get to perfect first,

[00:12:09] Pazbi Zavatzki: and then by the time they get there, they’re burnt out because they’ve not got any.

You’ve not got any of that dopamine coming in to keep you motivated, right? But if you just put it out and then people are like, oh wow, this is good. You could improve a little bit, but then you’re like, yeah, no, I could improve it. But somebody said, it’s good. I’m excited now. Right. So I think that’s a really big thing.

And then I think the other thing is we compare ourselves with a lot of people online. Everyone projects this like perfect version of themselves online, and it’s not. It’s not true, right? Everyone has ups and downs. I’m not gonna be like, over the past 12 years of my life, I’ve been perfect and every venture I’ve done has succeeded.

I run a company for about nine years and that, that went into liquidation. So, and I’ve closed, I.

Maybe about four companies. ’cause I just set them up, planned [00:13:00] everything and then I didn’t have the right people to delegate it, so it just never got off the ground. 

[00:13:04] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:13:05] Pazbi Zavatzki: Even, even with me knowing the steps, because I’ve done them before,

I had to trash three companies in the past couple of years because there was no way I was gonna invest the time to do it myself.

And I could find the right people at the time to, to get it off the ground. So there’s always. There’s always this perception that, oh, they must be doing good, so why can’t I? And then you start getting that like negative feedback loop of, there’s something wrong with me, why can’t I do it? They’re doing it, blah, blah, blah.

And I think role models are better when they’re a bit more honest. So I think about, like Richard Branson, he’s got a DH, ADHD and dyslexia, and he, in one of his interviews was like, I didn’t know the difference between net and gross profit until I was 50. Because his main skill in growing his entire, like Virgin Empire has been delegating.[00:14:00] 

So people would be like, oh, these are the profit and loss and blah, blah, blah. And he’d be like, is that good news or bad news? 

[00:14:05] Pazbi Zavatzki: Like, I don’t I’m not gonna read this. I have dyslexia. Like, I’m not gonna, and he would just delegate the, he would just want the, he just wants to make the decision, yes or no.

So is this good or bad? Are we in a bad bit? And then they’ll be like, oh, it’s good. Alright, no problem. Right? Oh, it’s bad fire. 5% of the staff done.

Like, he doesn’t, and so I think the speed at which you can make decisions is what ultimately decides whether you’re gonna be successful in business.

If you have to procrastinate in all over a decision for three weeks, the opportunity’s gone.

And so. But If you can just be like, okay, flip a coin, it’s better. 

[00:14:46] Laurence: I mean, 

I think for me, certainly decision making when it involves, communicating with other people or that decision is gonna affect people, whether it’s, just planning, events or

Whatever, it, can be really

[00:15:00] challenging for me to communicate that. But yes, certainly firing people.

Wow. That if you could delegate that so that you didn’t have to do that would be fantastic. 

[00:15:09] Pazbi Zavatzki: necessity because I hate confrontation. Massively. I avoid it. And so I’ve had to delegate things like credit control.

I like if somebody owes me money, I’m, I was like, so avoiding having to talk to them about it Because I would upset them or they would leave as a, and then, but then it’s like, I’m not getting paid.

[00:15:31] Pazbi Zavatzki: I had to get somebody who didn’t care, like who could just do that. That was his job and we could get paid on time.

And so it’s about knowing your weaknesses and I think you can’t know. 

[00:15:43] The Importance of Diagnosis and Self-Understanding

[00:15:43] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yourself until you get some clarity. And I think that’s why diagnosis are important. ’cause it gives you something to work from, 

And for some people they’re so far along their life with their identity set and so it doesn’t benefit them.

Like if you’re 50 and you’ve had [00:16:00] like three kids and you’re married for like 25 years and you are nearing the end of your career, getting an ADHD diagnosed is probably gonna do you more harm than good. But I feel like, Funny. And you’re struggling and you don’t know why. I think it might be good to know.

[00:16:17] Laurence: Yeah. I mean, I think for me personally, I mean, I found out a few years ago, just as I was sort of approaching 40 and, it was so important for me just to understand myself and have a lot of things make sense.

And, you used quite often the term in coaching, name it to tame it.

And I think that there’s a lot of power in that

Once you can identify what something is or certain traits of certain things. It can be really powerful to then know, okay, I know how to, approach this specific challenge. And yeah, but like you say, it is different for different people.

But for me it was [00:17:00] certainly, a good thing. 

[00:17:01] Pazbi Zavatzki: Have, you ever seen Earth, sea? 

[00:17:03] Laurence: Earth, sea? What’s that? 

[00:17:05] Pazbi Zavatzki: It’s a fantasy. But there’s been, what’s it called? There’s been TV shows over and like anime and different stuff. But there, it’s all about like knowing something to then be able to control it with magic and stuff.

Right. So there’s this guy and his nick, everybody uses aliases. Because you don’t want them, they don’t, you don’t want other people to know your real name. So they can’t manipulate you or whatever. And I just thought of, like when you were said, you need to name it to tame it, and I was just like.

Sparrowhawk to mean guy. 

[00:17:39] Laurence: Well, I wonder if this is a tenuous link. I mean, you said, you can use magic to, tame or control things.

[00:17:47] Exploring the Magic of AI in Business

[00:17:47] Laurence: I wonder if we might, move on to talking about the magic of ai. Because in your business, you. Help businesses with AI driven solutions.

And I wonder, it, it reminded me when you were [00:18:00] talking about the tools that you use,

With your colleagues, you said you’d leave voice notes and I remember there was a tool that I added to WhatsApp briefly

where you could, have a, use a voice note and then it would.

Type it out. And I thought that was a powerful thing, but I couldn’t really set it up properly in order for it to, to really, supercharge my process. 

[00:18:24] ADHD and AI: Personal Health Journey

[00:18:24] Laurence: But I wonder if you might be able to talk a little bit about, any sort of, ADHD, AI benefits that you’ve come across.

[00:18:33] Pazbi Zavatzki: So one that I’ve done. Relatively recently that it is helping me is because I’ve noticed my health was slipping a bit, And, so I went and got some blood tests in November and then I got some new ones in February just to see sort of like my, has it improved or not? And then what I did was feed that information into chat GPT.

[00:18:55] Laurence: Right. 

[00:18:56] Pazbi Zavatzki: And then ask it, create me a.

a [00:19:00] plan to improve my health basically. So I wanted it to cover supplements that I need to take. I wanted it to cover the exercise, when I need to do it, what to do, and then like a meal plan. And then I was like, okay, make it super simple. I have it adhd, I’m not gonna remember everything. Want you to make it super simple so I can copy, paste everything into my calendar with the exact steps.

And so that’s what it did. And it came out with, the exact dosages I need to take of different supplements, exact sort of meal meals and, how much stuff I need to do. And everything’s super simple to make.

It’s like, for breakfast, four eggs and some smoked salmon. And so obviously results will vary depending on what your goals are and stuff, but for me, that’s really helped me. I’ve been doing it for about a week now. I’ve lost a little bit of weight. I’ve gained a little bit of muscle.

I feel already about a lot better than I did two weeks ago. And so ask if they gimme a six month, six month plan. And then basically we’ll see, oh, at the end of the six month, I’ll do some [00:20:00] more blood tests and then I’ll find out if my attempt at biohacking with AI has worked, and then I’ll write a big piece about it and put it in the BB, C and like, man saved himself with ai.

It’ll be great. But until then we’ll just, I’ll just have to see if I can stick to it for six months. That’s the main challenge, right?

[00:20:19] Laurence: I wonder. I was reading recently, ’cause obviously, I assume a lot of the listeners have tried chat GPT, on some level. And when, what you were describing there,

I, it made me think of some little experiments that I’ve done in using chat GPT to create my own GPT where you can actually sort of feed in specific.

What’s the word? Resources or documents? So, the GPT actually gives you that, reads that information and gives you information based on the prompts that you give it. And I’ve, I found that to be really useful, but what I want to ask you about.

[00:20:58] Exploring AI Agents: Beyond Chat GPT

[00:20:58] Laurence: if you are able to, [00:21:00] if you’re able to, on this topic is talking about AI agents that seem to be, coming up, are you familiar with AI agents and what the difference is?

Between that and chat GPT? 

[00:21:10] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yeah. So agents actually do things in the real world for you. So whether that’s. Them researching a topic or calling somebody or sending out emails or managing your calendar, all of those things are what agents can do. Whereas chat JPT and other, platforms like Perplexity or clawed, what they’re doing is you’re just communicating.

And they’re just giving you output right now with, some of the new models of Chat GPT and with, like Claude, they have a agent control. which basically means, okay, I want you to create this program, on my computer and then it’ll open up like you can see it controlling your computer and doing stuff for you.

Right?

So that’s where it becomes quite powerful. So at the moment I’m [00:22:00] using something called Cursor. I.

And Cursor is a IDE. So it’s a tool to program and I’m using its agent mode To basically create a game for me. 

[00:22:14] Laurence: Okay. 

[00:22:15] Pazbi Zavatzki: it’s a game I had in my mind for, I, I studied computer games development at University of Westminster, so it’s something that I’m quite passionate about, but they take so much time and skill to develop.

And so for the past, few days I’ve just been, whenever I have some spare time, I say, oh, add this to my game, and then you just see it typing away and it’s like, oh, I think blah, blah, blah, blah, and then blah, blah, blah, blah. And I added this and then, oh, there’s some errors. Oh, let me fix those and then, I, and then they’ll be like, oh, I forgot to change this variable.

That’s why there’s errors. And you, I’ve got a game. In like two days rather than a year.

So it’s pretty cool what you can do with it. 

[00:22:55] Laurence: I wonder, just going back to the example that you used [00:23:00] previously about, when you were thinking about your health and you used chat GPT to, come up with a six month plan.

So, would I be right in saying that, with just plain old chat, GPT. It’s helpful in that mode of when you are

in research or planning mode and saying, what would a six month, plan look like? And it just feeds back the information. And what you said after that is, I just need to stick to it now with an agent.

Am I right in saying that the age, you could program. You’d give it the same information and then the agent would say, right, today you need to do this, and then the next day you need to do, so it would be a bit more interactive and actually able to continue working with you throughout that six months.

Is 

[00:23:45] Pazbi Zavatzki: So for example, what you could do is with chat GPT, you have something now, called Schedule Talk.

So they’ve got a model I you have, I think you have to, I think you have to be on the paid [00:24:00] plan. Like the 20 bucks a month. but it’s basically chat PT four oh with scheduled tasks, so you could ask it to do stuff over and over again.

Or you can use something like, proxy, which is, a relatively new AI from, convergence and proxy. Basically can do stuff for you, like create a calendar invite and stuff like that. So you could say, this is my six month plan. I need you to remind me what I need to do every day. So just email me with today’s tasks or WhatsApp meal.

But, and then you just have to make the integrations and stuff. And then the most extreme thing is if you could do a voice agent, that, clones your voice or maybe your mother’s voice, I don’t know, whatever would motivate you more, and then get it to call you.

Nine o’clock and be like, Hey honey, you’re supposed to be taking your medication.

Have you done it?

[00:24:54] Laurence: Yeah.

[00:24:55] Pazbi Zavatzki: and so you could have it like that. I mean, that would be the most costly version of it, but [00:25:00] depends what you need in terms of motivation. So I.

There’s a bunch of stuff that we can do. It’s very early days in agent, agentic ai. So, there’s just no limit to what you can create.

It’s just a matter of wanting to actually sit there and set everything up once and then, having it do all of these things for you. automatically. 

[00:25:23] Laurence: Well, I mean, I’ve written a ton of notes, from what you’ve said, and I. definitely gonna have a little play around, with that, in the next few days.

[00:25:31] Neuro-Inclusive Standards in the Workplace

[00:25:31] Laurence: but I wonder if I could move you on to the topic of, the neuro inclusive standards. So thinking about. How can we, improve accommodations in the workplace? Could you tell, the listeners a little bit about, what you’ve done with the neuro inclusive standards? 

[00:25:48] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yeah. So it’s very early days for us as well in, neuro inclusive standards waiting on some approvals for our, for our business to basically be able to go forward and expand.

[00:26:00] but essentially the idea is that the reason I started it was when I first got my diagnosis and looked into support and stuff, I met some consultants in the neurodiversity space and a lot of the stuff that I saw was very. Tailored, let’s say, to their form of neurodiversity.

So you know, if it was somebody who’s got ADHD, they would go to workplace and say, these are the things you have to do. To be more neuro inclusive. or more neurodiverse and it would just be stuff that would work for, per people who have ADHD. It wouldn’t help somebody who’s got dyslexia for example, or DYS or any other type of neurodiversity.

It wouldn’t, help somebody who’s got autism. And if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism, they’re all they’re all unique and so. I thought that this sort of approach was very [00:27:00] reductive and actually breeds a lot of toxicity in the workplace. Because what happens, let’s say you’re in an, you’re in an office and for you to get support, you essentially have to out yourself to the company, right? You have to go there and say, hi, HR person. I have ADHD. I need these accommodations. 

[00:27:22] Pazbi Zavatzki: Okay. Great.

Now it’s on your file that you have ADHD, and that comes with whatever preconceived notions about that, trait.

To your management, right? So maybe you then get passed up for management opportunities because they’re like, well, that guy, can’t he’s not organised, right? Maybe you’re late, like one time and they’re like, oh, people with ADHD are always late.

And then you’re like, I’ve been 99.9% attendance.

Like one time I’m late. And it creates these sort of situations. And then from the other point of view, let’s say you get these accommodations, maybe they give you a nice chair or standing desk or soundproof headphones. These [00:28:00] are like the standard trifecta of where we’re a good employer, 

[00:28:04] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:28:05] Pazbi Zavatzki: What about your colleagues who aren’t,

They look at you and they’re like, why does he get a call desk? Why does he get nice headphones?

why do I have to buy my own headphones, right? And so, even though it seems petty. People start festering those kind of negative feelings and they pop out at different times, and then that becomes a toxic workplace for you.

So even though you’ve done the right thing, you’ve told your bus company about your conditions so they can accommodate you, and they’ve made the accommodations, and then you’re still gonna get burnt out because the people at work are bullying you because you are, special or 

[00:28:39] Pazbi Zavatzki: And so there’s no. like, inevitably it’s a flawed system. So considering that the statistics show that 2020 to 25% of the workforce is neurodivergent, that’s regardless of whether they self-identify or not. 

[00:28:56] Laurence: Yeah.

[00:28:58] Pazbi Zavatzki: It doesn’t make sense [00:29:00] for, and obviously those stats are higher in specific industries, but just across the board, like the whole workforce, let’s say 20 to 25%, depending on the research is neurodivergent.

So if that’s the case, why would you not just have everything available to everyone without them having to out themselves? 

[00:29:21] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:29:22] Pazbi Zavatzki: And. Have the play, the setup in at work where, okay, we’re not gonna play music on the radio out loud, in the main room where everyone can hear it. If you wanna listen to music, put your headphones on, listen to music.

That’s a better way of than forcing somebody who’s. Different, let’s say, not a neuro to have to wear special headphones just so he, they don’t have to listen to the noise that everyone else is making. you You know what I mean? Because there’s gonna be other people in the room who also hate it and it’s driving them crazy and it has been for five years and they just looking for an excuse to leave.

[00:30:00] So that’s the core sort of driving factor of, neuro inclusive standards is how do we make the workplace. Fair for every type of brain. Not just, let’s highlight these few people and then, punish everyone else for being neurotypical like that. That’s not the right way to do it.

Right.

And so that’s the way we’ve structured it and it covers everything from, um. Recruitment, hiring, onboarding, training, day-to-day work, leadership management styles, workplace accommodations, and then like continuous improvement for the organisation. And we’re working on a version two with, a company that does, office fit outs.

[00:30:45] Laurence: Yeah.

[00:30:47] Pazbi Zavatzki: So basically finding out all the sort of stuff that you can do to a space to make it more inclusive, because that the, one of the owners of that, company, their son has autism and so he’s acutely aware [00:31:00] of, all the best types of soundproofing and, the best types of lighting and stuff like that.

So we’re trying to get that. Real world experience ’cause they’ve been running for like over 30 years into our plan. So then we can give practical advice to the companies that want to take this on board. And, I mean, financially it’s a good incentive as well because I. For a company that has like a hundred employees, we’ve done the math on it.

And if you reduce the absenteeism and the, churn, the attrition of, the staff leaving for, which is elevated for, people who neurodivergent. So like that 25%, if we bring it down to neurotypical levels for a company that has a hundred employees, that’s a saving of about 60,000 pounds a year.

[00:31:46] Laurence: Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. as soon as you start, as soon as you start talking money, then people go, okay, let’s look at this. 

[00:31:54] Pazbi Zavatzki: yeah.

Because I know, like, I know as lovely as it would be to go to a company and say, [00:32:00] this will make everyone happier. 

[00:32:02] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:32:02] Pazbi Zavatzki: It’s not, this will make you a ton of money every year.

I. And they’d be like, ah, okay, let’s do it. I did a de and I leadership course at Rice University just before. I wanted to work on this just so I have a bit more experience in the space. And the guy was so jaded, the professor was so like every other lesson was like, you have to constantly justify everything.

[00:32:26] Laurence: Yeah. 

[00:32:26] Pazbi Zavatzki: And

I was like, okay.

Step one. Is there money to be made for companies to do this? Yes. Okay. Let’s do all the fun stuff afterwards. So that’s the plan with neuro inclusive standards, basically. 

[00:32:41] Laurence: Cool. 

[00:32:41] How to Get Involved and Learn More

[00:32:41] Laurence: Well, I’m just aware of the time that we’ve got left, and Just before we wrap things up,

I just want to make it clear then.

So if somebody wanted to find out more about, the neuro inclusive standards, it’s neuro inclusive standards.com and they visit the website, what would they be able to get? You talk about the information on there. What would they be able [00:33:00] to do, when they visit? The website

[00:33:02] Pazbi Zavatzki: At the moment, they can

just subscribe and be added to the mailing list.

As soon as we get the, the approvals to go live, it’s mostly just IP stuff that’s in the works. Then they’ll be able to purchase the material we’ll start putting out content as well about stuff that they can do, without having to buy the material. But it’s basically a 45 page ISO style document. that outlines everything in an organisation I worked with, one of the leading, ISO specialists in the uk, based in Oxford, to create it in a way that companies would be, have better, more familiar with. So we structured it in a way that if somebody has done ISO 9,001 or something like that, then.

They’ll pick this book up and then they’ll say, okay, I get the format, I get what I have to do. So that’s why we structured it that way. And that was unfortunately 45 pages long. Yeah.

[00:33:59] Laurence: [00:34:00] Yep.

[00:34:00] Pazbi Zavatzki: Yeah, So once all of that’s ready, then basically you can get the PDF or you can buy a printed version and have it and run through it and implement it in your business.

And then you can get a cool badge if you want as well. Put it on your website. 

[00:34:12] Laurence: Well, everybody wants a cool badge. Um,

so, and if anybody listening wants to know more about all the stuff that you’ve been talking about today, how might they be able to, find you online? What 

[00:34:22] Pazbi Zavatzki: So super easy?

You can Google. has P-A-Z-B-I. I’m on the first five, 10 pages of Google That’s, it’s just me. So you

like connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to, make sure you mentioned Laurence’s podcast is the reason. You can go to my blog, thepazbi.com. I had Pazbi.com, but my dad bought it like 15 years ago and then he let it expire, so now it’s like five grand.

Ah,

[00:34:48] Laurence: no.

[00:34:48] Pazbi Zavatzki: just bought the Sby,

Yeah, and that’s a bit, that’s it really. You can find me on those two platforms, LinkedIn, and my blog are usually the places where I’m at. And if you want any web help or AI help, you can check out [00:35:00] kickass online.com as well.

[00:35:02] Laurence: Well, I will put, all those links in the show notes and, yeah, I’m definitely gonna try out some of those, AI things that you’ve mentioned.

But, thank you so much for coming on the share and chatting with us. It’s been a really interesting conversation and I think we probably could have, talked for hours on some of this stuff. So yeah, thank you so much for coming on. 

[00:35:23] Pazbi Zavatzki: Thank you, Laurence, for having me. Appreciate it. 

[00:35:24] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:35:24] Laurence: Well there, we have it. Thank you so much for listening this far. If you want to hear more episodes, then please subscribe on YouTube or whatever podcast platform you use. It really helps us spread the word. So if you know anyone, this episode could help, then please share it with your friends. If you want to follow me on social media, I am on Instagram at ADHD underscore goals. And you can find me on Facebook too. If you want to get into touch with the show, then you can email me at hello@adhdgoals.co And finally, if you’re struggling to manage your [00:36:00] ADHD and you would like me to be your coach, then please head over to my website and get in touch. Until next time. Bye for now.