5 simple rules for staying sane as an ADHD entrepreneur!

Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. I'm going to share with you five simple rules for staying sane as an ADHD business owner. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. I think we can all agree that to start a business you have to be a little bit insane. You have to. You have to be willing to believe in things that you have no proof of, that clients will come to you. What you have to offer, there's a market for that. You can show up on social media and grow a following. Even though you've seen no evidence that it's true, it's safe to say that there's a little bit of insanity that's required for that. So yay for not being completely sane. However, there is a fine line. There's a line where you get a little too insane and things start not going well. And usually you start crossing that line when you have bad rules set up in your business, when you don't set yourself up for your sanity to be protected. And one of the hardest things about going from working for someone else to working for yourself is that there's no boss, there's no manager, there's no owner of the company that you get to point to and say, oh, it's their rule. We have to follow the rules here. It's just you. You make the rules, but you also have to enforce the rules with people who know that you're the owner of the business, who know that you're the one setting the rules. So you should be the one who is able to flex them for them if you want to. Right? Well, let's talk through how that can go heinously wrong and why you need to have really solid rules in your business to protect your sanity, to protect your bank account, and to keep yourself from quitting this business and going back and working for another corporate company. Because who wants that? I know I don't. There are rules that are outward facing rules about how you deal with clients, potential clients, people who work for you, strangers on the interwebs. And then there are rules that you have to set for yourself. Both the outer and inner rules are difficult to enforce and stick to in different ways. So the number one rule that I want to give you permission to set up in your business is one that will protect you from having nightmare clients. Clients who have no respect for your time, who will be so much more work than the clients who actually show up, are invested, and will see greater results working with you. And this one simple rule is that if someone no shows your sales call, they are not allowed to reschedule. Now, this sounds really harsh coming from a coach who works specifically with adhd. Business owners, right, because people with ADHD tend to have time blindness, tend to forget about things. But let me tell you, if my incredible, magical, brilliant clients who have ADHD and severe ADHD at that, can manage to show up for an appointment that they booked on my calendar asking for my time for free to learn about my programs because they desperately need help, if they can show up to a damn appointment, why can't anyone else? Back when I worked in corporate and I worked in sales, no shows were a nightmare because someone would set an appointment with you because they were interested in what you were selling and they wouldn't show up to it. And you couldn't have this rule that they couldn't reschedule because this is a hot lead. Your boss and the owner of the company would be like, why aren't you rescheduling? Why aren't you chasing them down? So you'd have to spend cumulatively hours of your work week or your work month chasing down this person who already disrespected your time trying to get them to book another time. And let me tell you, someone who's comfortable no showing you once will be very comfortable no showing you twice or three times or four times or however many times. They just don't give a F. Every single salesperson knows that the people who no show you are highly unlikely to actually ever buy your stuff. If they didn't care enough to even show up to the appointment that they set on your calendar, they don't care enough to buy. Now, in the case where you do reschedule with them and they do sign up, these are also the clients who expect you to bend over backwards to make their lives easier. And that's not saying that we don't want to go above and beyond and deliver an excellent service to our clients. But there's a fine line of you delivering an excellent service and going above and beyond and surprising and delighting someone who is carrying their equal weight in the work here, and you having to bend over backwards and twist yourself into a pretzel and sacrifice all of your free time to do shit that they can't figure out or won't figure out how to do themselves. I've done this in the past. I made the mistake early on of kind of offering to do copywriting for a client, writing posts for them for social media. And guess what? They changed the post and they went through and they edited it, even though they weren't talented writers. That relationship did not last long because they weren't pulling their weight. And the red flags were there early on. And one of the biggest red flags that you're going to get right off the bat is that they no show an appointment. So I give you permission here and now to have a no tolerance rule for no shows. And I bet you're thinking, okay, well, but here's someone who is interested in working with me. Maybe something happened for them. Maybe life got in the way. They just forgot all this stuff like, shouldn't I be compassionate? To which I say, sure, if you want to be compassionate, that's totally up to you. But I want you to remember what we create space for in our lives, we attract more of. So if you're making a ton of space for people to set up appointments on your calendar, no show them. Reschedule. No show those. And you're creating the space and the time to devote your energy to chasing them down, following up with them, asking, what happened? Do you want to reschedule? Guess what you're going to attract more of. You know, it sounds woo woo, but the universe is always paying attention. And what you make time for, the universe is like, oh, cool, you want more of that? Awesome. I will gladly send you more of that. When you set the expectation that no one is allowed to waste your time, the universe is paying attention. Okay, cool. You don't want people who waste your time. Got it. We're going to calibrate to that. Now, what goes along with this is you have to have confidence that what you have to offer is worthwhile. And when people want what you're selling, you don't have to chase people down and beg them to buy it. You can do the work to put yourself out there to promote your good work, to talk about the impact you have with your clients. And your ideal clients will be attracted to that. And they will book on your calendar and they will actually show up to the sales call. And a little psa. If you ever choose to book a sales call with me, which is a generate income sales call, this is your fair warning that if you no show that call, it will not be made up. You will not be allowed to rebook. You actually probably won't be allowed to sign up for any of my shit. Consider yourself warned. And if you want to go ahead and book that call, you can go to weeniecast.com strategy call and book a generate income strategy call with me to learn about how I can help you grow your business in a way that you're attracting your ideal clients and not having to chase no showing bastards down. And by the way, I want to add, you know, there are ways that you can do this in a kind way. So like for instance, if you were to book a call with me, I have it. ADHD proof. I have it. I have very clear instructions for what you're supposed to be doing doing. So first and foremost, I instruct you to save it to your calendar. The booking that you just made, there's clear instructions. Save this to your calendar so you don't forget. You get a confirmation email that again says save this to your calendar if it's not already showing up. And then you get three obnoxious reminder emails before the call, 24 hours, 12 hours and one hour beforehand. It's a. It's really hard to forget that you booked a call with me. In your business, I urge you to set up similar parameters because let's be real, ADHD people attract more ADHD people. If you tend to forget about stuff or you tend to need reminders, I bet you your ideal clients also tend to forget things and need reminders. So be kind. Set things up so that they are set up for success, so that they don't no show you. But also hold firm. If you've done everything you can to give them everything that is necessary for them to remember that they booked on your calendar and they're still not showing up. Big red flag. The next rule that will make your life way less insane and far more tolerable is a really hard one to stick to. And I'm going to talk you through this because it involves firing someone. So as you grow your business, there are going to be moments where you realize, oh wow, I don't need to be spending my time on this. I can outsource this to someone and focus my time and energy somewhere else. That's money generating. So this may be hiring your first virtual assistant. This could be hiring a social media manager. It could also be hiring an online business manager. I wish I had had this rule when I first started my business. It literally would have saved me about $25,000 and hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost business. Not having this rule can a make it really hard for you to be profitable in at the best case and in the worst case, it can make you go out of business. If you're like me, you develop really close, deep friendships with the people you work with. And it feels really shitty to have to fire a friend, you know, someone that you hired and you developed this closeness with. But if you want your business to succeed, that's going to happen at some point. It's a guarantee it's going to happen. You're going to have to let someone go from your business. There's no way you're going to work around that. So what I find really helpful is you don't make it about your feelings. You can't make it about your feelings. You know, it's really frustrating when someone something up in your business and you have to deal with it and you have to clean it up. The feelings are there and they're valid. And absolutely talk about them with your therapist or your coach or maybe your bestie who gets it. But you're a good person and you're not going to want to take away part of someone's income because they pissed you off. You need to make this decision logical. You need to make a rule that you have to follow so that your business can be successful. Now, for me, if someone makes a mistake more than a couple times and doesn't learn, when I coach them through how I want them to do it differently, then the relationship is probably not going to go forward. And the reason for this is a they're not learning. They're not adhering to what works best in your environment for your clients, for you, you know, and that's valid. You need people because you're a small business. You don't have a huge margin to be spending on people who aren't pulling the weight that they're supposed to be pulling in your business. But if you're a normal human who is starting a business because you need to make money to survive, you need to get rid of them as fast as possible. And not like get rid of them, you know, not in the mob sense of the word. Just like, hey, I don't want to pay you for your services anymore and I would like you to stop doing the services for me. Thank you. Bye. That kind of get rid of, I don't want anyone going and like unaliving someone and being like, well, Katie told me to. She said it on her podcast, get rid of them. Is that not what she meant? No, you cannot use me as an excuse for that. Now, the other reason why it's so important to pay attention to this and to hold firm on this rule is because if you've hired this person, it's because you want to outsource work to them. And if you're outsourcing work and they're not doing it correctly in a way that's going to help you grow your business, maybe it's having a negative impact on your clients. What's going to end up happening is you're going to stop trusting them with stuff that you've hired them to do. Now, I found myself in this boat with my first OBM that I ever hired, and I found myself having to do, like, three times the amount of work because I didn't trust them to do the work correctly so that it didn't create a bad experience for my clients. There is a point where I started to ask her for something, and then I realized I don't trust this person to actually do this correctly in a way that won't lose me a client. So, okay, well, instead of me explaining this to you, I'm going to have to take all this on, even though I've hired this person to do it. And it just. It was insane. But I liked this person. They'd become a friend. But what unfortunately happens with people who work for you like this is they make a few mistakes and they realize they can get away with it, and then they make more mistakes and they realize that they can get away with it, and then they make more mistakes, and they start realizing they're making so many mistakes that their whole job becomes, fix the mistakes before you notice how many mistakes there are. It's like they're actively punching holes in the bottom of your boat. And instead of saying, hey, listen, I am a hole puncher. I probably shouldn't be on your boat. You should probably bring someone in who doesn't punch holes in your boat. They just spend their whole time trying to patch the holes. And it gets to the point where you start having to patch the holes as well. This is what happened to me with my first obm, and it is miserable. And the friendship does not survive beyond that. So have a rule around how many mistakes you are willing to withstand with this person and understand what your expectations are for their learning. We all want to think that we're perfect teachers, that we can explain things and people will understand exactly what we mean. Maybe you're explaining stuff badly, but if you're explaining it more than three times and they're not getting it and they're not getting better and they're not coming to you and be like, hey, I'm not sure what you mean here. Chances are it's not you. Chances are there's a misfit here. They're not what you need in your business. You need something different. And sure, you can continue to pay them your hard earned dollars or pounds or whatever currency you work in, but know that they are going to become a drag on your business and you're going to have to start hiring other people in addition to them to cover their butts. And again, if you're independently wealthy and you enjoy spending your money like this, be my guest. But for the rest of us, we have to make some really tough decisions. And it's not like working in corporate where your boss says, hey, we have to lay this person off and you get to say, hey, I'm so sorry, it's out of my hands. The big bosses up here say that we have to lay someone off and they've identified you and I'm so sorry. And here's your severance plan. You're the big boss. You're the one making the decision. And that's hard. It's really hard. And it's one of the reasons why having a coach or a therapist or some kind of mentor in your corner who can hold that space, space for you as you work through the emotions of it is so important in growing your business. It's why I have numerous coaches and a therapist and lots of business besties who I can bounce things off of and really help sort through my feelings around this stuff. No one is exempt from needing that kind of support. And I want you to know you needing to let someone go doesn't make you a bad person. Yeah, they're going to be upset. It's upsetting to lose business. It's upsetting to lose a job. I think we've all been through it in some, you know, in some way shape or form. But for you to succeed in this business, it's a decision you're gonna have to make. And the good news that if it's hard for you, that means you're not a sociopath. Congratulations. Go and give yourself a cookie. So those are two outward facing rules that are going to make running your business easier. It's gonna keep you from going like the bad kind of insane. We're going to move into some inner rules that are going to be a lot harder to follow because they're rules that you are setting and Then you have to adhere to. And we all know that those of us with adhd, we're so incredible when we have structure, but we also really suck at creating that structure for ourselves. So I'm going to tell you these rules and in the back of your mind you're gonna say, yes, I'm going to have strong intentions to do this, but I'm also going to forgive myself when I fail at this. Because you're gonna fail at this. Failing at this does not mean that you suck at running a business and you're gonna fail. Okay? It just means, like, this is a hard thing for you. It's hard. And like, the thing about hard things is that sometimes they're so hard that you fail at them. And that's okay. When you fail, you learn. Oh, cool. This is not the way to do this. Right. So this is more of an experiment that I'm handing to you to figure out your way of being with these structures you're going to put in your business that will help you stay sane and be more likely to succeed. Deal? Deal. So the first inner rule is you have to adhere to setting hours. This is especially important when you're first starting your business and you're still working for a full time job. Okay. If you're working a corporate 9 to 5 and you're wanting to start a business on the side, it's really tempting to expect yourself to work every spare hour that you're awake outside of your 9 to 5. And if your 9 to 5 is really miserable, you might even expect yourself to work on your business while you're in your 9 to 5. I don't recommend it, especially if you want to continue to get that salary as you're ramping up. But you do. You boo. Now the only thing that this leads to is burnout. The Hustle bros will, will want to fight me on this. Like, come and get me, guys. I can take all of you because you're all sleep deprived and you know, and I feel like you're malnourished because you only drink coffee and green juice. They will want to fight me on this because they're going to tell you you have to hustle every single hour you're awake. No, no. When you do that a, you burn yourself out. You make yourself more likely to get sick and need time to recover. You also, when you're constantly expecting yourself to do this, you're not gonna do it. You're not gonna be 100% productive every hour of the day. You need rest. And so when you have this expectation that you should be doing all this stuff in your free time and then you don't do it, what happens is you start associating failure with with your to do list for your business. And what happens when we start associating failure with something is we start avoiding it. What starts off as, okay, cool, I'm gonna work nine to five and then I'm gonna do four hours of work on my business, either before or after. Like not even a week in, you're not gonna follow through because that's a lot to expect of yourself, especially if you have adhd. You know, you need transition time, you need rest time, you need time for your mind to just kind of wander and daydream. That's where all of your inspiration comes from. So you're gonna get a couple days in and kind of like a New Year's resolution about going to the gym every single day. Day three, you're not gonna do it. You're gonna be like, oh, I'm tired, oh, gonna sleep in. Or you know, my friends are going for a drink after work. I really wanna spend time with them. I miss them. I haven't seen them in a couple weeks. And then the next day it's like, oh, well, I failed yesterday, so what's the point? I'll start again next week. But then next week you're gonna say, well, I failed at that last week. And it's gonna start this vicious cycle where you start punishing yourself and making yourself wrong and you're gonna avoid doing the work. And the next thing you know, it's six months in and you haven't made any progress, so you have to set hours for yourself. Just like this is a part time job. So what happens if you get a part time job at one of those chain restaurants as like a host or a hostess? And what happens if you like show up every single day whether you're scheduled or not? A, they're going to be creeped out by you because that's weird because you're not on the clock. And also they don't want to pay for that, so they're going to fire you. On the flip side, if this is a part time job and you don't show up for your shift, what happens? You get fired. The no show policy. You no show a job, they don't want you anymore. Notice how a lot of businesses have no problem with a no show policy. It's an industry standard in a lot of ways. If you're afraid of doing a no forgiveness, no show policy, just refer to basically any business. But when you, when you set realistic hours for when you're going to work in your business and you stick to them, it doesn't have to be perfect, but you stick to like working six to eight hours a week on your business. What happens is you actually make progress, you actually start growing your following, you actually get, you know, start getting known for something to your world. You start getting clients. I've had a client, Adam Kimmel, who is a technical content writer, has a full time job, never wants to give up his full time job. He started a copywriting business and when he started with me, he was making two to three thousand dollars a month. By the end of that first year of working together, he'd taken his business that was bringing in two to $3,000 a month, to $86,000 for the year. The following year, using the three different retainer offers that we had set up in his business, he took his side hustle 10 hours a week business to $150,000 a year. It is possible to build a successful business in that amount of time, but it does require you to be very strict about your hours. He wouldn't have been able to do that if he had expected himself to do 30 hours of work on top of his 40 to 50 hour a week job. For one, I think his wife would have left him, his kids would never want to talk to him. He would have gone into a deep depression and said it all like, I'm just gonna go and live in the woods. I mean, I don't know that that just sounds like something that someone would do. Adam, if you're listening, tell me if I'm right. But no, like he, he would have burned himself out. It wouldn't have worked. He's a copywriter. He has to have access to his creativity. And tell me, do you have access to your creativity when you're exhausted? No. It doesn't matter what kind of business you're starting. You need access to your creativity too and making sure that you have enough energy for that. So set realistic hours for yourself. And if you're growing your business full time, it's no different. Sure, it feels good to brag that you're working 60 hour weeks, but that can't be the constant. And I might ask like, what are you trying to avoid by working so many hours? That's something to talk about with your therapist. The next inner rule that I want to talk about is there are going to be moments where you feel like everything is going wrong and like you don't see a way for it to get fixed, and so you feel like you just have to work harder. Working harder in those moments will never help you. In those moments. You need to have a rule about walking away and not walking away from the business and burning it all down and going back to a corporate job unless you really want to. But walking away and going to a yoga class or going for a run or reading a trashy fantasy novel. There's a saying that you cannot trust your mind after 9pm Your mind does not have anything positive to say. Usually after 9pm Everything's going wrong. You know, the doomsday voice starts and you can just see how your life is going to crash and burn. Don't believe that voice. Go watch some tv. Go to sleep. As a business owner, that voice can really strike at any point. You know, you get no showed for a call and you think, oh my God, like, all I'm attracting are flakes. This happens to me. I'm not immune from this and I genuinely have to go and shift gears and step away from my business. And then things look better on the other side. It's hard to do. You'll notice the more you do it, the easier it gets and also the faster you get at recovering from those moments. And again, these two inner rules you're gonna suck at doing in the beginning. You're gonna get better over time. You're gonna fail at it a bunch, and that's okay. You're learning. We all have our own unique way of doing this. This is one of the things that I work on with my clients is we really develop what are the best ways for them to adhere to this kind of stuff. Because what works for one person might not work for you. Now, lastly, a rule that is going to save you a lot of frustration. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. One of the biggest challenges I hear from new business owners is how hard it is to figure out what to post on social media and to stick to consistent schedule with it because it's hard. And so in the month of May, I'm actually launching a challenge to help you build that muscle of posting every single day. Each participant will get their own customizable content plan for the month of May, an extensive list of content prompts. So you have an endless bank of ideas of things you can post that work with your content plan. Every Monday through Friday, we will have a 45 minute Zoom call at 9am Eastern where you will create your content and one lucky person per day will be able to volunteer for the coaching hot seat where I will help you fine tune your messaging so that your content can help you attract high paying clients. If you can prove that you posted every single day for the 31 days, you will win a 30 minute one on one coaching call with me. Normally I charge $497 for this but for the whole challenge for your content plan for the content prompts for those 23 daily calls that you're going to get throughout the month, it's only $197. This is my birthday gift to you this year and I'm so excited to hold your feet to the fire and make you post every day about your business and get more clients. If you're down for a challenge and you want to join us, then you then go to weeniecast.com challenge. I can't wait to see you there. Now lastly, a rule that is going to save you a lot of frustration. It'll keep you from like the rage gremlin popping up in your mind all the time is how are you going to deal with online? Set up rules for engagement for how you're going to deal with trolls. They will show up in your comment section and you just don't want to let them win. You know, letting them win is getting pissed off at them. That's what they want. They, they sit there, you know, with their little keyboards, their greasy little fingers click clacking away thinking oh this is going to make them mad and they, they get off on it and don't let them do that. I want to give you full permission here. You own the delete button for comments on your stuff. You can delete stuff. You can block people. I know it feels really good to like go to bat with facts against them and a comment and like set them straight and educate them on how they're wrong to tell them that they're being a jerk. They love it. They love it when you do that. Don't give them the satisfaction. Delete and block. Delete and block. Delete and block. Unless you also have a little troll living in you and you get off on it too, then be my guest. Troll them right back. I promise you if you set up rules like these in your business and you stick to them, your life is going to be so much easier. You're going to make money easier. You're going to attract your clients easier. You are going to stay sane and a likable person that people actually want to spend time with. It's going to free up your time. It's going to free up your energy. You're going to be less of a miserable person on tough days because you're going to know that you have a standard operating procedure to deal with this stuff. You're far more likely to make more money. You're far more likely to attract your ideal clients. You're far more likely to be your brilliant self out there in the world who people want to spend more time with. I can't guarantee that because I don't know you and I don't know your circumstances. And it's gonna feel mean when you have these rules and you're sticking to them. It's gonna feel mean when you're talking to other people, and it's gonna feel mean to yourself. You're gonna feel like you're slacking, especially with limiting how many hours you're working in your business or walking away from something when it's hard. You're gonna feel like you're failing, like you're not working hard enough. When you take a deep breath, it's not true. You are working smart, not hard. You are using your head to save your feet. As my favorite mentor early on in my working career, when I was in college, Toni Guthrie used to say, when I was a cabana girl and I was running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to get drinks to everyone, use your head to save your feet. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income strategy call with me by going to weeniecast.com strategy. Strategy call. On this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams, and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of us and we can talk about different ways to work together, some hand lotion on, because that helps me think better. Obviously this is like one of my manifestation things, like this is really expensive hand lotion, but it smells so good. And so I treated myself to two really big bottles. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Join the weeniecast Hyper Focus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls. Turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals, and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses, and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month. It's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weenicast.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus or.