ADHD Social Media 'teaching': how to balance teaching and gatekeeping for your growth!

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, we're going to talk about the three different types of value that you can bring to clients on social media. Squirrel Squirrel Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. You know that classic what if question? If there was a time machine, what year would you go back to? I used to answer this thinking about, like, what clothes I get to wear. You know, like, what beautiful costumes and dresses would I get to, like, try on and then come back to the comfort of modern technology. But in recent years, I've realized that if I went back in time, I'd be screwed. I wouldn't know how to start a business back then. I wouldn't know how to make money. I wouldn't know how to help other people start their businesses without the gift that is social media. I know social media gets an awful rap because a lot of people struggle with it when it comes to their mental health, and a lot of folks with ADHD struggle with it when it comes to their mental health. But it is this massive gift. If you are running a business and getting clients online, there is no other way in which you could get in front of hundreds of thousands of human beings without paying a penny. Social media allows you to do this. I think that a lot of new business owners are terrified of social media, not just because they're freaked out and worried that they will actually succeed beyond their wildest dreams. One of the things that my clients often complain to me about is how slowly they're growing on social media. They'll come to me having 500 followers on LinkedIn and maybe 200 followers on Instagram, and they start posting things that are specific to their niche. And slowly but steadily as they're consistent, they see those numbers creep up and they see engagement increasing on their posts, and they see comments from people who are their ideal client, and they start Getting bookings from people who are their ideal client, but still the number of followers is not as high as they want it to be. Their posts aren't going viral. And I want to remind you, that's a good thing. You don't want to go viral. You want to create content that resonates with your ideal client and no one else. And if you want to hear more about all the reasons why you don't want to go viral, then go and listen to episode 37 where I dive deeper into this. But imagine you post something that everyone likes. You get hundreds of thousands of comments and likes and millions of views. Imagine the amount of management that you have to do on the back end of that. And you don't even have to imagine it. You can go and see the amount of work that these influencers have to do on all of their posts, the amount of hate and trolls that they attract. Even now, you're already busy. You're already running a business. You're trying to get clients. You are trying to keep your eye on the prize of bringing in income. Imagine all the extra work that goes along with having a viral post. Your goal should not be going viral. Your goal should be creating content that speaks only to your ideal clients. Now, this is where a lot of people also get freaked out, right? So you're freaked out about creating content that fails. You're freaked out about creating content that's too successful, that makes you too big too fast. And then you get all tripped up about what kind of content should I share? And I know everyone is out there saying that you need to share value. And what the does that mean? Are you gonna be Babs? Babs is this adorable grandma on LinkedIn and TikTok and she shares the most helpful house hacks. Your mom ever tell you the do's and don'ts of loading a dishwasher? Here's two don'ts before you start loading. Three, don't rinse. Not only will you save water, but the detergent will have something to adhere to. Don't put things in the dishwasher that don't belong there, like wood objects. Or you put kitchen knives. Time to load. All of your fragile items belong on the top shelf. Just nestle them between the plum. But she's not getting clients. She's creating massive value. But that's not the kind of value you need to be creating. So today I want to talk about the three different kinds of value that are going to resonate with your ideal clients and how you ensure that the content in Those categories actually does lead people to work with you. Now, one of the problems about giving away value is a lot of folks tend to give away too much. I can't tell you how often when I'm doom scrolling on Instagram or TikTok, I see someone share their 10 steps to doing something and instead of commenting or liking it, I hit that save button. I think, okay, I'm definitely going to come back to this and I'm going to do what they say and I never do. And guess what? Because they've just given me so much information, they've given me all the steps. There's no mystery of how I'm going to do this thing. I don't go to their profile, I don't look up how I can work with them. I don't go to their website and download the free PDF that they have that actually gives those steps. Instead, I don't have to. They just gave it all to me. So there's this beautiful balance that you want to have between being in teacher mode, where you're sharing helpful information to your audience, and being in gatekeeper mode, where you're leaving a little bit to mystery. A lot of my clients, when I tell them not to be sharing everything that they know, when you first start out and you're sharing stuff that's helpful, but not a hundred percent helpful, it can feel really gross, right? Because you know that you're not giving people everything that they need to be successful. You know that you're giving them half of the recipe but not the instructions. And yes, this can be super gross when it's done unethically. And let's talk about what that looks like when it's unethical. You're training someone on something and you make it sound way more complicated than it is. You tell them you know the first three steps when there's only four, and you make it sound as though that fourth step is this incredibly hard, complicated thing that if they want to learn it, they have to spend $500 on your course. That's not ethical. We're not doing that here. What we are doing is we're showing them the strategy of how they can achieve something so that they understand that it's possible for them. And we're very cleanly pointing to if you want further help here, if you want action steps, if you want someone to hold your hand or do it for you, get in touch, book a call with me, download my free PDF, sign up for my course, because in that asset, I will walk you through exactly what you need to do now, if you did give it all to them, what's going to happen ultimately is just what I described when I doom scroll is they're going to save your post, they're never going to look at it again. And because they're never going to look at it again, they're never going to take action. So it actually wasn't helpful. It scratched the itch of what they thought they needed to know, but didn't inspire them to take further action. I want to remind you that action begets action. So if someone sees your post and it's talking about how they can be successful on Twitter and then it's pointing them to if you want to be successful on Twitter, here's your top three tips if you need more instruction. Go and download my templates for the best tweets you can write for your industry. Right. Them just going from reading that post to clicking the link to downloading the thing to checking their email, to reading your PDF, that already starts a chain reaction where they will continue to be in action. Hopefully now you'll be able to stay in touch with them better because you have their email now. You can prompt them, you can encourage them, you can remind them of how successful that they can be on Twitter. I'm using Twitter. I'm not. I'm not really successful on Twitter at all. I don't know why I decided to do that. Maybe because I need this consultant in my life. I need to see someone on Instagram or on TikTok who can tell me about Twitter and how I can use it. And if you're this person, please message me. This is the Weeniecast where I just get consultants, where I get all the business people that I need for my business Anyway, can you see how that's far more helpful to someone than you just handing them a whole bunch of instructions that they never use. So balancing teaching mode with gatekeeping mode, know that you're going to overshare sometimes and know that you're going to under share sometimes and it's going to take time for you to practice. What content do you want to share that has that right amount of mystery that will get people to go to your page to check you out, to download your thing and sign up for your stuff. Bypassing that and just continuing to throw information at people over and over again is not going to be helpful for your business or for them. So when we think about giving value, teaching people about stuff that you do is the first thing that we think about. The other thing that people worry about when they are told that they need to go and give value and teach people in social media about what they do is okay, well that's all well and good, but people pay me to teach them this stuff. Aren't the people who hire me going to get mad when they see that I'm sharing everything that they're paying for for free on my social media? And yeah, some of them will get mad. That's why you want to gatekeep some stuff. You want to give people just enough information that they understand that high level strategy. Just enough to be dangerous. I took a coding course once upon a time in San Francisco before I got into sales for the tech industry. I thought that learning how to code HTML and CSS was going to be like the right way for me to break into tech because I'd understand coders. I was so out of touch with the tech industry that I thought that salespeople actually know this stuff. They don't. So I signed up for this boot camp. It was awful. The people who ran it, they lied about who the teachers were and their experience and yada yada yada. They basically hired all of their old students because their students couldn't get jobs. And by the way, yes, of course I led a revolt and most of us got our money back. But anyway, they hated me at the end. Anyway, in the course, the reason I bring this up is because in the course, yes, they would teach us how to do stuff, but mostly they were teaching us how to Google how to do stuff. They were teaching us what questions to ask. And I didn't realize before that course, before that boot camp how valuable it is to just know the right question to ask, to just know who's the right person with the right qualifications to go to with this problem as you are creating content and providing value and teaching your audience about stuff that you do, just giving them enough so they understand what questions they need to ask to take themselves further, that is super valuable to them. If they were going to do it on their own anyway, they're still going to do it on their own. It doesn't matter what you share, but often if you've been helpful enough to them and gotten them to a certain level of success and then they get stuck, guess who they're going to go back to? They're going to go back to you because you got them there whether you knew it or not. I recently got this beautiful DM from this woman in New Zealand, Laura Bradley, who just started a business. It's had this beautiful launch and she messaged me and I honestly thought she was trying to do a sales pitch, but she told me that two and a half years ago or something, she kept seeing this tagline on LinkedIn and it was the thing that motivated her to actually start her business. And that tagline was my tagline. Stop being a weenie and start your business already. Now, I have never spoken to this person in my life. She was not at all on my radar, and yet me just sharing constantly so that she could see my tagline over and over and over and over again, that created value for her, that motivated her, and I'm so delighted that it did. This is the beauty of starting a business where you are advertising on social media. You really don't know the impact that you're going to have around the world. And literally around the world, this woman is on the opposite side of the planet from me. And something I said helped her on her journey. She doesn't ever have to be a client of mine. I would love her to be a client of mine. I'm not saying that, but she doesn't ever have to be a client of mine. And I'm so happy I got to help. This is the beauty of social media. This is why when people say, oh, social media is bad for your mental health, I actually really disagree. I think social media can be so healthy for you because it provides this level of connection that we wouldn't have otherwise. We live in a global community, and how special is that? Think of how we get to empathize with people in different parts of the world in a way that we would never be able to before. So teach. Yes. Give people enough. Yes. But do not forget to invite them in the door. Don't forget to create a little mystery like your grandma probably told you. Like, you don't want to show all your skin. Who's going to buy the cow if you give the milk away for free? Right. The same for your business people. And to be clear, to be clear, I'm not slut shaming anyone. Sleep with as many people as you want. I'm just giving business advice here. My mom's going to hate that part. Okay, so that's one way that you can give value. Another way that you can give value is literally just empathizing with your ideal clients. I just did it there. I don't know if you noticed it. I named a bunch of different ways that people worry about posting to social media. They worry about their content, they worry about the reaction, lack of, and too much you showing that you understand your ideal clients a builds an incredible amount of trust with you. Because if you know their problems and their worries and their deepest, darkest fears, that, well, then people will start betting that you know how to solve everything for them without you having to spell it out, without you having to prove it. The other side of empathizing with your audience. 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 hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperFocus the other side of empathizing with your audience is it normalizes everything that they're worried about. Everyone and their mother is worried that their problems are so unique that no one else has experienced their fear before. And the worst part of, like, feeling like you're all alone with your problems is like, okay, well, there's no one who can help me then. It's isolating. I was recently talking to a friend who was describing assuming that they're always the bad person. And I had never heard someone else admit that before. And it was so freeing for me because I have gone through this lifelong journey of trying to realize that I'm not actually the bad person. And I'm revealing a little bit here, but, you know, I think you're safe to share this with. I've struggled with being a codependent throughout my life, and I think this. This is kind of related to adhd. I find a lot of my friends and clients and people in my world who have ADHD also struggle with codependency, because codependency is when you prioritize other people's comfort and happiness over your own. Doesn't that sound a hell of a lot like mirroring as someone with ADHD or who's neurodivergent? We're constantly masking and mirroring to make other people comfortable so that they don't realize that we're different. So here's this friend admitting to me something that I've been terrified to ever admit to anyone else that I always assume that I'm the bad person in situations. And I didn't realize that we were allowed to admit that about ourselves. And it was so freeing. And this is recently. This is like, literally in the last month or so that a friend admitted this to me. And I remember going to my therapist and saying, oh, my God, did you realize that, like, not everyone thinks that they're the bad person in every situation? And her response was something along the lines of, yeah, Katie, that's what we've been working on for the last two years. I want you to think about this in terms of marketing. If someone on my Instagram feed or on my TikTok feed admitted that about themselves, or at least normalized that, a lot of people feel that way, and I saw it, how relieved I would feel that I was not the only one. Now, you can offer that relief to your audience and your people as well. You can just name what are the things that they're frustrated with, what are the things that they're afraid of, what are the beliefs that they have about themselves that are keeping them from getting what they want? That's value. No one wants to go to the doctor to check to get a mole checked out and have the doctor freak out as if it's the biggest, scariest mole they've ever seen in their life? No, you want to go in and say, hey, Doc, I have this mole. I'm concerned it could be problematic. Can we look at it? And you want the doctor to look at it and go, oh, eh, could be something. Might not be something we don't know, but let's do a little biopsy and we can cross that bridge when we have more information. But I don't think it's going to be anything. Right. You want them to be a little blase about it. If they're too freaked out, you're gonna get freaked out. And that's a long wait for test results. What do they say about being on a plane? Like, you don't have to worry if the stewardesses are still smiling, but as soon as they stop smiling, get worried. Buckle up. Your clients are out there, they're living their lives, and they're all in their own heads. And imagine the bond that you'll create with them if you just call out what they're thinking already and make it normal. Because if you're able to name it, it means that they're not alone. It means that they're not this freak with these unique Problems that have no solution to them. You're out there and you obviously work with a bunch of other weirdos like them who have the same problems. It's like you're the Mole doctor. You look at all the moles. This ain't your first mole, and it's not your millionth. It's your gazillionth. And you're a pro, right? You want your client seeing you in that light. Maybe not that light. The Mold doctor doesn't sound sexy at all. But you can find a more alluring way to frame yourself up. I'm sure I'll leave that to you. Now, lastly, as we're talking about value, remember, you're valuable. Your story is valuable, even if it's boring. As I recently did this survey with a bunch of new business owners and a question that kept popping up is, how do I tell a compelling story about myself and my business that will make people be interested in me and my business? And this question comes from people who lived a fairly benign life, right? And good for them. I don't want them to have anything too exciting. Like that's usually that something bad happened, right? But if you've lived a normal life, an insignificant life up until now, like, there's not a whole lot that you can make a story about. Or so you think. If you're just an average Jill and you go about your days and all of a sudden you just realize, this isn't what I want my life to be, and you decide to make a change. And then there's a sequence of events from there that leads to you living a way better life than you had before. That gives hope to the person who's reading that story, who's also an average Jill, who's living a fairly average life and just wants to change. Now, if you're listening to this podcast, I. I will bet you $5 that somewhere in your house you have a self help book. You have something that's personal development, I guarantee you. Now, I challenge you. After you listen to this podcast, I want you to go and pick one up off the shelf because I know you have more than one. And I want you to read the introduction or the first chapter. 95% of the time, the first chapter of the introduction are about the author. Up their life royally. You might think that that's where they, they build all their credentials and they tell you how impressive they are and how smart they are and wow, look at me and everything I've accomplished. That comes later. They need to show you that they Started off worse than where you are now to give you hope so that by the time you get to the point where they're trying to convince you that you can do anything, you actually believe them because they're far more credible in your eyes because they came from a worse situation than you did. And remember, worse is relative. The beautiful thing about being a business owner with ADHD is you've had a gazillion different interests throughout your life. You have gotten hyper focused and so obsessed with random topics and then you've moved on. I'm sure you've changed your career a couple times and you've probably changed who you are a couple times. Every single time you've changed something that is a story in itself, that's something that your ideal clients can relate to. It's not something to hide. One of my biggest fears when I was younger, when I was working for other people, is how do I present how many jobs I've had so that I wouldn't look like I was a career jumper. I didn't stay in a job for more than a year and a half. And a year and a half was a really long time for me to stay in a job. I would get into a job. And here's the thing about sales. You're constantly talking about the thing you're selling, obviously, right? That is the conversation you're literally paid to have over and over and over and over again. Well, it was interesting for the first seven months. By the eighth month, I don't want to talk about that thing anymore. By the ninth month, I'm talking about other stuff. By the tenth month, I'm on a pip because I haven't sold anything in two months. And then by the 12th month, I'm breaking records again because I'm so excited that this is my last month in this job and I'm moving on to something else. It's more exciting. You have these stories and I don't want you hiding them because in each stage of your life, everything that you've gone through, every hyper focus you've had, every job that you've had, every success and failure, you picked up skills that make you better at what you do today. The world we live in has told you over and over and over again that not sticking with things is a failure on your part. And I don't think so. Someone on LinkedIn today shared about, when you're looking for a job, you really have to look at what your transferable skills are. And I got to thinking about, you know, what was the thing that I did that helped me the most in growing my business. Now, of course, learning how to sell and learning how to market obviously is super helpful. But the thing that I find has been most impactful in the day to day running of my business is the teaching skills that I learned when I taught knitting. I used to be a knitting teacher in San Francisco. If you didn't know that, now you do. And the funny thing about teaching knitting, I mean, you're literally taking string and two sticks and making fabric, right? It's complicated. It requires some dexterity in your hands. And when you're learning, people learn different ways. Some people learn by it being explained to them. Some people learn by it being shown to them. Literally, there would be some students who I'd have to, like, bear hug from behind and hold their hands and guide their hands. Some students needed metaphors. They needed to be able to visualize stuff and have little rhymes. Teaching that stuff every week made me so much better at teaching my clients how they can run their businesses. I mean, that's a really boring story right there, right? I just told you, I taught knitting. Knitting is so boring. But it positions me now as someone who is really good at teaching. If I can make knitting relevant to my business and useful for marketing. You can make anything boring about your life interesting to your clients, I promise you. Quick story. So I'm going to be in Edinburgh for part a few days of my trip. And this guy had reached out to me a little while ago, and he's just south of there, but still in Scotland, and his name is Gary McManus. And so I reached out to him and I was like, hey, Gary, you know, I'm going to be in Edinburgh for a couple nights in August. Would love to meet up with you and anyone else who's named McManus. And so I think we're organizing a McManus meetup. 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 $1.99 a month, 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 weeniecast 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. Winnie Cast for Winners is a show that's worth every penny for entrepreneurs who want to succeed. Subscribe now and start enjoying the benefits from yourself. Join the Weenicast 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 of just $77 per month, it's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast.com hyperfocus all one word, that's weeniecast.com hyperFocus.