If the thought of starting a business makes you break out in hives because you're terrified of sucking at, well, pretty much everything, then this episode of the Weeniecast is exactly what you need.

Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"

Pssssst! Not sure if you've heard, but I'm inviting new members to the best community for business owners with ADHD - the Hyperfocused Community! You can join here - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus

Now, back to this episode...

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: intentionally failing at stuff is the key to building resilience and telling perfectionism to take a hike.

We'll dive into why those of us with ADHD tend to have such a hard time with failure, and I'll hook you up with three tactics to practice being absolutely terrible at things.

You'll find out how failing on purpose, correcting instead of beating yourself up, and embracing the "half-assed" approach can help you stop spinning your wheels and actually make some progress in your business.

By the time you're done listening, you'll be itching to go out there and epically suck at something new.

You'll be ready to tackle all the crazy skills you'll need to learn as a freshly minted business owner, from sales and marketing to tech stuff that makes you want to pull your hair out.

And you'll have the tools you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when you're not magically amazing at everything right out of the gate.

So come along for the ride as we take a hilarious, no-holds-barred look at how to dropkick perfectionism to the curb and develop the resilience to fail your way to success.

Timestamp Summary:

[00:00:50] - Why starting a biz means doing a crap-ton of stuff you've never done before and will totally bomb at

[00:03:52] - Three tactics to build resilience to failure

[00:07:17] - Tennis misadventures after 20 years away from the court

[00:08:58] - How royally screwing up is the only way to learn a new language

[00:13:07] - Why being awful is the key to prepping for new challenges in your business

[00:14:25] - Correcting yourself without going all self-flagellation

[00:18:32] - Shooting for "half-assed" instead of perfect

Useful links

My discounted link for you to learn a new language to give you practice at failing!:

https://weeniecast.com/lingoda

Your next steps after listening

Realizing it's time to work with me? Book your free initial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall

Get more support in your ADHD entrepreneur life by joining my hyperfocus community! - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus

Wanna get this content earlier, and totally unbleeped? Subscribe to the Apple Podcasts premium version of this show - https://weeniecast.com/winners

Want to just buy me a coffee in return for some helpful insight? Thank you! Here's where you can do that - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiethecoach

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I'm about to prescribe your perfectionist cure.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And

welcome to the Weeniecast! If you want to

prepare to start a business before you even have an idea, before you

figure out what your niche is, before you make any

plans to quit your corporate job, here is the number

one most important thing that you can work on right now. And

that thing is be bad at. Just be bad.

Go and do things that you've never done before and suck royally at

it. Get used to being bad at stuff, right? Because

when you start a business, let me tell you, it's not just offering

the service that you're going to be selling, it is

doing a buttload of other stuff that you've never done before,

even if you come from sales. Oftentimes, my clients who come from

sales, I have to retrain on how to sell their services

because the sales process is very different. Selling your own

time is incredibly vulnerable. It feels

like you're putting yourself up for a whole ton of

rejection, which you are. It's. That's the nature of sales. But

if you're not used to being bad at, you're going to do it once and

then say, I never want to do that again. And then you're going to quit

and then you're going to have to stay with your nine to five job and

your dream of owning your own business is never going to come true.

And it's not just sales that you're going to be bad at. It's marketing.

It's writing content for social media, it's creating video content for

social media. It's learning how to use an email marketing

system. It's understanding how to create a website

or how to have someone else create a website. And then knowing how

to tell if it's good or not. It's learning how to speak, it's learning how

to go on a live stream. It's learning how to be on a podcast.

There are so many skills that you're going to have to learn when you start

the business that you're just gonna have to suffer

through being really shitty at for the first dozen

times you do it or more. And if you don't have a resilience to

being bad at it, then, my friend, I'm sorry,

starting a business just isn't for you. This is what I call the perfectionist

cure. Because the reason we're afraid of being bad at stuff is because we

expect ourselves to be perfect at it. We don't think anything is worth doing if

we can't do it perfectly. And this is so hard for people

with ADHD, right? Because we have this experience of

learning incredibly fast when we're interested in something. And

when we learn that fast, we gain this expectation that we're

just good at everything the first time we try. I can't tell you a single

crafting hobby that I've ever had that took me a long time to learn because

I was so interested in it. So much so that I will brag that my

knitting teachers were really impressed with me, that I learned how to do, like, a

cable knit with, like, minimal instruction and

just like, kind of a glance over my work. I know you're super impressed. We're

also incredibly good at avoiding stuff that we're bad at,

right. If you're bad at something in your job, you tend to find the

workaround for the workaround. For the workaround that will help you avoid doing that thing

forever. Or, and this is true for many of us, I

know there's always that one task that you're

bad at enough that your manager or your coworkers are like,

don't worry, we'll do this for you because you cannot be trusted to do this

well, okay. There's something about you that you just can't handle this. And that's

fine. You're good at other things. We will delegate this out to someone else.

We do not have a great resilience to being bad at

things. We don't have a great resilience to failing. So there are three

tactics that I find really helpful. When you're trying to build your resilience

to being bad at and move yourself away from that

perfectionist mindset. And this serves you when you're starting a business.

This serves you in jobs. This serves you in relationships. This serves you when you're

trying to learn a hobby or how to do something like cooking. It

serves you in the sports, which I have a little story about. And really,

it's something that once you learn how to be bad at stuff, you actually

become unstoppable. When you learn how to deal with that feeling of,

oh, God, I'm failing. I'm actively failing, oh, no, I just failed again. And I

failed again. And I failed again. People are going to know that I'm a massive

failure. Once you learn how to be with that, nothing can stop you.

No judgment from other people will stop you. You're not going to freak

yourself out about this not being good enough. You're going to become a

powerhouse, to get whatever you want in this life.

Okay, so the number one most effective way

to get good at failing is obvious. You have to fail

on purpose. And when I say fail on purpose, I said this to a client

the other day, and I was like, what's something that you are bad at? He's

like, skydiving. And I was like, cool. That's not

something you want to be bad at. So don't try to fail with skydiving.

Then he's like, skiing. And I was like, cool. It's summer.

You can't practice being bad at skiing in the summer unless you really

want to hurt yourself falling down a very rocky mountain. It's funny.

When I asked him that question, I was expecting him to say something like

macrame

or speaking a language or something. I don't know. And,

yeah, it didn't go the way I thought it would. So when I say this,

I want you to think through what are the things that you can practice being

bad at that won't end in a nice little memorial service for

you or with you in the hospital? And disclaimer, anything that you

do that gets you hurt is your responsibility. I take no ownership of that. As

the host of the Weenie cast, this is all just for inspiration's

sake. What it inspires you to do is hopefully something that keeps you safe.

When you think about failing on purpose, I want you to pick something that is

disparate from your work. It is not associated with the thing that you want

to do for your business. Because what we don't want to start doing is we

don't want to start creating a story that you suck at the thing that you

want to do. We want to give you something that is in a

complete other sphere where you get to practice

just being bad at something.

If you listen to, like, one or two episodes of the Weenie cast, I bet

you know that I know nothing about this. Sports. Half the time I start a

metaphor that involves sports, and then I get confused halfway through. And then Neil has

to go back and edit it so it sounds smart. It might surprise you to

find out that I actually played tennis when I was a kid. And when I

was in high school, I was not popular on my

own tennis team because I didn't play to win. I didn't really care about

the competition of it. I just played to have fun. And my tennis partner,

Jackie Blut, got really, really frustrated with me, that

I was trying to have fun with the other team and that I was being

friendly with them. And I wasn't like out for blood, not my style. So anyway,

so I quit the tennis team. I didn't really play. Gave up when I moved

cross country to California. My tennis racket was actually stolen out of my car in

Tucson, Arizona, which of course, like I could have

absolutely replaced it. But you know, I wasn't good at tennis. So

why, why? I don't even know why I brought a tennis racket in the first

place. It's like, you know when you're traveling and you're like, oh, I'm going by

car. Throw it in the car, I might want it. Yeah. So I

recently decided that I wanted to get back into tennis and so I signed up

for a one on one class. No, I'm not good. No, I don't remember a

whole lot. I'm not terrible. But it's been this really incredible experience

going and doing something that I would expect myself to be better at

because 20 years ago I was somewhat good at it. God,

I feel so old when I do math on when I how old I was

in high school. That's so depressing. Sidebar.

I went to this political event for the Massachusetts governor a few weeks ago

and I walk into the event and I see one of the history teachers from

my high school, Mister Dixon. And I was never in Mister Dixon's class, okay?

So I'm not gonna bash him. I don't know his teaching style. He was never

terrible to me. He was always super nice. He actually got me into rowing one

summer, which was kind of fun. Great workout, by the way. Anyway,

so I go up to him and I'm like, oh my God, mister Dixon, so

great to see you. And he was like, oh my God, Katie, so great to

see you too. And he's like, how old are you now? And I said, oh,

I'm 36. And he's like, wow, you're so old.

And I was just like, I'm old.

That makes you ancient. So

great. Anyway, how did I get there? Oh yeah, so anyway, the math on

high school. Yeah. So 20 years ago I was somewhat good at tennis.

Not good at anymore. But I'm on this mission to be bad

at. I'm on this mission to put myself in

situations where I am going to

fail in another way. I have signed up to take french lessons

again. I was a french major. I lived in France for half a year so

that I can learn the language. I really immersed myself. I passed their fluency exams

and then I never spoke it again for 15 years, which again makes me feel

very old. I recently started taking these classes online through this program

called Lingoda, which if you're looking to learn a language, I can't recommend them enough.

I wonder if I should sign up for a referral code if I'm sending you

all to go there anyway. If you want to go to weeniecast.com

lingoda, I'll link it there because it is such a great resource if

you're looking to learn a new language or brush up on a language that used

to speak a long time ago. One of the things that I really, really

liked about how they onboard you is that first lesson that you're signed up

for is an orientation. And in the orientation they

like, make it the purpose to make

errors, to make mistakes, right? Because it's really

the only way that you learn a language is by saying something,

thinking it's gonna make sense. Hearing someone say, I don't really know what

you're talking about, or I think you're saying this, is that right? And

then teasing it out with them until you figure out the exact right way to

say the thing that you want to say. Could you imagine trying to learn a

language and then getting all freaked out every single time that you make a

mistake? And I know a lot of people try to learn a language and they

get all freaked out about making mistakes. And yeah, you

look stupid, like you probably say some stupid,

but there's really like, you said stupid shit when you were a baby. Also, you

said stupid things when you were a toddler, when you were learning your native tongue,

right? And it wasn't that you were stupid or trying to be funny, it was

that you genuinely were just misunderstanding how to use your own language.

When I lived in France, I was in this immersive school that

basically you had 5 hours of french lessons in the morning into the early afternoon,

and then they would release you and you could go on all these excursions and

you could live with a french family if you wanted or in like a student

apartment. And I was in class with this australian woman.

She and her husband had just moved to France and she was a nurse. She

was like passing all of her licensing, getting all of her licenses so that she

could be a nurse in France because they, you know, wanted to live there. And

I remember we're in this class and the teacher asked us to explain

what our dream for our future was. And we were going

around the table and her thing was like, she's like, I want to

go and I want to nurse the whole world. But she translated

wrong and what she actually said is, I want to go breastfeed

the whole world. And the teacher was

like, I don't know if that's what you want to. And I was, of

course, next. Cause we're sitting next to each other, so we're laughing and we're just

dying. And she's like, no, no, no. I don't wanna breastfeed anyone. It's fine.

Like, I want to heal people. And then I was like, yeah, I wanna go,

and I wanna have a lot of adventures around the world. And I used

the word Les Avantur, which I thought meant adventures, just like

in English. It doesn't. It doesn't. It means a lot of sexual

encounters, which I just announced this to the whole class,

and the teacher looked at me, she's like, this is what it means. Like,

no judgment. No judgment if that's what you want. But, like, I don't think that's

what you meant. I was like, no, that's not what I meant. I meant adventures,

like, do cool, go and see exciting

things and have interesting stories. And she helped me figure it

out. Throwing myself back into learning French again

and throwing myself back into tennis again

has really been eye opening for me, because I think one of

the things that helped me be so successful so quickly in my business early on

is that I was fully down to fail. I was used to

failing. I was all about it. Fail fast, fail

forward all that jazz. And over time, I've

moved away from it, because, like, once you start your business and you get

good at it, you're just kind of used to being good at everything, you know?

And I realize that there are a few things that I'm going to be doing

in the next year that I'm probably going to be bad at. You know,

there are a few business schools that I have that I've, like, never done before

and things that are way outside my comfort zone and, like, has

massive opportunity for failure. And I realized that I was

never going to be able to go and do those things if I didn't build

my resilience to failure back up to where it used to be.

So I urge you, if

you're thinking about starting a business, or if you're in the process of starting a

business, or if you're in the process of scaling a business and

there's opportunity for failure and you're afraid of it,

which is pretty much everyone in the world except for sociopaths. So if you're afraid

of it, congratulations, you're not a sociopath. I invite you

to go and be at something. Pick something. Go

actively be bad at it. Practice being bad.

It's going to be absolutely life changing for you. And over time,

when you really commit, you'll actually get good at it. Well, that's what I'm telling

myself with tennis. Well, it still remains to be seen, but I'm

getting better at French, in case you were wondering. Now, the next thing you want

to be very conscious of as you're actively being bad at stuff

is, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to

find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

Now, the next thing you want to be very conscious of as you're

actively being bad at stuff is correction, not punishment.

So in french classes, when I say something wrong, the teacher corrects me,

and when I say something wrong, I try to correct myself. I look

for the correction. I'm not, like, determined to always

be perfect, right? Because that's not going to help anyone. If my friend, who

was determined to be correct with her phrase saying that she wanted to breastfeed the

whole world, could you imagine the conversation she'd have later in her

career? Like, she'd probably be fired from the hospital that she got a job

at? They'd probably be like, I'm sorry, like, you can't do that with patients. And

she'd be like, what do you mean? I can't nurse people? And they'd be like,

no, it's so weird. Get out of here. Thinking she was planning

on going up to patients and trying to BReastfeed them in tennis. So there

was one day where I went, and I was, like, practicing tennis on my own,

and. And how do you do this, you might ask? Well, there's machines that I'm

sure you've seen in movies that basically have, like, a whole bunch of balls on

top, and they shoot a ball out at you and you're supposed to just hit

it. And the point is to work on, like, one swing at a time.

And so I rented a court, and I rented this machine,

and I go to my little tennis club that I'm a member of,

and I was the only one on these three courts, right? So

I'm the only one. I'm the center of attention. There's a wall where

all the treadmills line up, and there's a window. So everyone who's on a treadmill

up on the second floor of this gym is looking out, watching me,

because I'm the entertainment. It's a tennis club, so people like watching tennis.

The first round the first 20 minutes, I was so

angry, I was missing, like, the ball was hitting the same spot on the court

over and over and over again, and I kept missing it. And every time I'd

miss it, I'd be like, oh, my God, you suck. What's wrong with you? That's

terrible. Oh, my God. That's awful. What are you doing? You

know, I started just getting really tight and frustrated and angry with

myself, and eventually the machine ran out of

balls. And so I went around with that stupid tube that you go around just,

like, popping the balls inside and

just being so angry with myself. And I realized, oh, my God.

Me being angry with myself for doing this badly isn't

helping. There's nothing about this process that's actually

helping me get better. It's actually making me worse. I was hitting more balls in

the beginning than I was at the end. And so as I'm collecting all the

balls and putting them back in the machine, I made a deal with myself. It's

like, okay, like, let's correct me rather than punish me.

And so I filled up the machine again. I went back to the other

side of the court. I hit the little remote control button, and I hit the

first ball, and it was too long. And I just said, oh, too long to

myself, you know, no one's around. And then I hit the next ball, and it

was to the left. It went outside the court, oh, too far to the left,

you know? And then I hit the next ball, and it was too far to

the right. And then I hit the next ball, and I hit the net, and

then I missed the next ball, and it's like, oh, you swung too late. Oh,

this is the thing that you did wrong. Like, here's the action that you can

make better. And what was miraculous, and actually, it's not

miraculous, it makes perfect sense, was by the end of that next

20 minutes session of the machine shooting balls at me. I was

hitting every single ball by the end, and I was hitting

balls most of the time where I wanted it to go, in the other

side of the court. Side note, I should have switched hands. I

couldn't use my right arm for about two days afterwards because

it's not normal in tennis that you just spend, like, 40 minutes straight just hitting

with one arm the exact same swing. So next time, I will go

back and forth. But I'm so glad I learned this lesson, because it really helped

me understand how I learned best and helped

me coach my clients on how to be good at failing in

a way that they learned from it. And don't just create a story that they

suck at everything. So I urge you, like, as you're being bad at

stuff, correct yourself. Don't punish yourself.

The final thing that I want to offer, as you're working on

your perfectionism, as you are leaning into

failing, because so many of us have this

idea of how perfect looks like, but it's also just not like a

firm idea. I'm in the midst of redoing my website right now, and

actually, this is one of those moments where I'm like, oh, my God, I need

to be taking my own advice because I'm designing it

and I'm realizing, like, oh, my God, it's not exactly how I want it, but

how I want it is just perfect. There's no specific

idea I have of what perfect looks like. The mentality

we want to adopt when we're in the middle of a project that's actually going

to impact our business is we want to look at what would half ass

look like. Because oftentimes half assed is more

than enough. Half assed is done,

whereas waiting for perfect is never done. Because perfect

is a moving target. Perfect will never happen. One of

the great questions that artists get asked is, when do you know that your painting

is finished and a lot of them can't tell you. A lot of them are

like, eh, like, eh. You just kind of like, you know,

have to be okay with it. And the cool thing about doing something half

assed is that you get to be with it for a while and you get

to see, okay, cool. What do I want to correct here? What do I want

to correct? Instead of punishing yourself for not being perfect, for instance,

with my website, I could say, oh, you know, I don't really like how this

drop down menu goes. Maybe I should change it the next time I

redo my website. I can do this, this, and this differently, but in the

meantime, I still have a website to send to people. I still have a place

for people to discover me and to find out more about me and to hopefully

scare some people away who aren't my ideal clients.

And I would like to just say something to the family members of

my listeners, those of you who may have adhd also or who are

neurotypical. I just want to apologize in advance for

all the hobbies that are about to come into your house that

your loved one who listens to this podcast is about to take

on, who is about to be really bad at who's going to get

frustrated with it. Yeah, my heart goes out to you. I hope you

understand this is for the greater good. You're a loved one. Learning to

be bad at stuff and maybe developing some more hyper

focuses and getting more hobby

supplies and things like that will make them better

able to start a business in the future, which hopefully makes them super rich. And

then you can retire. Right? And you can just, like,

be taken care of. Hopefully. If it doesn't work out that way,

not my problem. I'm sorry. I invite you. If you're committed to being bad at

something, I would love to hear what you're committed to being bad at. If you

want to get in touch with me on the socials, you can find me on

Instagram at Katie the coach

or on TikTok at Katie

KDHD. You see what I did

there? Or if you're listening to this on Spotify, then you can go

ahead and leave a comment for us. And I can't wait to see it.

Oui, je enfin frapper la putin bal quin's

amouritevere. Ha. Squirrel,

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.