42: Being a superhero with your ADHD-entrepreneur-friendly systems (for a successful business)

Transcript for: "Being a superhero with your ADHD entrepreneur-friendly systems"
In this episode, we're going to talk about setting up ADHD-friendly systems so you don't
burn down your business or at least don't make it harder for your clients to work with
you.
Most people when they start a business, they do so because they want to break free of
that 40-hour work week. They want to get away from the corporate overlord that own
your life and your time that demand you be someone that you're not to get a paycheck
at the end of the week.
Most ADHD entrepreneurs start their business because they're tired of that. They want
to be able to run their business unmasked.
They want to be able to run their business and have time flexibility so that they can work
when they have all the dopamine levels in line and so that they can rest when the
dopamine levels are low.
They're tired of having people shame them for not being the quote-unquote “perfect
neurotypical”, for not doing work exactly like their manager wants them to do. And they
want to be able to change and flex and grow as they build this business.
And also, you probably want to make more money in less time with fewer distractions.
Now, what I'm about to describe, these systems are going to be really difficult for you to
see for yourself in your business. I'm going to make it sound super simple, like here's
what you do and here's how you do it. And also, you're going to look at your business
and be like, OK, it's great that she's describing that, but how the fuck do I do that? I don't
see how that can be set up in my business. I don't see how my offer or how I work with
clients or what I sell can be plugged into a system like that. And I want you to know that
that's totally normal. You are way too close to your business to be able to see this
simply.
This is one of the things that my clients really struggle with before they start working
with me. That saying, you can't see the forest for the trees because it is so true because
you're in the forest. It's really hard to see the high level of how big this is and how it
works from that 1,000-foot perspective because you're in it.
When you choose to work with a business strategist or a coach, that's what we do. We
hover above your forest and we see what needs to be done, what needs to be taken
care of.
And we start showing you different ways that you can start looking at your business
from that perspective without getting mired in the weeds. So I want you to take a deep
breath. We're going to be talking through some really simple systems that you can be
using in your business. And I don't want you to shame yourself or feel overwhelmed
when you don't see how it can be simply put into place for you.
So deep breath. And if, while I'm talking about this, you start getting overwhelmed, you
start feeling stressed out, you start feeling like, oh my god, I don't know how to do this,
at the end of this episode, I'm going to invite you to book a call with me.
Because if you do not set up your business to have standard operating procedures that
are designed to make your ADHD life easier as well as your ADHD clients' lives easier,
this business is not going to be your key to freedom. It is going to be the key to yourself.
And you're going to want to escape from it sooner rather than later. And I don't want that
for you. I want this business to be the key to freedom and the exact life that you want to
live with all the money that you possibly want to make. But you're not going to be able to
get there if you do not have these kinds of systems in place.
If you're an ADHD business owner and you accept clients and you accept money, you're
going to have to set up your business to be ADHD-friendly for your clients. The reason
being is that because you have ADHD, I guarantee you, you naturally attract clients who
also have ADHD.
The reason for this is that we naturally are drawn to each other. We have the same funny
jokes. We speak the same language. We understand that sensation of kind of drifting
off and bouncing from topic to topic. If you've ever been in a circle of people at a party
who are chatting and there are three or more ADHD people in that circle who are
jumping from topic to topic to topic to topic that don't seem connected, pay attention to
who is following along with the conversation.
It's not the neurotypicals. They have no idea where this conversation has gone. It has
gone off the rails and they start drifting away. They start going to the bathroom or
grabbing a new drink. It's the ADHD people who lean in closer, who hang out for the rest
of the party because they have found their tribe. Now, this happens socially and this
happens in our businesses.
I bet if you go through your client list, you're going to notice, oh, yeah, that person
definitely has ADHD and that person probably has ADHD and that person's told me that
they have ADHD. This is what I went through in my business. I didn't used to focus only
on ADHD clients, but there came a point when I realized that all of my clients had ADHD,
whether they were diagnosed or not.
And it got to the point where the clients who didn't have ADHD started noticing my
content about ADHD and started questioning, hey, I think I have ADHD too.
And they started going to their doctors and surprise, surprise, they got a diagnosis. We
naturally attract each other. So what I'm about to tell you is going to make your life so
much better and your client’s experience of your business that much better.
You have to design all the systems in your business to be optimized for ADHD. You have
to make sure that your payment systems are ADHD-friendly. Now, this will help you
because you won't have to chase people down. And this will help your clients because
they won't feel like an asshole because they forgot to pay an invoice that you sent over.
This is going to make sure that people actually show up to your events, your pop-up
trainings, your webinars, because you're doing all of the reminder work for them. You're
not putting any extra intellectual work or emotional work on their plate. You're just
allowing for them to show up. And this will make sure that clients who sign up with you
actually schedule with you and don't go drifting off into the ocean of their own lives. And
then remember at some point, like, oh, wasn't there something I was supposed to do?
Because we've all been there. My favourite chiropractor in the world that I have been
meaning to schedule a follow-up appointment with since January of 2021. As I'm
recording this, this is July of 2023, two and a half years later, right before Christmas in
2020, he told me, just reach out to me in the new year and we'll schedule your next
appointment. I'm so sorry, Dr Mike, I completely forgot. And it's been haunting me ever
since.
And now I'm at the point where I'm kind of embarrassed that it's taken me so long to
schedule this next appointment, even though I'm sure he does not remember.
Now, before we get into this, I want to talk about the dangers of not doing this. And I
have a very recent experience of being a client of a business that was not set up for
ADHD people. And I feel like a massive asshole about it. I recently did this experiment in
my business.
I had it in the back of my mind, this idea that I might be able, in addition to doing
business strategy and coaching for my clients to make their lives a little easier by also
taking on the responsibility of doing some social media content creation. Now, in my
mind, I knew that I would not be the person to do this. So I decided that I was going to
trial a couple of different ways to outsource social media content creation to other
people. And I decided before I sold this to any clients that I would trial it in my own
business.
And so I reached out to a virtual assistant company and hired a couple of virtual
assistants to try this idea out. Now, long story short, bad idea, the worst idea. You know
how I always talk about can-do-itis and how it is the death toll of your business? This
was me falling prey to some can-do-itis myself.
And I own that because I want you to know that it is so normal to like see different
opportunities for what you can do in your business and be like, yeah, I can do that. And
yeah, I can do that. And yeah, I can do that. And no, do not do that.
The kiss mentality, Keep It Stupid Simple, is always going to be your best friend when it
comes to running and growing your business.
So don't do what I did. Do as I say, not as I do. But anyway, this experiment of me trying
to create a little social media agency within my own business went terribly wrong. The
VAs that I hired to trial this idea, we completed about a month and a half in. When I
emailed the owner of the company to cancel, I got a confirmation email back with a
bunch of different attachments on it.
And being me, I looked at the first attachment that I saw, and it was a receipt for my
previous payment of invoice. And I was like, oh, cool, these are just receipts for my
records. And I moved on. A couple of weeks later, as I was driving from Cape Cod to
New York City and stopping for gas, I opened up my email and I saw a reminder saying
that there had been an invoice attached to that first email that I had not paid.
And of course, my thing is that you attract the types of clients that you are. So when I
get an invoice, I am always so conscientious about paying it as soon as possible
because I want to attract clients who pay their invoices as soon as possible. Now, of
course, I'm on the side of the highway. I'm filling up gas. I think I also had to pee in that
moment. So it's like really like, OK, cool, I'll finish filling gas. I'm going to go park
somewhere. I'm going to do this thing. And then at some point, I'm going to come back
to this email. I'm going to pay it.
And we all know what happened. I went into the rest station. I went to the bathroom. I
came out through the convenience store. I was like, oh, I want a water.
Oh, and I think I want some pumpkin seeds, too. Awesome. Oh, they have chocolate.
Awesome. What kind of chocolate? Get back in the car. Completely have forgotten
about that email even exists.
Got to New York and then had like a whole week of adventures and was very neglectful
of going back to my email that week. Totally on me. Totally, 100% on me.
Now, I got another email yesterday reminding me again that there was an invoice that I
hadn't paid because this service provider was outside of the US. And for some reason,
my bank is it's pretty much impossible for me to do bank transfers the way that they had
requested that I pay them, which is mistake number one as a business owner. If you are
hiring people, you need to make sure that the way they bill you is going to be ADHDfriendly.
If they do not have an ADHD-friendly way for you to pay your bills, do not hire that
contractor. It is never going to work out well for you. It is going to be stress-inducing. It
is going to cause more problems for you. It is not going to be great for the relationship.
Make sure that the way they take payment from you is friendly to how your ADHD
manifests.
For me, this is auto payment. The only way I can be in business with people is if things
are set up to auto payment, because then I don't have the opportunity to forget. So my
number one mistake here was I let go of that rule. And this contractor had said, OK,
cool, if there's no bank transfer, then you're just going to PayPal me the payments when I
invoice you. I don't know about you guys, but I can never remember my password. I can
never remember my PayPal password. And I don't know if that makes it super, super
secure because even I can't get into it. But what this does is it creates a whole barrier of
activities before I can even get to the point of paying someone. So after seeing this
email freaked out, realised, oh, my God, I'm becoming that worst person that I hate
attracting in my own business because they don't pay.
Went to PayPal, realized I was locked out after trying too many passwords in a row that
were wrong. Walked away, got myself a cup of coffee, came back, and the power went
out in my house.
And a whole other sequence of events happened that just made life kind of miserable in
the moment. Starred the email on my phone, and said, I'm going to come back to this.
And of course, we know what happened.
The rest of the power came back on, had to take care of a whole bunch of stuff and then
went to sleep. And as I was falling asleep last night, had this moment of like, oh, fuck,
you forgot something. What was it? And sure enough, this morning woke up to a
righteously angry email from the service provider saying, hey, this is not cool. I'm having
to chase you down. This is the fourth email, which I totally owned, that was completely
on me. There are no excuses for paying someone late. Sent an apology, fixed the
password issue with my PayPal. Did not let myself get distracted before I dove in and
took care of this. And all of this is my fault. I should not have gone with a service
provider that manages payments like this. I know how this is going to go.
Now, you as an ADHD business owner, you have two responsibilities here.
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, you as an ADHD business owner, you have two responsibilities here, like I do. One
is when you're hiring freelancers, contractors and different businesses to service your
business, your responsibility is to only pick those companies that have payments set
up in a way that works for your ADHD. Because what we don't want to happen is you
get sent into the I'm an asshole spiral.
Because for humans with empathy, and it doesn't feel good when you've been the bad
person in a situation, and actually it can completely sideswipe you for a whole day. If not
longer, depending on how big the thing was.
Thankfully, this is just a couple hundred dollars. And of course, like, I don't know if that
couple hundred dollars was a big deal. I don't know if that couple hundred dollars was a
big deal to this person or not. That's not for me to decide. But imagine if you needed to
pay a bill that was for four thousand dollars. You can make up a whole story that that
was going to make it a break it for their business. And it could absolutely. So we don't
want to put ourselves in the position of ever being the bad guy, which is easy to do when
you forget stuff like this.
We also have the responsibility of making sure that we don't give our clients the
opportunity to be the bad guy. We want to set up things like auto bill in our own
businesses. We want to make it so easy for our clients to give us their money for our
services. We want to make it memory proof or forgetting proof or distraction.
“:Oh, my God, a squirrel, shiny object that is at a tree. I love cake” proof because we
know what happens. We also don't want to put ourselves in the position where we
haven't been paid in a while. So in your business, you need to set up auto pay. A couple
of different ways you can do this are Dubsado. It's a program where you can also send
all of your contracts. I've just recently switched my business to Dubsado from Acuity.
This is great if you are growing your business from that, like, one hundred thousand
dollars a year to five hundred thousand dollars a year mark.
Like in that realm, you want to consolidate those two actions and make it really
seamless. I would not recommend Dubsado to absolute beginners. I personally don't
even know how to use Dubsado. I'm at the point in my business where I don't have to.
I've hired other people to know how to use it for me and to fix it when I need it to do
something different than what it's set up for.
If you're an absolute beginner, I want you to look at solutions like Acuity Scheduling. It
links up with Square and PayPal and Stripe and is really, really stupid, simple to use. And
if you want to hear more about this, go check out Episode 29, How to Stop Being a
Weenie in Your Business Systems.
The next area that you want to make sure is ADHD-friendly in your business and in
businesses that you are working with is how you handle events. Now, events could be
like a group training class that you do once a month. It could also be webinars. It could
also be in-person retreats. It sounds crazy and super annoying that when I have an
event and all my events are virtual up until now in my business, you know, I will be
letting you know when we have in-person stuff coming.
But whenever I have a webinar or a pop-up training or even an extra bonus call for my
group clients, they get three to four different emails just reminding them in the 24 hours
leading up to that event. This sounds insane. It sounds super obnoxious to be sending
this many reminders. But let me tell you, I can't tell you how many times I've signed up
for a webinar or a pop-up training or there's been a call with one of the service providers
that I work with that I knew would be super valuable to me.
And I miss it because there was one email reminding me an hour before it started. And
by the time it had started an hour later, guess where I was? I don't know, probably
cooking something, maybe starting a new hobby. Maybe I picked up the phone and
called a friend and was having a nice little catch-up because I couldn't remember what it
was that I was kind of keeping my time open for.
Now, in my business, if you sign up for an event, you're going to get four different emails
from me typically. You're going to get one that's 24 hours ahead of time. You're going to
get one that's 12 hours ahead of time. You're going to get one that's an hour before the
call. And you're also going to get the remember to go pee and get a glass of water email
that I always send out about 10 minutes before the time we start.
I do this for my clients because I need this personally if I'm going to show up to stuff.
And I can't tell you how effective it is. I will regularly have people in pop-up trainings and
webinars that I host who will say their first words when they show up are, oh, my God, I
forgot that I signed up for this. I'm so happy that I got that email 10 minutes ago that
reminded me that I signed up for this because I really need to learn this right now,
whatever the topic is.
Now, this is especially important if you are charging for events because nothing feels
worse than when you pay your money to go to an event and then you get distracted by
whatever happens in your life and you forget to attend. It feels like wasted money. And
the last thing you want your service or your business associated with is this feeling of,
oh, my God, I wasted money there. It doesn't matter if it was their own poor time
management or service on your end. That vibe, that flavour will stick with their
association of your business.
So remember to remind your clients and your people to show up to your events. They
will thank you for it. And anyone who gets annoyed at a bunch of different reminders
that they signed up for something that they wanted to go to, they were never going to be
your clients anyway. They do not belong with you. You can say goodbye. And when they
unsubscribe from your list, you're going to say sayonara.
Lastly, another area of your business that you want to make sure is ADHD-proof is
scheduling. Now, when someone signs up for one of my group programs, what they get
is an ad event calendar, a link that basically they can click on and automatically add
every single event that we're going to have for the program that they signed up for
added to their calendar. It is already there.
I will also send out reminder emails, not as many as when I do it like a webinar, because
these people know that they signed up for the thing.
They're paying for the thing. And it's a regular call that they have on their calendar
already. They should already be tuned into when it's happening.
But I will send some reminder emails an hour or 10 minutes before we hop on the call
just to grab their attention. And when a client signs on with me to work one on one, they
get a link to book on my calendar, because these one on one sessions are at a time that
they get to choose. And I tell them, hey, listen, we're going to be working together for a
year.
Go ahead and schedule a year out, schedule as many appointments as you want, as far
into the future as you need. If you need to move them as we get closer to that date,
you're welcome to do so. When we don't get proactive about people scheduling with us,
what happens is out of sight, out of mind. Because we are not actively taking up space
on their calendar, they don't see us. They don't feel the impact of our work together. And
after a while, they're going to think, oh, yeah, that's right. I signed up for that thing. I
haven't talked to them in a while. I haven't gone to the thing in a while.
Oh, nuts. And the next step could be they feel bad that they're wasting the money
because they're not attending or they're not using the service. And you don't want this
because you don't want someone feeling like associating bad feelings or wasting
money again with your service or your business. What's worse is if you're not taking up
time and space on their calendar and they get a few months in, they realize they haven't
been doing the thing that they're like, oh, well, I obviously don't need this because I
haven't been using it.
You know the impact you can have on your clients when they are tuned into the work,
when they meet with you regularly, when they learn the things that they need to learn
from you. It is your job to make sure that them getting what they want from you is easy
for them.
Likewise, when you sign up to work with someone or you hire a freelancer, you want to
make sure that the process to schedule is ADHD-friendly for you because the last thing
you want is to waste your money on something that you're not going to use or to
become that client who hasn't gotten what you need out of their service provider. And
above all, I want you to know that mistakes happen. You're human.
There's no perfect way of being 100 percent of the time. Like me, you're going to screw
up and you're going to hire the wrong people who have the wrong systems for how your
brain works. You can feel like an idiot about it if you want, or you can take those
instances as a reminder of, oh, yeah, that's why this is so important for me to do in the
future. It's your choice.
I personally vote that you take it as a lesson and not as evidence that you're a moron
because I don't think you're a moron. I think you're great. And it is also your job to make
sure that your systems in your business are friendly to people whose brains work just
like yours because you know you're attracting them. You know that they're already
walking through your door and they're already wanting to be in business with you. It is
your job to make it as easy as possible for them to get the full value of working with
you.
And if you don't set up these systems to be ADHD-friendly and things go wrong, like
people don't pay their invoices or don't schedule their appointments and then get
grumpy about it, know that that's your responsibility. But the beautiful thing about things
being your fault is that you can also be the person to fix it.
That said, there are going to be moments in your business where you're going to have to
come up with a workaround because maybe the system isn't set up yet.
And you have a client who's willing to buy the thing that the system would be supporting
or because something broke in your normal system. And that happens. But what we
don't want to have happen is that those workarounds become standard operating
procedure. Because the goal of your business is to grow and serve more people and
make more money and make your life easier, not harder. And when you grow a business
and take on more clients and make more money with systems that are all designed
around workarounds, guess what happens to your life? It doesn't get easier. It gets far
harder. And that's when we burn out and that's when we decide this is too much. I quit.
I'm going to go back to corporate. And we all know how well people with ADHD do in
corporate environments.
Now, hopefully, some of you have been listening to this and think, oh, awesome. That
makes my business so much more clear. I know exactly how I'm going to do this. Thank
you, Katie. This has been life-changing. And to you, I hope you have an amazing day and
the rest of your lives. And I hope your businesses are massively successful. And please
email me because I want to be able to celebrate with you.
For those of you, however, who have been listening to this episode and been thinking,
oh, I don't know how to do this. And are realizing that your business is designed around
some workarounds that do not help you and do not help your clients. And you have no
idea where to even start to fix it. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go into the
show notes and I want you to click on that link that says weeniecast.com/strategycall.
And I want you to book a generate income strategy call with me on this call. We are
going to get real about what your goals are. What's the dream of this business? Where
do you want to take it? We're going to look at every little obstacle that is getting in the
way of you getting there. If it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about different
options to work together. And if it's not a fit for us to work together, then I'll put you in
the direction of some resources that are going to be massively helpful to you in your
business.
I want to also acknowledge that taking this step to talk to a business strategist and
money mindset coach can be really scary. You probably have this thought of, oh, my
God, well, I should be able to figure this out on my own. I'm smart and I'm capable. And I
know you are. You've made it this far in starting a business. You're a fucking badass.
And also, if you wanted to learn a foreign language, could you do that on your own?
Probably it would take a really long time. You're probably going to get it wrong along the
way, though. If you want to learn advanced chemistry, again, you could probably learn on
your own with books and through YouTube University. But you're probably going to be
better served by going and talking to some experts who can show you what you don't
know that you don't know. Also, especially with advanced chemistry, it's probably safer,
right? Because you're dealing with chemicals and sometimes chemicals react badly to
each other. And we don't want that because you probably have a nice face and we want
your face to stay unharmed.
Point being, you can figure this out yourself, but I think you're going to be better served
in the long run by getting some expert guidance who will help you get to that point of
success faster with fewer white hairs. And we'll see what we can do about making it
easier for you to run and help you make some more money doing this.
© 2022 - 2023 Katie McManus – Weeniecast