ADHD Entrepreneurs! Reject the 'Hustle Bro' Mentality for Sustainable Success

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'll be explaining why Bro Hustle Culture can be dangerous for you, the ADHD entrepreneur. Squirrel.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast.

Squirrel, when you think of Hustle Bro Culture, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Hey bro. For me it is the 5am Club. It is protein shakes, it is fist pumping, and all those really uncomfortable, cringe worthy Instagram reels where they're talking about how much money they make in their Amazon shop or on Etsy when they're obviously just screwing up the math. You know what I'm talking about? They go through the math of what it takes to get a custom T shirt made and shipped and how to list on Etsy and then they show you all the orders and they're like, that's pure cash. Not even factoring in the cost of.

The T shirt, the cost of printing.

The cost of shipping. And then on the back end, they're selling their course on how you can do it too. I'm of the opinion that there are some real evil perpetrators of Hustle Bro Culture. Hey bro. And then there are just some kind of innocent bystanders that get sucked into this vortex.

The problem with this kind of messaging is it makes the rest of us.

Feel like we're not doing enough. We're not working hard enough, we're not working long enough, we're not sweating enough, we're not punishing ourselves enough. And it puts everyone in this mindset of lack. I don't know if you've ever been on a diet. I can't imagine an adult human in this world who hasn't at least tried once. But what happens when you severely restrict the kinds of foods that you eat? When you cut out all of your favorites, all your sweets, French fries, sodas, alcohol, whatever it is that is your go to usually you fall off the wagon, you can stick to this restrictive diet for only so long. And then, as if you almost can't help it, you find yourself in the car, driving to the supermarket, and then magically you're in the frozen aisle in front of all the cases of ice cream. And then before you realize that, you're checking out with three different gallon tubs of your favorite flavors. Fast forward 15 minutes, you're at home, halfway through one of them and feeling like garbage. Now I want you to think about what the equivalent of this is in your business. For those of us with adhd, we have this expectation of ourselves that we can do 150% of the work every single day. Because when we get into hyper focus and we have a lot of dopamine in our systems, we can absolutely do 150 to 200%. That's what we have to give and we do it. We can work 14 hours straight now because we have ADHD. In those 14 hour days, we run through all of our dopamine and our bodies have a very hard time producing dopamine consistently. So the next day we can't do it and we feel like garbage. And the day after that we can't do it and we feel like garbage. And the day after we might have a little more dopamine in our system and we can do an eight hour day.

But at that point we're just catching.

Up on some of the stuff that we missed in the previous two days. I recently saw a LinkedIn friend of mine who made a post. I'm not going to name them because I don't want to call someone out. Where does this belief come from? This belief that we have to torment and sacrifice ourselves in order to get what we want? It comes from a really harmful family legacy that is passed down through generations. I like to call this poverty pride because a lot of us, most, I mean the vast majority of us really came from peasants. Let's be real. I don't have any royalty in my background. I'm sure you don't either. And if you do, then please go to weeniecast.com and scroll all the way down. Leave us a voicemail telling us about your ancestry. I'd be very interested to hear it. The vast majority of us, our families came from extreme poverty. They had to escape awful circumstances just to survive. They had to do backbreaking labor to be able to feed their families. And if I know anything about the human spirit, I know that the human spirit cannot exist and cannot survive believing that it is the downtrodden that there's no hope, that there's no strength within. The human spirit can only survive when it feels pride, when it feels like it's contributing something, even if that contribution is so small. So our grandparents and our great grandparents and our great great great grandparents, oftentimes you'd hear people brag about them and brag about the fact that they were able to feed 17 children by just growing three potatoes a year, a miraculous feat. And I'm not saying that that's not something to be proud of, right? But what got passed down from that whole messaging is that success, to have success, any form of it, from being able to feed your children to making millions of dollars a year, you have to submit yourself to breaking your back, you have to punish yourself. You have to sacrifice your happiness, your rest, any form of self care goes out the window. And at its heart, when you believe that this is what's required for you to be successful, what's ultimately going on is that you have this family belief that to be worthy of good things coming your way, you have to sacrifice everything that you love, including yourself. And that's up. It's also not true. We know from extreme dieting that when you restrict yourself, it doesn't go well. It's not consistent. If you want to live an expansive life, making lots of money, having lots of free time to yourself, having amazing, positive, generative relationships in your life, you have to live an expansive life. If you want expansive success in your business, you need to live expansively. And I'm not saying that you should go and buy a fancy car when you don't have the money for it. I'm not saying that you need to live a life of luxury, if that that's the kind of life you want to live, but don't live a life of poverty. In my Trauma of Money certification, there's several different kinds of money disorders that people suffer from. Now, included in these are hoarding, overspending, financial infidelity, where you lie to your partners about what you're spending or how much money you have. But another major one that we don't actually see as a society as a disorder is underspending. Underspending can be as damaging as overspending, as hoarding, as financial infidelity. And it truly is a trauma response. And it comes from this belief that there is never going to be enough for you. And I have some bad news. If you live your life like there's never going to be enough or that you have to break your back working as hard as humanly possible or inhumanly possible in order to get enough or to reach your goals. Guess what? There's never gonna be enough. And yes, you are going to have to work inhumane hours with inhumane effort to reach your goals. To take a page out of one of my hustle bro y but beloved friends who is aiming to do his first million dollar year next year, I too am aiming to do my first million dollar year in 2024, but I'm approaching it completely differently. My non negotiables to reach my first million seven figure year are that I'm going to sleep eight to nine hours a night on days where I didn't get a great night's sleep. I'm also going to commit to taking a nap. I commit to eating. And this is going to be really hard for me because I have ADHD and eating consistent meals is not always doable. So I'm not making this a non negotiable for myself, but it is going to be a strong intention to eat two to three well balanced meals per day. And let's be real, there will absolutely be several days at a time where I'm just eating leftover pizza and I'm gonna make that okay for my ADHD brain because sometimes that's just what we need. But overall, my commitment will be to eat healthy. I'm gonna spend at minimum an hour each day outside exercising my dog and playing with her and being with her and training her because she matters to me and I want to invest in that relationship and spend all the time I possibly can with her. I'm also going to commit to moving my body every single day for at least an hour. Now this could be an hour of strenuous exercise at the gym. It could also be an hour of me stretching while I'm watching my favorite show. It could also be taking a walk with a friend. All of it counts. But I know for my mind to be its most productive, my body has to be well taken care of. I'm also going to make a lot of time for my spirituality because living an expansive life is not just something that we do, it is something that we have to be as well. And whatever your belief system is, if you want to live an expansive life, you have to tap into what whatever higher powers you believe in because doing this is really hard. And I don't know if you have any experience with 12 step programs. I have several loved ones in my life who have struggled with alcoholism in their time here on earth and part of the Alcoholics Anonymous programming is to turn to God or whatever higher power you have. Because doing something this hard is hard to do alone when you don't feel like you have something bigger than you to turn to. And this is going to be the most surprising thing for you to hear. For me to reach my first seven figure year.

Ooh, 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, 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 hyperfocused all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus.

And this is going to be the most surprising thing for you to hear. For me to reach my first seven figure year, I commit to only working four to six focused hours per day, Monday through Friday. But Katie, what about the Hustle bros who are working 14 hour days? How are you going to keep up with them? Hey bro, shut up. And let me tell you, there's so much research on diminishing returns of work. Folks who work 35 hours a week get far more done than people who work 55 hours a week or more. Why is this? Because your brain is not designed to do high level work more than 35 hours a week. And if you're looking to build a seven figure empire, that's not like checking out groceries. It's not working on a production line. It's not mowing lawns. And I'm not putting those professions down. They are honorable. They pay the bills. But if you want to grow an empire, you need to have your brain working or operating at its best, most highest level. And your brain can only do that for four to six hours a day. As someone with adhd, you and I both know that we are lazy af. We can procrastinate like no one else, right? And the reason we're able to procrastinate and still succeed and still get good grades and still get the project done on time is because we find really creative ways to get away with it. We figure out the hack that cuts out 40% of the work, if not more. We don't waste our time. I mean, we do waste our time. Let's be real. We waste our time for weeks and weeks and weeks leading up to the deadline. But as soon as that deadline is fast approaching, we get it done. I had this mentor when I worked at thequassett, which is a beautiful resort on Cape Cod. If you ever go there and you have the money, I urge you to go there. It's a gorgeous experience. But Tony Guthrie was the assistant general manager when I worked there. And I idolized this man. I wanted to be him when I grew up. And I remember one summer I was a cabana girl and I was serving. I was serving the cabanas. And if you ever go there, the cabanas are on the other side of the pool from the bar. And there are only two entrances to get to the cabanas, and it's on either side. So literally, for me to go and service the cabanas, I would have to do a full lap around the pool, over to the furthest, most edge of the cabana stands, go up the stairs, talk to everyone in the cabanas, and then go around the other way around the pool to get back to the bar. I ran myself ragged for three days straight until Tony came up to me one day and he's like, katie, you're not using your head to save your feet. And I was like, I was sweating and I was tired, and I'm like, late with these drinks because it is.

A really high end resort, so you.

Have to get your drink. Like the. The service standards are really high, so we would have to get the drinks to the guests within about six minutes or something of them having ordered. And this was really hard when you had to walk that far to get drinks to everyone. And like, Tony, what are you talking about? And his response was, you're taking longer trying to get one cabana's stuff to them as fast as possible than if you were waiting and taking everyone's order at the same time, coming back, putting all the orders in, bringing them waters in one swoop, coming back, picking up the drinks, and then delivering them in one swoop. Instead, you're doing about 15 different passes and you're exhausted at the end of the day from watching you. Not like in a creepy way. He wasn't that way. But. And with this permission to take just a little bit longer, I ended up actually saving time. I ended up getting better tips because everyone was so happy with the service I gave them. I was Able to be more attentive to my guests. And also I wasn't as tired by the end of the day. Just as that worked for me as a cabana girl at the Wequasset during my summer in college. It works in your business too. And just like college aged me who is helping people in the cabanas and running herself raggedy, I couldn't see how to do this for myself. I needed someone to come in with an outside perspective and tell me how to do it better. Oftentimes when my clients come to me and they've successfully made tens of thousands of dollars in their business per year and are working really hard to make not enough money to live on, all they need is is an outside perspective. They need a business strategist to come in, eyeball the situation, see where they are using their feet too much, and help them make some shifts that will allow them to make a lot more money in a lot less time. This is something the bro e Hustle Culture guys are completely missing. Hey bro. And it's really bad news for them because here's the thing about building a seven figure business on working 80 hour weeks and only sleeping five hours a night. Once you build it, guess what that business is going to require? It's going to require you to work 80 hours a week and only sleep five hours a night. It's never going to let up unless you completely deconstruct it and start from scratch. I don't know about you, but I don't want to do that. I want to design my seven figure business to easily function with me only spending four to six hours a day on it. I want it to be able to run even if I go on vacation for two or three weeks.

But to grow a business to that.

Point where that's possible, you have to design it for that to be possible. And the best part is that the bro y Hustle culture guys who have this seven figure goal for 2024, if neither one of us reaches our goal, I'm not going to be burned out like them. You know, if they don't hit seven figures and they've completely given up their life and sacrifice their health and their sleep and their sanity, it's going to feel really shitty. Because that's their only metric for success for the year is money. Whereas if I miss the mark, I'm going to be happy and I'm going to be healthy and I'll be really proud of the time that I've spent with my dog and hopefully she'll be way better trained by the end of next year, by the way, I'll have great relationships. I may have even met someone who knows and I'm not going to have to recover at the end of the year. But the best part is that if I do hit my goal, think of what more is possible the next year. Because mentally, emotionally, physically, I will be perfectly set up to do something even bigger the year after. And I would love to hear from you. If there's an aspect of Hustle Bro culture that you are completely rejecting, what is it? If you don't mind, go to www.weeniecast.com, scroll all the way to the bottom and leave us a voicemail and tell us what is the bit that you're.

Rejecting and what are you going to.

Do that's completely contrary to it in order to reach your big goals? And likewise, if you are running yourself ragged in your business, if you are hustling and it is not paying off and you cannot see a more elegant way to use your head to save your feet and you know you need some help, then I invite you to book a Generate Income Strategy call with me. This is a 30 minute call where we will get real about your goals and your dreams and what is actually getting in the way of you reaching them on your own. And if it makes sense, then we.

Can talk about different ways to work together.

And if it doesn't make sense, I'm going to send you in the direction of some resources that can help you. Hey bro. Bro.

Bro.

Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.

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