ADHD and authenticity: the power of using vulnerability online

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. 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 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 in this episode, I'm going to tell you why you absolutely need to share your imperfections on social media. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel One of the biggest challenges that I have to take a lot of my clients through is helping them get over this idea of that for them to go online and get clients and build their business that they have to be perfect. Because that is just not true. One of the best ways that you can build trust with your potential and ideal clients is by outing yourself as the beautifully imperfect person that you are. One of the platforms that I train a lot of my clients on is LinkedIn, and everyone thinks that to get business business on LinkedIn you have to show up and you have to be an expert and you have to use all the fancy words and you have to show people how smart you are and how much you know about what you do, when actually that is the thing that is going to limit you the most. Whenever you're showing up in a place where your ideal clients are hanging out, the goal is not to show them how smart you are, it's to open the door for them to show up in your comments and appear smart themselves. One of the best ways that you can do this is by going onto social media and posting about the struggles that you encounter in your day to day life. Now this could be everything from you're that person who always forgets that you put your coffee on the roof of your car and drives away. So much so that maybe the cement outside of your house is stained brown because of all the coffee you've spilled there and perhaps even the sidewalk in front of your house has little chips of cement missing because of all the metal to go coffee mugs that have gone flying from the top of your car and hit the ground. Sharing about that level of imperfection is really relatable. It allows for people to feel like they know you, like they would know a friend or a neighbor. Now, you can also out yourself for bigger imperfections. How you're screwing up in your business, your divorce, struggles that you've had with addiction in the past. Now, of course, everyone's terrified. Well, if I share that stuff, it's gonna scare people away from me. Good. You want to scare people away from you. Thankfully, I've never struggled with addiction in my past, but if I had, I know for damn certain I would not want to have a bunch of people as clients who would find out potentially later down the line after hiring me that I struggled with addiction at some point in my life and then be like, whoa, I feel like this isn't a good fit, and back away from me. Then I want to scare them away up front. A lot of folks who've grown up with adhd, we have this level of imposter syndrome that is just unheard of because we feel constantly like we're just faking being good at stuff. We're faking having our together because there are so many ways in which we have had to fake being neurotypical, to pass as being okay and being one with the rest of the class and being productive like the rest of our coworkers. And let me tell you, just because you're not like everyone else doesn't mean that you're imperfect. It doesn't mean that you're broken. It doesn't mean that you're faking it. There's that saying, fake it till you make it, and people get all riled up when they hear it, because when they hear it, they think of, like, that con artist who's pretending competence, and they're going around saying that they can do stuff, and then they, like, outsource it or they figure it out on the fly, and sometimes they drop the ball. Now, for ADHDers, that is not us. We're not faking our competence, okay? We are faking confidence. The difference here is the P and the F. Wait, that's not how you spell confidence. P, E, and F. I. Right. How do you spell confidence? I don't even know how to spell this word. Apparently, I'm over here talking about confidence all day long. I don't even know confidence. On my latest episode, I owned that. I was literally having an ADHD meltdown in my business, and I'm still in the process of coming back from that. So I'm actually recording this episode right after the last episode where I owned that I'm in the middle of an ADHD meltdown. And let me tell you, I would not feel comfortable owning that to all of you if I didn't know that you were a safe place for this. And the reason I know that you are a safe place for this is because I have been sharing my imperfect self for years, and I have never had a negative backlash. Every single time I have shared personally about how imperfect I am, about how I'm screwing things up about all this stuff, I not only get people sharing back with me, you know, how they struggle with the same thing, or they have a loved one who did that once and, like, they wanted me to know that I was supported and cared about and all this stuff. These beautiful, beautiful responses. But in some cases, I even get clients from it, right? Because the people who. The people who I work with the best see that I'm not perfect, and it gives them permission to work with me and not expect themselves to be perfect. Right? That's the gift that you give your potential clients when you show up and you show that you don't have it all together. You allow for them to not have to be this idealized, perfect version of themselves when they work with you. An interesting metric that my producer shared with me today is that the amount of outreach that I get from you all, DMs on Instagram, DMs on LinkedIn, emails telling me about an episode that really hit home for you, or that you appreciate the podcast, or that I normalize something for you, that that kind of outreach is absolutely unheard of in the podcasting world. Now, this blows my mind because every single time I get a message from one of you and you tell me that you enjoy the podcast or that it impacted you in some way, like if you send me a message, you know, I respond right back. You know that I am so delighted that this podcast gets to be that for you. And I genuinely believe it's because I come on here and I am not concerned with being perfect. And it gives you permission to also not be perfect back at me. I want to bring this back to social media because this is going to be so impactful for you in your business as you are putting yourself out there and building your personal brand and marketing what it is that you do, Right? Usually people think that the biggest metric for success is how many likes and comments you get telling you how brilliant you are and how much money you make on the back end. Now, the last one is absolutely very important. You want to be getting clients from what you're posting online, but when you're sharing personally, when you're sharing about how imperfect you are, the goal is not to be told how perfect you are in the comments. The goal is to get other people to share back. The goal is to tell the story about how much your grandmother meant to you and the special bond you had. And like the funny little activities used to do with her when you were a kid that meant so much to you that you wish you had cherished more in the moment. And to look down in the comments and see everyone else also sharing about their grandmother, that is a bond. When you're making friends with someone, you're not just sharing your resume at them and having them be like, wow, you seem really confident at Excel spreadsheets. Hmm. Like, that's not a friendship. A friendship is, you know, here's this fight I had with my mom once, and oh, my God, we didn't talk for three weeks. And them sharing back the difficulties that they have in their relationship with their mother, Right? That's where trust is built. When you're able to build that level of trust with people on the Internet who are interacting with your brand and potentially becoming clients, that's when you take people from not only being strangers on the Internet or followers to being actual friends and whether or not they ever become your client. It is so much easier for someone to go from being a friend of yours to a super fan who promotes you and refers business to you and celebrates you than it is to take just a simple old follower who thinks you share some useful information from time to time. And as I describe this, I want you to think about your best friend, the person who you talk to the most, the person who you go to for advice. Are they perfect? I want you to list, like, the five ways in which they kind of suck. And yet, if they have something cool going on in their life, say they're a musician and they have a show, or they've started selling their art, or maybe they started a business. I bet you are going to be the first person to go out there and shout from the rooftop about how amazing they are and how everyone needs to go and check them out because you are their friend. You have so much trust and caring with them. You know more than just their resume. You know more than what they're an expert at. You knowing the five plus ways in which they kind of suck doesn't take away from all the ways you know that they're incredible in what they do, even if you're not even the ideal client for them. Even if you don't even like the type of music that they make, you're still going to be a massive fan of theirs. That's the power of going out onto social media, in your marketing, in your email list, and being imperfect and just showing who you actually are and what you struggle with. And if you want to start a podcast about it too, I highly recommend it. Now, the thing to just be really conscious of, if you have ADHD especially, is that, oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, 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 weeniecast.com.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus now, the thing to just be really conscious of if you have ADHD especially, is that you have rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, more likely than not. So sharing something super, super vulnerable onto social media and potentially getting any backlash is going to feel super scary for you. And that's okay. You don't actually have to share anything that's super vulnerable. Like I said, you can share about how you regularly forget that you put your coffee on top of your car and you drive away with it. I used to do this with my lunch. I can't tell you how many times I would get to work and I'd be looking for the Tupperware that I had, like, my leftovers from dinner the night before. And I'd realize that I had put it on top of my car as I was putting my coffee in the car and putting my bag in the car and, like, forgotten about it. I lost so many Tupperwares in the parking lot of my apartment building. I, like, surprise. The maintenance department, like, didn't start ticketing me for littering because I'd find them in the bushes. You know, after a while, they started disappearing on me. And I'm convinced that one of my neighbors, like, figured out that I was, like, dropping my really nice Tupperware somewhere and was like, cool, free Tupperware I'm just going to empty it out and throw it in the dishwasher. It's a very expensive habit. But you can share something silly like that that people wouldn't know unless they were friends with you. And that still counts as something that will build trust, right? Because when I share something silly like that, I imagine. Actually, I don't even imagine this. I know some of you were in your own head thinking that you did some version of that. Also, there's some mistake that you make very often that maybe your friends kind of tease you for, or maybe your family is relentless about. This morning I was at my mom's house and I walk into the room and she has all of the jars that she has used that she has gotten product out of for like the last five years on the kitchen table. And she starts asking me, katie, would you like some jars? And I was like, no, no, mom, I'm good. Like, I don't need any jars. And she's like, are you sure? Because this is a really good one and this is other one is really good. And I just have too many of them. I have to get rid of some of them. But like, I don't want them to go to waste. Would you like some? And I literally, I started videoing her and I'm probably not going to share this because she would murder me for this. But, like, this is the kind of shit that I make fun of my mom for. And if she were to go onto social media and share about how her daughter makes fun of her for saving jars, like, there'd be so many people in the comments talking about the things that their kids make fun of them for. It's not something that you're going to get massively rejected for, is my point. You're allowed to share the light stuff as well and have that count. You don't have to risk getting massively rejected by the whole world for sharing something that is super shameful and close to you. Okay? So the very first author that I wrote when I started reading self help books was Brene Brown. Daring Greatly. And she talks about building trust with people. She was talking about her daughter and how her daughter came home from school one day and was heartbroken that one of her friends had told a secret to the rest of the class. And she, she recounted how she had explained to her daughter that building trust was kind of like collecting marbles. So, like, when someone shows you that they're trustworthy, you put a marble in their jar. And as soon as you have enough marbles in that jar to see, like, wow, there's a lot of evidence that someone is trustworthy with this. Then you can start sharing vulnerable information with them. You get to do the same thing with your audience. You get to give them opportunities to show that they are safe around one little topic and then another little topic, then a slightly bigger topic and then a slightly different topic. And you get to notice how they respond. You get to notice how they respond differently when you share it differently. And you get to decide when your cutoff point is when something is too personal, too vulnerable. You're not going to go there. It's all within your control. Now, there might be some of you who have some real dark and twisty stuff, and that's really the only thing that you think of when you think of sharing vulnerably. Like, you don't have any goofy stuff that feels like the lighter version of this. And I just want to give you full permission. You get to share any part of you that you want. But I want to caution you, share the scars and not the wounds. There's this level of caretaking that can show up in the comment section of your post when you're sharing something that is obviously unhealed, obviously unprocessed. And there's nothing more cringy than sharing something vulnerably online and then getting a couple dozen DMs from people who are well meaning, but they're checking in on you like, oh, honey, are you okay? Do you need some support right now? Da, da, da. Like, oh, God, go away. It might have been Glennon Doyle. I think she was talking about is someone who has written a couple memoirs and published them. And no, it wasn't her. Who was it? Okay, I'm the queen of referencing things that I don't remember who said it or in what context. I heard it. There's a TikTok. It was an article in a book. Is it an audible book? But somewhere I heard someone talk about the art of writing a memoir and how sometimes people write memoirs and they write it to process all the feelings. And then when they release it, people actually can't read these books. They are literally transferring trauma through these books. So they're sharing the wound and not the scar with you. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that for you because it's not going to feel good. Like baring your soul in that way to people who, if they react badly to it, it's going to impact you further. Right. But like, that is your Journal entry. If you have dark and twisty stuff, as they say in Grey's Anatomy, then I urge you to start journaling about it. I urge you to start processing through it with a therapist. I urge you to start, like, really delving into, like, your own process of working through it. Because let me tell you, as someone who shares her scars a lot online, there's nothing more gratifying than being able to share something that used to activate you, used to trigger you so much, and sharing it and not feeling anything about it, not feeling scared, not feeling hurt again, but also seeing people show up in the comments and be like, oh, my God, thank you. I needed to hear that there was another side to this. I needed to hear that this is just a temporary experience that I'm going through right now and that on the other side, it won't be as heavy. In a way, this podcast is that right? There are a lot of folks right now getting diagnosed with ADHD for the first time later in life, and so they have lived their whole lives thinking that they are broken in some way. And I'm so happy that I've created a space where I get to share. You're actually not broken. This is just how your brain works differently because it normalizes the experience for them. I wouldn't be able to do this podcast if I were still in that mindset of, wow, there must be something wrong with me, right? This podcast is a scar and not a wound. Well, last episode was kind of still a wound, but, you know, for the most part, we're sharing scars here. And if you haven't listened to the last episode, I literally go into the current ADHD meltdown that I'm experiencing my business right now. I highly recommend it. I think I actually have this whole take on bragging. I don't think bragging is bad. I think when we think of bragging, it's the bragging that isn't actually bragging. It's rubbing stuff in other people's faces. That's not bragging. That's just being an. When we're bragging from, like, an energetically clean place, it's actually just like. Like thanking the universe for everything we've gotten and just saying universe, I would love more of this, please. Thank you. Squirrel. Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you struggling to stay focused and organized while juggling a million tasks? Are you looking for ways to improve your productivity but finding it hard to stay motivated? Then you need to get access to my weeniecast for winners show. That's exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I know you might be thinking I've tried everything to stay on task and nothing works. But I'm enjoying the advice I'm getting here on the weeniecast and let me tell you, I'm delighted to be able to help you and thousands of listeners just like you, my friend. But the weeniecast for Winners podcast is next level and I'd hate for you to miss out on it. For just 199amonth, Weeniecast for Winners delivers in depth and actionable advice that's specifically designed for entrepreneurs, including those with adhd, whether diagnosed or suspected. I'll talk you through how to increase your sales conversions, keep your mindfulness on point, and even offer practical tips that can help you be more productive and successful in your business, all while catering to your unique needs of being an entrepreneur who might be struggling with adhd. With winicast for Winners, you'll get practical tips and strategies that you can use to drive your business forward without the frustrations and setbacks that often come with adhd. So if you're ready to start seeing real Results, subscribe to Winniecast for winners today at weenicast.com forward/winners for just 199amonth, you'll gain access to the valuable insights and strategies that can take your business to the next level. Weeniecast for Winners is a show that's worth every penny for entrepreneurs who want to succeed. Subscribe now and start enjoying the benefits for yourself. Join the weeniecast hyper focused 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.