‘How it was named’ is a series where I explore the creation of brand names that have caught my interest. This edition features Sara-Louise Ackrill of Wired Differently

 

1] Tell us about Wired Differently; what do you do?

 

Wired Differently is a for-profit company that creates and provides services to neurodivergent professionals and students specifically. We have a range of services, it started as therapy, coaching, and virtual assistance because those were my personal areas of skill. And we grew the team so we now do public speaking, more niche therapy and coaching… we’ve also got learning and development, one book published and two being written. We do quite a bit in the neurodiversity space. The reason I make the distinction with for-profit is because we also have a non-profit called Start Differently that serves the same people, professionals and students.

 

2] And why do you do it?

 

I do it because I can’t not do it.

 

I think when you have something in life that’s a bit of a vocation, it doesn’t matter what job you do, you just are that person that should really be whatever it is you should be. So, for example, when I was in recruitment and in luxury hospitality, I would get told all the time “You’re a therapist, basically, you’re a coach.” That was just me. And I can’t think of a better way of paying my bills, because it’s what I want to spend all my time doing — and not just my free time in the sense of having a hobby.

 

3] What values inform your ‘why’?

 

I’ll tell you the value it is, and I’ll tell you the value it isn’t.

 

The value it could have been but isn’t is justice-seeking. Justice-seeking is so neurodivergent, and it’s so linked to what we do at Wired Differently. But if that was the driving value, I don’t think we would be a profit-making company. In any organisation, if that is your overriding value and it goes unchecked by other values and checks and balances I think that can be quite dangerous. If you try to run a business that is focused purely on being fair you are going to be running into a wall, and you’re also being quite irresponsible. Life isn’t fair, and we should seek justice but that’s not how to run a business.

 

So the value that is the foundation of Wired Differently is being service-led. I feel that I am well-equipped as the leader of the business to be in the space and contribute stuff that other people are not contributing. It takes all sorts to make a world, and it takes all sorts to make a neurodiversity sector. And I feel I offer something different to, say, Leanne Maskell or Ellie Middleton or Rachel Morgan-Trimmer or any of the other people that I admire who have a really strong presence and point of view in the neurodiversity space. They are all different from each other, and I am different from them. I can meet a certain sector of the neurodivergent community’s needs, it’s something that’s comfortable and viable for me financially, and therefore all of those things intersect and it makes sense. So that’s kind of like a supply and demand argument. This is the demand. Some of the demand isn’t met by all the other people in that field, therefore I can meet it. I would say it’s a supply and demand argument, which I think is more mature, strategic and astute than a purely justice-seeking objective or value.

 

4] How did you end up with the name Wired Differently? (did you work with an agency, undertake trademark searches and registration, indicative costs…)

 

When the first lockdown happened in 2020, I had been on a two-year sabbatical, having come out of domestic abuse and being left with a lot of debt… I had burnout and I wasn’t equipped to accompany anyone through emotional trauma (being their therapist) because I just had a very dangerous experience.

 

So I was completely alone with all my notepads jotting down all the things I’d enjoyed, courses I’d been on, all the books I read in my time off. I had decided I wasn’t going to go back to my day job, my original skillset is therapy but I’d decided to specialise in supporting neurodivergent people somewhere along the way. So it needed to be something that speaks to ND people. But I knew full well, they’re very likely to not be formally diagnosed. How does someone who is ND and doesn’t have a bit of paper yet or ever, think of themselves? I was like, well, the term that would speak to me is ‘wired differently’ — you’re not diagnosing me, you don’t need me to have paperwork, you *get* me./mark> And that was it.

 

I have been through branding processes. I have been through naming processes. I’ve done that with other things in the past. On this occasion, it was me and a notepad and lockdown. And that’s how it came about.

 

5] What did you almost call it before deciding on ‘Wired Differently’?

 

I initially created Down-to-earth Counselling, immediately after completing five years of training. Therapy in the old days was seen as a bit of a get-rich-quick scheme or something that you did because you were upper middle class and you were a bit bored and your husband was supporting you, where your counselor would typically sit and nod at you. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to differentiate myself and be like, “You’re going to get real benefit. This is down-to-earth. It’s not woo-woo. It’s going to literally help you move forward.”

 

I also ran a social enterprise years ago, working 100% with people who had a lot of dealings with public sector — benefits, Citizens Advice, non-profits, people who were living on benefits, crisis teams, social services, and I needed a name then that would speak public sector, because public and private sector don’t really talk (in my field anyway). That was called the Cheltenham Support Service, and that was basically because of SEO.

 

Wired Differently was to reflect a more modern, more dynamic approach and the possibility of having way more services and projects than just therapy and coaching which was why I went with a more of a start-up-y type name as well.

 

6] How important is a business name according to you?

 

Naming things is such an interesting, iterative process. I didn’t really fully appreciate how powerful the right name can be until quite recently and I’m really appreciating the power that having a strong name has given us, actually.

 

I have been absolutely amazed at the reception of Wired Differently, which I think has got to be a lot to do with the name, because these are people that wouldn’t know much else about Wired Differently, particularly back in the day. The first indicator I got that people were fond of the name was I would get messages on LinkedIn saying, “Oh, do you do T-shirts and hoodies?” Because they saw it as a bit of a coming out statement. So I would get asked for merch in the really, really early days because people thought ‘wired differently’ makes a statement and they liked that.

 

There are many things that have made me go, “God, I’m really glad we called it that.” Firstly, from a business perspective, we have always had top Google ranking, because people use the term ‘wired differently’ anyway, and we’ve never paid for SEO or any Google ads or anything and still had people find us via search even in the first few really early weeks.

 

The team has grown and not one person has ever gone, “Can we just change the name because this isn’t really working?” It’s never even been a thing, whereas in some companies, at some point, you’d be like, “you know what, we need to drop this letter or this word… or we need to just be called WD, or, this name isn’t working for us”

 

We collaborate with people in many different countries now and we’ve never once had someone go, “Well, we’re in Singapore (for example), and you can’t use the ‘wired differently’ here, because it means something negative” etc. It’s also another thing about it that I’m grateful for, as we become more international — I’ve always had that ambition for Wired Differently and it translates across cultures.

 

7] What one thing do you wish people were aware of about your area of expertise/industry? 

 

I’d like people in the neurodiversity and DEI space to just be mindful that there’s something for everyone out there and that’s how the market should be.

 

There’s a lot of arguments on LinkedIn and a lot of time wasted on questioning what other practitioners are doing, whether people are the right people, whether they’re qualified enough etc., there’s a lot of infighting which I try to stay very distant from and it looks awful from a PR and brand perspective to be out there slagging off other businesses or practitioners.

 

In terms of the wider community, I wish people would realise that therapy and coaching can very much enrich each other, and you don’t have to be in one camp or the other.

 

Therapy and coaching have a very rich history where sometimes the older ways in which therapists worked involved hunches or experimentation in a very risk-assessed way… they would be creative, draw in influences from philosophy, religion, culture, they would be more lateral thinking. But now, I feel like we have professionalised supporting people to a point where we’re really at risk of being kind of anti-creative and dictating what good looks like, where actually it should be down to what works for the client. We have to be careful that people know what they’re doing, and it has to be safe, but there are lots of ways to do that but it gets waylaid by a lot of very single-minded discourse on how you must act, what modalities you must follow and such.

 

8] Question for funsies! Fill in the blank: Whatever you do, don’t _____ 

 

Whatever you do, don’t work towards your own hype.

 

Get your head down, do the work and the rest will take care of itself, but don’t show up to work to power the hype around you because you’ve got so many followers or because someone said this about you or so-and-so wants to do an article on you. I think there’s two levels; there’s doing the work and there’s talking about the work. If you’re plugged into the feeling it gives you, the ego and the image, you’re going to run out of steam very quickly. That is not a motivation. That is a reaction, and you need to be plugged into your purpose, the actual substance of your work.