The Origin Story

If you have just found me on social media, you have probably watched a reel or two, maybe seen a post about async workflows or ND-friendly business, and you are wondering one thing. Is she full of shit? Is this just another freelancer who spotted that neurodivergence is having a moment and decided to build a brand around it?

Fair enough. I would wonder the same thing.

This is the Build Diary. It is the thing you read when you want to know whether I am actually building something or just posting about it.

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The 9-5 did not break me in a single dramatic moment. It was a slow erosion over a couple of years, sitting in the corner of an open-plan office where you had to be at your desk every single day, ready to pick up the phone, answer emails, and entertain people who would wander over and just stand there until you gave them your attention. It was a sensory nightmare. I used to nap in my car at lunch because I was that exhausted. My mental health was down the toilet, and I had the recovery team involved just to help me get through the day.

I asked to cut my hours down and take Wednesdays off to manage the pressure. They made me feel guilty for it, said I was leaving the rest of the team in the lurch. Absolute bullshit. I was doing a full week's worth of work in four days. But that was the culture. You had to perform being busy, not just be productive.

By then I had been diagnosed as autistic. I was expected to educate my colleagues about it myself, on top of my full-time job. The support that was supposed to be there either vanished or got replaced by someone who let my employer walk all over me. I went off ill quite a lot towards the end. The whole system was designed for someone who could tolerate noise, interruptions, and performative availability. That was definitely not me.

My body had made the decision before the paperwork did.

So I left. And then I had to figure out what I could actually do.

I had always wanted to start a business, so I opened a little Etsy shop selling handmade stickers and prints with my illustrations on them. To document the behind-the-scenes, I started a YouTube channel, and to make the videos, I had to learn how to edit.

That was the door. I fell in love with it. The deep focus. The flow state of being deep in an edit. Finding exactly the right piece of music for a moment and feeling everything click into place. It was and is meditative. It was the first time in years that work felt like something I wanted to do, not something I was surviving.

Now I run a done-for-you video editing retainer for neurodivergent entrepreneurs who are sick of hustling.

I have always been a better communicator in writing. When I have time to think about what I am saying and how to articulate it, I am clear. Face-to-face I trip over my words, whether that is from a brain injury I had years ago or just part of how my brain is wired, probably a bit of both. My old job wanted everything done by phone or in person. I wanted breathing room. So async communication became a non-negotiable. I am not anti-Zoom; I just prefer words I can craft without someone staring at me while I do it.

That is why the business is ND-led. I am autistic, for a start, but I also looked around and realised there are hundreds of neurodivergent-friendly virtual assistants out there and almost nobody doing what I do - video editing and content partnership for ND entrepreneurs. I prefer working with neurodivergent people because they tend to share the same values: honesty, directness, no bullshit. We do not have to perform being someone else.

I am not a VA (I tried that, didn't like it!). I am not a social media manager (also tried that back in the day...). I am a video editor and content partner who understands that your brain does not work like a spreadsheet.

The proof that this is real and not just a rebrand? Leighanne. She came to me as a solopreneur and has scaled up to a team with my help on her content and video editing. That is not a trend. That is hours of focused work, understanding how her brain works, and building a system that actually fits her. Neurodivergence is not a hashtag. It is a real disability that holds me back in ways you could never imagine, and it also gives me a perspective that makes me very good at this specific job.

So what does the next six months actually look like, not the vision-board version?

I want one more client on my £1,500 retainer package. I will be working at my desk in my office with the winter sun streaming through the windows in the morning. My energy will be balanced - mentally tired from genuine thinking work, so I sleep properly at night, and physically tired from daily walks, so my body stays healthy. That is it. No hustle. No six-figure projections. Just a sustainable, honest business that fits the brain I have.

If you are the kind of business owner who is burned out and thinks you are bad at business because of how your brain works, you are not. The business is not broken. The container is.

I am on LinkedIn if you want to follow along or just say hello. Link here.

Leah Bourne

Video editing services offered.

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