Do you have an ADHD business baby or a business 'oops'?

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 Squirrel, do you have an Oops business or an on purpose business? Squirrel Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel A lot of people talk about how their business is their child, and when you think about children, you think about on purpose children and oops children. The result could be a little different. I personally would prefer to be a child that was had on purpose to parents who really wanted to be parents. And thankfully I was, and I'm so grateful to my parents for being those people than to be the unhappy but now happy accident between two people that weren't really planning on it but just kind of went along with it. Whereas some people are forced to be parents by the circumstances of their life, it is really hard to be forced to be a business owner. Once you get pregnant, unless you make a decision otherwise, which I fully support you to do, you really don't have any way of preventing that baby from growing inside of you. And then eventually, you know, after 40 weeks, that baby coming out of you, which does not sound fun, and then just being a baby in your house that turns into a toddler, that turns into a child that turns into a preteen and then teen and then an adult. Ipso facto, you are a parent. You obviously there is a ton of work that goes into it. It's not like if you don't show up to parent work that day, your five year old's going to not age a day, right? If you phone it in for a few months, it's not like your 5 year old is gonna stay that one age and not progress in their development. Your business cannot do this. Your business will not grow like a child just on its own. Your business does need a lot of attention like children, but it requires attention in order for it to grow. Now why am I talking about Oops babies and Oops businesses and the Difference between the two, because we are coming out of the pandemic and we're seeing all the oops businesses that came about because people were laid off from their job and they really didn't have any other options to bring money into their households. We're seeing a lot of these people quitting and going back to their nine to five because they weren't in it to become an entrepreneur, they weren't in it to become a business owner. They needed money. They were laid off from a job. They had a set of skills. There has to be a Liam Neeson thing like, I have a very particular set of skills. You know, what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a very long career. Squirrel. Squirrel. So these incredible humans who had to figure out a way to make money, come into their homes to support themselves and their families throughout a very, very turbulent time in our world history, they didn't mean to start a business. They weren't in it for that. And it's obvious now that we are seeing them dropping their businesses and going back to a 9 to 5 job, because that is ultimately what makes them feel happy, safe and secure. As business owners, however, who are in it to win it, who are super passionate about what we do, this can be really scary. Seeing other people have to quit their businesses because it's not going well enough for them to survive gets you all flipped out about what you believe is possible for your business. It's kind of like when you hear someone your age was diagnosed with a really scary form of cancer. Your brain can't help but wonder, what about me? What if that happened to me? What if that happened to my husband or my wife or my sister or my brother? Our brains do this really awesome up thing where it scans the world for all the scariest things that could possibly happen to us and then starts playing out the what if scenario. And this is a survival mechanism. This has been happening since the beginning of time, and it's the reason we're still kicking around on this planet and ruining it. Because our ancestors walked out of their home cave and scanned the horizon for hungry tigers rather than looking for all the pretty flowers. The cave people who walked out of their cave and didn't scan for tigers, they got eaten. And seeing other people make this decision of quitting their businesses and going back to a 9 to 5 can make you question if you're really meant to do this. Even if you are destined to be successful in this business, there's a big differentiator between people who think it would be cool to start a business or it's necessary for them to start a business and those who don't have a choice. And when I say they don't have a choice, I don't mean they're backed into a corner and this is the only thing that they can do to be able to put food on the table. I mean that literally. Their spirit will not be fulfilled if they don't go and do this brave thing by becoming an entrepreneur. One of the questions that I sometimes ask when I'm on a strategy call or a sales call with a potential client is would you be able to put this business down and walk away from it and never touch it again? What would it take for you to do that? And the correct answer to this question that I'm looking for is no, I wouldn't be able to. I am so passionate about doing this work and providing this service and offering this help to the world and owning my life in a way that being a business owner will allow me to do. I will never be able to walk away from it. I'm going to find a way to make it work and I just need help to get there. That's the business equivalent of having a child on purpose. Now, the reason I only want clients who are driven on a deeper level to start this business, whatever it is, is because I know that they're going to succeed because they're, they haven't given themselves another option. There is this pop up workshop that I ran once during the pandemic and I wish I'd kept the notes of it. It was literally something I planned in 20 minutes and then completely forgot, didn't remember to go and save the recording. And it was all about the ships that you have to burn in order to be successful. Now I went through the laundry list of quote unquote ships that I had to burn. And if you don't get that reference, a really evil man named Cortez sailed from Europe to the New World and massacred a bunch of people, right? He did so successfully because when they landed on the beach in the New World, he had his people burn their ships, which basically drove them to fight harder and kill more people and succeed in winning because they had no other option if they wanted to get home. So I really don't like where this metaphor comes from if you can't tell by the tone of my voice. But it's a great metaphor for what it takes to be successful. The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who don't have ships waiting by their beach. The first year and a half of me starting my business, and I say starting my business, it did not go well. It wasn't like this was a successful business overnight. And I posit that the reason for that was that I was still looking for a job. I would spend several hours a day working in my business, on my business and after hustling for a little bit, I'd head over to the job boards. I'd look at Glassdoor, I'd look at LinkedIn, look at Indeed, I'd look to see what jobs were available in my area. I might even submit some applications to a couple just in case this business didn't work out. Guess what? The business didn't work out for that first year and a half because I wasn't fully betting on it. I was actually betting on it to fail because I had all these other irons in the fire. I had a plan B, a plan C, plan Z in case this didn't work out. It wasn't until I deleted my account on those platforms, on, indeed on Glassdoor, and until I said that I was no longer looking for a job on LinkedIn that I actually started getting high paying clients, that I actually started making a full time income from doing this work that I love. I had to be that entrepreneur on purpose because let's face it, if we were comparing early business me to a parent. I was basically like the auntie who was babysitting a lot, trying on being a parent, taking her niece to the playground, dropping off her cousins at school, picking them up, maybe going to little league a little bit, talking a lot about wanting to be a mom, what it'll be like when I am, but not actually doing it because once you actually do become pregnant, once you actually do commit to becoming a mom, once it happens, there's really no turning back. It's the same for your business if you actually want this, if you want this business to be able to support you, to help you have a life where you're thriving and not just surviving. This has to be a 110%. Hell yes. It can't be a well, if it happens, it happens. I won't stop it. And I bet we can all count a ton of parents that we know on all of our fingers and all of our toes who had that approach to having children, who are probably amazing parents now who have really happy, healthy children. But that same approach is not going to work in growing your business. So now that we are seeing all of these oopsie, Businesses shutting down and their owners going back to a 9 to 5, dropping it, like, basically putting this business in the orphanage, like, we're no longer interested. It can be really triggering because we're seeing this happen and thinking, oh, my God, like, what if I'm forced into the same corner? And I just want you to know that the fact that you did this on purpose, the fact that this is your baby, this is the thing that you did on purpose that you are doing consistently every single day because you want to grow it, because you really have no other choice. Because on a soul level, this is your calling. That's never gonna happen to you. There may be walls that you hit and ceilings that you bump up against that limit, how much money you make, you may need some help to get to the next level. And that's perfectly normal. It does not mean that you are failing. It does not mean that you're gonna have to pack it in and go back to a 9 to 5 that made you miserable. Unless that's really what you want, in which case I take back the miserable part because hopefully you'll be really happy. And this may sound harsh, but those friends, those colleagues, the people that you follow on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook who are packing it in, who are shutting their doors and going back to their nine to five and talking about how hard it was to start a business and how it just they didn't have what it took and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You need to unfollow them because what that messaging is going to do is, 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 Weenacast 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 weeniecast.com.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus. Because what that messaging is going to do is it's going to poison the well of your brain. It's going to start you down this pathway of focusing on all the scary things that come up in your business. All the hard aspects, everything that makes this too difficult to continue. And you're gonna start looking for evidence that you too can no longer do this, that you'll also fail, that you'll also have to go back to a 9 to 5. I want you to tune out from the messaging that they're putting out, and I want you to tune into messaging from people who are fully committed to their businesses, to the people who are entrepreneurs on purpose, because they literally couldn't help themselves. But to do this calling. And, and I want to be very clear here. I'm not saying entrepreneurs on purpose. I'm saying business owners on purpose, because there are a lot of business owners who don't see themselves as entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is someone who starts multiple businesses, who's always onto the next thing that might not be you. And that's okay, you don't have to be. A lot of my clients who are massively successful are accidental on purpose business owners. And what does that mean? It means that they discovered their life's calling, like leadership coaching or technical copywriting, and they loved it so much, but no one was really hiring for it. And if they weren't paying the amount of money that they wanted to make. So in order for them to make the income that they wanted and have the impact that they wanted to make on the world, they had to start a business. The key here is that they couldn't not do the thing. Those are the people you need to be tuning into. You want to follow them, you want to comment on their stuff, you want to like everything that they post. You want to train all the algorithms to show you more and more and more of that. Because as you surround yourself with these other business owners on purpose, you're going to start seeing other opportunities rather than evidence that this isn't going to work for you. You're going to see a post by someone saying that they're starting a speaking tour and your ADHD hyper focus is going to get completely clicked on and you're going to go down a wormhole of, oh my God, that sounds so interesting, let me see how I can do that myself. You're going to see another colleague starting a group program, and it's going to inspire you to figure out how you can roll out a group program for your business as well. Ultimately, you want to remember that we are all the sum total, the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And this doesn't just mean people that we hang out with at night. This also means the people that we spend Our working hours with. I remember when I first started my business, or I first not even started my business, when I first started coaching, I decided to start this mastermind group with a bunch of other coaches that were in my program. And it was really sad because none of us knew what we were doing. We were all so afraid of putting ourselves out there. Like, the idea of posting anything to social media about the fact that we were coaching and offering sessions and taking money for this work that we loved was absolutely terrifying to all of us. So none of us did it. So we spent all of our time on these mastermind calls thinking of bull work that we could spend our time on rather than actually going out there and doing stuff that would actually get us clients. And after a couple months of this, those calls stopped being about, well, what bull work can I come up with? And evolved into, oh, my God, this is so hard. This is so hard. I don't have any clients. Do you have any clients? You don't have any clients? Oh, God, this is really hard. And it would basically be this little bitch fest. I'll call it what it is. And it really didn't help at any of us move the needle in our business. I realized that these calls weren't serving me. And I also, no, it was funny because in these calls, I would hear other people complaining about how hard it was to sell coaching or market themselves. And I would hear myself give them this incredible advice that was based on all of my years of experience in sales and marketing and how to create packages that were based off of the membership model from gyms that I'd worked in previously. And I remember giving them this advice and be like, wow, that was good advice. I should take that advice on my own. And the call would end and we'd go about our weeks and we'd come back the next week and I'd ask them, did you do what I told you to do? They'd say, no, and I get frustrated. And then they'd bring up their problem. They complain a little bit more, and I'd complain a little bit more, and I'd give them some really good advice on things that they should do. And again, we'd break for the week and we'd all do our separate things. And then we come back and again, they hadn't done what I told them to do and I hadn't done what I told them to do. And I realized towards the end of this, the lifespan of this mastermind that if I could see it so clearly for other people, I really need to start following my own advice. Now. Part of this is I had to get a coach who would actually hold me accountable to doing things. Because as you can imagine having adhd, it's really easy to come up with ideas for scary things to do, but actually doing them requires someone else checking in on you to make sure that you actually follow through. The other element that really helped me be successful and break out of this vortex of suckery I co created with my fellow coaches is when I was working with a coach, I almost needed constant permission to do things in my business. I needed permission to go and put something on social media because I wasn't seeing anyone in my world doing that. I needed permission to go and host a webinar because I didn't know anyone who had ever hosted a webinar. I needed permission to come up with a website because I didn't know anyone who'd actually made a website for a coaching business. Because who was I to go out there and say that I do this thing? Who is I to go and bug people who know me from high school and college and previous jobs with this information on my business that I was starting? I didn't want to annoy them. And while, yes, I had invested a good almost $20,000 into becoming a coach, who was I to go and turn around and share any of that knowledge that I just learned? Now imagine what would be different if I had just stayed stayed in that little vortex of suckery. If I continued meeting with these people who I absolutely adore to this day, but we'd continue to talk about how hard it is and how we weren't getting anywhere and boo hoo, woe is us. What's the more bullshit work that we can spend time on that won't actually move the needle for us? Nothing. I would have had to resort back to my plan B, plan C, plan X of going back to a 9 to 5 that would have ultimately made me miserable and probably burned me out. And then I'd probably only last a year and then I have to Switch to another 9 to 5, then another and then another. And it would continue this whole story that I had in my head that I couldn't commit to anything, which probably sounds familiar to you because this is really common for people with adhd. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income strategy call with me by going to weenicast.com strategy call. On this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams, and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together. I have someone mowing their lawn over here and I have a rooster going over here. And I know you say you can't hear it, but for me I'm just like what the f. 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. 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Weeniecast 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 weenacast hyperfocus 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.