32: How you can figure out whether you have a business or an ADHD hyperfixation

 

Do you have a business, or a hyperfixation? (Transcript)

 

00:00:00
In this episode, we're going to talk about how you can figure out whether you have a business or just a hyper fixation. So oftentimes people with ADHD will start a business and they freak out halfway through because they realize that this business is not actually a sustainable thing for them to do.

00:00:26
This business actually started off as a hobby, which was really an ADHD speak, a hyper fixation. Now, if you are not familiar with hyper fixations, I want to explain that to you. Hyperfixation is for instance, when I took up screen printing, there was a brief period of time I had a friend, Brooke Bundgard, who was absolutely incredible. She ran a screen printing business out of her bedroom, and I think she made a couple, like multiple six figures from it and she was waitressing on the side. Anyway, she ran the screen printing business, and as we became friends, she showed me how to screen print.

00:01:02
So there was one night where we had dinner and then we had some wine, and then we started screen printing some T shirts, and I still have them somewhere. Anyway, this started a hyper fixation for me, and I was living in a very small apartment at the time with a roommate, so I couldn't necessarily set up a whole screen printing workshop in my space. So I signed up for classes and I went to classes every single week. I actually hired a graphic designer to come up with some designs, and they were really cute. They had to do with my other hyper fixation that was knitting, because I was going to make all these bags for knitting projects.

00:01:39
It was a great idea. And as I'm taking the classes, I'm learning how to do it. I'm learning, like, here's how you use this equipment, here's how you actually make the screens, which is really interesting if you guys have ever done screen printing. How they do it is they basically develop it like film. And I don't understand anything beyond that because the teacher just walked me step by step through.

00:02:00
But it was fascinating. And then, of course, there was one night where I just went ahead and ordered all the equipment that I would need to run a screen printing business out of my very small apartment, which I did not have space for. So I never actually set it up. So I had, I want to say, like $500 worth of equipment just sitting around in my closet, taking up space that I did not have because I was convinced that I was going to be a screen printer like Brooke and start my own business. And it was going to be fabulous.

00:02:29
That didn't happen. I think that's safe. You guys know this. I'm not a screen printer. I don't sell merch at all.

00:02:36
Actually, we should sell merch. We should absolutely develop some stop being a weenie cast merch who would wear t shirts with hot dogs on them. If you have any suggestions for different graphic designs and I'm not that great graphically, then please pop those into our website suggestion box at the bottom. Just go and leave us a voicemail, please. Thank you.

00:02:57
But that hyper fixation didn't last. I was obsessed with it for about three months, never went anywhere with it, and it took me a few years to even get rid of all the stuff. By the time I got to the point where I was ready to get rid of it, I was so impatient with it that I just gave it away. I didn't sell it just like, here you go, it's free. Have at it.

00:03:15
Enjoy. So this is the fear that a lot of ADHD folks have when they think about starting a business. And it's usually because they've started some kind of small side hustle in the past and it's worked out this way. The big hesitation here is, well, if I'm not sure that I'm going to be interested in this forever, then why would I start a business on it? That seems like a huge risk to start a business on this right now if I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it.

00:03:42
Back to the topic about hyper fixation starting a business. Okay, so I have an opinion on this.

00:03:50
Start the fu*king business. Start it. What are you waiting for? Yes, this might be a hyper fixation. You may do this for three months and get bored, but guess what's going to happen in those three months if you start now?

00:04:07
You're going to learn all the do's and don'ts of starting a business. You're going to gain experience that you're not going to be able to get without starting and trying. Through learning how to do this business, you're going to be able to start other businesses with other hyper fixations. You're also going to learn how to start businesses that aren't hyper fixations. Whenever my clients come to me and they're stressed out about picking the right niche because they don't want to announce one thing and then be wrong and then change it and then be wrong and then change it again, I have to remind them that I picked numerous wrong niches when I started my coaching business.

00:04:42
If you guys don't remember, I started off as a dating coach for men, and I got one dude and like eight women. The guys did not want me to coach them on dating. Women did. And then only one of my female clients actually wanted to stick with the topic of dating. Everyone else actually needed to talk about work because how they were showing up at work directly got in the way of how they could even have a personal life because they have shi*ty boundaries.

00:05:07
They weren't communicating well enough. They weren't managing up. They weren't managing down all the stuff. So then I became a leadership coach, and I announced that to the whole world. So dating coach for men, dating coach for women, leadership coach for everyone.

00:05:19
And then all my friends that I'd gone to coaching school with were like, wait a minute, how did you do that? And I was like, what? How did I do what? How did you get clients and how are you how are you making that much money and how are you marketing and how do you do this and how do you do that? I don't understand.

00:05:36
And I had completely taken for granted that I had this whole background in sales and marketing, and so I started showing them, and they started going out and getting clients and being successful. And I started noticing that I actually liked those conversations better than the leadership conversations and definitely way more than the dating conversations. I got so bored with those after a while. Thank God only one of them wanted to stick with that topic. Oh my God.

00:06:01
So then they started insisting on paying me, and I realized that this could be a part of my business. And then it was a pretty even split with leadership and business development, and then the pandemic hit the pandemic that changed so many businesses. And I lost the majority of my leadership clients. Like, let's just be real. A lot of them, their companies were paying for it.

00:06:23
Obviously. They were cutting budget left, right and center because everyone was freaking out. And then a bunch of clients who were paying out of their own pocket, they flipped out because they were worried about potentially getting laid off and they wanted to hoard their pennies. And I don't blame them at all. So I had a deep, dark moment where I lost almost half of my business, but then everyone wanted to start a business and it worked out.

00:06:44
And now that is all I do. I actually don't accept leadership clients anymore. I used to do it only on referrals, and now I just don't have the bandwidth for it or the interest. Not that I don't love you, those of you who have been my leadership clients, but I feel like what I do now is I teach alchemy. It's like magic.

00:07:00
I teach people how to turn their words into bold, and that's pretty cool. But once you name this is kind of what can happen with hyper fixation. It can evolve as you discover more about yourself, as you learn more about what you like, what you're passionate about, the conversations that you enjoy having every single day. Your business can evolve with you. But there are some things to do on the front end.

00:07:26
If you want to avoid it being a huge waste of money, if you're concerned that you might not stick with it. And we're going to go into that now.

00:07:37
First I want to go into when you're starting this business if you're not sure it's the thing that you want to be with for the long haul, you want to think of the ways you can do this with the smallest investment possible. Okay? So, for instance, even when my clients start with me, when they go to sign up for subscriptions like Acuity or Dubsado or Kajabi, their instinct can be that they want to pay for the year in full because you get a lower price overall. However, if you get three months in and you realize, this is not the platform for me, I don't want this anymore, you have literally just thrown money out the window. If this turns out to be a hyper fixation and you don't want to have a business on this, guess what?

00:08:23
You have just spent a lot of money on something that you're never going to use again. So small investments, pay monthly. Pay monthly until you're sure this is the tool that you want to use and that this is the business and this is the thing that you want to do. The smaller the investment up front, the less weight you're going to feel on your shoulders to make this work and to stay passionate about it. You also want to do a lot of market research on the front end because you can have a passion.

00:08:53
You can have a hyper fixation. Like in high school, I was hyper fixated on the French Revolution. I know dark gory beheadings all the things, not something you can start a business on. But imagine if I was just like, I'm going to find a way to make the French Revolution into a business that's really dangerous. Like, maybe I wanted to make period costumes from that time period, or maybe I wanted to make Halloween decorations based on the French Revolution.

00:09:24
There are so many ways I could do this. Maybe I wanted to start a crepe stand and chop everything in half with a guillotine. Who knows? I enjoy a good crepe, and it doesn't taste any different if it's chopped in half. However, is there a market for it?

00:09:39
Is there a market for it? Probably not. Another hyper fixation that I've had throughout my life is knitting. If you've ever asked a loved one to knit something for you and offered to pay them for it, it is not worth it, okay? Because even to knit a hat so the yarn, like, if you're getting nice yarn for a hat, that's at least $20.

00:09:58
And then to knit a hat, depending on how fast the knitter is and how complicated the pattern is, that could be anywhere from four to 20 hours to knit a single fu*king hat. How much does this person charge per hour? I mean, when I was asked to knit stuff for people, I fortunately worked at the gym, and it was a lot of personal trainers asking me. So I bartered for free personal training. I bartered for thousands upon thousands of dollars of free personal training for doing things like baby blankets and hats.

00:10:29
However, you cannot eat personal training. You also can't pay rent with personal training. I then also became a knitting teacher. Let me tell you some jobs that do not pay well teaching knitting. There's not a whole lot of demand for it.

00:10:47
And also there are very finite hours. Like, people aren't going to take 2 hours out of their day to go to a knitting class. They're not. It has to happen early in the morning or has to happen late at night. There's no way to make it into a full time gig.

00:11:01
I could have opened a yarn shop, but no thank you. That would have been a big investment. So you have to do some market research. You have to figure out, is there a need out there? If there is a need, how can I do this in a way that is a small investment for me, but also starts generating some income and allows for me to see if this is a viable business?

00:11:25
I got this question on TikTok. Someone mentioned that their friend started a retail store and they were really excited about all the merchandise that they were bringing in. They were excited about the aesthetic that they were selling and all this stuff. And then they got over it. And that's a huge investment.

00:11:42
Doing a brick and mortar shop is a massive investment. You're signing leases, you're paying for utilities, you're buying a crap ton of inventory. They also mentioned that they bought a website. Now, I would argue if you want to start a retail store, start an Etsy shop. You advertise on Pinterest and Instagram and stick with that for like a year and see if you're still interested after a year.

00:12:08
You also want to think through how will this business change if it does go to brick and mortar? Because remember, brick and mortar, unless you want to be there every single damn day, even when you're sick, even when you're tired, even when things are going on in your life because you have to have consistent hours. Do you want to manage people? Do you want to constantly have to rearrange stuff so it looks nice? Do you want to deal with customers coming in?

00:12:34
Do you want to deal with potential shoplifters? There's a whole set of different problems that come with owning a brick and mortar shop versus an online store. You want to think through all the steps here. That's not to say that you can't still do it and kind of check out. The next step that I want you to think about is what am I going to say next?

00:12:55
Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

00:13:05
You want to think through all the steps here. That's not to say that you can't still do it and kind of check out. The next step that I want you to think about is what are the systems that you could put in place for this business so that if you get it started and if you get it to a point where it's fairly successful, can you hand it off to someone? Could this business actually make you money by selling it? There are a lot of online businesses for sale right now that generate anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 that people started, and they're just not interested in continuing with.

00:13:39
You could absolutely do that. You could either list it yourself or you could get an agent. But to be able to do that, you have to think about what are the systems that you can put in place that would be easy to hand off? What are the systems that you could put in place that will allow for you to not have to pay attention every single day? So the name of the game with stuff like this is automate.

00:14:03
Automate. As much as you possibly can. I say this, and I am instantly filled with regret that I didn't do this when I started my business here's. The danger of of starting a coaching business is that you're not just selling coaching. You're selling the relationship with you.

00:14:19
You're selling your expertise. So I couldn't really sell the Katie McManus brand because it's my brand. I couldn't really sell what I do because it's what I do. However, if I had done that screen printing business and stuck with it and kind of set it up so that I had other people managing it and it was all automated yeah. I absolutely could have walked away.

00:14:42
I absolutely could have put a manager in place. Told them you're responsible for this, this and this. And we're going to have biweekly meetings where we're going to have status updates and any major decisions that I need to make will address at those points. But otherwise I don't want to hear about it. Don't talk to me.

00:14:58
Actually, now that I think of it, maybe I should go back and start a screen printing business. I still have the graphic. There's one graphic. I thought, this is so clever. There's one graphic, and it's a Chinese food, little like paper curtain.

00:15:12
Like the classic one that you usually eat noodles out of or fried rice and filling out of. It is yarn. And instead of chopsticks, there's knitting needles. It's so cute.

00:15:27
Maybe we should put that in the show notes.

00:15:31
When you're starting a business, regardless if you have ADHD. Okay, I want everyone to pay attention to this bit. Regardless, you want to think about the evolvability of this business? And yes, I think I did just make that word up for that term. But if you want to fact check it, go ahead.

00:15:48
The evolvability of this business. So, for instance, say you're starting a coaching business. There are so many ways you could evolve a coaching business. You could evolve it into a training business. You could evolve it into doing corporate engagements.

00:16:02
You could evolve it into a speaking career. You could evolve it into creating digital products, retreats fruit programs, you name it. You could evolve it into a book series. There are so many ways you can take it. So if you get bored of the model that you've created, you have different pathways you could go.

00:16:21
Now, this is something that I really spent some time on when I started my business, because I wanted to make sure that if I got bored of doing this one thing every single day, that I'd have options to mix it up. Now, for instance, Neil, when we were starting this conversation, shared that his wife started a waffle company. Now, there are so many ways to evolve something like that. So she could have continued making waffles. She also could have prepackaged ingredients for this.

00:16:49
She also could have branded different waffle irons. She could have made different aprons and turned it into a merch store. You can get so creative depending on what business you've started with different ways that you can evolve it. But I want you to check in with yourself. Are those different ways you could evolve?

00:17:05
It interesting to you because if it's not interesting to you, it's dead in the water. As folks with ADHD, we know that if we're not interested in something, we're not going to stick with it. The reason a lot of us didn't do our math homework, because we weren't interested in it.

00:17:22
For me, I started hyper fixating on being a virtual assistant and my own boss and did so much research, I decided to force myself to wait six months. If after six months I still wanted it as heavily as I did before I knew it was here to stay. Here I am a year from that point, a full time VA. Yes. Kira there's a stage in starting a business that we don't often talk about, that all of my clients go through.

00:17:46
And it's that staying that point where you're pretty sure you want to do this. You've done a lot of pre work, and you stop. You stop, you don't act. And it's that breath before you jump. It's like that moment where you just kind of, like, have to get yourself settled.

00:18:03
Like, is this the thing I want to do? Do I really want to jump into this? And then you jump or you don't. Okay. I love that you brought this up.

00:18:12
There's this concept that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in the book Big Magic, that ideas will come to you and you can either enter into a contract with them or they will move on to the next person. She talks about this in relation to writing a book. She had this incredible idea for writing a book. It was about this woman who was an assistant for this guy, and she's kind of in love with him. And they had business ventures down in Brazil, and things were going wrong, and his son was running it.

00:18:42
And so he sent her down to Brazil. And because she's in love with them, she went down and realized there was a whole lot of stuff going on that wasn't great, and it was actually costing the company a massive amount of money. I think it was also kind of a murder mystery, romance, whatever. So Elizabeth Gilbert got this idea. She started working on it, and then some personal stuff happened.

00:19:01
She had to drop it. She had to put it in storage, not work on it for a couple of years. When she was able to pick it back up, it had no juice. The juice was gone. The idea that spark for this book, she was looking at all of her notes, and it just felt dead in the water to her.

00:19:16
Fast forward to her meeting Anne Patchett, who she'd never spoken to before. I don't think they had a lot of friends in common, and she really hadn't shared about this book. And she and Anne Patchett met at a speaking event, and they went out for coffee afterwards, and they're talking about the different projects that they're working on. And Anne Patchett asked Elizabeth, what book are you working on right now? And she's like, oh, because there wasn't a lot of juice in it.

00:19:40
She was like, you know, you go first. And Anne Patchett started describing her book. It's about a woman who is an assistant to this man who she's in love with, and they have business ventures down in Brazil, I kid you not, and the sun isn't running it. And so she gets sent down because she's in love with her boss. She does it, and they go down, and, like, all this stuff is going wrong.

00:20:01
That idea tried to enter into a contract with Liz Gilbert. She dropped the contract. That idea did not stick around. That idea went to Anne Patchett. They were writing the same book.

00:20:14
So Kira, starting a business isn't as niche as that. Like, a VA business is a VA business is a VA business, and they may vary in your specialty. They may vary in your industry. But if that idea, if that spark is going to stay with you, it's going to stay with you. But if it's not, it's going to move on.

00:20:30
So when you stay, when you stop and you take six months and you just breathe through it and you see, okay, well, do I still have this desire to do this? If it stays, then that's a yes. And it sounds like it was a yes for you, and that's incredible. I'm so happy for you. And also, sometimes it's not a yes.

00:20:50
Sometimes that desire passes and you realize you want something different, or you realize you just don't want to do that and you're not sure. And that's okay too. So should you start a business in something that you're super interested in that might be a hyper fixation? So, you know my opinion here, it's a yes. It's a f yes.

00:21:08
Regardless of whether or not it's a hyper fixation. We've talked through all the what ifs. If it's a hyper fixation, you get bored of it. But we haven't really talked through the best case scenario here. It's not a hyper fixation.

00:21:23
What if this is your life's calling? What if this is the thing that you were meant to do? This is the thing that you were put on this earth to do, and it is your passion. It is something that you will spend your entire life doing and never get bored of it. You holding off on starting a business on this thing could be delaying you doing that.

00:21:46
Let me tell you, I wanted to be a coach from when I had my very first coach when I was, like, 22 years old. I kept telling myself, you're too young. No one's going to listen to you. You're too young. What do you know?

00:21:56
You're too young. I have found all these different ways to discredit myself. It took me getting into a very serious car accident when I was 29 to actually light a fire under my ass, to go to coaching school, to get certified, and to just start my business. Now, what if I hadn't been in that car accident? What if I hadn't needed to be off work for eight months and I didn't have that time off?

00:22:19
I bet you I would still be in a very highly paid sales role, miserable, convincing myself that I'm not because I get to do fun things on the weekend and I get to buy nice clothes and things. I get to go out with my friends. But still, in the back of my mind, wanting to be a coach and still discrediting, like, who's going to listen to me? What have I done now for you holding off on starting this business because you're worried that it's just a hyper fixation and you're going to get bored of it. Do you want to spend the rest of your life doing the thing that you're doing right now?

00:22:55
Is it making you happy? Is this something that you feel is your calling? If no, then I say take the fu*king chance. Stop being a weenie and just jump, not literally, like, metaphorically jump into starting this business. Don't be safe, everyone, please.

00:23:13
Because you're never going to know unless you go and do it. And everyone has this fear that if you quit your job, you quit your career, you go and start a business that's a bridge that you burn down. You can never go back on bulls*it. Bulls*it. People go back to work all the time.

00:23:29
People start businesses, realize it's just not for them, and then go back to the industry they were in before, or they go back into something different and they are hireable. You can always go back. So go and start this business. Start it with a small investment. Do some market research.

00:23:43
Make sure that this is the thing that you could do for a little while, that you can actually make money at it. Set it up so that it can either be handed off to someone else or it can evolve in a way that you could see yourself staying interested in. But don't not start it because you're worried you're going to lose interest. Because there's an opportunity, there's a chance that you will not lose interest. I have found my life's calling.

00:24:08
I can't imagine doing anything besides what I do right now. And sure, it will evolve over time. I'm going to learn new things. I'm going to grow my business. I'm going to be helping people at different stages of their business as I grow my own, I'm sure my niche is going to evolve, but I can't imagine not helping people find freedom, flexibility and financial wellness in their lives.

00:24:32
That is what I was put on earth to do. But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't started if I hadn't started as a dating coach for men. Could you imagine all the guys who could be married and happy right now that just didn't get to work with me because I decided to move on to something else?

00:24:55
Sorry, guys. Now, if you are working full time and you're not crazy about your job and you sense that there's a business in you and there's something that you want to try, but you're not really sure, and you have to figure out how to get into the mindset to do this. We did an episode on this very early on. So I want you to go to Weeniecast.com Six and have a listen. Hopefully it'll help you figure out what you should do next.

00:25:21
We love Crowdsourcing, our podcast episodes. So if you have a question, if there's something that you're really, really struggling with that you need answers to, or you want to hear my perspective on, please send us the question you have. You can put it in the comments. You can DM us. You can even go to Winniecast.com.

00:25:38
Scroll all the way to the bottom and you can leave a voice message with what it is that you're struggling with. We've done one episode on that so far. So much fun. And just to underline that us a voicemail, we're just going to assume you're a Weenie and you don't want that.

 

 

 

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