27: Slow down to speed up! Identifying your ADHD - preneur values

 Slow down to speed up! Identifying your ADHD entrepreneur values (Transcript)

In this episode, we're going to talk about why you need to slow down to speed up.

Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. One of the things that I end up doing with a lot of my clients, especially the ones that have ADHD, and especially the ones who go at a million miles a minute, want to iterate and create new programs every other day... they have all these ideas, is we have to figure out how they're going to make decisions when they come up with all these new ideas.

How they're going to make decisions when they design offerings.

How they're going to make decisions when they create marketing plans.

How they're going to make decisions about growing their team. Because it's really easy to go and do these things and the worst thing that can happen is you go and you hire a bunch of people, you create an offer, you market it, you do all this stuff, and then you realize, holy shit, this is not what I want at all. This doesn't reflect me as a human. This is not how I want to have my life set up. So the activity I have a lot of my clients do is we dive into what their values are. And when I say values, and I explain this to my clients for the first time, they're thinking like, well, I value honesty and I value intelligence, and I value this and I value that, and that's not what I'm talking about at all. Your values are the things that have to be true in your day to day, for you to be a pleasant, optimal human, for you to be your best self, these have to be true.

I will share about my own values here. So growing up, I was often called a control freak. I didn't like my toys being moved. I hated it when my mom came in and cleaned my bedroom. I didn't like people telling me when I needed to do things. I mean, it's very obvious that they figured out that I had ADHD early on, but how could they have missed it, really? I also generally just didn't like being told what to do, which made being in school extra fun. So growing up, I was constantly told whenever I'd have these bad reactions to people messing with my stuff, changing timelines on me, telling me what to do, that I was a control freak. And it was painted as this massive personality flaw, right? And it was something that I was kind of embarrassed about. Things wouldn't go the way I wanted them to go, and I would internally get really upset about it, but I wouldn't feel comfortable voicing it because I didn't want to have that judgment thrown back at me.

Now fast forward to go through basically my whole twenties, and then I discover coaching. And I go through the coaching program and I get a coach for myself and my coach had me go through a values exercise where we dug in and really figured out what my top five to eight values were.

Control kept showing up. And when we were talking through it, my coach, he kept bringing it up like, it sounds like you have a value of control. And I kept rejecting it, saying, no, I don't have a value of control. Like, control is a bad thing. And he responded to me saying, Says who? Like, who says control is a bad thing? And I told him this whole story about growing up and constantly being told that I was a control freak and how that was bad and all these things, and it usually ended up with me crying. So I had really negative connotations with me wanting control over things. And he started asking me a bunch of questions about, well, what would have happened if you were able to communicate that you liked having control over your space and that it bothered you when people would come in and violate that boundary. And I had this flashback to childhood, and if I had been emotionally aware and had coaching back then, that would have been a game changer. If I had been able to explain to my parents as a seven year old that I had a value around controlling my own time and controlling when I was going to be going out to socialize and when I wanted to be at home, I probably would have been a much more pleasant, easy to deal with child.

Also, I would have felt better. I would have been my best self.

When we try to break down what our values are, it's not like a mission statement. It's not like, this is what I want to go and do in the world. It's kind of like our operating book, right? It's like the user manual for how you do well in the world.

I have a Fiat 500. It's a really cute little car. My mom likes to call it the Roller Skate. I've personally named it Tina Fey because I always name my cars after women that I admire. And also, it's an Italian car. Let me just tell the story. It's an Italian car, but I didn't know any Italian women who I particularly admire and know a lot about naturally. And I really didn't want to have to go hunt for someone that I admire who's a woman who's Italian. So I figured Tina Fey was the closest thing, and she's Greek. It's just one peninsula over. It's no big deal. But back to the point.

So I have a Fiat 500. The user manual of the Fiat 500 does not recommend you go offroading. Okay? The clearance of the ground is really low. I have whacked the crap out of the undercarriage so many times on roads that have really big potholes. It is not meant for offroading. A jeep wrangler is meant for offroading. And in the user manual. It can say when offroading, here are the best practices. Not for a Fiat 500. The Fiat 500 is like, stay on the most paved roads possible. On the best paved don't go to Rhode Island, okay? If you're listening and you're not from the United States, Rhode Island gets a lot of crap because they have the worst roads. The only state that I've ever gotten a flat tire in, by the way, if you're in Rhode Island and you have any control over public roads, can you do something about that, please? Anyway, it's funny, when I was in Europe, I have a lot of friends who live in the Netherlands because I studied in France for a while, and for some reason, there were just a lot of Dutch people who came and learned French at that same school. The way the Dutch treat Belgians and the Netherlands looks at Belgium. It's kind of how Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont all look at Rhode Island.

So your values are going to be your user manual. Your values are going to tell you what needs to happen for you every single day, for you to operate the best for your ride, to be as smooth as possible. It's also what you need to know when you are communicating boundaries and how other people need to work with you.

Now, another value I have, I call Labradoodle. It's like, what does that mean, Katie? This is the reason why we can't stick to typical values names when we're coming up with our own value structure, because there was no word that encompassed everything that I needed this one term to be. And when I say I have a value of Labradoodle, I need fun. I need goofy moments throughout my day. I need to be in the moment. I need to be able to ask for what I want. Like, a Labradoodle will just come up to you with just full of joy and goofiness and ask for a belly rub, right? The Labradoodle doesn't think that they don't deserve a belly rub or a treat. The Labradoodle just knows that they always deserve belly rubs and treats. And so I have to really encapsulate that every single day, and that fun in the moment element. Now, there's a reason why this is important. Because if I'm on a sales call with potential client and I feel totally flat and I'm not having fun, and I feel like there's not one bounce in my step talking to this person, I know this value is never going to be honored with that client. And it's not their fault. It's just not a correct energy match.

Back to my value of control with my team. I like things done in a very specific way. One of the things that we have designed is I give really straightforward feedback because I want to make sure that there are no miscommunications over how I want things done. And there are certain things that I still insist on doing myself because I have that value of control and it's something that I will have to work on as my business continues to grow.

I also have a value of freedom. The way I see freedom, it doesn't necessarily mean that I want to be able to hop on a plane at any point to go anywhere. It means that I want to be able to work from anywhere and everywhere. It means that I want to have the flexibility to take client calls from anywhere in the world. Now, this actually helps me determine the hours in which I work with clients. So if you're a client of mine, you'll notice that I don't take a call earlier than 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. That doesn't mean I don't start working until then. It means that if I'm ever in California or on the West Coast of the United States, there's no fucking way I'm getting up to have a call before 07:00 A.m.. But I have decided that 07:00 A.m. Is that early start time that I'm willing to do right. And I want to have the freedom and flexibility to be able to go to the West Coast and spend time there with friends and family and loved ones whenever I want and not have to alter anything about my schedule. You'll also notice that there's no booking on my calendar past four or 05:00 P.m. Depending on the day. I love going to Europe. I love going and spending time in Italy and in France and all over. I'm not going to be up until 02:00 in the morning taking calls max 10:00 p.m. When I'm over there. My value of freedom helped me determine what hours my business would be open and just let me name also that I also am ADD and I hate going and fixing things after the fact. Like the idea of going into my scheduling system to prepare for a trip when I'm already procrastinating, packing and procrastinating, making sure my passport is up and ready and making sure that my dog is going to be taken care of. That's already a lot of things to procrastinate on. I don't also want to have to go and remember to change my calendar settings and then because I probably would have done it last minute, realize that like 17 people have already booked on my calendar and have to go and reschedule each and every one of them. Doesn't that just sound miserable? So it's really good that I know that I have this value of freedom and what it means to me as an individual, which is going to mean something completely different to me than it might mean to you. If you also have a value of freedom because it helps me make some very straightforward logistical decisions in my business.

Back to the value that I have around Labradoodle, because I have fun throughout my day, because I crack jokes with my clients on client calls. Because I make things goofy and weird and fun as much as I can, that actually indicates a whole bunch of stuff in my business, right? It indicates my branding. If you check out my stuff, there are a whole lot of hot dogs. There's a whole bunch of me in a hot dog suit. That is part of who I am. I can't leave that part out because if I were to make myself look too polished or too serious or too sophisticated, you'd meet me and be like, who is this lady? There's no way this is the lady that is on the website. There's like a complete disconnect between this person and that person. It helps me give instructions to any copywriters that I ever hire. Neal, my podcast producer, he gets to edit my podcast in a way that is a little more fun, a little more goofy, a little more pushing the edge, because that is something that is a value of mine. I'm very open about that side of myself. I don't often do this on this podcast because I'm here to give you value. I'm here to share about the experience of being ADHD and running a business. But it is so important to know your values as you are starting and growing your business. I'm actually going to be offering one off sessions, which I don't regularly do, and you can check those out at weeniecast.com/values. I will offer a few per month. So if you are interested in figuring out what your values are and having an experience with me as your coach, you're going to want to go and sign up for that.

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