Las Vegas runs on a rhythm that most cities do not understand. The hospitality and entertainment industries operate around the clock. Shift work is not the exception here, it is the standard. You might be a hotel operations manager working swing shifts at one of the major resorts on the Strip. You might be a fintech developer at one of the growing tech companies near the southwest part of the valley. You might run your own business in Henderson or freelance in the entertainment industry with a schedule that changes every single week. Whatever your situation, the expectation in this city is that you stay sharp, stay flexible, and figure out how to keep everything moving. If you have ADHD, figuring out how to keep everything moving is the one thing that never quite clicks into place.

So you decide to look for help, and that is when the Las Vegas version of research fatigue kicks in. You search for ADHD coaches and get a mix of results from across the valley. Henderson, North Las Vegas, Paradise, Summerlin, and the Strip corridor all blend together in the listings. Some profiles belong to therapists who mention coaching as a secondary offering. Some are life coaches who recently added ADHD to their service pages. A handful look like they might be genuinely specialized, but their websites all say similar things, and you cannot tell from a directory listing or a social media page who actually knows what they are doing. You have had the search open in your browser for a week and a half. You keep meaning to make a call. The fact that you cannot follow through on finding help for your follow-through problems is painfully on brand.

This guide will walk you through what ADHD coaching actually is, which credentials separate qualified coaches from everyone else, what good coaching methodology looks like, how to navigate cost, and how to make this decision without letting it turn into another abandoned project sitting in your open tabs.

What makes ADHD coaching different from therapy or psychiatry

A lot of people in Las Vegas start looking for mental health support without a clear picture of what kind of support they actually need. The healthcare sector here has been expanding rapidly, and with institutions like UNLV's psychology programs and University Medical Center growing their mental health offerings, there are more clinical options available than there were even five years ago. But coaching, therapy, and psychiatry serve different purposes, and picking the wrong one first can cost you months of time and hundreds of dollars before you realize the fit is off.

ADHD coaching is focused on the present and the future. It is a collaborative partnership where you work with your coach to build practical strategies, systems, and habits that help you reach your goals. Coaching is about action. You figure out what you want to accomplish, identify what keeps getting in the way, and create personalized tools for managing challenges like time management, prioritization, task initiation, and follow-through. A good ADHD coach designs systems around the way your brain actually functions instead of forcing you into frameworks built for neurotypical people. Neurotypical is a term that simply means someone whose brain processes information and attention in the way considered standard or typical.

Therapy addresses what is happening underneath the surface. A therapist helps you process past experiences, work through anxiety or depression (both of which show up alongside ADHD at high rates), and understand emotional patterns that have built up over time. In a city like Las Vegas, where the pace of work is relentless and the hustle culture rewards constant output, a lot of adults with ADHD have spent years pushing through without understanding why everything felt harder than it seemed to be for everyone else. Therapy is the right space for that kind of processing. But therapy on its own does not always give you the concrete daily systems for managing your calendar, breaking through task paralysis at work, or staying on top of responsibilities when your schedule is unpredictable.

Psychiatry handles the medical side. A psychiatrist can formally diagnose ADHD, prescribe medication, and manage your treatment plan over time. If you need an official diagnosis or want to explore whether medication could help, a psychiatrist is the starting point on the clinical end.

These three types of support are designed to work together, not replace each other. Many adults with ADHD benefit from some combination of all three. You might see a psychiatrist for medication management, a therapist for processing the emotional weight of years spent undiagnosed, and a coach for building the day-to-day systems that keep your professional and personal life on track. In Nevada, therapy and psychiatry are often at least partially covered by insurance depending on your plan, while coaching typically is not. We will cover cost and workarounds in more detail later.

The key thing to understand about coaching is that it is forward-looking and tactical. You are not digging into your past. You are building a concrete plan for managing your energy, staying organized when your schedule is chaotic, and following through on the things that actually matter to you.

What credentials should an ADHD coach actually have

Before you spend any time or money evaluating coaches, there is one critical fact you need to know: the title ADHD coach is completely unregulated. Nevada has no licensing requirement for coaches. There is no state board, no required exam, no minimum number of training hours. Anyone can create a website, call themselves an ADHD coach, and start taking clients tomorrow. In a metro area as large as Las Vegas, where the wellness and self-improvement market continues to grow alongside the city's population, the variation in quality is enormous. And from the outside, it is almost impossible to distinguish the deeply trained specialists from the people who took a weekend course and launched a coaching business.

So how do you figure out who is actually qualified?

PAAC certification is one of the strongest signals you can look for. PAAC stands for the Professional Association of ADHD Coaches. Coaches with PAAC certification have completed rigorous, ADHD-specific training programs, logged supervised coaching hours, and demonstrated real competency in working with ADHD-related challenges. This is not a quick online module. It represents a serious, sustained investment in specialized education and practice.

ICF credentials are another reliable indicator. The ICF, or International Coaching Federation, is the most widely recognized credentialing body in the broader coaching profession. An ICF-credentialed coach has completed extensive training hours, accumulated a required number of client coaching hours, and passed a formal evaluation process. ICF credentials on their own do not guarantee ADHD expertise, but when you see them combined with ADHD-specific training, you are looking at someone who takes both the science and the craft of coaching seriously.

NBC-HWC certification is also worth being aware of. NBC-HWC stands for National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. This board certification indicates training in evidence-based coaching methods, and when combined with ADHD specialization, it represents another verified layer of competence.

Lived experience with ADHD can be a real strength in a coach. Many excellent coaches have ADHD themselves and bring a personal, intuitive understanding of the challenges you face. But lived experience without professional training and a structured methodology is not sufficient on its own. You want someone who brings both personal understanding and proven, evidence-based frameworks to every session.

Red flags to watch for:

• No specific credentials or training programs listed on their website

• The only stated qualification is personal experience with ADHD

• Promises of guaranteed outcomes like eliminating procrastination or curing distractibility

• No mention of continuing education, supervision, or a defined coaching methodology

• An approach that sounds more like casual conversation than structured, goal-oriented support

Questions to ask any coach you are considering:

• What ADHD-specific training have you completed, and through which program?

• Are you certified through PAAC, ICF, or another recognized credentialing body?

• Do you receive regular supervision or participate in peer consultation?

• What methodology or framework guides your coaching sessions?

• How do you track and measure client progress over time?

• What does support look like between sessions?

A genuinely qualified coach will welcome all of these questions. They have invested significant time and money into developing their expertise and will be glad to walk you through their background. If someone becomes vague or defensive when you ask about training and credentials, treat that as important information.

Why does virtual coaching work well for ADHD in Las Vegas

The Las Vegas metro area sprawls across Clark County in a way that makes geography a real factor in any recurring appointment. Henderson is a 30-minute drive from North Las Vegas on a good day. Getting from Summerlin to the southeast side of the valley during rush hour can take close to 45 minutes. Public transit options are limited, and the city's layout is built around car dependency. If you are filtering coaches by who happens to have an office near your neighborhood, you are dramatically shrinking your options before you even evaluate quality.

Virtual coaching removes that constraint entirely. You can work with your coach from your apartment near UNLV, your home office in Henderson, a break room on the Strip during a split shift, or your kitchen table in North Las Vegas. Sessions fit into the natural flow of your day rather than requiring you to block out extra time for a cross-valley drive, find parking, and mentally transition in and out of a physical office visit.

But the more important benefit is about the quality of the match itself. When location stops being a filter, you can choose a coach based on what actually matters: their experience with your specific type of challenge, their coaching style, their familiarity with your industry or life stage. Someone who specializes in working with shift workers and hospitality professionals navigating irregular schedules might be a far better fit than a generalist who happens to have office space near your zip code. A coach with deep experience supporting entrepreneurs or tech workers with ADHD might be exactly what you need, even if that coach is not physically located in Nevada.

Virtual coaching also helps with consistency, and consistency is one of the hardest things to maintain when you have ADHD. Every added logistical step becomes a potential reason to reschedule or skip a session. When your coaching appointment is a video call you can take from wherever you happen to be, the friction drops significantly. You show up more often. The relationship builds momentum. Progress compounds over time instead of stalling out every time your schedule shifts or traffic on the 15 is worse than expected.

And if a particular coaching match is not the right fit, adjusting is straightforward. You are not locked into someone because they are nearby. You connect with a different coach and keep moving forward without restarting a geographic search.

What does a strong ADHD coaching methodology look like

Methodology is the hidden difference between coaching that creates lasting change and coaching that feels like a nice conversation you have already forgotten about by the next afternoon. Two coaches can have similar websites, similar pricing, and similar-sounding bios, but the way they actually work with you behind the scenes might be completely different.

Evidence-based frameworks are the foundation of quality coaching. One widely used model is the COM-B framework, which breaks behavior change into three components: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. Instead of giving generic advice like just use a planner or set more alarms, a coach using COM-B helps you figure out whether a particular struggle comes from a skill gap (capability), an environmental barrier (opportunity), or a drive issue (motivation), and then targets the actual root cause. Another evidence-based tool is implementation intentions, which are specific if/then plans designed to close the gap between wanting to do something and actually doing it. Instead of a vague goal like I will work on my project this week, an implementation intention sounds like when I get home from my shift and sit down at my desk, I will open the project file and work for 25 minutes before checking my phone.

Structured sessions versus open-ended conversation is one of the biggest quality dividers in coaching. In a structured approach, each session follows a framework. Your coach prepares in advance. Goals carry forward from previous conversations. Progress gets tracked over time. You are building on a foundation week after week rather than starting from scratch every session. Open-ended conversations can feel supportive in the moment, but without structure, they rarely produce consistent, measurable behavior change.

Between-session support matters more than most people expect. ADHD does not take a break between your weekly coaching calls. New habits are fragile. Motivation fluctuates daily, sometimes hourly. Quality coaching includes some form of ongoing connection between sessions, whether that is messaging, quick accountability check-ins, or access to a community of people working on similar challenges. That continuity between sessions is often what determines whether a new strategy actually sticks and becomes part of your routine or fades away before your next call.

Executive dysfunction-specific design is essential for any coaching that claims to be ADHD-focused. Executive dysfunction refers to difficulties with the brain's management system: working memory, planning, task initiation, emotional regulation, and time awareness. Generic coaching techniques often assume a baseline level of executive function that people with ADHD do not consistently have. A methodology built specifically for ADHD accounts for those realities and builds systems around them rather than pretending they do not exist.

Peer community and shared learning offer something that isolated one-on-one sessions cannot. Connecting with other adults who face similar challenges builds accountability, normalizes the experience, and surfaces practical strategies you might never discover on your own. Hearing that someone in a similar work situation found a particular approach effective carries a different kind of weight than hearing it from a coach alone.

Ongoing coach supervision is a quality indicator most people never think to ask about, but it is significant. Coaches who practice in isolation with no external oversight can develop blind spots or drift into outdated methods over time. Regular supervision means a qualified professional is reviewing their work, providing feedback, and holding them accountable to a consistent standard of care.

The difficult truth is that none of these methodological differences are visible from a directory listing or website. Two coach profiles can look nearly identical while representing very different levels of depth and rigor underneath. The only way to distinguish them is to ask the right questions during a consultation call.

How much does ADHD coaching typically cost

Cost is a real consideration, and it is better to go in with clear expectations than to be surprised after your first session.

Nationally, individual ADHD coaching sessions range from about $150 to $300 per session. Monthly coaching packages, which usually include regular sessions plus some level of between-session support, tend to fall between $300 and $600 per month. Pricing varies based on coach experience, credentials, session length, and the amount of support included between calls.

The instinct to look for the least expensive option is understandable, especially in Las Vegas where the cost of living has climbed steadily over the past several years. Housing costs, in particular, have risen sharply across the valley. But cost and credential depth tend to be correlated. Coaches who have invested thousands of dollars in ADHD-specific training, ICF certification, supervised coaching hours, and continuing education charge more because their overhead is higher and their expertise runs deeper. That does not automatically mean the most expensive coach is the best one, but consistently choosing the lowest price point increases your chances of working with someone who has minimal specialized training.

Insurance generally does not cover ADHD coaching. Coaching is not classified as therapy or a medical service under most plans, and Nevada does not currently mandate coaching coverage.

FSA and HSA accounts can often be used for coaching. If your employer offers a Flexible Spending Account or Health Savings Account, ADHD coaching may qualify as an eligible expense. This lets you pay with pre-tax dollars, which can effectively reduce your real cost by 20 to 30 percent depending on your tax bracket. With the growing number of large employers in healthcare, hospitality management, and fintech operating across the Las Vegas metro, this is worth checking with your benefits administrator.

When evaluating cost, it helps to weigh it against the cost of doing nothing. Stalled career momentum because you cannot consistently deliver. Strained relationships from forgotten commitments. The mental and emotional weight of knowing you are capable of more but not being able to show it reliably. Effective coaching pays for itself when it helps you show up consistently in the areas that matter most.

How do you find and evaluate coaches in Las Vegas

With a solid understanding of what coaching is, which credentials matter, and what strong methodology looks like, you can start the practical search. The Las Vegas metro presents a few specific challenges worth preparing for.

Where to look:

The PAAC directory (Professional Association of ADHD Coaches) is the most targeted starting point. Every coach listed there has met specific ADHD training requirements. The ICF directory is broader but useful for independently verifying credentials. Las Vegas does not currently have a dedicated CHADD chapter. CHADD stands for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The nearest chapters are in Reno or affiliated with statewide Nevada groups, but CHADD offers virtual meetings and national support groups that are accessible from anywhere. While CHADD does not provide coaching directly, connecting with these communities can be a useful way to get recommendations from people who have firsthand experience working with coaches.

The Las Vegas-specific challenge:

Las Vegas is a city where the wellness and personal development market has been growing alongside the broader population boom. The service industry culture here normalizes high performance and adaptability, which means a lot of adults with ADHD have been masking their challenges for years rather than seeking support. The coaching market includes a mix of credentialed specialists and generalists who have added ADHD to their offerings without deep specialization. Directory results pull listings from across the valley, and the language on profiles tends to blur together. Sorting through that noise and identifying who is genuinely qualified takes real effort and sustained focus.

The vetting process:

Once you have a shortlist, go beyond what their website claims. Verify credentials independently through the PAAC and ICF directories. Schedule consultation calls, which most coaches offer for free or at a reduced rate. Use those conversations to ask the credential and methodology questions outlined earlier in this guide.

During a consultation, pay attention to:

• Whether they ask about your specific challenges or jump straight into selling a package

• How clearly they explain their coaching methodology

• Whether they mention supervision, continuing education, or structured frameworks

• How natural and comfortable the conversation feels

• Whether pricing, session structure, and expectations are transparent from the beginning

When a match does not work out:

This happens more often than anyone acknowledges. You go through the whole search, commit to a coach, and after a few sessions you realize the fit is not right. Maybe their style does not match how you process things. Maybe they lack experience with the specific type of challenge where you need the most support. Now you are back at the start. New search. New vetting calls. New financial risk. New decision fatigue. For someone with ADHD, restarting that kind of open-ended research project can feel nearly impossible.

Even with the right directories and a thoughtful approach, the full weight of researching, vetting, and choosing falls entirely on you. That is a lot to ask of anyone, and it is an especially difficult task when the executive function challenges you are trying to get help with are the same ones that make sustained research feel exhausting.

Why a Shimmer ADHD coach might be the better option

Every frustration described above is the reason Shimmer exists. We built it because we have been through the same draining search ourselves and knew there had to be a better path forward.

The vetting is already done before you show up. Shimmer coaches go through a selection process with a 4% acceptance rate. Every coach holds ADHD-specific credentials, whether that is PAAC certification or equivalent specialized training. They are not hired and then left to operate independently. Shimmer coaches receive ongoing supervision and continuing education, which means their practice is held to a consistently high standard. The methodology is grounded in behavioral science frameworks designed specifically for how ADHD brains work, and it is consistent across the entire platform.

Matching is built into the system. Instead of spending weeks scrolling through directories and hoping for the best, Shimmer matches you with a coach based on your specific needs, preferences, and goals. If a match is not the right fit, you switch. No awkward conversation. No penalty. No restarting the entire search from scratch. You connect with someone new and keep building forward momentum. This alone changes the experience compared to the traditional path, where a bad fit means going back to the beginning of the process.

The methodology goes beyond your weekly session. Shimmer's coaching approach is built on science-backed frameworks for behavior change and executive function support. Sessions are structured, goal-oriented, and connected from one to the next. But the support does not disappear between calls. Shimmer includes community access where you connect with other members working through similar challenges. That combination of expert one-on-one coaching and peer community creates a layer of accountability and shared learning that a single weekly session on its own simply cannot provide.

The financial risk is minimal. Shimmer offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Pricing is transparent and published upfront, so you know exactly what you are committing to before you start. Compare that to the traditional route where you might spend $300 on a first session with someone from a directory, realize after two or three sessions that their approach does not work for your brain, and then face the prospect of paying more to try again with someone else.

Virtual-first means all of Las Vegas is covered equally. Whether you live in Henderson, work a rotating schedule on the Strip, are based in a home office in Summerlin, or split your time between North Las Vegas and the southwest valley, you get the same quality of coaching without geography playing any role. No driving across the valley between shifts. No rearranging your day around a cross-town appointment. Just consistent, expert support that fits into your life where it already is.

Shimmer's coaches work with professionals across the industries that define the Las Vegas economy. Hospitality managers and executives navigating the cognitive demands of high-volume operations. Fintech and tech workers dealing with focus challenges in fast-moving companies. Entertainment professionals managing inconsistent schedules and project-based work. Healthcare workers balancing shift rotations with personal responsibilities. Entrepreneurs building businesses in one of the fastest-growing metros in the country. The matching process accounts for these differences so you work with someone who understands your professional and personal context.

Members consistently describe the difference as meaningful compared to previous coaching experiences. The structured methodology, ongoing accountability between sessions, and the ability to switch coaches without friction combine to create something that works with ADHD instead of asking you to power through a broken process just to get help.

How do you get started with ADHD coaching

Taking the first step can feel like a bigger decision than it needs to be. If you have been researching ADHD coaching for weeks or even months without actually committing, you are in very good company. That kind of decision paralysis is one of the most common ADHD patterns, and there is a real irony in the fact that the challenges you need help with are the exact same ones making it hard to seek help in the first place.

Getting started is simpler than the research process makes it seem. You sign up, get matched with a coach, and have your first session. That initial conversation is about your coach getting to know you: your goals, your challenges, what you have already tried, and where you want to focus first. You do not need to show up with a polished list of objectives or a detailed history of your ADHD experience. Your coach is trained to guide that conversation and help you identify where to begin.

The first few sessions are about building a foundation. You and your coach will identify what matters most to you right now and start developing strategies tailored to how your brain works. Expect it to feel exploratory at first. You are testing approaches, discovering what sticks, and building trust with someone who is going to be in your corner consistently.

Set realistic expectations. Coaching is not an overnight fix. You will not leave your first session with every executive function challenge resolved. What you will have is a structured starting point, a knowledgeable partner who understands ADHD deeply, and a framework for making steady, compounding progress. Most members start noticing meaningful shifts within the first few weeks as new strategies take hold and small wins begin building on each other.

If you are ready to stop cycling through open tabs and start working with a vetted, expert ADHD coach who genuinely understands how your brain works, Shimmer is a good place to begin.