Founder & leadership coaching · ADHD & AuDHD specialist

Hi, I'm Phil. A coach for founders, executives and leaders. I specialise in how ADHD, AuDHD and personal patterns slow business growth.

I'm a former $20M founder, and I'm AuDHD myself, so I get it from the inside. I coach founders, executives and leaders to build and run a business that fits how their ADHD or AuDHD brain actually works, so growth stops stalling.

Rated 5 out of 5 · 100+ founders coached
Phil Drinkwater, ADHD and AuDHD business coach
Quoted in
  • Hello!
  • ITV
  • Metro
  • MSN
  • Yahoo
Featured on
  • ADHD Uninterrupted
  • ADHD Entrepreneurs Summit
  • ADHD UK
For founders, ADHD or not

Grow faster, without working any harder.

Your capability was never the problem. A hidden set of patterns, I call them your Founder Airbrake™, is cancelling most of your impact before it ever reaches the business.

Your business is up and running and should be much further along. Decisions still queue on your desk, and your week still vanishes into work that shouldn't need you.

Over a few months, I find the airbrake, find the cause, and take it off. It works whether you're ADHD, autistic, both or neither, and you don't need a diagnosis.

Left on for a few years, it's a million-dollar difference. At least.

How I'm different

You, the business, and what happens between the two.

Most coaching works on the individual alone. The next hack, the next tool, the next morning routine. I work on three things at once: you, your company or role, and the way the two interact. That's where founders and leaders actually get stuck, and it's where the change holds.

So alongside the strategy, the offer and the money, or the politics and the pressure of a senior role, we handle the draining stuff that keeps you in the same patterns. The RSD that makes feedback feel like a threat. The perfectionism that stalls the work. The avoidance of boring but profitable tasks. The passivity, and the masking that leaves you flat by the evening.

It's not productivity tips. It's the work on how your brain and personality actually run.

Why work with me

Built it, lived it, and trained to help.

$20M

I've built a business

I scaled a previous company to $20M in sales and led it for years. When we talk strategy, hiring, cashflow or growing past yourself, I've sat in that chair.

AuDHD

I live this brain

I'm AuDHD, ADHD and autism together. I'm not coaching this from a textbook. I know the RSD, the avoidance and the masking from the inside.

Trained

I have the method

I combine coaching, psychology and neuroscience with the day-to-day reality of running a company, so the work holds up in real situations, not just on paper.

I've coached more than a hundred business owners and leaders, including founders running seven and eight-figure businesses and an Emmy-winning music producer. Accredited by the Association for Coaching, UK, with a psychotherapy background. Sessions run online, so I work with founders and leaders worldwide.

Across every kind of business

The brain is the same in any industry.

I coach how your brain and personality work. The industry barely matters. These are some of the worlds the people I work with come from.

In their words

What changes for the people I work with.

From the very first conversation we had, he just got it… Since then, my business has grown exponentially year on year.
LCLeo Crocker
Founder
From our first session, Phil's insights have led to more breakthroughs than I've had in years of previous Executive coaching.
AGA.G.
Executive coaching client
For me, with my ADHD brain, it helped me really understand things at such an easy level to execute. When I did execute, within a week I was able to fix my financial problems.
RURon Ung
Founder
It was refreshing to hear "there was nothing wrong with me", I simply never had tools that worked well with my neurodiversity… After each session, I feel more confident.
KKasia
AuDHD founder
The ongoing sessions and regular check-ins have had a greater impact than I could ever have expected… Phil's guidance has been invaluable.
SRSimon Ritterband
Founder
Working with Phil has been an illuminating experience, deepening my self-awareness as well as advancing my professional development.
GGarnet
Executive coaching client
Running on Friction, the book by Phil Drinkwater
Free to read

You've been running on friction for most of your life.

My book is free to read, and it won't hand you another system to follow.

Instead it explains what has actually been going on underneath, and why. The friction you've felt for years has a cause, and once you can see it, the next steps stop feeling impossible.

Before you ask

The questions I get most.

No. I'm a coach, not a clinician, so I can't assess or diagnose.

A formal diagnosis is a job for a GP or a specialist. You don't need one to work with me.

No. Medication is a medical decision and it belongs with your doctor or psychiatrist. I don't give medical advice.

No. Plenty of the people I coach are self-identified or still working it out.

If the way I describe things sounds like you, that's enough to start.

No. Therapy tends to work on your past. I work on you and your business now.

I do have a psychotherapy background, so the emotional side is handled with care, but the focus is your business and how you run it.

It's my specialism, and it's most of who I work with. If you're not certain you're ADHD or AuDHD but the patterns fit, you're still welcome.

Both. I switch between them as the moment needs.

Coaching draws the answer out of you. Mentoring hands you what I learned building to $20M.

Both. If you're in a senior role rather than running your own company, see my executive coaching page.

Sessions run online, so I work with founders and leaders worldwide.

The next step

Book a free 30-minute consultation.

We'll check the fit both ways before either of us says yes. No pressure, and no obligation. If it isn't right, I'll tell you, and point you somewhere that is.