What being featured on Greatest Hits Radio meant to me as a neurodivergent business owner

Earlier this year I was featured by Greatest Hits Radio after being recognised in the UK Small Business Awards, where Hi This Is Bry was named in the Top 10 for Best Business Branding and one of the Top 100 Creative Arts Businesses in the UK.

Seeing my business covered like that was obviously lovely, and I am never going to pretend I am too cool to enjoy an award or seeing my face somewhere unexpected on the internet because I am absolutely going to send it to people. You can read the full Greatest Hits Radio and Rayo feature here.

The part of the feature that meant the most to me, though, was seeing my experience as a neurodivergent business owner being treated as part of the story of my success. I spoke quite openly about being autistic and ADHD, how I had rebuilt my business around the way my brain actually works, and why I think businesses need to pay more attention to neurodivergent people, which is something I do not think I would have been comfortable discussing publicly a few years ago.

Why did being featured mean so much to me?

When I first started my business, I debated whether I should tell people I was autistic at all because I worried people might think I was less capable. I wondered whether clients would make assumptions about how well I could communicate, whether I could manage projects, or whether I could understand people well enough to work in branding and marketing, which is particularly funny in hindsight considering analysing people and why they do things has become such a huge part of my job.

There can still be a very narrow picture of what a successful business owner is supposed to look and sound like. You are supposed to network a certain way, communicate a certain way, work normal hours, enjoy the right kind of professional environments, and somehow have a LinkedIn profile full of sentences no human being has ever said out loud, but I knew quite early that trying to build my business around all of that would exhaust me.

I started doing more things my own way, worked more flexibly, became much more open about how I communicate and what I need, and stopped trying to make Hi This Is Bry resemble somebody else's idea of a professional creative business. By the time the Greatest Hits Radio feature was published in January 2026, rebuilding the business this way had already helped me reach my strongest quarter to date, which mattered because one of my biggest fears had been that being more open would make people take me less seriously, yet my business was now being recognised nationally.

What changed when I stopped hiding how my brain works?

A lot of my business started making more sense because being autistic and ADHD affects how I work, so pretending that it had nothing to do with my business was always going to be a bit ridiculous. It affects what I notice, the questions I ask, how intensely I research things and how interested I become in the reasons people make certain decisions.

It also means there are parts of conventional business culture I find difficult or pointless, so I have been able to build alternatives instead of repeatedly forcing myself through them. That has shaped the type of clients I enjoy working with too, and I said in the Greatest Hits Radio feature that I wanted to work with people who are like me and who do not necessarily fit neatly into the traditional business world, which I still feel very strongly about.

I like people with weird ideas, especially when somebody tells me they have thought of a business that does not quite fit an existing box yet. I like helping someone work out how their interests, experience and values can actually become useful parts of the business rather than things they have to remove before they are allowed to look professional.

That thinking now feeds directly into my Brand Discovery Roadmap, where I help founders understand their audience, clarify their positioning and work out how their business should be presented and marketed. I want people to build brands around what makes their business genuinely different, rather than looking vaguely similar to everyone else in their industry.

Why I think neurodivergent people need to be more visible in business

One of the points I made in the interview was that neurodivergent people are already part of the business world. We run businesses, we work for businesses, we buy things, we recommend things, we decide which companies we trust and where we spend our money, and when existing systems do not work for us, plenty of us also go away and create our own opportunities.

That is why I find it frustrating when accessibility or neurodivergence is treated like an extremely niche subject that a business can safely ignore unless it specifically markets itself as inclusive, because you almost certainly already have neurodivergent people in your audience. They might find long enquiry forms difficult, want to know what will happen before booking a call, prefer written communication, leave a website because there is too much happening on the page, or struggle to understand an offer because the copy assumes everybody processes information in the same way.

You do not need to know somebody's diagnosis before making things easier to understand and use, and a lot of good accessibility is simply good communication.

I also think visibility changes what people believe is possible

This is probably the part I feel most strongly about now because I nearly kept my autism diagnosis separate from my business because I was worried it would damage my credibility, then I ended up speaking about it in a national awards feature. That matters beyond the nice little ego boost of seeing your name in an article because when people only ever see one kind of person presented as successful, authoritative or good at business, it becomes very easy to assume there is a correct way to be one.

Visibility gives people more examples, and I want an autistic person starting a business to be able to see somebody openly autistic talking about winning awards, working with clients and building something successful without having to pretend that their neurodivergence disappears between 9am and 5pm.

I also want businesses run by people who are not neurodivergent to understand that inclusion has commercial consequences. If people cannot understand your website, access your service comfortably or feel confident communicating with you, some of them will simply spend their money somewhere else, and those people are already part of your customer base whether you have actively thought about them or not.

Do I think every neurodivergent business owner should talk publicly about it?

I do not think every neurodivergent business owner should feel pressure to talk publicly about their diagnosis because that decision is incredibly personal. I wanted to talk about mine because it became relevant to the way I work and the type of business I wanted to build, and being open also means other neurodivergent business owners and clients can find me and know from the beginning that I am probably not going to think they are difficult because they want an agenda before a call.

For somebody else, their diagnosis might have absolutely nothing to do with what they want to share publicly, and there can also be real risks attached to disclosure because people still make assumptions about autism and ADHD. I would never tell somebody they owe strangers their medical information in the name of representation, but for me, sharing it eventually felt right, and I am glad I did because hiding it would now feel much stranger than talking about it.

What do I want other business owners to take from this?

I would like more business owners to look at the rules they have inherited and decide whether those rules are actually helping them. You do not automatically need to run your company the same way somebody else in your industry does, and you can change the way enquiries work, make communication clearer, create services around the way you are best able to deliver them, and build a brand that sounds like a person rather than slowly turning yourself into a corporate press release.

I also want people to pay more attention to the customers who are usually expected to adapt themselves to businesses. If somebody needs clearer information, give them clearer information, if customers repeatedly ask what happens after they enquire, put the answer on the website, and if people tell you a process is confusing, investigate it rather than deciding they should have understood.

Accessibility often starts with actually listening to the people trying to use what you have made, and if you are neurodivergent yourself, I think it is worth questioning whether the parts of business you find exhausting genuinely have to be done that way. I spent too long assuming I needed to get better at fitting into business, but building Hi This Is Bry differently turned out to suit me far better.

See also

You can read more about the award recognition behind the feature in Hi This Is Bry named Top 100 Best Creative Arts Business in the UK by the Small Business Awards.

I also wrote about being named UK Top 10 for Best Business Branding at the Small Business Awards, which was the other award mentioned in the Greatest Hits Radio feature.

FAQs

Can neurodivergent people run successful businesses? Absolutely, and neurodivergent people already run businesses across countless industries, although the way somebody works may differ depending on their individual needs. Building processes around how you work best can make running a business more sustainable.

Should I tell clients that I am autistic or ADHD? You do not have to disclose a diagnosis to clients unless you want to, and some business owners find that sharing it helps explain the way they work and attracts people who value that openness, while others prefer to keep medical information private.

Why does neurodivergent inclusion matter to businesses? Neurodivergent people are customers, employees and business owners, so inaccessible communication can directly affect who is able or willing to buy from you. Clear information and flexible ways to communicate can make a business easier for more people to use.

How can a small business become more neurodivergent friendly? Start by making your services and processes easy to understand, explain what happens after someone enquires, avoid unnecessary jargon and listen when customers tell you where they are getting stuck.

Why this feature still means a lot to me

Being featured on Greatest Hits Radio gave me one of those slightly surreal moments where I could compare where I was with what I had been worried about when I started. I had wondered whether being open about autism would make people take my work less seriously, and a national feature was now discussing that same openness alongside my business being recognised as one of the UK's top small creative businesses.

I was obviously very pleased about the awards, and I am absolutely keeping the article forever, but I am even happier that I did not build the business by hiding the parts of myself I thought might make other people uncomfortable. If you are figuring out what could make your own business easier to notice, understand and trust, my free Business Visibility Playbook gives you a practical place to start.