The ADHD Marketer
You’ve been told your ADHD is a problem to manage. Medication, systems, therapy, planners with color-coded tabs you abandoned by Wednesday. Productivity gurus selling you morning routines designed by people who’ve never lost forty-five minutes staring at a cursor because the office was too loud and the deadline was tomorrow. Nobody told you the truth: the same brain making it hard to sit through a budget meeting is the reason you spotted a market opportunity three competitors missed entirely.
The ADHD Marketer is for the marketing professional who thinks in seventeen directions at once, hyperfocuses on a campaign until it’s brilliant, then forgets to send the invoice. It is not a book about coping. It is a book about competing — and winning — with the brain you actually have.
Richard Lowe didn’t learn marketing in a classroom. He learned it the hard way, building a freelance writing career and a publishing business that now spans more than 100 books, while figuring out how to stop losing clients to disorganization and start closing them with ideas nobody else was generating. He is not a therapist or a psychologist. He is a guy with ADHD who had to figure out how to market himself, his services, and his work. He kept detailed notes on what actually worked.
This book is that education, compressed into short, direct chapters you can read in one sitting and apply the same day. You’ll learn how to set up a workspace that works with your attention span instead of fighting it. How to turn hyperfocus into a billable asset. How to pitch clients when your brain won’t stop generating tangents and how to close them when it finally lands on the right one. How to manage deadlines without white-knuckling through every hour. How to handle the clients who drain you and build relationships with the ones who don’t.
The book covers freelance, agency, and in-house marketing roles. It covers the practical — workspace, time management, client communication, career development — without padding it with theory that sounds good and does nothing. Every strategy is field-tested. There is no psychobabble, no advice recycled from neurotypical productivity books with an ADHD sticker slapped on the cover, and no suggestion that the goal is to fix yourself.
You do not need to be fixed. You need a different approach. That is what this book delivers.
If your brain works differently, your marketing career doesn’t have to suffer for it. It can be better because of it.
| Amazon Kindle | Paperback (IngramSpark) | epub (Kobo) |
| 📖 Look Inside | Need a Ghostwriter? Let’s Talk | |
| ISBN (Paperback): | 978-1-946458-45-2 |
| ISBN (eBook): | 978-1-946458-77-3 |
| Publisher: | The Writing King |
| Publication Date: | April 11, 2026 |
| Print Length: | 156 pages |
| Language: | English |
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Chapter 14
Networking Without Wanting to Die
Traditional networking advice assumes you’re social, enjoy meeting strangers, and can work a room full of people without breaking a sweat. Show up, shake hands, collect business cards, follow up within 24 hours. Simple.
If you’re neurodivergent, this approach to networking feels like social torture. Large groups drain your energy. Small talk feels pointless. You forget to follow up because your executive function dropped the ball. The whole performance leaves you exhausted for days.
But networking is unavoidable in marketing. Relationships drive referrals, partnerships, and opportunities. You need strategies that build genuine professional connections without requiring you to become someone you’re not.
Find Your Marketing People
The networking advice to “attend everything and meet everyone” is terrible for neurodivergent brains. You don’t have unlimited social energy, so you need to invest it strategically.
Start by identifying your ideal networking targets. Who are the people that could help your business grow? Who shares your professional interests and could become genuine collaborators? Focus your limited networking energy on these people instead of trying to connect with everyone.
Look for industry groups rather than generic business networking organizations. General networking groups attract every type of business owner and the conversations rarely go deep enough to be useful. Industry-specific groups attract people who share your professional context and interests, making conversations immediately more valuable.
Join online communities before attending in-person events. Facebook groups, LinkedIn communities, Slack channels, and industry forums let you build familiarity and relationships at your own pace, without the pressure of real-time social performance. By the time you meet people in person, you already have a foundation.
Seek out smaller, more focused gatherings instead of large networking events. Mastermind groups, intimate workshops, and small meetups allow for genuine conversation instead of the surface-level connection that large events produce. You’ll make better connections with five people in a focused setting than with fifty people in a crowded room.
Connect with other neurodivergent entrepreneurs and marketers. They understand your challenges, share similar working styles, and won’t judge you for needing recovery time after social interactions.
Follow the 80/20 rule for networking activities. Spend 80% of your networking energy maintaining and deepening existing relationships, and 20% building new ones. This is more sustainable than the constant new-connection hustle that networking culture usually promotes.
Conference Survival Tactics
Conferences are necessary evils for most marketing careers. They’re where industry trends emerge, where partnerships form, and where you can build relationships that take months to develop remotely. You can’t avoid them entirely, but you can approach them strategically.
Choose conferences carefully based on clear objectives. Don’t attend events just because they’re well-known or because everyone else is going. Ask yourself: what specific connections or knowledge am I trying to get from this event? If you can’t answer that clearly, the conference probably isn’t worth your energy.
Book accommodations that give you a retreat space. A quiet hotel room where you can recharge between activities is essential. Consider this a non-negotiable expense, not a luxury — your performance at the conference depends on your ability to recover from social exertion.
Arrive early to get oriented before crowds arrive. Scope out quiet spaces where you can retreat when you need breaks. Identify less crowded times for the events you want to attend.
Set realistic networking goals instead of trying to meet everyone. Aim for three to five meaningful conversations rather than collecting dozens of business cards. Quality over quantity isn’t just a preference for neurodivergent networkers — it’s the approach that actually produces results.
Use meal times strategically for networking. Instead of attending large networking lunches, schedule one-on-one meals with people you specifically want to connect with. One good conversation over lunch is worth more than an hour of circulating through a crowded ballroom.
Prepare your introduction and conversation topics ahead of time. Having a mental script reduces the cognitive load of social interactions and helps you stay on track when your attention wants to wander.
Online Networking That Works
Online networking often works better for neurodivergent professionals because it removes many of the challenges of face-to-face interaction. You can take time to formulate thoughtful responses, engage at your own pace, and retreat when you need to without social consequences.
Focus on platforms where thoughtful content performs well. LinkedIn rewards professional insights and industry commentary. Niche communities reward expertise and genuine contribution. Avoid platforms where superficial visibility is the only currency.
Share valuable content consistently rather than only posting when you need something. Educational insights, industry observations, and genuine expertise attract the kind of connections that turn into real professional relationships.
Engage with other people’s content instead of just broadcasting your own messages. Comment thoughtfully on posts that interest you. Ask genuine questions. This approach builds relationships more effectively than self-promotion, and it plays to neurodivergent strengths — focused attention on topics you find genuinely interesting.
Use direct messages to deepen relationships that start in public forums. Many neurodivergent people are more comfortable with one-on-one conversation than group interaction. Moving relationships into direct messages allows for the kind of substantive exchange that actually builds trust.
Networking for neurodivergent marketers isn’t about becoming more social or learning to love large group interactions. It’s about building genuine professional relationships through methods that work with your neurodivergent traits rather than against them. The goal is a network of valuable connections developed through approaches that don’t leave you depleted — because a networking strategy you can actually sustain beats a perfect approach you’ll abandon after one exhausting event.