Katie McManus breaks down three habits ADHD business owners inherit from corporate jobs that kill their goals: treating the customer as always right, keeping your calendar open every day for bookings, and forcing yourself into a 40-hour workweek. Instead, set booking days, say no to one-off sessions, and block full days for strategy.
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Here are three things that ADHD business owners need to deprogram from from their 9 to 5 to be able to be successful in running their businesses. And number three will absolutely surprise you. And hi, I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time with your distractions by showing you how to discover your profitable niche. Create an offer that they are starving to buy. I train you on how to market and sell your services for or top dollar without wanting to vomit. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. The first thing you need to deprogram yourself from any beliefs around the customer always being right because they're not. I don't care if you've talked to five people and all of them just want to buy a one off session rather than sign up for your six month program. That is not what you're selling. And let's say for example, you're a career coach and you help clients really figure out what they don't like about their current career. Strategize and come up with a plan to start applying to other jobs and help them come up with their resume and cover letter and go through the whole interview process. You're absolutely going to attract some people who think they can cover all that in a 60 minute session. But if you're a coach or you've worked with a coach ever, you know that's bullshit. You know that can't happen. You know, there's so much that needs to be unpacked from what you're leaving and what you really want in the future and all the things in preparing you to start applying for these jobs and actually be successful in getting one of them. And it's so easy early on in your business to be like, oh well, they want to give me money for one hour, I guess I should take that. No, no, you're the expert here and you're running this business. You're in charge. Okay. You have a couple different objectives that you have in mind, right? Number one, you want to make money. Absolutely. So you can take the quick buck of the one off session. Remember, you're going to have to do a fuck ton of sales calls to be able to make enough money with one off sessions. Now number two, you want a good testimonial and you and I both know someone who just has a one off session with you. They're not gonna see results from that. Okay? They might in a world where everything aligns perfectly for them. But you know that true transformation happens over time. Okay? For them to See results and give you a good testimonial. They have to commit to working with you for longer. Okay? You get to be the expert. You get to hold firm on, no, no, no, no, no. I know what works best. And if you really want help, you want to sign up for my bigger program. And we all know that more often than not, the customer's fucking wrong. The second thing that you need to deprogram from that every working day on your calendar should be available for people to book sales, calls, sessions with you, whatever it is that you do with them. I did this early on in my business and it burned me out so fast because what would ultimately happen is someone would book at 10am and so I'd have a 10am client call and then someone else would book at 3pm and because I have ADHD between 11am and 3pm, I couldn't get anything done because I was just in waiting mode. Okay? And I kept looking at the clock constantly, like, okay, I have enough time to do this because I have three hours left. Okay, cool. And then I look at the clock and I'd be like, oh my God, I don't have three hours. I have two and a half. I can't do this in two and a half. And then I get hungry and I need to go get a snack. And then I come back and be like, oh my God, I only have two hours left. Okay? How much stuff can I get done in that? And it was exhausting. And it was so scary for me to limit the days that my clients could book with me. But once I did it, no one actually noticed. I was sure they were going to like send me angry emails and quit, but literally no one noticed that I was no longer available on Mondays and 30s Thursdays for client calls. You're the owner of this business, okay? There's no boss that's going to come knock on your office door and be like, excuse me, why aren't you available for the meeting with the GM from blah blah blah, this Thursday? Okay, Your calendar, your time is hours between the hours of 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. No, fuck that. You work for yourself now. You get to set the rules. And believe me, this rule will save your sanity. Now, number three will absolutely surprise you, but you need to deprogram yourself from working a 40 hour work week. And I don't mean that you're only going to work like 10 hours a week in your business and make a million dollars. That's not how it goes. But the way you do 40 hour work weeks okay, the way you did them in your 9 to 5 corporate job, they do not work here. When you were working for someone else, you had a job description, okay? You had a finite list of responsibilities that you had to get through every single day. And you either got through them or you didn't. And you had more stuff to do the next day. But the expectation was always that you would arrive at 8 or 9 in the morning and you would work all the way through until lunch, take your lunch maybe, and then come back and continue working until about four or five in the evening, getting paid for each and every hour. But nowhere in there in your 9 to 5 work week did you have to do strategy for the whole fucking business. As a business owner, you don't just have a finite set of responsibilities that you can just plug into and then finish up. No, you have to do the sales and you have to do the marketing and you have to serve the clients and then you have to do back end stuff and then you have to do taxes and then blah, blah, blah, blah. And in addition to that, you have to come up with the strategy, the overarching strategy that's going to allow for all those things to happen for money to actually come in the door so that you can pay for your mortgage. And when new business owners start, they think, okay, cool, yeah, I can absolutely do that. I'll do that between my 1pm call that's an hour long. So I have from 2pm until about 3:30. I'm going to do it in that like one and a half hour window. No, you're not. To really understand what the strategy is for the next two, three, four months, next year, next two years, you need to block in, into your calendar, empty space. And when I say empty space, I don't just mean an hour here or there, I mean full on days where you are dreaming and planning and coming up with the strategy that is going to take your business from where you are right now to where you want to go. And if you're working with a coach, you're going to also need equal amounts of time to work on whatever strategies they're working on with you, or else you're not going to get anything after that coaching relationship. You're just going to be getting information from them all the time and not using it. So as you start looking at your week and as you start kind of planning what your schedule and routine will be, you, my friend, need to block off time just for you to spend time in your own head, taking notes, dreaming, innovating, and let me tell you, it is the absolute game changer in your business. In the comments, I want to hear from you what your biggest struggle has been in starting your business. And if you know a new business owner who's been burning themselves out, then go ahead and share this video with them.
