Welcome to the latest episode of The Weeniecast, where we simplify the world of ADHD entrepreneurship and business strategy. Hi! I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.

This week, I'd like to share a story about my high school graduation and the school janitor who made a lasting impact.

The Right Way to Build Real Human Connections In Your ADHD Business

I just want to name the importance of creating genuine human connections in your content to attract ideal clients.

I'm gonna say it - relying on AI-generated content from your ChatGPT prompts may not be as effective as you think.

I'm here to reveal the key to empathetic marketing and the value of building meaningful connections in business.

Listen in to this episode for practical insights and memorable anecdotes that can transform the way you approach content creation and client engagement.

The impact of building real human connections

There's a reason I open this episode with a personal anecdote about my high school graduation speaker.

I want to illustrate the importance of making genuine human connections in attracting ideal clients.

We didn't ask any of the teachers to speak to us.

We asked the janitor.

Why?

Well, I get into that in the episode.

Suffice to say right now, the reason is the same less that I hope teaches you the impact of authentic, empathetic marketing in creating content that resonates with your audience of ideal clients.

AI-generated content is obvious. And it's bad news if you're looking building connections with those dream clients, especially for entrepreneurs with ADHD.

As well as telling the story about why my teachers didn't speak at my graduation, I'm also going to share my story about the young mom, her daughter, and two old men who met at the park.

If you're planning on hopping on to ChatGPT today to create your social media content for the next week, stop everything and listen to this first, I urge you.

Because it might just be the decision that leads to a change for the better in your entrepreneurial journey.

Your next steps after listening

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

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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, you'll learn what my high school janitor can

teach you about attracting your ideal client.

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

coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast,

I have the most

traumatizing recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, I get a phone

call from my old guidance counselor from my high school, Mr.

Bennett. And Bennett says, hey, Kathryn, so great to talk to

you. I'm sorry, but I have some bad news. And I'm like, what,

Mr. Bennett? Like, what happened? I'm thinking, like, someone died or

the school burned down, whatever. And he know. We've

actually been auditing our past records, and it looks

like the courses you did in your senior year of high school

actually weren't enough for you to graduate. And unfortunately, we have

to take your high school diploma back. And if you'd like to keep

it, you'll just have to redo your senior year of high school, and you'll

have to come back and enroll. And in my dream, I'm very aware that I'm

in my 30s. There are a few ways this dream goes from there. Sometimes I

go back to school. Sometimes I say, fuck it, I'm just not going to have

a diploma. There's a lot of different ways that Dreamcatie handles

this nightmare. And the only reason I bring this up

is because I'm talking about this incredible thing that happened

at my high school graduation that helps me prove a point

about what you should be using to create content that will

attract your ideal clients. Before we get to that,

I want to share. At my high school, the senior class would always

vote on who their main speaker would be at

graduation. This was usually a local

politician, a celebrated business owner, maybe one of the

favorite teachers, maybe an administrator

know had been influential in some big project during their

time at school. My class, however, chose our

school janitor. I believe his name was Dave. And I'm so

embarrassed. I'm really bad with names from that far back. The reason

my class chose the school janitor to

speak at our graduation was because he was the

adult in that building who made

the most people in our class feel seen and

understood and taken care of. He was there in the

hallways when someone got kicked out of class for misbehaving,

and they were just having a really bad day and they needed to talk to

someone. I seem to remember him putting his mop up against the

wall and just kind of walking with them down the hallway for a bit and

just being an ear. After school, if kids

were sitting around and kind of avoiding going home,

he'd be the first person to ask, like, hey, what's going on? If you made

an excuse to go to the bathroom in the middle of class because you needed

to go cry, he was usually in the hallway. He was usually

just a very kind person to speak to. He offered genuine

connection, and it wasn't that

structured connection that you got. If you went to the guidance counselor's

office and set up an appointment and then had a meeting with

Mr. Bennett and all the things, and they put the notes in your

file that you were having a hard time with this, that and the other thing.

He was just an adult who cared. He gave a. When he

got up to speak, he was incredibly touched that he was

being recognized in this way. And

I don't think he realized until that moment what a

difference he made in so many teenagers lives.

Simply by being there, simply by listening, simply by

giving a fucking caring. It's really something special

to be able to do that for kids that have

adults around them that might not be listening. And I'm sure as I'm

describing this person, you're listening, thinking about

this person that was there for you when you were younger, that

adult who was just kind of always there in the periphery, who, if you needed

to talk to them or if you were crying, they would ask you, what's going

on? You okay? We remember these people.

These people have a very special place in our hearts,

even if we can't remember their names 20 years later. I say

all this to prove a point, that chat GPT is

shit.

As you're growing your business, I know a major part

of promoting your work and marketing yourself and being on social media

is coming up with a crap ton of content.

And it's so easy now that we have this incredible

robot brain to turn to, to go

and give them a couple prompts and get some language

back and say, amazing. This is content that I'm going

to share on social media that's going to convince people that they need to hire

me. Guess what? Chat GPT can't build

connections. Chat GPT can't make people feel

seen or heard. Chat GPT can't make

people laugh in a genuine way. It can't

represent your personality, the way you

show your personality. It's great for coming up with content

ideas, but I don't want you becoming

reliant on using chat GPT content to

promote your business, because guess what? It

won't work as well in my

programs. Whether you work with me in my group program or one on

one. The type of marketing that I teach is called empathetic

marketing. And this style of marketing does a couple different

things. It really communicates that you understand

the troubles, the stresses, the fears that your ideal

clients have. You exhibit that you deeply understand where they want to

go from here. What does winning look like to them? And

a lot of that is listening to them. And a lot of that

is also sharing your personal stories, showing

that you've been in their shoes, you've struggled with

similar things, and you've overcome

similar things. And by the way, if

they're ready to overcome them, you're happy to be there to help them. In

the content creation universe, there is this myth of giving

value. All the social media gurus are out there saying, give

value, give helpful tips, give listicles of things that people

should do to move from X to Z, and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you can absolutely give

tips. You can exhibit how smart you are. You

can teach. But I want to remind you, my senior

class did not nominate a single teacher to speak. They

nominated the person who is listening, who built those connections with

them. Your ideal clients out there who are paying attention to

your content are waiting for you to build that

connection. They have enough people who are throwing information at them, who

are trying to teach them shit that's like, in that moment, they're not ready to

accept. And to prove this point,

I'm going to tell you. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll

have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

And to prove this point, I'm going to tell you the story of the two

old men in the park. I've told this story previously, but it really shows

you what works in marketing. Every single day,

there is a young mom, and she has a three year old daughter. And they

go to the park, and this little girl is obsessed with the

fishes in the pond. She insists

that every single day, rain or shine, they have to take some pieces of

bread to go and feed the fish. And she checks on them, and she kind

of names them, and she gets really excited when they come up

to the surface and they bite the bread and all the things. And she really

takes her time to spend time with her fish, right? And the mom,

of course, any excuse to get out of the house and give her child

an activity that she doesn't have to really be the entertainer for

is a nice little break. And so every single day, around the

same time, they go to the pond, the daughter feeds the fish, and the mom

just kind of hangs back, watches, and occasionally she'll

notice that around the same time every day, there are two old men that sit

on either side of this little pond. One day, after they've been doing

this for a long time, she realizes, like, this is so silly. I should just

go and introduce myself. So she goes up to the first old man

and tells him her name and says, hi, I see you here a lot.

Thought it was just time that I introduced myself. And he says, oh, it's so

nice of you to do that. Yes, my name is so and so. Please have

a seat on the bench. How's your day going? She says, oh, it's going really

well. And he starts talking, and he starts saying,

I saw your daughter having a temper tantrum last week. And here's what I would

have done differently. Here's, like, the three step process that I would have taken to

handle a child having a temper tantrum. And also,

do you ever have a squeaky wheel on your office chair?

Here's how you fix it. Also, if your door hinge is

ever out of alignment, here's what you do with a hammer to

just tap it back into place. And if you ever have

a leaky faucet in your house, here's how you'd fix it from a plumbing perspective.

But if you don't have those tools and you're a little nervous about

doing plumbing work and you're waiting for an actual plumber, what you can do is

you can tie a string around the tip of the faucet, and instead

of the water doing the drip, drip, drip, that drives you crazy, the water will

just fall down that string to the bottom of the sink. And he goes on,

and he's sharing fairly helpful tips with her throughout the time

that they're sitting on this bench together. And then, of course, it's time to go.

The bread is done, and the little girl has lost interest in the fish for

the day. And the woman says, it's been so nice to talk to you.

I will see you tomorrow. And they say goodbye. The next

day, the woman comes back to the pond, and instead of

talking to the first old man, she decides she wants to say hi to the

second old man, who's also there every day. And so she goes, and again, she

introduces herself and explains that she sees him there all the time and

thought it was time that she introduced herself. And he says, oh, my God. It's

so nice to meet you. My name is so and so. Please come and sit

down. And he asks her how's your day going? And he

says, I saw your daughter have that temper tantrum last week,

and I just want to say you did a great job. I know having kids

at that age is so tough. I had three of them,

and the oldest one used to do this and it drove me crazy. And

then the middle one would go off on these tears and,

oh, my God, I thought my wife was going to burn the house down.

And our youngEst, oh, our youngest,

we are so delighted that our youngest has children now. So they get

their comeuppance, right?

They have kids, and their kids are around your daughter's age,

and you know what they call us? They're at their wits end sometimes. And

being a parent is so hard, isn't it? But it's so gratifying. And then

he goes on to ask her questions about her life and about what's

going on for her, and then he shares stories about himself.

And throughout this time, she feels really

connected to him. She feels seen, she feels acknowledged.

She doesn't feel at all shamed for how he's observed her

parenting her daughter. And then, of course, the

daughter runs out of bread, loses interest, it's time to

go. The next day, who is she going back to?

The first old man or the second old man?

And this is a rhetorical question, but there is a right answer, and it's the

second. Second one. Of course, not only that, but

if she ever has a parenting

question, if she ever wants feedback from someone who's

been there, she's not asking the first old man who gave a ton of quote

unquote value. She's going to the second old man

who normalized the struggle, who didn't

give her any suggestions how to do it better, just

acknowledged that it's hard, and shared that he had a

lot of experience with it, didn't try to fix her problems,

and made her feel seen and listened to.

When we're thinking about value, we oftentimes

think of, well, what's the lesson that they're going to take away? What is

the actual curriculum that they're going to walk away with that is

going to show them how to get from point A to point B?

But that's not all value is. Value

is also a feeling. Value is that

connection that trust you build.

I would actually argue that the value the first old man

gave was pretty worthless.

It was all stuff that if she actually had that problem, she could go onto

the interwebs, Google, search it and find the

answer. It was all stuff that I'm sure a

million first old men have created YouTube videos

about, but she can't get what she got from the

second old man from a Google search. And neither can your

clients. As you're thinking about what kind of

content to create, I know it's really

tempting to turn to tools like chat GPT, because

that's what everyone's telling you to do, and it seems so easy. And

as ADHD entrepreneurs, we're always looking for different

ways to hack things and make it easier for ourselves.

But it's not going to be as effective as actually just connecting with

your ideal clients and showing that you understand

where they are. There's this funny thing that happens with new

business owners in particular, and especially people who have ADHD,

is that when you start a business, you feel like you have to prove to

the world that you know what you're talking about, that you're an expert,

that you are a

quantifiable authority in your

industry. It's almost like you feel like you have to make a list

of all the things that you know and present this list to everyone so that

they can see that you know, stuff. Because we're so self conscious that people

are going to think that we're dumb or we're doing it wrong or that we're

not qualified for the thing. And this can come from a myriad of things.

This can come from having massive shiny object syndrome, right where

you're jumping from topic to topic. So you become a very

spread out generalist. You're not necessarily an expert in

one particular area. It can also come from people

just treating you like you're not good enough. And it

doesn't necessarily even have to be true. It could be rejection, sensitivity,

dysphoria, where you're just perceiving the tone that they're

speaking to you in as they're thinking that you're not good enough or you're

not smart enough or you're not qualified enough. It's that

self rejection that you do to yourself that makes you feel like you

have to prove to the world that you are smart and capable.

The interesting thing about humans is we actually don't go

around assuming everyone else is stupid. We actually go around

assuming that everyone else is just as smart as we are until

proven otherwise. So unless you hang around with

really, really dumb people who are very aware that they're

dumb, you do not have to prove anything.

What you do have to do is you have to build connection with your

ideal clients. That is the thing that is going to make you the most memorable.

That is the thing that is going to create a special

part in their hearts for you because you understood them

more than anyone else, especially if you're selling a high level

service that costs a lot of money. I want you to think about the people

who are out there in the world, who are following your content, who

are reading it every single day and reading other people's

content that's giving a ton of value. If they're going to spend

a ton of money on solving this problem that you

fix, are they likely to hire the person

who's offering advice they can find on Google? Or are they

likely to hire the person who they feel deeply connected

to, who they trust more than anyone,

and who they know will not shame

them for being in this problem?

Bet you it's the latter.

This doesn't just go for creating content, it also goes for

engaging on other people's content.

I want to urge you not to use chat,

GPT or other AI

tools to comment on other people's posts.

It's obvious I have started deleting comments

that are obviously written by a robot because I'm not

online to connect with robots. If I'm having a conversation

with you in my comment section, I'm having a conversation with you.

I don't want to have a conversation with a robot. If I did, I'd be

spending a lot more time on chat GPT and I'd be getting a little weird.

We both know that. Not that I'm not already weird. I know using

chat GPT comes from a place of fear and worry,

that what you have to say is not good enough, that being you is

not good enough. But I promise you you

are. I promise you that it doesn't matter how

you show up. There are going to be people

who, when you show up as your authentic self, will be drawn

to you. You can make all the spelling mistakes,

the grammatical mistakes that you want, and it really doesn't matter.

And please, for the love of God, do not use chat GBT to comment on

my posts. 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.

Wow,

it's just like there's so many comments where they're just summarizing my post and

I'm like, Are you kidding me? Squirrel,

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.