As an ADHD entrepreneur there's a top five of annoying things we do.

And we're going to talk about them in this episode!

Hi! I'm Katie McManus, ADHD entrepreneur business strategist and money mindset coach.

And welcome to "The Weeniecast."

The origin story of The Weeniecast? TikTok videos. No BS!

Alright, so how bananas is it that a bunch of us ADHD unicorns found out about our sparkly brain quirks through TikTok?

Seriously, one minute you're just killing time, laughing at cat videos and people epic-failing at life, and the next, you're smacked in the face with this huge "Aha!" moment.

It's like going on a treasure hunt and finding the map tattooed on your own butt.

The cheat codes of ADHD coping

Some of us have been in the know about our brain's funky wiring since we were practically in diapers, while others only caught the memo later in life.

It's like half of us have been playing this crazy game of life with cheat codes, and the rest of us were just making it up as we went along, only to find the instructions taped to the bottom of our shoe, covered in glitter and coffee stains.

5 annoying things us ADHD entrepreneurs do

No spoilers, but you're about to go down a rabbit hole of unfinished tasks, shiny object syndrome, all-or-nothing dreaming, dopamine seeking, and a huge helping of Mean Girls.

Particularly burn books!

Timestamped summary

00:00 The 5 ADHD traits in entrepreneurs - an introduction.

04:06 Frustrating ADHD behaviors and ways to cope.

08:04 My regrets about unfinished knitting projects and legacy.

11:51 Planning doesn't equal doing; it's appealing.

14:06 Apology for planning and striving to overcome self-doubt.

18:26 Enjoying fitness but struggling with realistic planning.

20:08 Perfectionism leads to self-sabotage and failure.

23:36 Google ads fuel self-doubt and impostor syndrome persists.

28:33 Embracing community support and seeking business assistance.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Katie's May Birthday challenge

Clients can't hire you if they don't know you exist... Which is why it's SO important to post content to Social Media. Consistently. But that's easier said than done... To learn how to post consistently, you have to DO consistently. Which is why I've created the 31 Day Challenge- to hold your feet to the fire so you can create content, post, and finally attract your ideal clients to you, rather than chase them down...

In this episode, we're going to talk about the

top five annoying things that I, and probably you

do as ADHD entrepreneurs. Hi, I'm Katie McManus,

business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast!

There are two types of ADHD people

that I tend to come across nowadays, that I have this podcast and I work

with a lot of ADHD folks, and the first one is

very similar to me. They got diagnosed with ADHD when they were a kid.

Were never actually brought on board with what that meant

for them, right? Because back in the day when you got diagnosed with

ADHD, it was very much, here's how your ADHD is making

everyone else frustrated. And

I, along with all these other people who grew up

knowing they had this label, but not actually understanding how it

impacted them on a day to day, have now gotten to the point where they're

comfortable with the label, but they're now watching TikToks and

reels and listening to podcasts like this and they're

understanding, oh, my God, I didn't realize that was an ADHD thing.

That other thing that people do is also an ADHD thing. Holy

crap. I thought it was just me. Like this whole time.

I feel like there is gatekeeping of this information,

and it is probably because the people that researched ADHD early

on didn't have ADHD. And really, the only

reason I got diagnosed with ADHD is because I wasn't really following along with what

was going on in class, right. So I was the

problem. That's kind of how they approached it early on is this child

is being a problem. We need to make them not be a problem anymore.

Maybe give them some Ritalin or some Adderall or whatever else there is out there,

and hopefully that'll do the trick. I don't remember at any point, I

will absolutely do an episode on my experience as a

child getting diagnosed early on because I think that would be super valuable

for those of you who got diagnosed early on to know that you weren't alone.

But there was no point throughout all that where I was told about

rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, or executive

dysfunction, I just thought I was bad at paying attention to stuff.

I didn't realize that there was actually something going on in my brain that made

it hard for me to start things. It honestly wasn't until

the lockdown of Covid-19 where I got on

TikTok and started watching these videos by people who

have ADHD. They're younger than me. So they obviously had different

support systems when they got their diagnosis, and they were describing all

these things that I've done all my life. Squirrel. Squirrel. What

fake Adhd looks like? Yeah, I have, like, really bad

AdHD because I can never focus in class what

real ADHD looks like? Okay, I'm just going to brush my hair. I

kind of wish I was a brunette. Oh, are those my kids?

I literally lost them. I have an identical

twin sister, and we were both diagnosed with ADHD, but our diagnoses were almost ten

years apart. I presented as very outwardly hyperactive, and she presented as more

inattentive. So I was loud, disruptive, and had trouble sitting still,

whereas she appeared uninterested during lessons, doodled a lot, and always seemed to be

distracted by her thoughts. All right, let's sit down and do

some work. Work.

All right, enough. Come on, sit down, dude. Focus. Focus,

Ford, focus. What a piece of car. Squirrel.

It's like you're a zebra in a herd of horses.

You might realize that you're a zebra, but you think that you have to fit

in with these horses and really, like, zebras are

horses. They're not great. They can't do the things that

horses do. But understanding that there are other zebras

that are also shitty horses and that they're shitty at being

horses in the same way you're shitty at being a horse, there's a

relief to that. And I hadn't ever

experienced that relief until I started watching

TikToks by other ADHD creators. And really, that's the only reason this

podcast exists. So thank you to all those creators on

TikTok who inspired this. So, in honor of

that, I want to share with you the top five

annoying things that my ADHD does

that drive me and everyone around me up

the wall and how I

am learning to cope with them, because let's be

honest here, they still drive me nuts. They're still problems. I haven't

figured out the solution to this, and as I'm sharing these things, if

you have an experience of this, I would love it if you shared

how this shows up in your life to my instagram. If you go to

Instagram, it's at Katie the coach. And

if there's a thing that you have going on that I'm not

listing, I'd love to hear that, too. Because the goal here is

to start showcasing the person

with ADHD, their experience of having

ADHD, rather than the diagnostic

criteria that represents how other people are

frustrated with us. For someone to be able to diagnose us. They kind of have

to be able to see, like, how us being ADHD is negatively impacting

the people in our lives. It's usually the thing that we see,

but for us, that doesn't quell this feeling

of, I must be the only one. I'm just fucked up, there's something

wrong with me. No one else has this problem. So the

goal is to create a very comprehensive list of all the annoying shit

that we have to struggle with with ourselves so that we know that we're not

alone, so we know that we're actually adequate zebras, not inadequate

horses.

So the first thing on my list is I'm a 60

percenter. I get really excited for new projects,

and because I get hyper focused on new things that

have variety and energy and are

interesting to me, I can bang out a big

chunk of any project to a

point. There comes a point where

it stops being exciting. Like, this new project

loses its shine, gets a little dusty. The

way you got yourself into it with that motivation

fizzles out. Like, as I'm recording this podcast, I'm

sitting in my office. It has four walls, as rooms

do. Some rooms have more, some rooms have less. I don't know why I

wanted to clarify that, except to explain that three of these

walls are painted a different color than the fourth, and not on purpose,

because when I made this room my office, I decided I wanted to

repaint it, and I got three walls in, and I was like, you know what?

That's good enough. I don't really

feel like painting that fourth wall. It seems like I can do it later.

Right? Like, this is good enough. That wall never

got painted. Of course not. It's still the old color. To its

credit, it does look like an accent wall. Okay, so it

works. Unless you look under my desk and you see the can of paint that's

still there with the drop cloth and the thing. Let's not talk about that.

Also, there's, like, too much stuff in front of that, so you probably wouldn't even

be able to see it if you did come into my room. This happens

everywhere. This happens in all aspects of my life

as a crafter. For those of you who do knitting and sewing

and quilting, you'll know what I'm talking about. When

I moved out of my apartment in Philadelphia, I literally counted

how many knitting projects I had started and not

completed that were still in project bags.

And I'm pretty sure the number is around 23. Now,

to give you an idea of the kind of knitting I do usually

a ball of yarn that I buy is around $30, and these

projects usually have about three of those, if not

more. So $90 worth of yarn. The needles are

usually $20 each. And then, of course, the project bag. So

literally 23 projects that all cost me all

in, say, $130 that I've never

finished, they're all about 60% done.

And honestly, I know I'm just going to continue to move them

with me as I go through life until I die. They're never going to get

finished. Like whoever I leave my

estate to when I'm old because I don't think I'm going to have kids, I

feel really bad for them because they're going to have to throw out

my unfinished work that I started 60 years before.

So, to whoever you are, if this podcast is still around when

I die, I preapologize to you. And also

I preapologize for all the projects that I know I will start between now and

then and never finish that you will also have to deal with. What's extra

fun about this is it doesn't just exist in painting rooms,

in renovating your house. It also happens in your business,

which makes it so much fun for

your vas, your obms, your podcast producer, to

work with you. As Neil and I were talking about the topic of this episode,

he reminded me of a couple things that I told him I would get to

him months ago and then completely forgot about.

I'm not gonna lie. Hearing about them gave me a little bit of anxiety,

but also, I should probably get them done right.

This is something that drives me crazy about

myself. It's something that if I could wave a magic

wand, I would change spelly armor. And it's also something

that I honestly have not figured out how to fix.

Right. I have set goals for myself that I'm going to finish all these

things. I have asked for accountability on

them, and usually that accountability just gives me anxiety.

The one thing that I find does help is

having someone sit down and doing it with me. Like body doubling,

having a friend come over. I mean, it would be really boring for a friend

to come over and just sit there while I finish a knitting project

that really, honestly needs another 14 to 25

hours of knitting. That would be a very patient friend, or it

would be a friend who really has to catch up on a major series or

something on Netflix. I have good friends, but I also don't have

any friends who have that much free time. So it's

probably not effective for a lot of stuff that I'm only 60% on,

so if you have any tips on this, I would be open to hearing them.

If you also do this, I'd love to hear exactly how

this shows up for you in your life. This also shows up in

how I live my life in my space. So, like, for instance,

if I decide that I'm going to take Luna for a walk, I have to

put on socks and I have to put on shoes. I'll go into my bedroom,

I'll open the drawer, pull out the socks, then put them on, and

then go for a walk. I won't close the drawer.

By the time I've acquired the socks, the drawer has

ceased to exist to me. It has served its purpose.

Like, there's no next step in my mind to the point where

I will walk into my bedroom and every single drawer

in all of my dressers will be open. And it's

inconvenient because if you need something in a lower drawer, you can't get to it.

So that's when you kind of have to close things. But that

60% done shows up in a lot of places.

It has made me kind of an annoying roommate in the past, and I do

apologize. My former roommates. Anyway, moving on.

The second thing that drives me absolutely bonkers about

myself and also annoys people around me, is I'm really good

at planning the plan. Right?

Planning the plan does not equal doing the plan.

This happens especially for us, in the new year,

in a new month, right. We decide that we're going to take on a

new habit that sounded like hobbit, a

new habit, like working out or being on social

media. We're really good at planning out what we want to do,

and we can kind of get addicted to the planning of it

and not actually ever do any of it.

So planning on the plan. For me, this

especially shows up in creating workout plans for myself and

in my business, two areas that are pretty important,

my health and my income. Now, I will

say there's something about this that I do like, because creating a plan, to me,

I find very soothing, very reassuring, that when you see the

plan laid out on paper and there's space for it in your life and you

could do it if you wanted to do it, it's there for you, it fits,

there's time for it. It's not like you're being unreasonable in saying

that you're going to devote x amount of time every single day when you don't

actually have that time available. So there is some value here,

right? Because sometimes when you have anxiety, you just have to do one little

thing that will bring your anxiety down enough that you can move on and do

other stuff. Sometimes this is that for me. But for the

most part, I'm really great at making plans that I never act on.

I imagine who I would be if I made the plan

and did the plan. Think about how fit I'd be. Think about how

accomplished I'd be. Think about how many books I would have written by now. There

are several books that I've started and I've never finished, but I have plans for

them. I have the chapters planned out. I have the storyline or

the point of the book. Fiction and nonfiction. I could be a New York

Times bestselling author by now.

I'm now going through what my life would look like, and I'm living in a

moment of regret because there's no way I'm ever going to follow the plan.

There's no way I'm going to plan the plan and then actually do the plan

on all the plans that I've ever made. I get excited for new

plans all the time, and actually, maybe that's a hobby. Maybe that's

something I do for fun. If you listen to the last episode where we talked

about having fun for fun's sake, maybe planning is actually

something that I do for fun, which is kind of sad. I need more

hobbies.

I need to get out more. This episode is basically an apology

tour to everyone who has to deal with me on a day to day

basis or has had to in the past. So I apologize to those of you

who've had to deal with my planning self and my not doing

self. I want to say I'll try to be better in the future, but I'm

always trying to be better and it never actually works.

Number three, another thing that I do as a

business owner with ADHD is I actually steal

dopamine from myself all the time. This dopamine

theft usually happens by me setting an

arbitrary deadline for me to do something that I planned

on and then not doing it and missing that deadline

that I set for myself that no one else was counting on, and then feeling

bad about it and feeling like, oh my God, I'm so behind. This is

three weeks late when really it doesn't affect any other part of your

business. No one's waiting for it. It's

literally just something that you said that you would do for you and then

gave yourself a deadline for when you

pass a deadline. There's no more dopamine in that action

if you go and do it, you don't get any credit for it.

There's no wave of relief that you got this done.

You've failed already, right? It is the

ultimate way to steal dopamine from yourself. This is one of the

reasons why in the Monday sprints that I do with my clients and my

communities, one of the first things I have them do in that

call is I have them forgive themselves. Like silver light

just kind of washing over them. That washes away the

lateness and the behind on the deadline

and kind of cleans up all the energy around the tasks

that they're going to assign themselves that week. Because if any of those tasks are

hangovers from the week before, the week before, the month before, the year before,

they're not going to have any credit attached to them. They're just going to have

failure. And whenever we feel like we've already failed at something, that's prime

time for our executive dysfunction to pop up and we will avoid it

and we'll continue to feel about it, and it doesn't matter, actually,

how many other things we do and accomplish in that

week if we still have that one thing that we're behind

on it actually robs dopamine from the other things as well. We got this

from school. We got this from work. There were deadlines we had to have our

homework in. If we didn't do it, we didn't get credit. If we didn't learn

the stuff by the time the exam, we failed the exam. When you run your

own business, you're the boss. You make the rules.

If business is going fine without this

thing, then you're fine. No one cares.

I had a complete meltdown to my social media manager a couple of

years ago because I had set this expectation for myself, even though I

tell all my clients different, I had become prominent on

LinkedIn and had a really steady posting schedule for

like, it was just baked into my routine. And then I was like, okay, cool.

And then now I'm going to do TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram all at the same

time, counter to every bit of advice I give every one of my clients.

It's too much. And so I assigned myself the work. I planned the

plan, and then I didn't do the plan. I had this freak out because I

was robbing dopamine for myself and I wasn't getting other stuff done. Jess called

me out on it. She was like, okay, cool. Were you ever getting clients from

these other platforms? And at the time, I wasn't. She's like, okay, cool. So

you not doing it is actually not hurting you in any way, shape or form,

right? It's not like you're missing out on business because the business

isn't there yet, because you haven't done it yet. You've gotten all your

business from LinkedIn and from referrals and from other sources.

You're fine. When we rob ourselves of

dopamine, we rob ourselves of that steam that keeps the momentum

going. And it's cruel and it's unnecessary,

and it actually hurts us more than it helps us. So deadlines,

use them to the extent that they're useful for you,

but when they start becoming destructive, stop. That's what I've

learned.

Related but different. The all or nothing. So for someone

who is not athletic at all, like, doesn't know the rules to sports,

if you've been around here a while, you know, I can screw up the most

simple sports metaphor, but that doesn't mean that I don't

enjoy physical fitness. So, like, I love going to the gym. I love

picking up heavy things and putting them back down. I love

cardio and kickboxing and all that stuff. And

I think when I create a fitness plan for myself,

I tend to get excited for all the things that I can do in a

week in my mind, and I forget that my body

still has to actually do the things. So I

have to catch myself on this all the time. And this happens at least once

a month. I'll make a workout plan for myself. Three days in the

gym, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Here's the workout plan I'm going to follow. Oh,

I have four more days in the week. Great. What if I ran two of

them and did yoga plotties the other two?

Oh, but now I want to look at the schedule for that yoga studio. They

have a yoga class at night, but that's on a Tuesday or Thursday. Okay, cool.

I can do two workouts that day. Oh, yeah. Well,

if I want to run two times a week now, it kind of has to

overlap with this thing. Okay, so I'll work out three times that day. Two times

this day. That's not going to happen. I'm

not an athlete. I'm a normal person who sits most of the

day. Okay. I'm also way less in shape than I used to be when I

worked at Equinox. Right. Which is a place I used to work at. It was

a high end fitness club. What I still do to myself to this day is

I make this elaborate plan with this unreasonable amount

of workouts. In it. And day one I hold myself to the

expectation of doing it and I don't do it. And then it's like, well, I've

already failed at this, so I might as well not do it for the rest

of the week. And then next week I'll start. We do this all or nothing

thing to ourselves, right? And we attach failure to it

when we don't adhere to it perfectly. It happens in

fitness, it happens in diets. If you're trying to lose weight or if you're trying

to eat differently, if you're trying to cut sugar out, and then you go eat

ice cream, and then you ate ice cream once, so you've screwed up the

whole plan and, oh, nothing. So now you're just going to eat ice cream

and completely fall off the wagon. Happens in our

businesses, like posting social media. If you're in

a 100 day streak and you miss one of the days, what happens

the next day? And the next day? And the next day? Do you have the

same momentum? There's a point at which giving

ourselves like short sprint goals to do something every single day is really

helpful, but it stops being

helpful when we apply the all or nothing rule

to it. If you failed one day, then

none of the rest counts. It does actually

count. That's something that drives me absolutely crazy about

myself. And yet I still do it.

I still do it. I still make these elaborate plans and I never stick to

them. It's exhausting. I mean, it's not

as exhausting as working out two or three times a day. Now I'm just thinking

about how fit I could be, how in shape.

Oh my God. The last thing that really annoys me,

that qualifies for this list is what am I going to say

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

squirrel, squirrel.

The last thing that really annoys me that qualifies for this

list is this assumption that I suck.

I pretty much assume that I suck at everything. It

takes a lot of positive feedback for me

to start believing that I don't suck at something.

This is classic impostor syndrome. Now, this comes from

various places in our ADHD matrix, right? Comes from

rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, where maybe we do something but

we don't get the overt feedback that was

positives. And so we assume that it wasn't good enough, that we weren't good

enough. It can also come from having shiny object

syndrome and jumping from hobby to hobby to hobby to hobby.

We don't necessarily become deep experts about everything. We become

generalists, and whenever we come across

someone who knows more about a thing than we know,

we just assume that we're trash. Right? We're trash.

They're the best. We suck. We're the worst. And that's

that. Early on in my business, I did this a lot more,

because when I would go online, when I go on social media, I'd get all

these advertisements from fellow business coaches, and they looked more

successful than me, and they looked more well put together.

They had way more success stories with their

clients. Now, I completely discounted that. This person

usually had been in business ten years longer than I had because they'd

been in business ten years longer than I had. They had a bigger budget, they

had more programs because they'd had the time to develop them,

and they just had more experience. And also, you can

appear successful online and not actually have success. So who knows

if these people actually were as successful as they were? But these

advertisements were in my awareness because they were showing up for me, and they

would make me feel so small until I

realized that the Google machine pays attention to everything that we talk

about. So as someone who's constantly talking about business coaching,

because I'm a business coach, the Google machine can't

discern between, oh, this person does that, or this person is interested

in that. So the Google machine just shows you lots and

lots of business coaches, right? Or if you're a yoga teacher, lots of other yoga

teachers, or if you're a landscaper, lots and lots of other landscapers,

to the point that it's really easy to think the market's completely

saturated and everyone else is way better at this than you are,

and you should just give up. Now, I've gotten better at this because I

have that understanding, and yet still, I get

major impostor syndrome. When people who

I admire and respect and I see as successful in a lot of

different ways, when they reach out to me and ask me to partner with them,

my impostor syndrome flares up like, no, you're not qualified for this.

Forgetting the fact that they know I'm qualified, there's a reason

they want to partner with me. Now,

this annoying thing, this assuming I business, is

one of the most painful things, because this assumption that I

suck or that I'm not good enough in a lot of areas

actually keeps me from going for things that I really deeply want.

I have ADHD, and if you follow sacred money archetypes,

I'm a maverick, which means I'm very risk comfortable. Okay,

I'm okay, with risk, I actually really enjoy it. And

also sometimes if the risk is that I'm going to be

rejected or told that I'm not good enough, I will just self

reject. I will hold myself back. I won't actually go for

it. That's not something that helps you grow your business. It's not something

that helps you grow an empire, which I'm working on right now.

So this, as I'm talking through this, I feel like I'm just giving myself a

therapy session. Honestly. There's an activity that I assign to my clients and I rarely

do for myself. You know the movie mean girls and how

like, the premise of the movie is based around this group of

girls who are mean and they write mean shit about everyone

else in this burn book. The burn book gets out

and it tears people down and

like, violence ensues. They have to have a whole school assembly

to assess or to acknowledge all the mean things that got said.

And the reason it got that far is because the mean things that were

said were believed by the person that they were said about.

If you say something mean about me that I don't think is true already, I'm

not going to get upset about it. I don't care. But if you say something

mean about me that I'm already holding against myself, I already

assume I suck in that way. That's painful.

Now, what I tell my clients to do that I'm going to start doing after

this recording is instead of collecting a burn book on yourself, because we all

do it. We're all constantly scanning the world for all the ways in which we

suck. Instead of collecting a burn book about

yourself, start creating a brag book.

We have a weird relationship with that word brag, right? Because

when we see someone brag, it's usually done in a way that is meant to

make other people feel bad. That's not bragging. That's being an

asshole in its most energetically

pure form. Bragging is a

manifestation tool. Bragging is basically saying to

the universe, oh, my God, this amazing thing happened.

I am so happy about it. I would love if

more things like this happened. Please and thank you.

Now, the trick here, and I know this for my clients, and if you

have a business, you know what I'm talking about, because we all know for our

clients things that we don't do for ourselves, right? Anyway,

a brag book isn't going to feel real until you do it a lot. Because

if you've been raised your entire life to look for all the ways in which

you suck. And you're really good at looking for that evidence. Looking

for evidence that's opposite to that is going to feel really

fake for a long time.

So it takes repetition, it takes constantly acknowledging

the things that you're good at, the good things that come to you, the things

that you're grateful for. It's a practice. It's not a one

time thing. And I'm explaining this to you, but I'm also kind of explaining this

to myself so that when Neil and I stop recording this podcast,

I can sit down and plan a plan about how I'm going to incorporate this

into my day. And you can see where this is going to go. I'm going

to plan the plan and I'm not going to do the plan. And then I'm

going to continue to assume that I suck.

It is a vicious cycle, people.

And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to get out of it.

But you know what? One of the best things about the

weeniecast community is that we can be in this vicious cycle

together, and it doesn't feel as vicious.

And for that, I thank you for being here. I thank you for

being in my world and for all the beautiful feedback that you give me about

this podcast and how it helps you every day.

And for all the ways in which this episode might not have actually been helpful

at all because I haven't actually figured this stuff out for myself. I

apologize and I thank you for listening. Squirrel, 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

weeniecast.com strategycall.

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.

Okay, back to this thing with the weird apostrophe. Okay,

shut up, Neil. Stop talking.

Okay,

to get my together.

Are you hiding? Are you hiding so I don't see you laughing?

My RSD is pulsing right now. Oh my God.

RSD. RSD. Okay, in

this episode, we're going to talk you through why. To have

more fun. For fun's sake. For fuck sake.

Yes. Brilliant.

Awesome. Squirrel,

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.