As an ADHD entrepreneur do you need more fun in your business?

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. In this episode, we're going to talk you through why you need to have more fun. For fun's sake. For sake. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the weeniecast. Here's the story of something that never actually happened. My friend Laura, Laura Bernard, I met in Denver this past year. It was a whole LinkedIn networking thing. We quickly became business besties and we chat fairly often. Anyway, towards the end of the year, we decided we wanted to do like a whole manifestation live where we would go through and kind of organize all of our goals for 2024. And we do it on a live. We make it a lot of fun. And she had this brilliant idea that we would do it as bingo cards. So instead of just having list of like goals that you check off and like cross off throughout the year, it would be like a year long game of bingo. And if you're familiar with bingo, you have to have five categories, right? B I N G O. We were, you know, trying to come up with our five categories of what we wanted to focus on and so work, Obviously that's a category. Money, Great. Yes. That's another category for goals that we want to hit. Health was the third category. Working out, eating healthy, being our best selves, all that jazz. But then we couldn't figure out any other categories and we spent a good 20 minutes on the phone trying to figure out like what we both did for fun because we don't really do anything for fun. We do business stuff. And this is one of the pitfalls of having ADHD and being so excited and hyper focused and obsessed with what it is that you do for work, is that your work becomes your fun. But at a certain point it kind of stops being the fun thing that you do. It stops being the hobby that you do in addition to your corporate job. And it just, it becomes your job. It becomes, you know, how you support yourself. And there's a lot of pressure on that. And so I think we settled on we weren't going to do bingo, we were just going to do Bing because we couldn't come up with that fifth category. It just, it wasn't landing and it's like we didn't want to give ourselves goals that we weren't actually excited for. But then of course, I got sick. I had Covid between Christmas and New Year's, and we didn't do it, so it didn't actually happen. So you wouldn't have seen this live ever. But it triggered this conversation that I've been having with myself over the last month around, am I boring? Like, how? Like, is this what I want to do with my life? You know, like all the existent stuff. Walking my dog, cooking meals, which I do enjoy cooking. Working on my business, which I love. It is something that brings me so much joy and inspiration, and I'm very passionate about it. Doing this podcast, for example. I love doing this podcast. And I thought back to when I considered myself the most fun, and it was really when I worked in corporate, it was when I worked in sales, and I was doing well in pretty much all the facets of my life. And there's a difference between working for a company and working for yourself, obviously. And when it comes to fun, it's that you can walk away from your work for the weekend. You can leave work at work for the most part. You know, you might have a couple of thoughts about, I need to get that done on Monday. But you're not responsible for everything, right? You get to go and have little adventures, do things that you really enjoy, and really just go and live life in your spare time. And that changes when you become a business owner. When you're a business owner, every moment you're awake and mostly conscious, you're thinking about stuff you should be doing in your business. And I know I'm not alone when I say I fall into the trap of thinking of fun things to do, but then making it a work thing, because I make the fun thing into content. You know, carving pumpkins, that's content. Going to a museum, that's content. Cooking something for the first time, that's content. Trying to get my dog to go swimming with me when she really doesn't want to go swimming. Content. Although you're never going to see that video anyway. So instead of actually having fun, you make the fun things into more work, which is not the point of having fun. Like, let's talk about the benefits of having fun. You know, a it's fun. Like it brings you joy. Joy is valuable. I think as a society, especially in western culture, we don't creates space in our lives for joy, right? And I think also we see other people having quote unquote fun, and they're doing so in a really expensive way. You know, they're having fun on their private yacht. They're having fun by spending gazillion dollars at, I don't know, a designer place like Chanel. I was buying time, I couldn't remember the name of a designer. Anyway, let me see. They. I'm honestly, like, struggling for other things that people do for fun. This is how out of touch I am with fun. Right? We don't value it. We don't value, like, just pure joy. We value productivity. We value getting things done. We value making money. We also value things like having impact, about fulfilling our passions. But without joy, without creating space for joy in our lives, how are you going to feel when you're on your deathbed? Wow, we just went dark, didn't we? Okay, so as an existential question, like, what is life without joy? And how do you want to look back on your life? Do you want to look back and be like, oh, I crossed off my to do list, got everything done, or do you want to look back and think about all the times that you experience pure, unbridled joy? Or a combination of the two? It's up to you. But as business owners, there is a consciousness that we have to approach joy with. There is an intentionality that we didn't have to have when we worked in corporate. Because all of the responsibility of this business lays on our shoulders. And especially for those of us with adhd, with our minds that go a million miles a minute and constantly make connections to, like, things that we have at work, things that we have, ideas for, creative ideas, blah, blah, blah. That's constantly like in that swirl. We have to find a way to get ourselves out of work mode and into joy mode. Now the perks to your health. Experiencing joy on a regular basis lowers your stress levels. When you have less stress, you live longer. When you're joyful around your friends and family, guess what? Those relationships become stronger. And even as I'm describing this, my brain is going to the perks to your work. When you really set aside time for joy, when you're in flow, when you're in flow in something that you really enjoy, this project, it's creative. It has different parts of your brain working. You're going to get ideas for work. You're going to get ideas for how you can serve your clients better. You're going to get ideas for how you can make some system easier on the back end for what you do in your day to day. You're not going to have those ideas if you don't invest your time into things that are joyful. And this is not as easy as it sounds. I mean, granted, I've only been really focusing on this for about a month, but in that month I've really struggled to figure out what I do for fun, what I find fun. This is something that a lot of ADHD people go through cycles on, right? Because when we're hyper fixated on a new hobby, that's the thing that we do, and it brings us so much joy. But when that hyper fixation ends and we have to find a new hyper fixation, going back to that old hobby isn't actually as fun as it used to be. So we're constantly in this cycle of going through things that bring us joy until the point that they no longer bring us joy. And the more business owners I speak to with adhd, the more convinced I am that this is a specifically tough challenge for. For business owners with adhd, it's so common to burn out through all your hyper fixations, but then you're working for yourself, and so that kind of becomes your hyper fixation and you stop making time for fun in your life. In my whole self exploration of, you know, what brings me joy, there are a few things that I've identified that I think will be fun and I kind of have fun with already that I'm consciously making more time for now. One of these things is cooking. And there are two kinds of cooking. There's the cooking for meal prepping, which is fine. It doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't make me miserable. It's just kind of like a neutral thing that I have to do and a neutral thing that I do that sometimes I don't even eat the food because I don't want to eat it because, you know, I'm hyper fixated on another food group at the time. But this is my routine. But what I'm talking about with cooking is like cooking something you've never tried before. This past weekend, I decided to venture into making lobster risotto arancini the next day. And if you're not familiar with what arancini is, it's a Roman dish where they take a bottle of risotto, they bread it, and then they deep fry it. And they usually have a little bit of cheese in there, but with a lot of lobster, I didn't think cheese would be necessary. And it wasn't. It was delicious. It took a fucking ton of time. I had to go buy the lobsters. I had to kill the Lobsters. I had to cook the lobsters, then remove the meat from the lobster shells. I had to use the shells to make a broth that I then had to use to make the risotto. And if you've never made risotto before, you basically have to stand there for almost an hour stirring it. I had to chop up vegetables for the stock. Like all these things. And I know I'm describing this and this does not sound like fun. This was so much fun. I got so invested in it and it was like this new adventure that I got to embark on. And the best thing about cooking for me is cooking for other people, right? Because you spend all this time following the instructions, seeing how things turn out, and then you get to serve it and you get to see people's reactions. I'm not cooking risotto all the time. It takes too much time for me to do so. When we think about fun, we make fun complicated. But it doesn't have to be fun. Can be having an adventure in your own kitchen. You know, Another thing that I've been toying around with over the last couple years is I have an idea for a fantasy novel. Now, it may be terrible, who knows? It probably is a terrible idea. But I decided as part of my goals for 2024 that I want to take a whack at writing this novel. So I signed up for a Fiction 101 class. I may start this class and think it's terrible and like not have fun with it at all and then give it up. There's something to the adventure of trying something new. And it's something that is really hard to incorporate in your day to day life. But it is so necessary to people with adhd because we don't just like variety, we have a need for variety. If you're not giving it new experiences, it's going to come up in your business, it's going to come up in your relationships, and it's going to royally you over. Because if you're not feeding that need for variety with hobbies and little adventures and fun, then it's going to transfer to your business where it's going to undercut all the consistency, all that momentum that you've built. The other thing that I really had to set aside is having fun and then creating content out of it. As soon as I'm doing something fun and there's a pressure to record and to track it, it stops being fun for me. It starts being a performance. And I know like everything is content and we want People to feel like they know us, and we want to have, you know, kind of an interesting story that we can tell on social media. But for the vast majority of the people that you connect with on social media aren't going to remember you 40 years from now. Are you living life for them, to entertain them for a few seconds now? Or are you living life so that at the end of your life, you don't have any regrets? And it's hard to take time off from your business to do something that's not productive in any way, shape or form, that isn't helping you make more money, that isn't helping you reach your goals, that isn't helping you get more clients, but it is so necessary to living the life you want. Something I have to remind my clients about all the time when they're first starting out or when they are scaling their business to multiple six figures. You need to be really intentional about how you do this, because it's fairly simple to design an arbitrarily successful business that that brings in a certain amount of money, that helps a certain amount of clients. But that's not what we're after in the brave weenie world. We're not after arbitrary success. We're after individualized success. We're after designing a business that is successful in all the right ways that it can support you in living the life that you want. That's absolutely terrifying, because to be able to design a business that supports in living the life that you actually want, you have to actually figure out what you want. And you have to have the ovaries to state it, to demand it, to ask for it. You have to be brave enough to have those conversations with your partner and with your family and with your friends. As people with adhd, we've grown up knowing that we don't quite fit in to this neurotypical world. But we've also been bombarded by all the same messaging that everyone else is getting about what a successful, happy life looks like. It's the spouse with the 2.5 children and the dog and the cat and the white picket fence. At least it is in the United States. It may be different in your country of origin. We're handed this vision and we're told like, this is the thing that's going to make you the happiest. It's like a conveyor belt. You go through elementary school, middle school, high school, you're supposed to go to college, even though in the United States it also involves crushing debt. And then you have to go and Get a job where you work 40 to 50 hours a week, hopefully have enough to save for retirement. You know, you work for 40 years, maybe longer, and then you retire and then you die. At no point in that story is there a point where you're supposed to stop and ask, is this actually what I want? Do I actually want the white picket fence? Do I want to get married? Do I want to have kids? Do I want to work in corporate 40 to 50 hours a week? One of the hardest things about knowing this and going for it is you have to explain to a bunch of other people who've been sold on that story and they're not going to get it. This is one of the biggest reasons why you need a community that understands exactly how, why you're making these changes, why you're breaking out of the mold. Because for them, it doesn't work for them either. I've said this before, and I will say it a million times more before I die. Building a business takes a village. And not because it takes a lot of people to do all the things to build the business, but because you need the village around you to remind you that you're not crazy, that there's nothing wrong with you for not accepting the status quo that has been sold to you your whole life. That it's okay to want something different and it's okay to go after whatever it is that you want in a way that feels aligned to you. So here's where this conversation kind of becomes the chicken and the egg. Oh, 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 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 go to weaningcast.com challenge. I can't wait to see you there. So here's where this conversation kind of becomes the chicken and the egg. So if you need to design a business that will be successful in all the right ways to support you in the life that you actually want to live that brings you joy, then you have to know what it is that you want, what you want that life to be that brings you joy so that you'll have time for things that are fun. But in order to know what any of those things are, you have to start having fun now. You have to start experiencing joy for joy's sake now. Because who knows? Like, in my ideal life, one of the things that I cannot wait to have happen is to have a house that has a beautiful garden with tables set up and pretty much every Sunday night to have a family dinner. And not just family. Like when I say family, I mean adopted family too. You know, I cook something special, everyone kind of brings a dish. If they have kids, they can kind of run around and do whatever they want. But you hang out, you kind of get like, you have that final bit of respite before the week starts and you have your community around you. Like, that's something I really look forward to. And I wouldn't know that that's important to me if I weren't making time for the joyful act of cooking. And this is one of the reasons why I'm launching the community, like hyper focused. Because for you to be able to identify those things that you want, you have to have a sense of safety, that it's okay for you to want those things. And for you to have that sense of safety that it's okay for you to want those things, you kind of have to be around other people who are already going for the things that they want, setting up their own vision for what their own ideal life looks like and unapologetically going for it. There's a saying that I heard about 10 years ago and it was really painful to hear when it first came up. And it has continued to be painful as I've grown as a human, as I've changed, as I've evolved, as what I want has evolved. And it's that you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Now, the reason this is painful is because sometimes you look around at the five people you spend the most time with and you love them and you cherish them. And also, if you want the things that you want, if you're ever going to get them, you can't continue spending time with these people, or at least not as much as you have been. There's a distance that has to be created and there's a new group of people out there that you need to start spending more time with. So I ask you, what do you do for fun? What are the things that bring you small moments of joy? And I challenge you this week to block off three to five hours to doing that thing. And it can be ridiculous. It could be making a blanket fort in your living room. It could be dressing up as a wizard and just going to a coffee shop ex spelly armors and sitting there with your cappuccino and like chanting weird things over it. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. And I do have a wizard costume because I was Dumbledore for Halloween one year. However, the glasses never arrived. And like, you just can't be Dumbledore without the half moon glasses, which I get. He's probably reading old texts with weird scribbly small writing. But doesn't that drive you nuts? Doesn't it just feel like they're about to fall off your face? I wouldn't know because the glasses never arrived and I couldn't wear them. If you're struggling for ideas, here are some different areas you can check out. Eventbrite I always forget exists, except when I'm going networking. There are tickets to goat yoga on Eventbrite. There are like haunted house tours, there's cooking classes, Airbnb experiences. That's another venue where you can figure out, like, local fun things to do that get you out of your comfort zone. Weirdly, where I am now, there's a lot to do with like alpacas and llamas, which for a seaside town seems odd. I didn't realize we had that many alpacas and llamas here. This fun thing that you go to do will probably bring you joy. Probably isn't going to be like, oh my God, this is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life. But you're going to continue making time for fun things that are outside of your norm until you find that thing. Because again, you cannot strategize and plan and work on a business that is going to be successful in all the right ways that supports you in living your ideal life unless you know what that ideal life includes. So your work right now is to figure that out. If you take this challenge and you find something that's fun, weird, wonky, outside your norm to do, I would love it if you found me on Instagram at Katie the Coach, not Katie the Couch, which a lot of people mistakenly thought I had. Katie the Coach. I would love it if you found me there and sent me a DM and just tell me about what you did and if it was fun or not. That's data that tells you that's not something you want in your ideal life, that tells you you do not need to structure your business in a way that lets you do that thing because you don't want to do that thing. That's fine. I don't like being on boats. They make me sick. I'm not gonna design my business around the idea that I wanna be on a boat all the time. And I will personally keep you posted about what brings me joy. And if things work out in this writing class, you might be seeing a fantasy novel from me in the coming years. Who knows? Wouldn't that be funny to be like, yes, I'm the host of the weeniecast and I teach business strategy and I write fantasy novels for a young adult. Like, that would be the most ADHD life. It would be so on brand. You see here, I'm already planning, like, how this could work for my business. We really can't help it if you realize that you need people who are more supportive of you branching out, doing fun things, trial and erroring your whole life to figure out what it is that you want. Then I want you to get on the waiting list for the hyper focused membership. My producer asked me when this is launching, and my answer was when I get my together. And he's like, cool. If I asked your OBM, Heather, when this is launching, what would she answer is the date? And I said she would answer when Katie gets her shit together. But the community is absolutely going to be incredible because it's going to be people like you who want to create a life on their own terms and have to do so in a different way from all the neurotypicals and I'm really excited for it. And I really do need to get my together and to get on the waiting list. You want to go to weeniecast.com forward/hyperfocus, and you'll find that link in the show notes. I asked my clients about what she does for fun, and she's like, I don't know. I bought a. I bought a sign that says, life is short. Lick the bowl, and it's meant for your kitchen, but I put it in the bathroom. Like, other than that, I'm not that fun. 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.