38: Overcoming business breaking points: An ADHD Entrepreneur's Guide

Transcript for "Overcoming Breaking Points: An ADHD Entrepreneur's Guide"
00:00:00
In this episode, we're going to help you move past your business plateau.
00:00:13
One of the best moments about starting a business and running it and scaling it and growing it
and being able to help a ton of people is the point at which you start making between $150 to
$250,000 a year. That moment when you look at your revenue for the year and realize just how
much of a difference you're making in your client’s lives and in your own life is absolutely
magical. But let me tell you, there's a whole new set of problems that come up at that point,
okay? So usually my clients are super ambitious. They want to grow their business to multiple,
multiple six figures.
00:00:51
Hitting that point feels great. It’s also where they realize they need to look up from the
grindstone and look forward to see what the next big goal is.
00:01:05
There's usually a solid year after you've hit that 200,000 ish mark where your business will
naturally plateau. And if you've already hit this in your business and you're wondering, is it me?
Am I broken? Do I not know how to do this? Take a deep breath.
00:01:21
It's not you. It happens to so many business owners. All right? You're not broken. There's
nothing magically (bleep) up about you.
00:01:28
Welcome to the club. There are just really natural, typical breaking points that happen in service
based businesses, especially if you have ADHD at that 200 ish thousand dollars a year mark.
Okay? And today we're going to go into what those breaking points are so you can be aware of
them, you can identify them when they happen to you, and you can hopefully overcome them.
And also, if you're hearing this and you're thinking, oh, my God, that's happening for me, I have
no idea how I would even begin to tackle this.
00:01:59
I just want to let you know, I am designing a Group Mastermind for ADHD business owners who
are past six figures in their business but want to take it to that next level. This program is going
to be launching in July of 2023. So if you are curious, I ask you this small favour. Please go to
the link in the show notes and answer the two simple questions in the survey I have there. This
Mastermind is designed specifically for ADHD business owners who are already making about
$100,000 a year in their business and really want to ratchet that up to multiple six figures.
00:02:36
So what are the typical breaking points in an ADHD business that is scaling to multiple six
figures? Let's get into it, shall we?
00:02:48
So this first one is really uncomfortable for me to name because I am so guilty of this. I have a
real hard time handing things off in my business because I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. I'm a
lot of a control freak. I'm fairly good at a lot of things, so I'm pretty convinced that I can do it all.
And this belief that you can do it all and that you should do it all because you're the owner of the
business and you know better leads to a very dangerous disease that it can be the death toll for
your business, and it's called do it all-itis.
00:03:25
This is very similar to the other disease that I talk about often, which is can-do-itis. Can-do-itis is
usually what we say we can do for other people. Do it all-itis is what we say we can do for
ourselves. Now, the fact that you built your business to anywhere close to $100,000 to
$250,000, congratulations. You had to do a (bleep) ton of stuff all on your own to get here.
00:03:53
Okay. You've had to wear so many hats. You've had to shift gears. You've had to learn new skills
that you never had before to get to this point. Okay, well done.
00:04:05
I want you to give yourself full credit for getting yourself to this point. And also here's the point
where you have to let some of that stuff go. You cannot do it all yourself. Okay? What got you to
this point will not get you to the next point.
00:04:24
I just love the metaphor of weight loss just because it's a very similar journey to growing a
business. If you're really trying to lose weight, there will come a point where your diet that you
have given yourself and your exercise routine will stop working. You will naturally hit a plateau.
And when you do hit a plateau, it means that something has to change because what got you to
this point in your journey will not get you to the next goal in your journey. It's really, really
common for business owners, especially if you have ADHD at this point in your business, to
think, okay, cool.
00:05:01
I just have to work harder now. I have to work longer hours. I have to do more of what I'm
already doing. I'm guilty of this myself.
00:05:14
I will get into fits, where I'm like, okay, cool. I have conquered LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where I get a
lot of my business, right? And I start looking to the other social media platforms. I'm like, okay,
cool.
00:05:27
I'm going to add them all into my social media strategy. I'm just going to do them all, and I'm
going to do them all on my own because I figured out LinkedIn. I can figure out these guys too.
That is the wrong way to approach it. Okay?
00:05:39
So I'm telling you about this. I'm not perfect at it. Okay. If you go and follow me on TikTok, which
if you would like to it's Katie.K-D-H-D spelled out. We will put that in the show notes if you want
to go check me out and follow me.
00:05:53
Squirrel hot girl. Summer is cancelled. This is the summer of the hot dog suit, and I need your
help. Oh, and hi, I help adhd business owners make more money in less time with fewer
distractions. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and massive
weenie.
00:06:09
And I'm here to tell you to stop being a weenie in your business. And to prove the point, I'm
doing the stop being a weenie challenge this summer that I've just made up, and I need ideas of
what to do. Squirrel, by the way. I only need, like, 350 more followers before I can start doing
lives. And I fully intend on doing lives wearing the hot dog suit, where I'm doing tarot card
readings for your business.
00:06:31
Okay, that is the carrot I'm dangling in front of you. So go and follow me. And I don't know what
you have to do to turn on notifications on TikTok, but whatever it is, go and do that too. And
you'll be notified when I do a live in my hot dog suit doing a business tarot card reading for you.
Because we're here to have fun.
00:06:49
We're not just messing around, doing serious stuff all day. No, we're calling on spirit guides of
the hot dog land so you can stop being a weenie. Like when you started your business, you
don't know what you don't know about being effective in things that you've never done before.
So now the only difference is you are working full time. You have clients to serve.
00:07:12
You have daily tasks that you have to keep up with because you know that they're effective.
Now you're trying to add in stuff that you don't know what you don't know, so you're not sure if
it's even going to be effective onto your already full eight hour day. Honey, that's unreasonable.
Don't do that. And I'm talking to myself right now, but I'm also talking to you.
00:07:37
I know I say this a lot, but half the time I do this podcast. I'm talking to myself because I need
these pep talks. I need to be reminded of the shitty habits that I'm falling into. Right, because I'm
an ADHD person running a business. I don't have it all figured out.
00:07:52
I'm not here being perfect and telling you how you can do it perfect, too. No, we're in this
together. No one should be alone on this journey, and I'm bringing you along in mine. You have
to get really real about what kinds of things you can start letting go of. And the beautiful thing
about being at this point in your business is hopefully you have some extra capital to play with.
00:08:16
You have some money that you can turn around and hire the ultimate expert to take that thing
on for you. Now, I don't know if it's writing posts for LinkedIn, if it's creating assets for Instagram,
maybe you're outsourcing email marketing, your newsletter. Whatever it is, you have to hand
something off. And if it helps you discern what you need to be handing off and what you need to
be keeping for yourself. The only things that you want to keep are the things that no one else
can do for you that directly generate income for you.
00:08:52
Meaning you cannot send someone else to a networking event to get you clients. That just
doesn't work. It's weird. If you're going to go to a networking event to get clients, it has to be you
who's going. You cannot outsource someone being a guest for you on a podcast.
00:09:11
That would also be weird. Squirrel. Hi, I'm a representative for Katie McManus. You want to ask
me questions about her childhood? Hold on, let me look at the notes.
00:09:19
She says here that she hated doing homework. Cool. Does that answer your question? Squirrel,
squirrel, squirrel. That does not build trust.
00:09:28
That does not inspire people to want to work with you. Okay? If you're running your own sales
calls, which I highly recommend you do until you get to a certain point, you cannot outsource
that. And honestly, there's a point in your business where you wouldn't be able to compensate a
salesperson well enough that they'd be able to do it well enough that you'd get clients right. You
will get to that point.
00:09:49
I fully believe in you where you'll have to hire a salesperson and another salesperson until you
have this massive team, but you're not there yet. That is not one of the breaking points here.
You should still be running most of your sales calls yourself, unless you have some low ticket
stuff that you can have people just buy online.
00:10:08
I want to name that. Some of this stuff is going to be scary to let go of. You're going to be
incredibly uncomfortable. It's going to feel like you're handing over your firstborn to someone
who you don't know. Maybe you haven't done a background check on them.
00:10:21
I want you to take a deep breath, and I want you to know that no one can do this as good as
you would do it. And they don't have to. What they have to do is they have to do it. 80% as good
as you can do it, and that's it. 80% will be perfectly fine, because guess what?
00:10:39
That's going to free you up to do a bunch of new things that will help scale your business to that
next level. You will not be able to do those bunches of new things that will scale your business
to the next level. If you're still doing the things that you're doing, they have to be handed off. You
have to free up time, you have to free up energy, and you have to free up brain space. Now, this
brings me to the second breaking point that you're going to run into.
00:11:05
Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first squirrel,
squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
00:11:16
The second breaking point that you're going to run into, and this is your comfort zone now, I
want to remind you that the things that are in your comfort zone right now maybe posting to
LinkedIn, sharing selfies of yourself, writing a newsletter every week, inviting people to a sales
call all this stuff used to be terrifying to you, right? I know it used to be terrifying to me. The idea
that I had the right to post something on social media that would be helpful to other people. Are
you sure? I don't know.
00:11:49
What do I have to say if you go back? I post a lot on social media. I have a lot to say. It's been a
game changer in helping me grow my business. Right.
00:11:58
I had to get over that fear at one point until it was no longer a fear. It was just, well, like firmly
planted within my comfort zone. The things that are in your comfort zone right now, however,
were the things that could get you here to this point in your business. They are not the things
that will get you to the next level in your business. Now, I'm a big believer that we should not be
staying in our comfort zones too long.
00:12:24
We should always be putting ourselves a little outside of it. And just so you know, I know I've
mentioned this before on this podcast. If I haven't, I'm sorry. I was terrified of starting a podcast.
The idea of an audio-only medium where I don't get immediate feedback from people was
terrifying to me.
00:12:46
Okay. I don't know if you I mean, you probably never were in a clubhouse room with me
because I hated clubhouse. But for some reason, when it's audio only, I lose all of my charm. I
actually lose my ability to put sentences together properly. I stutter, I stammer, I'm super
awkward.
00:13:06
I am that person who's on a date, who has the flashcards under the table of “What do I say
next? I don't understand.” Okay, I'm not that way in video. My producer, Neal, he tried switching
platforms where we record this podcast, but we couldn't use it because I couldn't see him. I was
too awkward just being by myself in a recording room on my computer.
00:13:27
There are moments where thinking about the fact that I have a podcast, that there are people all
over the world who listen to me makes me massively uncomfortable. Whatever this is for you,
whatever that thing is that you're worried about or freaked out about or it scares you a bit, go
and do that. Maybe it's a speaking tour, maybe it's writing a book. Maybe it is creating a group
program. That next thing, the thing that scares you is the thing that your intuition knows will
grow your business the most.
00:13:58
I know I mentioned that Mastermind that's specifically for ADHD business owners. The program
is called Hyper focused. We're going to be highly focused on pushing you beyond your comfort
zone. If you're accepted into that mastermind, we're going to be identifying the that scares you
and holding you accountable until you go out and do it. And until you go out and do it well, it
starts generating more and more business for you.
00:14:23
And if it helps motivate you, I want you to start looking at your comfort zone as the place that all
your dreams die. It is a graveyard of dead dreams. You want your dreams to come true. You
want to reach any of your major goals. That all happens beyond that border of your comfort
zone.
00:14:41
But the beautiful thing you know this from getting to this point in your business that each time
you do something outside your comfort zone, your comfort zone expands. It gets bigger. There's
less and less stuff that scares you. But staying in your comfort zone will be a major breaking
point for your business. Because even if you don't want to grow your business beyond what it is
right now, guess what?
00:15:06
The world changes. Social media changes, what's effective in marketing and sales changes.
You are always going to have to move outside your comfort zone in some way, shape, or form,
even if you just want to keep everything the same. Because what you're doing now may not
work in five years. Hell, it may not work next year.
00:15:26
Before the pandemic. Had anyone heard of TikTok in the United States? I hadn't. It was a brand
new thing. It was something that the kids were doing.
00:15:33
And I finally got into it. When I had no social life on Saturday nights, I would just sit on my bed
and just scroll. It's not until recently that I realized, oh, I should probably do that for my
business. There's always going to be something new like that. So get outside your comfort
zone. 00:15:46
Do shit that scares you. Next, we're going to talk about your money mindset. And I know I'm
always telling you that you should be raising your rates and you should be raising your rates,
and your rates are probably too low, so you need to raise them. Yes, you probably do need to
raise your rates, but also there's a point at which you can no longer raise your rates and serve
the people who you are best suited to serve. For some of you, the breaking point around your
money is going to be that you're afraid to ask for more.
00:16:18
Depending on your industry and your ideal client, many of you can probably raise your rates
dramatically to be able to push past this plateau. But for everyone, there will come a point
where you can't raise your rates and get the clients that you usually get. I mean, for instance, if I
were to raise my rates to $100,000 for an absolute beginner coach to start a business with me,
how many clients would I get? There's just a point where you price yourself out of what the
market will hold, right? So you have to start looking at your business model and shifting it.
00:16:59
If you want to take a quarter of a million-dollar business and turn it into a million-dollar business,
what you did to get here will not get you there. Now, there are many ways you can do this. If
you're a coach and you work with clients one on one, group programs are an incredible way for
you to scale your income and make more money for less time. Doing digital products. I know all
those Instagram influencers talking about passive income, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:29
Digital programs are not passive. You still have to update them. You still have to market them.
There's still a ton of work that goes into them, but it does allow for you to serve more people in a
more approachable way with you having to spend less time on actually delivering. Okay?
00:17:46
That's the magic of it. You can also look at the franchise model. Depending on what your
business is, is there something that you can standardize about what you do with your clients?
Create an SOP that you could license and then franchise that out to other people who want to
do a similar thing? Spin studios do this.
00:18:06
Yoga studios do this. There are even some coaching programs that do this. Now, you can also
hire people to work under you who do exactly what you do, and you can step up into being more
of a CEO strategic thinker of the business. Now, if this is the way you want to go, the franchise
model or this model are the way you want to go, here's where you're going to need to upgrade
your branding. So I can't go around and sell the Katie McManus experience and then send
some guy named Phil to coach you.
00:18:40
That would not work. Okay? I would have to create some kind of brand that is standalone away
from me, that is a big part of me, but isn't solely me. If you want to do something similar in your
business, you're going to have to create a separate entity of a brand. Now, this is counter to the
advice that I give new business owners, okay?
00:19:01
Because when you're first starting and you're out there and you're a solopreneur and you're the
only person in the business, I highly recommend that you use your own name because people
are going to remember you. They're going to remember your voice, they're going to remember
what you look like. And if they're on the Google machine after talking to you, they're less likely to
remember the name of the business and more likely to remember you. That works up to a point.
If you want to create a business that you can hand off to other people in some way, shape, or
form, it's going to have to become a brand.
00:19:35
Now, along with all of these changes. This takes us into the next breaking point, which is your
systems. Now, when we talk about systems, I think everyone thinks about your tech stack.
So, like, how people pay for stuff, your online communities, like what your website is on, all
that stuff. And yes, that absolutely goes into systems, but it's also people. 00:19:56
So you know how I previously mentioned you're going to have to hand some stuff off to people?
Well, you have to first assess what roles you need to create within your business and what
types of people you're going to have to fill in those roles. For some of you, hiring a couple VA’S
that have different specialities will be enough to take enough off your plate for you to scale to
that next level. For some of you, you may have to bring in a partner in your business. If you're
running a law firm, you cannot be in three different courtrooms on the same day.
00:20:33
You may have to bring in other lawyers if you want to scale your law firm. Actually, you'll
definitely have to. There's no way that's an absolute. Now, bringing people in and assigning
them work is one thing, but you're also going to have to create systems and procedures for
when things go wrong. How do they make decisions on their own?
00:20:56
What are they allowed to make decisions on their own without coming to you? What kinds of
things do you absolutely need to be the bottleneck on? What projects are they going to handle
and how are you going to assess if they're doing it well or not? This is one of the things that a
lot of business owners struggle with when they first start hiring people. I know I did.
00:21:20
You also have to think about how are you going to be training these people? What's the
onboarding process going to be like. There are two ends of the spectrum, really. So there's the
we'll figure it out on the way. I have no idea how I'm going to onboard this person.
00:21:34
Hopefully they know how to onboard themselves, and you can guess how that goes. And then
there's the opposite end of the spectrum of I need to know exactly how this person who has a
speciality that I don't have is going to do their job every single day. I'm going to micromanage,
blah, blah, blah. And you know how that goes. We needed to find your correct space in the
centre of that spectrum, right?
00:22:00
Because like we've talked about what's gotten you here, the skill set that's gotten you here won't
take you to that next level. You need to be hiring people who have expanded skill sets to your
own. You're not going to know the best way for them to do their jobs, but you also can't feed
them to the sharks.
00:22:20
Trial by fire is not a nice way to bring someone into a business, which, I mean, honestly, now
that I think about it. Every single one of my sales jobs in the past was all trial by fire and I
always got burnt out and I always left. So there you go. Now, one of the things that we're going
to be assessing in the Mastermind are all the things that should not be on your plate. The things
that should not be on your plate become a job description for what you need to hire for in your
business.
00:22:47
And finally, the thing that all ADHD have a hard time with is time. Time management. If you're
not managing your time well, it will become a breaking point not only for your business, but for
your entire fucking life. And I want to call out that I know you're passionate about doing this
work. I know you love it.
00:23:10
I know there are days where you can work 14 hours like I did yesterday and not feel depleted in
any way, shape or form because it just lights you up to help people. It lights you up to do
creative stuff in your business, but you can't do that every day. I know we expect ourselves to
be able to, but it just leads to us running ourselves ragged. And divorce or breakups or children
who don't speak to you anymore, none of which are the ideal. One of the activities that I have
my clients go through when they get to this point in their business is I have them map out their
ideal week.
00:23:49
I'll literally have them draw out a calendar that has from 05:00 A.m. To 10:00 P.m. Hours all
blocked out. And before they even look at what they want to do work-wise, I have them go
through and put all of the personal things that they want to have in their ideal week. Now, this is
workouts.
00:24:09
This is when you have breakfast. This is when you take your dog for a walk. This is picking your
kids up from school. This is date night with your spouse or your partner. This is your hobby time.
00:24:21
This is your bedtime. This is when you watch trash TV. I see you. Those of you who watch
Desperate Housewives, anything, I see you. I'm not one of you, but I want you to have your
Desperate Housewives time.
00:24:37
And I've seen a couple of episodes. It is crazy. I would get sucked in. That's why I can't watch it.
By the way, I've recently started watching the Mindy Project.
00:24:45
I lowkey thought I would hate it. I thought I would find it annoying. But it is just a bunch of people
with a lot of ADHD who are very smart and make some really stupid mistakes. And you know
what? I find it really reassuring, even though they're make-believe people, that if they can do
stupid shit like that, that I'm okay.
00:25:01
I'm fine. Squirrel. Squirrel. I always wanted to try this. Looks easy enough.
00:25:08
Take that. Oh God.
00:25:15
No helping you cover it squirrel. Squirrel. Okay, so once you've mapped out that week with all
your crappy TV and your personal care and your relationship stuff built in, then that's when
you're allowed to go and put in your workday stuff. That's when you're allowed to put in when
you speak to clients, that's when you're allowed to put in your marketing efforts. That's when
you're allowed to put in meetings with your team.
00:25:46
Now, you're not going to get this perfect on the first try. You're probably going to draw up like, 17
different ideal weekly schedules. And let's be real, you're probably not going to stick to it, right?
You're going to get sucked into one thing and blow off the rest of the day. Or you may be bad at
setting boundaries around client calls.
00:26:06
That is okay. But what we need to start getting you good at is setting boundaries around your
personal life, right? Because we're not going to trip and fall into the perfect business that makes
us tons of money and allows for us to live our ideal lives. That doesn't happen. We reverse
engineer our perfect lives, and we design businesses that help us get there.
00:26:28
This is the first step of that. This is also something that we're going to be doing a lot in the
hyper-focused mastermind. And again, if you wouldn't mind doing me a solid, go to the link in
the show notes and answer the two very simple questions in that survey. I'd super appreciate it.
And lastly, the biggest breaking point of all is you not believing that you can do this.
00:26:57
That's it. If you don't believe that you can grow your business beyond what it is now, it's never
going to happen. But I want to remind you that you had no proof whatsoever that you could do
this when you started it. You started with zero clients, with zero revenue, with zero followers on
social media at some point. And look at you now.
00:27:20
You went from absolutely nothing to where you are right now. Okay? If you could turn around
and talk to you back then and reassure you, what would you say? And here you are. Now.
00:27:33
I want you to imagine you five years from now is turning around and telling you all about the
successes that you've had in the last five years and reminding you that you can do it. This is a
really fun exercise that I have my clients do usually. I usually ask them, what does you five
years from now want you to stop doing? What does you five years from now think you need to
cut the bullshit on. The answers are always amazing.
00:28:00
If you ask yourself that question and you're comfortable sharing it with me. Please go to
www.weenicast.com, scroll to the bottom and leave us a voice note because I'd love to hear
what you need to give up the bullshit on.
© 2022 - 2023 Katie McManus – Business Strategy For Weenie ADHD-preneurs