This episode is sponsored by CURE Hydration. You know that moment for me, it’s around like 2 or 3pm when my ADHD brain just decides we’re done for the day. We’re done here. The afternoon slump hits, the lights go off upstairs and suddenly answering an email or doing basically anything feels like climbing a mountain. That’s when I reach for Cure Energy. It’s a clean plant based energy drink mix made with 100 milligrams of natural caffeine and electrolytes. So I get the focus and hydration boost I need without jitters, without a crash and without that like I drink battery acid vi that some of the energy drinks have. The peach tea and acai berry flavors are my current go tos. Crisp, refreshing and they don’t taste fake, y’. All. They don’t taste fake. I’ll drink one before recording a session or when I need to get help through like that afternoon drag. And honestly, I. I drink it anytime. My brain just needs to cooperate. What’s wild is that Cure Energy is only 25 calories and has zero added sugar. It actually helps me stay hydrated while giving me energy. Okay, I love coffee, but coffee could never. Staying hydrated isn’t just about water. You also need electrolytes. And that’s why I love CUR Cure. It’s clean, it tastes great and it actually works. And remember, Cure is FSA HSA approved, which is amazing. You can use that money to pay for cure and for I have ADHD listeners, you can get 20% off your first order@curehydration.com I have ADHD with the code I have ADHD. And if you do get a post purchase survey, make sure to tell them that you heard about CURE right here on the podcast. It really helps to support the show. Don’t just drink more, upgrade it right with cure. Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with adhd. I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have adhd. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristen Carter and you’re listening to the I have ADHD podcast, episode number 162. I am medicated, I am caffeinated and I am ready to roll. You guys. You guys, Summer has arrived in Eastern Pennsylvania and your girl is so happy. I am so happy. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the community pool is open, and Kristen Carter is living her best life. I love the heat. I love the feel of the sun on my skin. I love to sweat. I love to sit outside until like 9 o’ clock at night, listen to the cicadas and the frogs and all of the nighttime sounds. It’s just the the best time of year and I promise to be in a good mood for the next five months until November when it’s frigid again and then I will be sad. But I hope that wherever you are in the world, you’re enjoying some delightful weather today as well. Now, today’s episode is the first in a four part series on ADHD entrepreneurship. I’ve been an entrepreneur since forever and I know many of my listeners and coaching clients are entrepreneurs as well. So I wanted to have a few episodes in a row that will be really impactful to those of you who are in the grind, in the hustle, or maybe even working with a team and scaling your business. These episodes will be helpful to you whether you’re working full time in your business or you’re just trying to get a side gig going. Either way, I have planned out these episodes in a way that is going to be super, super helpful. Now, I thought it would be good here to share a little bit about my own entrepreneurship journey. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 17 years. It’s a long time. It makes me feel a little bit old. But that being said, I built a five figure in home music studio where I gave voice and piano lessons to about 30 students weekly. Then after that I switched careers because my dad told me to. Which is a true story. Maybe a story for another day, but honestly, I wasn’t in love with the music lesson thing and I had a baby on the way and was looking for something else. Anyway. Anyway, okay. Out of that I built a six figure tutoring company in my hometown where I led a team of employees and helped students who struggled in school. Many of them had adhd. And most recently I built a seven figure coaching and consulting business where I help adults with ADHD understand and accept themselves and reach their goals that they always wanted to reach but could could never actually execute and follow through on. And this last business is where I’ve truly come home to who I am, to what I was always meant to do and I fully integrated my own ADHD into my business. Which is what we’re going to talk about today. Not that you even have to tell anyone that you work with or that you’re serving that you have adhd. But how can you make your business more more ADHD friendly? How can you do a better job of accepting yourself as an ADHD entrepreneur and integrating your true self into your business? So all of this to say I’ve done the part time entrepreneurship thing. I’ve done the full time entrepreneurship thing. I’ve done the in person or we call it brick and mortar in the biz entrepreneurship thing. I’ve done the online entrepreneurship thing, I’ve worked as a solopreneur in my music studio and I’ve had lots of years of experience. Experience leading employees and teams both in person, at a physical location and online. So today, as we get started in our four part series on entrepreneurship, I want you to know you’re in really good hands. I have years and years of experience, first working as an entrepreneur who didn’t even acknowledge her adhd and then eventually evolving to where I fully accepted my ADHD and how it impacts the day to day of my business. So we’re talking in this episode about five ways to make your business more ADHD friendly. No matter what phase of business you’re in, it’s important that you just take a minute and think through these suggestions and see how you can apply them to your specific situation. I wish I had someone telling me these things back in the day. Like even just five years years ago, I wish I had someone telling me these things. But I didn’t. So now I’m here to tell you so that you don’t have to go through what I did in order to become your most successful self and fully aligned in your business. Now I’ve found that conventional business advice often doesn’t work for the ADHD entrepreneur. I’ve been so frustrated over the years trying to build a successful business as an ADHDer, trying to learn from neural tip robots who just don’t struggle with an inconsistent brain. They don’t struggle with rejection, sensitivity, they don’t struggle with impulsivity, time management, organization, motivation and all of those things. So every book I’ve read and every course I’ve taken and every podcast episode I listen to, I had to take it all with a grain of salt knowing that they don’t actually have insight into my specific struggles because they don’t have any hd. So I wanted to create a series for you from someone who does know you and your brain and what you’re going through as an ADHD entrepreneur. I mean, sure, I don’t know you personally, but we share a lot of the same qualities and characteristics, and I’ve coached thousands of brains just like yours. So please know that the advice in today’s episode and the ones that follow are truly coming from a place of expertise, if I do say so myself. And I do. I really, really do. Okay, so let’s get rolling. Five ways to make your business more ADHD friendly. Number one, don’t force it to look neurotypical. Now, this advice applies to every single area of your life, not just your business. But I want you to begin to assess where you’re trying to force your business to be neurotypical. Where are you trying to force yourself to be neurotypical? Within your business. Now, typical business advice is going to sound like, wake up early, have a repeatable morning routine, work out, meditate, set your intentions for the day, blah, blah, blah, right? And if that is something you want to do and that works for you, amazing. But what the neurotypicals do when they share advice like this is make it seem like you won’t be successful unless you’re doing this. And that’s just not true. It’s just not true. They take it pretty far, though, and it’s so frustrating. I once even heard a prominent person, I can’t remember, it was someone along the lines of like James Clear or Adam Grant, somebody like that. I’m not saying it was them, but somebody like that. I once heard this person say, you need to make your bed every morning because the way that you do one thing is the way that you do everything. Oh, my gosh. We’re just going to pause for eye rolls here. Okay? So go ahead, everybody, roll your eyes. Completely untrue. Their implication is if your bed isn’t made or if your home isn’t tidy, then you’re not going to be tidy in your business. If you don’t care about the sheets on your bed being tidy, then you won’t care about the finances in your business being tidy. Now that is zombie S. And Specifically, here’s why. ADHDers, especially ADHD entrepreneurs, are super creative and inventive and can solve complex problems. But it’s the simple stuff that’s hard for us and sometimes it’s even impossible for us. So to say that I have to discipline myself to make my bed every morning if I’m going to be successful in my business is not only misleading, it’s entirely untrue and I think harmful. It’s so harmful. What we end up doing is spending so much time on the things that we really, really suck at. So much energy burning ourselves out, trying to improve the things that we suck at instead of enjoying and embracing the things that we’re amazing at. Now, in the next episode, I’m going to go into a lot of detail on this specifically, but just suffice it to say, for now, I want you to begin to notice in what ways are you trying to hold your, your business or yourself as an ADHD entrepreneur to a neurotypical standard that really just doesn’t work for your brain? Maybe you’re spending most of your day trying to keep your desk clean and organized instead of solving problems for your clients. Maybe you’re beating yourself up because you’re not consistent on social media. Instead of just putting a tiny bit of energy into showing up on social media, maybe you’re forcing yourself to do a morning routine that you hate and it’s stealing all of your energy and joy. So you’re starting work depleted and unmotivated. I’m getting like hot just talking about this. It’s like making me. I’m getting very activated talking about this. All right, I want you to know that I don’t keep neurotypical work hours. I don’t start work until about 10am Everyone is out of the house, including my husband starts work about at least an hour before me, like every single day. Many of us ADHDers have what’s called delayed diurnal rhythm and our body clocks literally just don’t get cooking until mid morning. That’s me. I’m raising my hand. You know what? I’m still able to get my work done. I don’t say, oh, I should start work earlier. I’m like, this is amazing. I start work at 10 and I still get my work done right. I also don’t work out. I don’t make my bed. I don’t have a morning routine. My desk is messy, my office is messy. My drawers are not organized. I don’t personally show up on social media regularly. Even though I have a team that posts for me, I hardly ever show my face on social media. I just. I just don’t have it in me. Right? So that’s all of like what I don’t do. Those are all of the ways that I’m just like not forcing myself to be neurotypical. Here’s what I focus on instead. I focus on helping people. That’s it. That’s all an entrepreneur does anyway. They provide a solution to a specific problem. If you are an entrepreneur, that’s what you’re doing. I solve a specific problem for my clients and you solve a specific problem for your customers. All you have to do is focus on serving them and solving their problem. You don’t need a clean office to serve your clients. You don’t have to have worked out or meditated to serve your clients. You just need to be in the mindset of having how can I help my people today? That’s it. And that shit will sell. And you don’t have to be tidy to do it. So I want you to ask yourself, in what ways am I trying to force myself as an entrepreneur or my business to be or to look neurotypical? And where can I let go of some of this? Okay, tip number two, to make your business more ADHD friendly. Here we go. Make room for inconsistency now. There is so much consistency propaganda out there. And yes, it is propaganda. It makes me want to scream. From business leaders like John Maxwell and Amy Porterfield and Gary Vee, Many, many business leaders tout the importance of consistency as if an entrepreneur cannot be successful without it. And I am calling bs, which is good. This is good news because with an ADHD brain, you literally cannot and you will not be consistent. Your energy will ebb and flow. Your dopamine will ebb and flow. Your motivation will ebb and flow. If you try to force yourself to be consistent, you’re going to burn yourself out, hate your entire experience, and not TR into the full potential of what you can do to serve your clients. I’m getting really fired up. I’ve said this before and it bears repeating. You don’t need to be consistent. You won’t be consistent. You must instead practice persistence. Persistence is the commitment to pick right back up where you left off. Persistence is the willingness to see that you’ve ghosted your email list for the last three weeks and still be willing to write them today. Persistence is the pursuit of serving your client even after you were late getting a proposal to them. Persistence is everything. For an ADHD entrepreneur, persistence is everything. Persistence is not hating yourself when you realize you forgot to finish work for your favorite customer and getting it done and over to them in the next hour just like, oh my goodness, I forgot to do it, I’m going to get it done. That is what being persistent is. Now do you see how that one tiny perspective shift can change everything? If we expect ourselves to be consistent and believe the business leaders who tell us we won’t be successful without it, then we see spend so much time in frustration and shame beating ourselves up, wishing that we were more consistent, totally spiraling out in shame when we are not consistent, inevitably, I mean 100% inevitably. But if we understand that conventional business advice really doesn’t work for our ADHD brains, then we can accept who we are and truly work toward getting things done for our customers in a way that works for our ADHD brains and not against it. In what ways, I wonder, are you working against your ADHD brain in your business? In what ways are you fighting your ADHD brain instead of embracing it and accepting it and making room for it? These questions, these self reflective questions will change your life. Now I’m going to take a break here. Just a real quick break. I’m going to tell you that if you are an ADHD entrepreneur working full time in your business, you need to join my business mastermind. In it. You’ll receive my personal coaching and support in making your business more ADHD friendly, just like we’re talking about today. And scaling sustainably, spending your time and energy exclusively in your zone of genius and establishing boundaries with yourself and others, figuring out how to actually shut your brain off and rest in your time off, hiring, firing, delegating and holding your team accountable without drama and stepping into leadership in your company even as a messy ADHDer. I am so pumped to be able to offer this to you. You’ve got to come check it out because conventional business advice doesn’t work for ADHDers. And if you’re an ADHD entrepreneur, you’re going to need something different and this group is that different thing. It’s a hybrid of a mastermind where peers share ideas and hold each other accountable and a group coaching program where I teach you and offer personal coaching and consulting on your specific business. I’ve never seen anything like this offered out there in the world, so you’re definitely going to want to be a part of it. So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to ihaveadhd.com mastermind to apply. That’s ihaveadhd.com mastermind. Okay, so let’s review. Tip number one to make your business more ADHD friendly is to stop forcing it and yourself as the entrepreneur to act and look like a neurotypical. Tip number two to make your business more ADHD friendly is to stop trying to be consistent. It’s not going to happen. Embrace the concept of persistence instead. Now tip number three to making your business more ADHD friendly is to drop perfectionism. It’s very interesting, but many ADHDERS don’t even really identify as perfectionists. And yet, as Dr. Russell Ramsey has found out in his research, perfectionism is the most commonly endorsed thought distortion for adult adhd, meaning pretty much all of us struggle with it. So I promise you that it is likely holding you back in your business in different ways. And if you can begin to identify perfectionism and drop it like it’s hot, I don’t really know what that means. I take it back. Don’t drop it like it’s hot, but just like, drop it. If you could just drop perfectionism, it will allow you to move forward more quickly and more successfully in your business. So let’s talk about perfectionism. What is it? Perfectionism is setting the bar too high for yourself. And then when you inevitably don’t meet the standard that you have set, it’s beating yourself up and shaming yourself for not getting it, quote, unquote, right. Okay, now there’s two different types of perfectionism. Dr. Ramsey talks about this in his book Rethinking Adult ADHD. So there is front end perfectionism. And that looks like getting ready to get ready. It looks like getting your desk looking perfect before you can start work, or not being able to work until the dishes are done or the laundry is folded. It’s the part where you really are just delaying getting started by taking care of a bunch of other things first. So that’s front end perfectionism. It’s wanting the environment to feel great, it’s wanting your body to feel great. It’s wanting everything to be perfect before you will allow yourself to start. That’s front end perfectionism. Back end perfectionism is the part where we edit and we tweak and we work really, really hard for far too long trying to make something better and better and better and better before we are willing to call it done. Now, this is what I see most often holding ADHD entrepreneurs back is that we or they work very hard to perfect. Maybe it’s a proposal, or maybe it is, you know, the actual work that they’re doing for a client. Or maybe it’s an Instagram post or a video or whatever, it doesn’t matter. Or wanting to tweak it and perfect it and edit it and make it perfect before they’re willing to put it out in the world. And the reason why we do this is because we are trying to avoid failure and rejection. Dun, dun, dun. Okay. So the reason why ADHDers are perfectionists is because we are trying to avoid failure and rejection. If the client doesn’t like this proposal, then they’re going to reject me. And I hate feeling rejected. So I’m just going to keep tweaking this proposal and never send it over to the client. Does that sound familiar? If the client doesn’t like this website that I’m working on for them, they’re going to reject me. So instead of just getting it done and hearing feedback and making changes, I’m just going to keep tweaking it and keep tweaking it even to the point of being late to get, you know, past my deadline to get it to them is even to that point in an effort to avoid the potential failure or rejection. Now, one of the concepts that I talk about a lot, which I borrowed from Brooke Castillo, is the concept of B minus work. B minus work is enough to change the whole entire world. And I want you to think about that in terms of your business, in terms of yourself as an ADHD entrepreneur. B minus work is enough. If you could write a B minus proposal, what would that look like? If you could write a B chapter in your book, what would that look like? If you could finish up this project that’s late for your client in a B manner, wouldn’t that be better than not having anything at all to give them? Question mark in parentheses? Yes, it would be okay. So I often incorporate the concept of B minus work when it comes to my own business, my own emails, my own Instagram copy, my own podcast, all of it. What you are getting from me is B minus work. It’s not perfect. There are typos, there are things that I am doing that is not perfect. And I will tell you that I really struggle with this because I also have fear of rejection and I also have fear of failure. And so I will often spend way too much time, for example, with this podcast. I will spend way too much time writing it, planning it, editing my ideas, and then recording it. Takes a long time, but I often will go. If I let myself, I will spend too much time on it. And do you know why? It’s. It’s because I’m afraid that you’re going to reject me. It’s because I’m afraid that you might not like me. It’s because I’m afraid of potential failure or getting a negative review. Of course I want to make sure that the work is perfect. Because what I think now, it’s not a conscious thought, but what my brain really does think, kind of like behind the scenes, is if I can make this perfect, then people will like me. If I can make this Perfect, then I won’t be rejected. If I can make this perfect, then I won’t feel like a failure. That’s not actually true. You can have the most perfect podcast. I want you to go to your favorite podcast. Maybe it’s even mine. Go to your favorite podcast, look at the reviews. There will always be negative reviews. Go to your favorite restaurant and look at the reviews. There will always be negative reviews. There’s always going to be somebody that rejects what the person is offering. And this is the difficult part of being a human. It just is. So instead of trying to perfect things and hold yourself back from putting your work out there in the world, that’s what perfectionism does. It holds us back from putting our work out in the world. Instead of that, I want you to ask yourself this question. What’s the most efficient way for me to help people today? How can I produce B minus work that’s really helpful to my customers or my clients today? That will change everything for you. Asking yourself, is a B minus proposal good enough to send over today so that it’s not late? Or is a B minus version of this project good enough to send over and ask for feedback so that the client is not mad that I’ve delayed and delayed and delayed? In what way can I be the most efficient and the most helpful to my customer today? Drop perfectionism. Stop holding yourself back in an effort to try to avoid failure and rejection and just embrace that this is a natural, healthy part of life and it’s a natural, healthy part of entrepreneurship. And if you can allow yourself to put B minus work out into the world, you’ll be faster, you’ll be more efficient, you’ll be more helpful to your clients, and you’ll be more successful in your business. All right, tip number four, how to make your business more ADHD friendly. Ready for this one? Be willing to ask for help. I hear from ADHD entrepreneurs all the time. Things like, I should be able to do this on my own. This is a really simple task. I don’t know why I can’t do it. I shouldn’t be taking so long on xyz. I want to remind you that for the ADHD brain, the simple things are actually quite hard. We have so many gifts, so many strengths. We are so creative and inventive and we solve complex problems. That’s why we are entrepreneurs, because we solve problems for people, right? We solve very complex problems, but the simple things are quite hard. And if we’re not willing to help, we are going to really make it difficult for ourselves, to move forward quickly and to embrace all of who we are. As an ADHD entrepreneur, I always recommend that if your business can support the investment, that you hire an assistant, someone to help you in your business with the quote, unquote, simple tasks. The two people that support me the most in my business, Felicia and Selena, they do very complex things for me, but they also do very simple, easy things that I just cannot do. For example, they pay the bills for me. Is it something I can do? Yeah. Is it something I put off? Yeah. Do I suck at it for some reason? Yes. I know that all of my contractors invoices are paid on time because I’m not the one responsible to do it. Felicia and Selena are both in my email. They’re so good at going through email and responding and when it’s something that I need to respond to, holding me accountable to respond to the things that I need to respond to. They are in my calendar. They’re scheduling things for me. It is really important that you honor the fact that, that you are amazing at the difficult things and really sucky at the easy things. And so if you can honor that and ask for help with the simple things, then you’re not burning out all of your energy trying to get the quote, unquote, simple things done, leaving nothing left in the gas tank, so to speak, for the hard, complex problems that actually when you solve them, they make you so much money, right? Solving complex problems is what allows you as an ADHD entrepreneur to make a crap ton of money, right? But if you are investing all of your brains, power and energy on the simple things, and again, that’s air quotes, simple things that you just really suck at, you’re not going to have anything left in the gas tank for the hard things. And so if you can, if your business supports the investment, hire someone to help you. If it doesn’t, if you don’t have the revenue in your business yet to hire someone, then ask a friend, ask a partner, ask a parent, ask anyone for help, ask someone for help, be willing to be vulnerable and say, hey, I need a little help with this. Would you mind? And listen, the people that love you, they’re going to help you if they have the capacity to, okay? And, you know, if they’re not able to, then go make a new friend who can. Because, like, I used to use Greg as a body double all the time. So I’d be like, I see that you’re doing work. Do you mind if I come and work next to you? Because I just need the anchor of somebody doing work, that was a huge help to me. He’s also helped me, like when I had my tutoring business, he helped me with mailings. He’s helped me with a lot of things behind the scenes, the things that I’m not good at. But unless you are willing to be vulnerable and say, hey, I’m really good at these hard things over here, but I’m not so good at these simple things, would you please help me? You’re not going to get the help that you need. And then you’ll be spending your time and energy on the things that you suck at instead of the things that you’re good at. All right, last one. And this one is good. The way to make your business more ADHD friendly is to make it more fun. You’ve got to remember that we ADHDers have lower levels of dopamine. That means that motivation is fleeting. It means that inspiration is fleeting. It means that we struggle to feel good. And so it’s important to manufacture fun. I love asking myself the question, how can I make this more fun? No matter what you are doing in your business, you need to honor the fact that your dopamine levels are low and manufacturing fun can make it go faster and smoother and more enjoyably. And you’ll be more likely to be willing to do that same task tomorrow and the next day and the next day because you are not trudging through the mud in order to do it. Your brain remembers when a task is boring. Your body remembers when a task brings up overwhelm or agitation or whatever the case may be. And so if you can counterbalance that with some fun, with some dopamine, with some liveliness, that will make it so much easier to get it accomplished and it’ll make it so much more likely that you’ll be willing to do that same task over and over and over and will not have to scale the wall of awful all of those horrible feelings in order to do it again tomorrow. All right, so these the five ways to make your business more ADHD friendly. Number one, don’t try to make it look like a neurotypical business. It’s not. You have adhd. Allow yourself to have adhd. Number two, make room for your inconsistencies. They’re going to happen, and that’s okay. Number three, drop perfectionism. If you’re a perfectionist, it’s for sure holding you back from making big strides in your business. And dropping it will help your success success to go faster and more efficiently. Number four, Ask for help. Be willing to be vulnerable enough to say, hey, I’m really good at the complex things, but I’m really bad at the simple things. Will you please help me? Whether you’re asking someone that you know who will help you for free or you’re hiring someone to help you, either way, asking for help is a key, key component to having a success successful ADHD entrepreneurial venture. And number five make it fun. Manufacture dopamine. It will make your life so much better, so much happier. I hope this was so helpful to you and that you’ll be able to apply these tips to your business today. And if you are an ADHD Entrepreneur working for full time in your business, go to ihaveadhd.com mastermind to apply to join me in a mastermind and group coaching experience that will change your business forever. Can’t wait. Talk to you next week. Bye bye. Hey ADHD Entrepreneur, if you want my support with your business but you’re not quite ready to apply for my mastermind, you need to get your buns into focus. Today Focused is my group coaching program for adults with adhd. And so so so so many of our members are entrepreneurs. Because of this, I created the Inconsistent Entrepreneur. The Inconsistent Entrepreneur is a course Inside Focus where I teach you how to grow your business even though you’ve got a distracted and inconsistent brain. The Inconsistency Consistent Entrepreneur is my signature course and it includes a workbook, four video classes taught by me and tons of binge able business coaching calls that’ll be so helpful to your business they’ll blow your freaking mind. Best of all, Inside of Focused, you will receive my coaching on your business and be surrounded by a community of ADHD entrepreneurs who will support you and give you great ideas on how you can grow. So go to ihaveadhd.com focused to join. And just a hint here, if you’re using Focused for your business, you should talk to your accountant about labeling it as a business expense. Go to ihaveadhd.com focused and I’ll see you inside. Sam.
