Going viral's bad for ADHD entrepreneurs - according to Seth Godin!

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 of the Weeniecast, I'm going to be going into why you do not actually want to go viral on social media.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and.

Money mindset coach and welcome to the Weeniecast Squirrel.

So from time to time I will collaborate with other coaches, other creators in the ADHD space and I will go and do pop up trainings. I'll be a guest on their podcast. I will write something for their blog that will help their clients. Because one of the things that I love about this whole community, the coaching community, the ADHD community, is that it is so supportive. It's so supportive and sometimes I run into some really harmful messaging and it's really disappointing to see I other people in the ADHD coaching space giving dangerous advice to their clients. I did a training recently where I was training on social media, few different platforms of social media and when I got to talking about LinkedIn, which is a really, really tough social media platform for a lot of new business owners to tackle because it feels like it has to be so professional. And so when you start on LinkedIn, you know, when you start on any social media platform, you're not going to get a ton of engagement, right? Because you're brand new, you don't have any followers, right? You don't know what works yet. Like I'm going through this currently on TikTok. I'm okay on TikTok. I'm sure I'll get better over time. The engagement, the comments, the likes that I get are insignificant compared to what other creators get on the platform. One of the teachings that I bumped into while I was running this training is that ADHD business owners have to chase the dopamine and that the dopamine comes from likes and comments. This means that there are some ADHD business owners who are being advised to go onto social media platforms where they are going to get the max amount of likes and comments so that they can get that dopamine drip. This is some of the most dangerous advice because this is the foundation for addiction. When we tie our dopamine release to the results of our actions, we become slaves to getting those. Those results.

Right.

There's a reason why people with ADHD have a real predisposition to gambling addictions. Because when you're. When you're at the slots or when you're playing blackjack, I don't gamble. I'm just thinking of things. And you're putting your cards down and you're. You're winning some chips or you're, like, hearing the bells and you're getting some coins, that gives you a release of dopamine, right? And what do we do when we get dopamine? We want more dopamine. So we get all the stimuli, we feel like we've won, and we get this influx of dopamine. What happens when we get that influx of dopamine is we want more dopamine. Right? Because we have an inconsistent amount of it in our bodies. Right. We learn the different things that give us dopamine. It's why we get obsessed with the same song over and over again. It's also why we become obsessed with one meal, because it releases dopamine for us. We cannot moderate our dopamine. Now, if we already cannot moderate our dopamine and we're creating practices in our business that make us reliant on factors that are already outside of our control to release that dopamine for us, that is a recipe for disaster. That is a recipe for serious social media addiction. And I know we throw this term around a lot, but let me tell you, it's just as dangerous as any other addiction. And it's especially dangerous if you have ADHD and you are a business owner who's running your business through social media, it's not like you can take a break from it. One of the most important things that business owners have to do is make sure that their relationship with social media stays healthy. So I was in this training the other night, and the coach that I was talking to was talking about how hard it was to get a dopamine drip from LinkedIn. Because when you're just starting out on LinkedIn, you're not getting a lot of feedback. You're not getting notifications for likes or for comments. And the notifications that you are getting really don't have anything to do with you. And it struck me that I've been Seeing this a lot lately. If you're familiar with LinkedIn, the platform has undergone some changes in their algorithm. Even top creators are getting far less engagement and views on their posts than they were just a few months ago. So everyone with ADHD on LinkedIn, or most of the people, are flipping the out because they're not getting the same results as they used to. Now the problem here is that they're tying that dopamine drip to the results and that can lead you down a really dark and twisty path. So the dangers here are not just that you could become addicted to social media. The danger is also that you get addicted to the likes and comments and the engagement that you get on your posts. So you start posting more stuff that will get you more likes and comments. Now, let me tell you from experience, the posts that get the most likes and comments for me usually don't get me a whole lot of clients. The posts that get me a ton of clients are usually the ones that get the least amount of likes and comments. And let me just use my dog Luna, the Sheepadoodle for an example here, so I can post a picture about her and tell a really funny story about something stupid that she did. Now that post is going to get a crap ton of engagement because everyone who likes dogs or who has a dog or who's ever seen a dog do something stupid can easily write a comment on that post. They can also like it. She's adorable, by the way. And if you want to go check her out, we have pictures of her@weeniecast.com forward slash Luna. Now you have to create that, Neil. Haha. Yeah, I just realized that. I'll just send you a bunch of pictures of her.

Yeah, that works.

But it's super easy for people to go and engage on that post, right? And the beautiful thing about posts like that is that any anyone who engages the algorithm reads that as, oh wow, this type of person really liked this post. We should show this post to more of their network. Okay, so those posts are really important for you as a business owner to invest some time in. They don't have to have anything to do with your business, but they do help you grow your network.

Right?

And we're not just trying to get in touch with our ideal clients on social media, right? We're trying to get in touch with their parents, with their best friend from elementary school, with their neighbor, with their former coworker, all these people who will see our content and think, oh my God, my friend, my sister, my daughter needs to see this, let me send it to them. Making those posts and getting that engagement is super important. But if you are chasing the dopamine drip of the likes and comments, you run the risk of only chasing likes and comments. You're going to stop posting things that really drive business, that bring in clients, that bring in money into your business. And let me tell you, if you're not making money, if you're not serving clients, you don't have a business, you have a hobby and hobbies do not pay the bills. Now how do you overcome this? So one of the things that I stress with my clients and I'm going to start stressing it more now that I'm aware that there's this bad advice being given out there that you get to give yourself the dopamine drip over the action you take, not the results you get. So what does that mean? So if you have a non negotiable that you're supposed to post to Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn every single day for three months, once you post to each one of those, you get to cross it off your list. You get to celebrate that you got that thing done. That is where your dopamine drip comes from. We have to stop tying our wins to the results that we're getting because we have no control over the results. Like I said previously, LinkedIn has changed its algorithm dramatically over the last three months. We have no control over that. Hell, we don't even understand half of the things that happen with social media and the algorithm. Right there are full on conspiracy theories across all the platforms about what's happening. Okay, we can only guess. And a great way to make yourself go absolutely insane is to tie your ability to have dopamine in your system to things that are absolutely, completely out of your control. So what are the things that are in your control?

Oh, what am I going to say next?

Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first.

Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.

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So what are the things that are in your control? A. Posting daily. If you posted something, I don't care if it was a beautiful, well written piece of copy that invites people to be your client, if it was a heartfelt story about your grandmother and how she taught you how to pick roses out of her rose garden, or if you panicked and just posted a picture of a ferret, which I make my clients do from time to time, by the way. If you really, really want to push yourself to post every single day on places like LinkedIn, I urge you to try the no Ferret Challenge, which basically means that you have to set a time limit every single day by which you have to post by. So like, you could say you want to post something for your business or about your personal life by 3pm every day. If you miss it, then you have to post a picture of a ferret. It can be any ferret. You don't have to have a ferret. You can just go into the interwebs and find pictures of ferrets. My personal favorite is ferrets in costumes. I think the last one I've posted was a ferret in a wizard costume. It's very handsome. But the point being is that you are taking action. You are doing the thing. You are giving yourself credit for doing the thing, and that's all that matters. And just in case you're like, why is she telling me to post pictures of ferrets? Let me just explain the thought behind it. So if you're posting anything, really a picture of a ferret, picture of a testimonial, whatever, it really doesn't matter what you're posting because people are still seeing your picture and they're still seeing your name and they're still seeing your tagline, right? You're still showing up in their awareness that day. Even if it has absolutely nothing to do with what you do. They are having that little subliminal message that you still exist out there in the world. And there's a question of why are they posting a picture of a ferret? There are a lot of social media influencers who are out to tell you the story that you need to have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers to be able to have a successful business. And I'm calling bull. I reached my first 6k in my business with less than 3000 followers. I reached multiple six figures in my business with less than 7000 followers on LinkedIn and LinkedIn alone. I really wasn't active on any other platform except for passively going live to Facebook when I'm also going live to LinkedIn. It's not the number that matters. It's the quality of people that you have in your following. You can get a certain amount of clients out of 7,000 followers who are all your ideal clients. You can absolutely get way more if you have 70,000 followers who are all your ideal clients. But do not hold out for having that big number before you start really inviting people in to be your client. I can't tell you how many times I've had to talk clients off the ledge because they went on a stalking spree of people on social media. People who are quote, unquote in their industry, who had hundreds of thousands of followers who were posting three times a day and doing all this interesting stuff. And they came. My clients come to me after going deep down the rabbit hole on these people and they're like, oh my God, I have to completely rework my social media strategy. They're doing it so much better. Look at this, this and this. And we start digging on this person, we find out that they have actually bought engagement. And it's really easy to tell because they have a massive amount of followers. And for the amount of followers, they have an inconsistent amount of engagement on their posts. And usually the engagement on their posts, like, great post or this is awesome, good job. There's not an actual conversation happening. Also, I want to remind you, someone can be really, really good at creating content for social media. It doesn't mean that they have a successful business on the back end. Also, their business model might be absolutely different from yours. If you're a coach and you charge a thousand dollars a month for people to work with you, your business is massively different from someone who is selling a $27 ebook. They have to make a crap ton more sales than you do to be able to make ends meet. They need a bigger audience. It also the fact that they have that bigger audience does not mean a damn thing as to whether or not they're making sales. One of the ways that I have really worked to counteract this seeking of dopamine from the results and not the actions is by creating little checklists for myself every single morning. So one of the things that will give us a dopamine drip as ADHD entrepreneurs and just as ADHD humans in general is by being able to check things off the list or cross them off the list. And I want to remind you, it really doesn't matter what it is. So I actually created this whole little checklist thing on Canva. I'm sharing the link@weenicast.com dailyroutine all the things that you can get dopamine from don't have to be massive. So literally on this list I have brushing my teeth, okay, I give myself a dopamine drip by crossing that off every single morning. Because it's just something that I do, but it's not something that I usually give myself credit for, right? Taking my dog for a walk. I get a dopamine drip when I.

Do that because I get to cross.

It off the list.

When I meditate, I get to cross that off the list. You'll be amazed once you start making lists or a standard list that you cross things off of, how much you actually do every single morning and every single day. And I want to remind you, they get to be easy things because as ADHD folks, we have a really hard time with doing the hardest biggest task first. This is one of the reasons why every single day I mostly every single day I post to social media because it's something that I really enjoy, it's something that's fairly easy for me to do. And the fact that I have done it, I get to cross off marketing my business for the whole damn day. That's a massive thing to cross off for something that feels super easy for me. Another element that you can do if you want to try to train your brain away from getting dopamine from seeing comments and likes on your posts is by actively going and supporting other people's posts, going and commenting on people in your industry, going and liking and commenting the posts of people who you sense might be your ideal client or who may work in an adjacent industry, who serve the same type of people that looking to work with. Because instead of just getting a random comment or a like on something that you've posted, you actually get to create relationships with people out there. And creating relationships, creating connection is always going to be more powerful for your business than chasing likes and comments. And at the end of the day, social media is essentially gambling. You're gambling with your time, you're gambling with your creativity. You have no idea if a post is going to go viral or if it's going to flop massively. A really dangerous thing that you can do is tie your dopamine, your worth, your sense of self success to the results because you have absolutely no control over it. The best thing that you can do is tie your dopamine to taking consistent action every damn day and celebrating not Only when you do the thing. But when you do the thing and you get better at it, and when you do the thing and you feel proud of what you've put out there. One of my favorite authors is Seth Godin. And his go to phrase for a really long time. I don't know if he still says this is create and ship. Create and ship. Create and ship. Squirrel. Ship. Squirrel.

Creative work. If it doesn't ship, it doesn't count. You're allowed to have a hobby, but this isn't about your hobby.

Squirrel. This man wrote a blog every single day. Sometimes he would write multiple posts in a day for years and years and years. I don't know if he still does this, but his whole philosophy is that if you want to grow, if you want to expand your career, if you want to have impact in the world, you have to continuously create something and put it out there. And it's the creating and the putting it out there that matters, not the reception it gets. If you're advising your clients to chase the things that are outside of their control to get that dopamine, I want to give you some credit here. You probably don't realize how unhealthy that is. You probably don't realize how dangerous that is for your clients, but please stop doing that. You're putting your clients at risk, not only of social media addiction, addiction. When once we get addicted to one thing, we are far more likely to get addicted to another. There are so many people in Alcoholics Anonymous who are also in Gamblers Anonymous, who are also in Narcotics Anonymous. As a population that has a predisposition to addiction, it is irresponsible of any person who is advising people with ADHD to do anything that could lead to any kind of addiction. We're just making up links for Neil to make at this point. We're gonna have a photo gallery of my dog. You're gonna have canva links, you're gonna have all this stuff, and he's just gonna have to create it on the back end as I make this shit up as we go. And he's laughing right now. He's gonna fire me as a client. Just watch. I'm gonna have to do everything myself. And this is gonna go terribly, terribly wrong. Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you struggling to stay focused and.

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