As an ADHD entrepreneur you need to have 'rules' within your business. Here are my five most simple, unbreakable rules that I have as an ADHD business coach.

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

And welcome to "The Weeniecast."

I have rules for doing business with me. You should too!

The rules are simple.

Setting Realistic Work Hours.

The art of finding the right people to work with you (and ditching the wrong ones!)

Combating the 'Doomsday voice'!

Creating Your Structure for Success.

And Avoiding the Rabbit Hole of Online Trolls.

Want to know more?

Of course you do.

Listen in now to learn how I set my business up to suit my rules.

Timestamped summary

00:00 No rescheduling after no-show, even for ADHD.

04:25 Salespeople understand the impact of no-shows.

07:28 Promote your work, attract ideal clients, no-show warning.

12:54 Client trust lost due to employee errors.

13:55 Realizing mistakes, fixing instead of preventing them.

19:26 Don't expect 100% productivity, rest is essential.

22:09 Successful business growth from part-time effort.

24:05 Self-care and therapy can help in crisis.

28:45 Work smart, use your head, delegate.

Your next steps after listening

Realising it's time to work with me? Book your free intial 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

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...

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. I'm going to share with you five simple

rules for staying sane as an ADHD business owner.

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

welcome to the Weenie cast squirrel. I think we can

all agree that to start a business, you have to be a little bit insane.

You have to. You have to be willing to believe

in things that you have no proof of, that clients will come to

you, what you have to offer, there's a market for that.

You can show up on social media and grow a following even though you've

seen no evidence that it's true. It's safe to

say that there's a little bit of insanity that's required for

that. So yay for not being completely

sane. However, there

is a fine line. There's a line where

you get a little too insane and things start

not going well. And usually you start

crossing that line when you have bad rules set up in your

business, when you don't set yourself up for your

sanity to be protected. And one of the hardest things about

going from working for someone else to working for yourself is that

there's no boss, there's no manager, there's no owner of the company that you get

to point to and say, oh, it's their rule. We have to follow the rules

here. It's just you. You make the rules,

but you also have to enforce the rules with people who know that you're

the owner of the business, who know that you're

the one setting the rules. So you should be the one who

is able to flex them for them if you want to. Right.

Well, let's talk through how that can go

heinously wrong and why you need to have really

solid rules in your business to protect your sanity,

to protect your bank account, and to keep yourself from

quitting this business and going back and working for another corporate

company. Because who wants that?

I know I don't. There are rules that are outward

facing rules about how you deal with clients,

potential clients, people who work for you, strangers on

the interwebs. And then there are rules that you have to

set for yourself. Both the outer

and inner rules are difficult to enforce and stick to

in different ways. So the number one

rule that I want to give you permission to set up in your business

is one that will protect you from having

nightmare clients, clients who have no respect for

your time, who will be so much more.

Work than the clients who actually show up, are

invested and will see greater results working with

you. And this one simple rule is that.

If someone no shows your sales call, they are not allowed to

reschedule. Now this sounds really harsh coming

from a coach who works specifically with ADHD business

owners, right? Because people with ADHD tend

to have time blindness, tend to forget

about things. But let me tell you, if my

incredible, magical, brilliant clients who have ADHD,

and severe ADHD at that, can manage to show up for an

appointment that they booked on my calendar

asking for my time for free to learn about my

programs because they desperately need help. If they can

show up to a damn appointment, why can't anyone

else? Back when I worked in corporate and I worked in

sales, no shows were a nightmare because someone would

set an appointment with you because they were interested in what you were

selling and they wouldn't show up to it.

And you couldn't have this rule that they couldn't reschedule because

this is a hot lead. Your boss and the owner of the company would be

like, why aren't you rescheduling? Why aren't you chasing them down? So

you'd have to spend cumulatively hours of

your work week or your work months chasing

down this person who already disrespected your time trying

to get them to book another time. And let me tell you, someone who's comfortable

no showing you once will be very comfortable. No showing you twice or three times,

or four times, or however many times. They just don't give a fuck. Every

single salesperson knows that the people who no show

you are highly unlikely to actually ever buy your

stuff. If they didn't care enough to even show up to the

appointment that they set on your calendar, they don't care

enough to buy. Now, in the case where you do reschedule with

them and they do sign up, these are also the clients who expect

you to bend over backwards to make their

lives easier. And that's not saying that we don't want to go above and

beyond and deliver an excellent service to our clients.

But there's a fine line of you delivering an excellent

service and going above and beyond and surprising and

delighting someone who is carrying their equal weight in the

work here, and you having to bend over

backwards and twist yourself into a pretzel

and sacrifice all of your free time

to do shit that they can't figure out or won't figure out how to do

themselves. I've done this in the past. I

made the mistake early on of kind of offering to

do copywriting for a client, writing a post for them, for

social media, and guess what? They changed the post

and they went through and they edited it.

Even though they weren't talented writers. That relationship did

not last long because they weren't pulling their

weight. And the red flags were there early

on. And one of the biggest red flags that you're going to get right off

the bat is that they no show an appointment. So I give you permission here

and now to have a no tolerance rule for

no shows. And I bet you're thinking, okay, well, but here's someone

who is interested in working with me. Maybe something happened for them,

maybe life got in the way. They just forgot all this stuff. Like, shouldn't I

be compassionate? To which I say, sure, if you want to be

compassionate, that's totally up to you, but I want you to remember

what we create space for in our lives, we attract more of. So if

you're making a ton of space for people to set up appointments on your calendar,

no, show them. Reschedule. No, show those. And you're

creating the space and the time to devote your energy to chasing them

down, following up with them, asking, what happened?

Do you want to reschedule? Guess what you're going to attract more

of? It sounds woo woo. But the

universe is always paying attention. And what you make time

for the universe is like, oh, cool, you want more of that? Awesome.

I will gladly send you more of that. When

you set the expectation that no one is allowed to waste your

time. The universe is paying attention. Okay, cool. You don't

want people who waste your time. Got it. We're going to

calibrate to that. Now, what goes

along with this is you have to have confidence that what you have to

offer is worthwhile. And when people want what you're selling, you don't

have to chase people down and beg them to buy it. You can do the

work to put yourself out there to promote your good work, to talk about the

impact you have with your clients. And your

ideal clients will be attracted to that and they will book on your

calendar and they will actually show up to the sales call and a little

PSA. If you ever choose to book a sales call with me, which is a

generate income sales call, this is your fair warning that if you no show

that call, it will not be made up. You will not be allowed to rebook.

You actually probably won't be allowed to sign up for any of my shit. Consider

yourself warned. And if you want to go ahead and book that

call, you can go to weeniecast.com strategycall and

book a generate income strategy call with me. To learn about how I

can help you grow your business in a way that you're attracting your ideal

clients and not having to chase no showing bastards

down. And by the way, I want to add, there are ways that you can

do this in a kind way. So like for instance, if you were to book

a call with me, I have it. ADHD proof. I have it. I have

very clear instructions for what you're supposed to be doing. So first and foremost,

I instruct you to save it to your calendar. The booking that you just made.

There's clear instructions. Save this to your calendar so you don't forget. You get a

confirmation email that again says save this to your calendar if it's not already showing

up. And then you get three obnoxious reminder emails

before the call. 24 hours, 12 hours and 1 hour

beforehand. It's really hard to

forget that you booked a call with me in your business. I

urge you to set up similar parameters because

let's be real, ADhd people attract

more ADHD people if you tend to forget about stuff or you tend to need

reminders. I bet you your ideal clients also

tend to forget things and need reminders. So be kind.

Set things up so that they are set up for success, so that they. Don'T

know show you. But also hold firm if you've done.

Everything you can to give them everything that is necessary for

them to remember that they booked on your calendar and. They'Re still not showing up.

Big red flag. The next

rule that will make your life way less

insane and far more tolerable is

a really hard one to stick to. And I'm going to talk you through this

because it involves firing someone. So

as you grow your business, there are going to be moments where you realize, oh

wow, I don't need to be spending my time on this. I can outsource this

to someone and focus my time and energy somewhere

else. That's money generating. So this may be hiring your

first virtual assistant. This could be hiring

a social media manager. It could also be hiring an

online business manager. I wish I had had this rule when I first started my

business. It literally would have saved me about $25,000

and hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost

business. Not having this rule

can a make it really hard for you to be profitable

at the best case, and in the worst case, it can make you go

out of business. If you're like me, you develop really

close, deep friendships with the people you work with and it feels

really shitty to have to fire a friend, someone that you hired and you

developed this closeness with. But if you want your business to succeed,

that's going to happen at some point. It's a guarantee it's going to happen. You're

going to have to let someone go from your business. There's no way you're going

to work around that. So what I find really

helpful is you don't make it about your feelings. You can't make

it about your feelings. It's really frustrating when someone, something up

in your business and you have to deal with it and you have to clean

it up. The feelings are there and they're valid and absolutely talk about them

with your therapist or your coach or maybe your bestie who gets

it. But you're a good person and you're not going to want to

take away part of someone's income because they pissed you off.

You need to make this decision logical. You need to make

a rule that you have to follow so that your business can be

successful. Now, for me, if

someone makes a mistake more than a couple of times

and doesn't learn when I coach them through how I want them to do it

differently, then the relationship is probably not going to go forward.

And the reason for this is a, they're not learning,

they're not adhering to what works best in your environment, for

your clients, for you. And that's valid. You need

people because you're a small business. You don't have a huge margin to

be spending on people who aren't pulling the weight that they're supposed to be pulling

in your business. But if you're a normal human

who is starting a business because you need to make money to survive,

you need to get rid of them as fast as possible and not get rid

of them, not in the mob sense of the word. Just like,

hey, I don't want to pay you for your services anymore, and I would like

you to stop doing the services for me. Thank you, bye.

That kind of get rid of, I don't want

anyone going and like, unaliving someone and being like, well, Katie told

me to. She said it on her podcast, get rid of them.

Is that not what she meant? No. You cannot use

me as an excuse for that. Now, the other reason why it's so important to

pay attention to this and to hold firm on this rule is. Because if

you've hired this person, it's. Because you want to outsource work to them.

And if you're outsourcing work and they're. Not doing it correctly

in a way. That'S going to help you grow your business, maybe it's

having a negative impact on your clients. What's going to end up happening is you're

going to stop trusting them with stuff that you've hired them to do. Now, I

found myself in this boat with my first OBM that I ever

hired, and I found myself having

to do, like, three times the amount of work because I didn't

trust them to do the work correctly so that it didn't

create a bad experience for my clients. There was a

point where I started to ask her for something, and then I

realized I don't trust this person to actually do this correctly in a way that

won't lose me a client. So. Okay, well, instead of me explaining this

to you, I'm going to have to take all this on, even though I've hired

this person to do it, and it was insane,

but I liked this person. They'd become a friend and.

But what unfortunately happens with people who work

for you like this is they make a few mistakes, and they realize they can

get away with it, and then they make more mistakes, and they realize they can

get away with it. And then they make more mistakes, and they start realizing they're

making so many mistakes that their whole job becomes

fix the mistakes before you notice how many mistakes there

are. It's like they're actively punching holes in the bottom of your

boat, and instead of saying, hey, listen,

I am a hole puncher. I probably shouldn't be on your

boat. You should probably bring someone in who doesn't punch holes in your

boat. They just spend their whole time trying to patch the

holes, and it gets to the point where you start

having to patch the holes as well. This is what happened to me with my

first OBM, and it is miserable, and the

friendship does not survive beyond that. So have a

rule around how many mistakes you are willing to

withstand with. This person and understand

what your expectations. Are for their learning. We

all want to think that we're perfect teachers, that we can explain

things and people will understand exactly what we mean. Maybe

you're explaining stuff badly, but if you're explaining it

more than three times and they're not getting it and they're not getting better, and

they're not coming to you and be like, hey, I'm not sure what you mean

here. Chances are it's not you. Chances

are there's a misfit here. They're not what you need in your

business. You need something different. And sure, you can continue to pay

them your hard earned dollars or pounds or whatever

currency you work in. But know that they are going to become a drag on

your business and you're going to have to start hiring other people in addition

to them to cover their butts. And again, if you're

independently wealthy and you enjoy spending your money like this, be my guest.

But for the rest of us, we have to make some really tough decisions.

And it's not like working in corporate where your boss says, hey, we have

to lay this person off and you get to say, hey, I'm so sorry, it's

out of my hands. The big bosses up here say that we have to lay

someone off and they've identified you and I'm so sorry. And here's your severance

plan. You're the big boss, you're the one making the decision.

And that's hard. It's really hard. And it's one of the reasons why

having a coach or a therapist

or some kind of mentor in your corner who can

hold that space for you as you work through the emotions of it

is so important in growing your business. It's why I have

numerous coaches and a therapist and lots of business

besties who I can bounce things off of and really help

sort through my feelings around this stuff. No one is

exempt from needing that kind of support. And I want you to

know, you needing to let someone go doesn't make you a bad

person. Yeah, they're going to be upset. It's upsetting to lose business.

It's upsetting to lose a job. I think we've all been through it in

some way, shape or form. But for you to succeed in this business, it's

a decision you're going to have to make. And the good news?

That if it's hard for you, that means you're not a sociopath.

Congratulations. Go and give yourself a cookie.

So those are two outward facing rules that are going

to make running your business easier. It's going to keep you from going like the

bag kind of insane. We're going to move into some inner

rules that are going to be a lot harder to follow because they're rules that

you are setting and then you have to adhere to.

And we all know that those of us with ADHD, we're so

incredible when we have structure, but we also

really suck at creating that structure for ourselves. So I'm

going to tell you these rules and in the back of your. Mind you're going

to say, yes, I'm. Going to have strong intentions to

do this, but I'm also going to forgive. Myself when I fail. At

this, because you're going to fail at this. Failing at this does not mean that

you suck at running a business and. You'Re going to fail. It just means this

is a hard thing for you. It's hard. And the thing about hard

things is that sometimes they're so hard that you fail at them. And that's okay.

When you fail, you learn, oh, cool. This is not the way to do

this. Right. So this is more of an experiment. That

I'm handing to you to figure. Out your way of being with

these structures you're going to put in your business that will help you stay sane.

And be more likely to succeed. Deal.

So the first inner rule is you have to adhere

to setting hours. This is especially important when you're

first starting your business and you're still working for a full time job. Okay.

If you're working a corporate nine to five and you're wanting to start a business

on the side, it's really tempting to expect yourself to

work every spare hour that you're awake outside of your nine to

five. And if your nine to five is really miserable, you might even expect yourself

to work on your business while you're in your nine to five. I don't recommend

it, especially if you want to continue to get that salary as you're ramping up.

But you do. You boo. Now, the only thing that this leads to

is burnout. The hustle bros will want to fight me on

this. Like, come and get me, guys. I can take all of you because

you're all sleep deprived

and I feel like you're malnourished because you only drink coffee and

green juice. They will want to fight me on this because they're going to tell

you you have to hustle every single hour you're awake. No.

When you do that, a, you burn yourself out. You make

yourself more likely to get sick and need time to

recover. You also, when you're

constantly expecting yourself to do this, you're not going to do it. You're

not going to be 100% productive every hour of the

day. You need rest. And

so when you have this expectation that you should be doing all this

stuff in your free time and then you don't do it, what happens is

you start associating failure with your to do list

for your business. And what happens when we start associating failure with

something is we start avoiding it. What starts off as,

okay, cool, I'm going to work nine to five and then I'm going to do

4 hours of work on my business. Either before or after. Like

not even a week in, you're not going to follow through because that's a lot

to expect of yourself, especially if you have ADHD.

You need transition time, you need rest time, you need time

for your mind to just kind of wander and daydream. That's where all of your

inspiration comes from. So you're going to get a couple of days in and

kind of like a New Year's resolution about going to the gym every single day.

Day three, you're not going to do it. You're going to be like, oh, I'm

tired, oh, sleep in, or my friends are going for a drink

after work. I really want to spend time with them. I miss them. I haven't

seen them in a couple of weeks. And then the next day it's like, oh,

well, I failed yesterday, so what's the point? I'll start

again next week. But then next week you're going to say, well, I failed at

that last week. And it's going to start this vicious cycle

where you start punishing yourself and making yourself wrong

and you're going to avoid doing the work. And the next thing you know it's

six months in and you haven't made any progress. So you have to

set hours for yourself. Just like this is a part time

job. So what happens if you get a part time job at one of those

chain restaurants as like a host or a hostess?

And what happens if you show up every single day,

whether you're scheduled or not? A, they're going to be creeped out by you because

that's weird because you're not on the clock. And also they don't want to

pay for that, so they're going to fire you. On the flip side,

if this is a part time job and you don't show up for your shift,

what happens? You get fired. The no show

policy. You no show a job, they don't want you anymore.

Notice how a lot of businesses have no problem with a no show

policy? It's an industry standard in a lot of ways. If you're

afraid of doing a no forgiveness, no show policy, just refer to basically

any business. But when you set realistic hours for when you're going to work in

your business and you stick to them, it doesn't have to be

perfect, but you stick to like working six to 8 hours a

week on your business, what happens is you actually

make progress. You actually start growing your

following. You actually start getting known for something

to your world. You start getting clients. I've had a client, Adam

Kimmel, who is a technical content writer,

has a full time job, never wants to give up his full time job.

He started a copywriting business, and when he started with me, he was making 2000,

$3,000 a month. By the end of that first year of working

together, he'd taken his business that was bringing in 2000, $3,000

a month to $86,000 for the year.

The following year, using the three different retainer

offers that we had set up in his business, he took his side

hustle 10 hours a week business to $150,000

a year. It is

possible to build a successful business in that

amount of time, but it does require you to be very

strict about your hours. He wouldn't have been able to do that if he

had expected himself to do 30 hours of work on

top of his 40 to 50 hours a week job for one.

I think his wife would have left him. His kids would never want to talk

to him. He would have gone to a deep depression and said, fuck it all.

Like, I'm just going to go and live in the woods. I mean, I don't

know. That just sounds like something that someone would do.

Adam, if you're listening, tell me if.

Right? But no, like, he would have burned himself out. It wouldn't have

worked. He's a copywriter. He has to have access to his creativity.

And tell me, do you have access to your creativity when you're exhausted?

No. It doesn't matter what kind

of business you're starting. You need access to your creativity, too,

and making sure that you have enough energy for that. So

set realistic hours for yourself. And if you're growing your business full

time, it's no different. Sure, it feels good to brag that. You'Re

working 60 hours weeks, but that. Can'T be the constant.

And I might ask, like, what are. You trying to avoid by

working so many hours? That's something to talk about with your therapist.

The next inner rule that I want to talk about is there are going to

be moments where you feel like everything is going

wrong and

you don't see a way for it to get fixed. And so you feel like

you just have to work harder. Working harder in those moments will never

help you in those moments, you need to have a rule about

walking away and not walking away from the business and burning it all

down and going back to a corporate job unless you really want to. But walking

away and going to a yoga class or going for a run

or reading a trashy fantasy novel, there's a saying

that you cannot trust your mind after 09:00

p.m. Your mind does not have anything

positive to say. Usually after 09:00 p.m. Everything's going wrong.

The doomsday voice starts and you can just see how your life is

going to crash and burn. Don't believe that voice. Go watch some

tv, go to sleep. As a business owner, that voice can really

strike at any point. You get no showed for a call and you

think, oh my God, all I'm attracting are flakes. This happens

to me. I'm not immune from this and I genuinely have to go

and shift gears and step away from my business and then

things look better on the other side. It's hard to do. You'll notice

the more you do it, the easier it gets and also the

faster you get at recovering from those moments.

And again, these two inner rules

you're going to suck at doing in the beginning. You're going to get

better over time. You're going to fail at it a bunch.

And that's okay. You're learning. We all

have our own unique way of doing this. This is one of the things that

I work on with my clients is we really develop what are the

best ways for them to adhere to this kind of stuff because what works for.

One person might not work for you. Now, lastly, a rule

that is going to save you a lot of frustration. What am I going to

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

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

Now lastly, a rule that is going to save you a lot of

frustration. It'll keep you from like the rage

Gremlin popping up in your mind all the time is how are you going to

deal with assholes online. Set up rules for

engagement for how you're going to deal with trolls. They will show up in your

comment section and you just don't want to let them win.

Letting them win is getting pissed off at them. That's what

they want. They sit there with their little

keyboards, their greasy little fingers click

clacking away thinking, oh, this is going to make them mad

and they get off on it and

don't let them do that. I want to give you full permission here. You

own the delete button for comments on your stuff. You can

delete stuff. You can block people. I know it feels really

good to go to bat with facts

against them and to comment and set them straight and

educate them on how they're wrong, to tell them that they're being a

jerk. They love it. They love it when you do

that, don't give them the satisfaction. Delete and

block. Delete and block. Delete and block. Unless

you also have a little troll living in you and you get off on it

too, then be my guest. Troll them right back.

I promise you, if you set up rules like

these in your business and you stick to them, your life is going to be

so much easier. You're going to make money easier. You're going to attract

your clients easier. You are going to stay sane

and a likable person that people actually want to spend time

with. It's going to free up your time. It's going to

free up your energy. You're going to be less of

a. Miserable person on tough days because you're. Going

to know that you have a standard operating procedure to deal with this stuff.

You're far more likely to make more money. You're far more likely to

attract your ideal clients. You're far more likely to

be your brilliant self out there in the world. Who people want to spend more

time with. I can't guarantee that because I don't know you and I don't know

your. Circumstances and it's going to feel mean when you have these

rules and you're sticking to them. It's going to feel mean

when you're talking to other people and it's going to feel mean to yourself.

You're going to feel like you're slacking. Especially with limiting how

many hours you're working in your business or walking away. From something when it's

hard, you're going. To feel like you're failing, like you're not working

hard enough. When you take a deep breath, it's not

true. You are working smart, not hard. You are using your head to save

your feet. As my favorite mentor early on in my

working career when I was in college, Tony Guthrie used to say, when I was

a cabana girl and I was running around like a chicken with her head cut

off trying to get drinks to everyone. Use your head to save your feet. 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.

It some hand lotion on because that helps

me think better. Obviously, this is like one of my

manifestation things like, this is really expensive hand lotion, but it smells

so good. And so I treated myself to two really big

bottles. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.