How ADHD entrepreneurs can be better public speakers! (A hyperfocus highlight episode)

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. Squirrel. Welcome to this hyperfocused highlight episode. Let's get you hyper focused on your business growth. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the weeniecast. Squirrel. There's this funny thing that happens when people see you as confident and you're not confident is you create this special brand of imposter syndrome, and it manifests as you constantly see yourself as not living up to other people's expectations. Now, this was a double whammy for me because where I was the biggest chicken, where I was the most massive weenie, was being seen by other people. And what I'm talking about is public speaking. I was terrified of public speaking from a very, very early age. The only times I would successfully speak publicly were at funerals for people that I deeply cared about. Because in those moments, the only thing I cared about was honoring that person. I wasn't worried about the people in front of me. I think it also helped that usually when you're speaking at a funeral, like, you know, everyone in the audience is so wrapped up in their own sadness that they're really not paying attention to you. But any other setting, doing presentations for school, speaking at nonprofit events, speaking at town meeting, which if you've seen Gilmore Girls, the TV show, those town meetings actually do happen in small towns in New England. Now, the fears that hold people back are different. And it usually happens in this up way where the thing that you're most afraid of is actually the thing that will make you most successful. And this obviously is different for everyone. For me, it was public speaking for another person. It could be writing for another person. It could be painting and letting your paintings be seen. It usually has to do with how other people perceive you. So it's kind of hard to talk about how to become brave unless you're actually talking about a story. And so I'm just going to share my personal journey with becoming brave, like how I stopped being a weenie. My biggest fear was public speaking. And just to give you an idea of how bad I was at public speaking, I once got voluntold by a professor at my college to read a letter at a literary Luncheon with about 300 people in the audience. This letter was from one of the authors who was going to be honored at this luncheon but couldn't make it. And so this professor, because I was well spoken, one on one, assumed that I would be really good speaking at this event. I told him no, I absolutely put my foot down and said, I'm not doing that. And he kind of blew past that. He was like, no, no, no, no, you're going to be fine. He soon regretted that. I will never forget getting up at that podium, looking out at the 300 plus people at this luncheon. It felt like there were thousands of them. Just so, you know, sweat just trickling down the sides of my neck and down my back. I was so nervous, my hands were shaking holding this letter. I had reprinted this letter in bold font, double space. I had practiced it. I had read it over and over and over again. And let me tell you, I was so terrified that I stuttered and stammered through this whole letter. I was so bad that people in the audience came up to me after I read this letter and apologized to me for how bad I was. It was the most mortifying experience of my life. And I'm saying that as a person whose skirt has flown up over her head in front of a bus full of tourists in San Francisco, I would do that every day for the rest of my life before I relived this one experience. After that event, I literally went home. I bagged up all the books this professor had lent me. I wasn't in any of his classes. And at 2 o' clock that morning, I drove to his house, knowing that he and his wife would be fully asleep, and left these books on his doorstep. And I never spoke to him again. He also never reached out to me again, which tells me he understood what he had done to me in that moment. And I hope he felt really guilty about it. This is a long time ago. So now you have a picture of how bad I was at public speaking and that I had a right to be terrified of doing it now. One of the things I always knew about myself is that I wanted to help people. And I didn't want to help people just volunteering on the weekends. I wanted my job, my career, my calling, to be in some way helping other people. This landed me in a bunch of different sales roles, because when you're working for a company, one of the most direct ways that you can help clients is by selling to them and selling them a solution to the problems that they have. One of the things about being in Sales is sometimes you have to give presentations. Sometimes you have to do a standup with your regional sales manager, with your boss, with all of your coworkers and people on the marketing team. And you have to explain every single thing that you did that quarter. Sometimes you have to be in a room with dozens of other salespeople and explain a process that you implemented that was really successful. And for me, these were the most painful experiences of my work. And so I recognized that learning to speak publicly was going to be the be all end all of me breaking that success ceiling that I created for myself. I also knew that sales wasn't going to be the thing that I did forever. I knew that I was going to become a coach at some point. I knew that at some point I would want to stand on the stage and show people a better way to be in some fashion. I didn't know at the time that I was going to be a business coach, a better way to be, to make their lives better or to improve their lives. So what did I do about it? Well, first and foremost, I had to get over this fear of just being in front of people. So I decided to enroll myself into some improv classes. And if you're from the San Francisco Bay Area, you'll recognize the name Bats Bay Area Theater Sports, one of the best schools for improv on the West Coast. In these classes, I learned that you can make mistakes and no one cares. You can stutter, and you can stammer, and you can screw up your words and you can use the wrong word, and you can forget what your character is supposed to be doing, and you can walk in the wrong direction, or you could, like, treat someone else as if they're a different character than what they are. You can screw up in a million different ways, and it's okay. One of the beautiful things about improv also is that you learn how to take whatever is given to you in the moment and turn it into something else, right? Because it doesn't matter if you're giving speeches and you have a speech that you have memorized word for word. You don't know when an audience member is going to shout a question at you and interrupt you. You don't know if, like, someone's going to open the side door and the fire alarm is going to go off. You don't know when a waiter is going to drop a whole tray of drinks making a crash. And as the speaker, as the person who is controlling the energy of the room by being on stage, you're going to have to acknowledge that in some way, there's always going to be moments of improv when you're speaking publicly. So learning to improvise in a really fun environment that was really safe helped me improvise better in my day to day and be more comfortable in front of people. Now, one of the things that improvisation does not do is get you comfortable being yourself in front of people. Right? Because when you're improvising, you're usually pretending to be like an alien from a far off place who's discovering zippers for the very first time and is also learning to ride elephants. You know, something absolutely ridiculous. So you're outside of yourself. You're not standing on stage actually as yourself, looking out into the audience, sharing your own thoughts or your own processes. That is not improv. After going through all these improv classes, that was still incredibly scary for me. You know, improv got me to the point where I was comfortable on stage being someone else. I was comfortable on stage speaking and being involved and taking what was given to me and, yes, anding it and creating a whole storyline. It didn't give me the confidence to get up there and be Katie McManus. It didn't give me the confidence to think that I actually had something worth saying. So the next step I did is I actually joined a Toastmasters group. And if you haven't heard of Toastmasters, it's an amazing nonprofit group. They are everywhere. If you want to get better at public speaking, you can look up Toastmasters in your area. And I guarantee you there will be several meetings at several different times on different days each week. It's kind of like aa. If you want to join a Toastmasters group, I can't recommend it enough. Now, in Toastmasters, everyone there is there to get better at public speaking. It's the most normalizing environment for someone who's afraid of being seen on stage. Because you look at this group and you have CEOs, and you have VPs, and you have entrepreneurs, and you have people who are just starting in their career. And everyone has one thing in common. They are terrified of speaking publicly. And they're also usually really bad at it, which is this massive boost to you. Because you're not the only one. It doesn't matter where in your career you are, you're not the only one who struggles with this problem. And everyone in that group, their one goal is to support each other in getting better. And so through Toastmasters, you volunteer to give speeches. They have different exercises that you do throughout the meeting. So Everyone has a chance to get up and speak in front of each other. They make it fun, but they also give really helpful feedback. Joining Toastmasters got me to a level where I was okay speaking in front of people, but I wasn't great. I didn't have the confidence that I knew what to do. I didn't have the confidence that I could build an experience in speaking that would have me to the point where I could be a keynote speaker. Which throughout this process, I kind of realized that was my ultimate goal. I wanted to be someone that people would reach out to and say, hey, listen, we need a keynote speaker. We love your story. We love what you talk about. We want to bring you in for this. And isn't it funny that the things that we're most afraid of are usually the things that we most want? 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. 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.