51. Three signs you're an ADHD entrepreneur

Katie [00:00:00]:
In this episode, we'll find out what ADHD is and the three signs that could suggest that you have it..... This is kind of a fun episode because we have realized through listener communications and questions that we get that there are actually a fair few people who've reached out to us who have admitted that they are not ADHD, but they listen to this podcast because they enjoy the business strategy stuff, which oh, my god.

Katie [00:00:31]:
I'm so grateful to you guys. Thank you. Yes, you are allowed to listen to the Weeniecast if you don't have ADHD. I always love the messages that I get from folks who've never been diagnosed who start listening to the Weeniecast and they start questioning, oh, my God, I think I might have ADHD. And to you, I somewhat apologize for sending you into this questioning sphere and into this mind space of wondering if you have ADHD. And I want to make something perfectly clear. Yes, this podcast is for folks with ADHD who own their businesses, but it's also for anyone who finds it valuable. So whether or not you have ADHD, you're welcome here.

Katie [00:01:11]:
This is a great place for you, and I hope you take some of the information that I share in this podcast and you use it in your business, and it makes you massively successful. If, through listening to this podcast, you start questioning whether or not you have ADHD and are wondering if maybe you should go and get diagnosed, I want to let you know, do what works for you. Do whatever you feel is going to be most supportive of you, where you are. If you think you have ADHD, but you feel like you have it fairly well managed and you're just kind of noticing that you do these kind of wackadoodle ADHD things that I talk about, but you don't feel like, you need further support. Getting diagnosed by a professional is an option. But if you're not looking for any further support, you don't necessarily have to do that. If you feel like you're going to want further support, if you're going to want to go on Ritalin or Adderall, or you might want to work with a behavioral therapist to help you overcome some stuff, highly recommend going and getting diagnosed. But I just want to make it perfectly clear that I, as a quote unquote, card carrying member of the ADHD community, do not care if you actually have a card.

Katie [00:02:16]:
I'm never going to be in conversation with you and hear you say that you have ADHD and insist on seeing the certificate that shows that you've been diagnosed. There can be people who really care about this. I'm not one of them. And I feel like most of the people who are in the Weeniecast hyper focused community also really don't care if you have been officially diagnosed with ADHD. If you self recognize, then welcome to the community. We have amazing snacks, we have incredible hobbies, and we're really fun to talk to. And honestly, if you can follow along with all the weird tangents that I have in this podcast, you probably have ADHD. Let's be real.

Katie [00:02:56]:
But in this episode, what I want to address for those of you who are kind of questioning if you have ADHD or if you have ADHD and you want a little recognition for the stuff that goes on in your business that is a sign of your ADHD. I mean, even if you're not diagnosed ADHD and you say that you're ADHD, and even if you were to go for a diagnosis and the doctor said no, you don't really have it, no one's going to care, right? It's not like you, as a quote unquote faker of ADHD, is going to go and try to scam people with a GoFundMe, right? It's not like you're one of those awful moms who pretends that their kid has cancer and starts a GoFundMe as a scam to take money from people thinking that they're helping this kid. If an ADHD person can be organized to get a GoFundMe up and running for themselves, like, I'm really impressed. You go. You go girl or boy or person. You go person. We want to be gender inclusive here, but I'm not looking at people who are self identifying as ADHD and thinking that they're trying to get away with something, right? Side note, wouldn't it be so funny if there actually was like an ADHD certification where people came over to your house and they checked off all the weird things that happen or that are normal in ADHD and they're like, yes, you're certified. Here is your identification card.

Katie [00:04:16]:
It's not a severe enough thing that you're going to have benefits to it, and it's also not something to you can brag about it, but what does that get you? For those of you who think you have ADHD and are worried that people are going to call you and be like, you're faking it, who cares if you are? If self labeling yourself with ADHD helps you ask for any kind of accommodation to help you be better at your job, to help you be better in your relationships, for you to show up better for yourself, then please use it. Please. Because I don't think anyone's making this up. And if the accommodations that I talk about on this podcast, if the advice I give here is useful to you, use it. I'm going to go through the top three things that happen for business owners that are massive neon, billboard sized signs that you have ADHD, that you're part of the Weeniecast hyper focus community already, and that if you wanted to have a card and be certified and get a diagnosis, you could probably very easily do it. But for now, we're going to go into the three things that are likely happening in your business. If you do have ADHD. The number one thing that I see in ADHD businesses is what I like to call offer.

Katie [00:05:37]:
Palooza. And yes, that is a term that I just made up. Offer. Palooza is a relative of Shiny Object Syndrome. They are very closely related. And you know you have offer palooza if you have a lot of different offers in your business. If you have one on one sessions, if you have three packs, if you have a six month commitment, if you have a ten month commitment. If you have a group program, if you have a one on one program and you have corporate offerings and you have this and you have that and you have Tarot card readings and you do cultural redesigns for corporations.

Katie [00:06:11]:
Basically, it's when shiny object syndrome, which if you want to know more about shiny object syndrome, go back all the way to episode one. We go deep into it in that episode is when shiny object syndrome and can do itis, which is one of the biggest risks to your business get together. And they have a baby because here you are. You are so multitalented. You have gotten sucked into so many different hyper focuses throughout your life. You are probably certified in a gazillion. Different things. And when you start a business, you don't want to not offer it.

Katie [00:06:44]:
You do not want to omit any of your offerings from your clients. If you have the ability to help them become more flexible in their body, then you're going to have a stretching class. And if you also have the ability to audit their hold on. What's a weird combo to audit their bookkeeping. You're also going to have a bookkeeping audit. You might even combine them. You could have a stretching bookkeeping audit session where while you're auditing their numbers, you're guiding them through a stretching session. Right.

Katie [00:07:18]:
Those two things sound very uncomfortable on their own. Could you imagine doing them together? Not a good offer anyway. Offer Palooza. If you have offer palooza going on in your business, here's a couple side effects that you want to be aware of. Number one. Your audience is going to be confused. AF they are not going to know what you're useful for. One day you're going to be talking about your stretching sessions.

Katie [00:07:41]:
Another day, you're going to be talking about bookkeeping compliance and they're not going to know where they can come to you. For what? Help. Right. So if you have offer Palooza Going on in your business, I want you to cut It out. Especially if you're in the early days of starting your business. In the early days of starting your business. Here's what I want you to know. Your fastest path to cash is always going to be one on one.

Katie [00:08:01]:
Clients. If you have a way to work with one on one clients, I want you to do that. And I want you to have one offering. Because here's the truth, and I will say this a million times. A confused buyer never buys. If you're confusing your audience, if you're confusing your ideal clients as to how you are helpful to them, they're never going to buy. If you have too many offers going on, chances are very likely that you are confused about what you're offering, right? And if confused buyer isn't buying, a confused seller absolutely does not sell. If you have a consistent, steady income from one on one clients and you want to start branching out, your next steps are going to be either a group program, a digital product, maybe working with corporate clients.

Katie [00:08:49]:
I do want to set the expectations here that if you want to go into a digital product teaching something, you probably want to start with a live group program first. It'll be a great way for you to kind of test drive the material that you're going to be putting in the program. You'll also understand in real time what parts of the program need to be fleshed out more. Because if you deliver a part of the training and it's not clear to the people in the group, they're going to ask more questions about it. And I want to set your expectations here. Your first couple of launches for a group probably aren't going to be gangbusters successful. And that's normal. If you roll out a group a couple of times and it doesn't fill up those first two times, do it a third, do it a fourth time.

Katie [00:09:28]:
Fine tune your marketing, fine tune your launch strategy. It'll get better over time. The same for a digital product launch, it a bunch of different times. Don't scrap the whole thing. Once you've built it. Just fine tune the marketing. And if you are wanting to branch out into working with corporate clients, say you're a consultant, you do culture revamps. I want you to understand that, yes, it's easy to sign a one on one client because there's only one person making that buying decision.

Katie [00:09:58]:
When you're working with a corporation, there's a bunch of people making that decision. There's a whole budget department. There's HR, there's the director, the president, the VP, whoever is involved who has to sign off on this. They all have to be convinced that this is the right thing to put the company's money in. Those contracts typically take anywhere from six to twelve months to come to fruition, which means you could be in talks with someone for six to twelve months before you ever get a dime out of that work. And the reason I want you to focus on one offer at a time is because I want you to imagine if you're pursuing corporate clients and having to have all those different touch points throughout the year, and you're trying to sell one on one clients and you're assigning clients really fast, it's going to mix up your expectations for both. Likewise, if you're trying to promote a group program and a digital course in addition to selling the corporate stuff, and in addition to selling one on one, I mean, you're only one person and you're having to market absolutely everything. I want you to remember that on social media, your followers are probably only seeing one to 5% of what you're posting.

Katie [00:11:02]:
Depending on how active they are on those platforms, you may think that they're seeing absolutely everything that you're doing. They're not. They're seeing a fraction. And if that fraction that they are seeing isn't relevant to them, they're never going to become your client. If you want to learn more about showing up on social media consistently and how to do social media effectively, I want you to go check out episodes 13 and 16 where I go deep into both topics. So if you have offer plooza happening in your business, a you probably have ADHD and B cut it out because it's probably hurting you more than helping you. The second thing that's probably happening in your business if you have ADHD is what I like to call commitment dropoffia, which is, again, a term that I have just made up. I want to fast forward like 13 years from now when this podcast is still going on.

Katie [00:11:54]:
We've had to release like, a special edition dictionary to cover all the words and terms that I've made up in the past 1314 years. If anyone would like to start keeping track of the words and terms that I make up throughout the life cycle of this podcast, we'd really appreciate it. It would make our lives far easier when we get to the point of publishing that dictionary anyway. Commitment drop off. Yeah, send me a smoke signal if this sounds familiar. You have a moment of inspiration. You have an idea for a newsletter that you feel like is going to establish so much loyalty from your following. You have an idea for something that you think your people need to hear every week.

Katie [00:12:34]:
And so you get to work, you figure out the themes, you create a whole format in your email system, and you draft up your first email and you're like, awesome. Now I do a weekly newsletter. The next week you do the second newsletter, and it's not as fun as the first time, and you're not as inspired, but you're doing it anyway because you said you would and you've committed and you announced it to the whole world. And some people registered for your newsletter, and you feel like you owe it to them to do the second newsletter and you get it out. And then week three rolls around and the day that you promised the newsletter would come out has passed. You're one or two days later, and you still feel like you need to get something out. And so you kind of half ass it and you get something out. Week four rolls around, you're like, I really don't want to do this.

Katie [00:13:19]:
This does not light me up. This is not fun. And so you start setting reminders for yourself in your calendar to write the newsletter. Several days before you know it, you're 70 weeks later and you have a whole bunch of these reminders that you have just become blind to. You don't even notice them showing up on your calendar and in your inbox because you stopped paying attention to them 16 weeks ago. And because you have this pattern of coming up with a brilliant idea, committing to it, announcing it to the whole world, and then losing steam in staying consistent with it. You start believing that you have an issue committing to being consistent. You have a whole track record of dropping off on your commitments to your audience, about your marketing, or about something in your business.

Katie [00:14:11]:
And so after a while, this track record creates a fear in you to commit to anything. You're hesitant to come up with anything new or commit to being consistent in really any way in your business because you're worried you're never going to stick with it. Now, this can happen with email newsletters. This happens for me all the time. If you're on my newsletter, you'll probably notice that it changes from time to time. It'll go months without one. And really the beauty of a newsletter is not necessarily that people are going to read it and be like, oh my God, I have to buy from this person now. No, that's not the point.

Katie [00:14:47]:
The point of the newsletter is to remind people that you exist, to give them some value, to continue that relationship, to basically pop up in people's awareness once a week, twice a week, and just remind them that you're here and this is what you're useful for. And this is why they signed up for this newsletter in the first place. And if you have anything exciting going on, letting them know about it in that newsletter. I think that a lot of the issue with commitment drop off you is that we put so much weight on something being correct and right and being effective, when really for most of the stuff we do as business owners posting to social media, doing newsletters, the efficacy of it won't show up for a couple of years. We won't be able to determine how effective it is until a couple of years down the line when someone who's been following us or on our newsletter for X amount of time finally pops through and it's like, I think I need to work with you now. Remember, that person who pops through saying they think that they need to work with you did not read every single post. They did not read every single newsletter you sent, but your name popped up for them every single day on social media and your name popped through once a week in their inbox. And occasionally that subject line or that top line on social media was enough for them to click see more.

Katie [00:16:11]:
And sometimes when they clicked see more. That sounds like I was saying Seymour. Like the name. Like S-E-Y-M-O-R. Just a weird name. Who would name their child that? Sorry. If your name's Seymour, I don't mean to judge the name. It's just anyway, they clicked Seymour, which again, sounds like Seymour the name.

Katie [00:16:31]:
Now I'm overthinking this. I'm so red right now. I'm sweating. I don't know why I think this is this funny. Okay, I need to turn the air conditioning on. This is like a hot flash. A Seymour hot flash. Okay.

Katie [00:16:49]:
Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay. Occasionally when they hit See more and they read your post and they read in your newsletter, you're speaking directly to their problem and that's the moment it's going to be effective. And you cannot count on that. You cannot count on that happening every single time you email something, every single time you post something. So you worrying about it being perfect. You worrying about it being absolutely 100% on par is just not effective. I would rather you commit to doing a weekly newsletter and every 6th one you forget, every like six or fifth one, you just have a busy week and you don't feel inspired and so you don't do it.

Katie [00:17:27]:
We have this tendency when we have ADHD to be very much all or nothing. I'm either going to go to the gym every single day or not at all. And also, I want you to let yourself off the hook of doing everything 100% well. Do things 60%, 60% of the time. Do the thing and honestly, like that. 60% of the time, do it 60% good. Don't hold yourself to the expectation that's going to be 100% perfect. No, you're going to have some misspellings in there.

Katie [00:18:00]:
You might not make the point perfectly. Your metaphors might be a little off some days, and that's okay because you showing up in your audience's awareness 60% of the time. And being 60% perfect is way better than you not showing up at all. And again, if you're struggling with commitment, drop off you in your social media strategy, then I recommend you go listen to episodes 13 and 16. They're both about building consistent habits and what you should be doing in your social media posting. Now, the third thing that's probably happening in your business and your life if you have ADHD is, oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Now, the third thing that's probably happening in your business and your life if you have ADHD is what I like to call messy desk syndrome.

Katie [00:19:00]:
If you have messy death syndrome, I imagine you can look over anywhere in your house because messy desk syndrome does not just happen at your desk. It happens in your bedroom. It happens in your kitchen. And the foundation of messy death syndrome is that when you put things away, they stop existing to you, right? ADHD folks have a big issue with object permanence, right? So if you go into your refrigerator and you're afraid to open the bottom drawers where they tell you you should be putting produce because, you know, there are some science experiments happening there, you probably have messy dust syndrome. I'm looking at my workspace right now and I'm just going to give you a quick inventory of all the shit that is on my desk. We have two things of tarot cards because one is not enough on a professional desk, you need to and actually there were three, but I can't remember where I took it. Somewhere in the house. I have a thing of floss.

Katie [00:19:56]:
I have two things of lip balm. I have antibiotic ointment neosporin knockoff because I cut myself once and I presumably used this when I was putting a bandaid on. I have a lot of postit notes. I have an old soup container, full pens, all different colors, all different tip thickness. That's what she said. Joke in there. We're not going to stop on that anyway. I have a bottle of ASOP lotion, which is one of my favorite lotions.

Katie [00:20:24]:
This is one of two bottles of ASOP lotion that were on my desk. The other one fell off the back of the desk and is now on the floor. And that bottle will not exist to me until this bottle runs out and I need to use that bottle. I have numerous chargers that may or may not be plugged in and I will not know that they're plugged in until I try to charge something with them. I have my passport, my current passport, and an old passport. I have a crystal ball because who doesn't need a crystal ball on their desk? I also have several pairs of thoughts that still have the wrapper on them because that's useful. I have pantyhose, because pantyhose is really good for you to have on your desk. Actually, it's two pairs of pantyhose.

Katie [00:21:06]:
On my desk. I have tape, which is appropriate for a desk. I have nail polish, I have tweezers, I have nail clippers. I have a lighter. I have an old battery. I have several books. I have this little baggie thing that I don't know what was in here. I think I maybe put jewelry in it at some point.

Katie [00:21:27]:
I have whiteout, which is appropriate. And then of course, I have my roll of toilet paper because I ran out of tissues. And then of course, all of my drink receptacles. I have my water bottle, I have my coffee cup and my sparkling water. If this sounds familiar to you, you have ADHD. There's no question in my mind. Anyway, just going to move all those canty holes junk out of the way. Now, for the neurotypical person, having this kind of situation happening in your desk will get in the way of you getting work done.

Katie [00:22:03]:
But for the ADHD entrepreneur, this will not limit your work. This will inspire you. You will get so many ideas looking at this kind of mess, because you'll make a connection between this thing and that thing, and you'll be able to draw so much inspiration from this kind of chaos, right? And also, there's a point where you stop seeing the chaos. I've been looking for these tweezers for months, and I only just realized that they were on my desk right in front of my face, 8 hours a day because I was doing this silly inventory. Oh, my God, there's a spider. I disturbed where the spider was living. Oh, no. It's big.

Katie [00:22:46]:
Thank God I have toilet paper here. Kill it. The spider is dead. Don't worry. We're safe. Oh, and I also have a skein of yarn in case I feel like knitting at some point, although the skein, I'll have to roll it into a ball, and then I have to get the needles, and I don't know where those are, so that's a whole other thing. Anyway. Now, messy dust syndrome can show up physically in your space, but it also probably shows up on your computer, because if you're looking at your computer right now, I bet you have anywhere from 13 to 77 tabs open on various windows.

Katie [00:23:19]:
No judgment. I do, too. But if you have that going on and it doesn't make your brain hurt, congratulations. You are a member of the ADHD Club. And like I said, we have great hobbies, great snacks, and we are a very warm community. So if you've wondered if you have ADHD after listening to this podcast, I hope this episode has given you greater understanding of what running a business with ADHD looks like and has helped you really figure out where you fall on that spectrum. Also, if you sense that someone in your life a family member, a friend, a colleague has ADHD, maybe they've wondered out it out loud to you at some point, then please feel free to send this episode to them. Because if they want to know, this is a pretty good gauge for figuring out if you have ADHD.

Katie [00:24:09]:
And again, I want to remind you, if you choose to get diagnosed, fabulous. Whatever is right for you. If you choose not to get diagnosed, if you're pretty clear that you have ADHD, also fabulous. Especially with the cost of health care right now, getting diagnosed can be very expensive. For some folks, it's almost like a luxury item to get an official diagnosis for some things, like a designer handbag. If it matters for you to get a designer handbag diagnosis, then please be my guest. But also, if you don't feel like making the budget for it, no judgment. I'd rather you spend money on something that'll help you make more money in your business.

Katie [00:24:47]:
But that's just me. And now that I've revealed everything that is on my messy ADHD desk, I invite you to take a picture of your desk, of your workspace, wherever it is and whatever chaos is happening there, and email it to me at katie@katiemcmanis.com. We will be making a compilation of the most quintessentially ADHD workspaces that we find in these emails. And if you wish to be tagged in it, just include your socials and we will give you a shout out on the various social media channels. And just a reminder, that email again is Katie. Katie at Katie McManus. Katiemcmanus.com. And we have linked that email in the show notes.

Katie [00:25:41]:
I always want to say@gmail.com after I say at Katie McManus, I always type it in that way because I forget that I have my own domain. Anyway, way. Bye.