Turning Embarrassment into a Success Tool for ADHD Entrepreneurs

Being embarrassed is often avoided like the plague, but what if I told you it's the secret sauce to business success, especially for ADHD entrepreneurs?

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...

In "Why Embarrassment is the Way to Business Success," I'm exploring how putting yourself in uncomfortable, potentially humiliating situations could be the catalyst you need for explosive growth.

Embracing public mistakes is a badge of honor in your entrepreneurial journey.

Let's get real—people have a lot of preconceived notions about what makes a business successful.

You might think you need an MBA or be an expert salesperson, but the truth is far more uncomfortable: the willingness to embarrass the hell out of yourself.

We dig into those cringe-worthy moments from childhood, those school assignments you aced wrong, and how those early experiences with embarrassment shape your adult fear of failure.

The podcast also touches on the challenges of social media vulnerability, the fears around launching new business ventures, and even the anxiety of having family members ask about your "little business."

This episode isn't just about laughing at our mistakes—it's about learning to use those mistakes to propel yourself forward.

After listening, you will walk away from this episode with:

• A deeper understanding of why embracing embarrassment is crucial for your business growth.
• Techniques to handle the public exposure of your mistakes and turn them into opportunities.
• A shift in mindset, enabling you to move beyond your comfort zones and make bolder business decisions.

Timestamped summary

00:00 ADHD can lead to embarrassing mistakes.

03:26 Fear of embarrassment can trigger survival instincts.

06:39 Professor corrected Greek alphabet mistake, leading to desensitization.

11:49 Push past fear and announce your business.

15:15 Social media embarrassment is cringeworthy at first.

18:20 Impulsive email campaign mishap due to distraction.

21:55 Brené Brown's shame and vulnerability in public.

24:33 Embrace embarrassing moments to achieve success.

27:13 Unique support for ADHD clients; different approach.

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Honorable mentions

Things:

Bridget Jones

LinkedIn

Zoom

Downton Abbey

Grey’s Anatomy

How to Get Away with Murder

Bridgerton

People:

Kelsey Letko

Shonda Rhimes

Brene Brown

Alec Baldwin

Hilaria/Hillary Baldwin

Mentioned in this episode:

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Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, I'm going to tell you why

embarrassment is the way. I'm Katie McManus, business

strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weenie cast.

Squirrel. People have a whole bunch of

beliefs about what it takes to be successful as a business owner. Lots of people

believe that you have to be good at talking about yourself. Others believe that you

have to be good at selling. While more will think that you have to have

an advanced degree, like an MBA or something, none of

that's true. Here's the number one most important quality

that will lead to your business success. And it's the willingness to

look stupid. It is the willingness to embarrass the

out of yourself. And I'm not just talking, like, using the wrong

word occasionally in a conversation. I'm talking full on Bridget

Jones humiliation, which, by the way, I can't even watch those

movies. I get so much secondhand embarrassment for her that, like,

as it's playing, I have to, like, get up and walk it off. It's like

my. But I get so anxious in my body for her in those movies that

I'm like, ah, I gotta go make popcorn. Gotta go. Can't

sit still, can't do this. That is what it takes to run a

business, which I will say is

incredibly hard for people in general and is harder for people with

ADHD. Because we all have had

experiences growing up where we didn't understand the

instructions or not that we didn't understand the instructions. We stopped

paying attention to what the instructions were about two minutes in, and then we did

the activity wrong, and then we did it differently

than everyone else, and everyone looked at us funny.

Growing up, I did so many assignments wrong. I

remember I watched the wrong french movie and wrote a paper on it.

I still got credit for it because I wrote a paper on a movie, but

I definitely miswrote down what the movie was. There were

projects that I had to present to the class that I did it on the

wrong thing. And every person with ADHD has some variation

of this, you know, and it could be something from school. It could be

showing up to a party and wearing the wrong thing or showing up late, showing

up at the wrong time. I had a friend who once showed up to my

birthday party the day before it happened. Like, we jived on that we

were buddies, we both had adhd, but it's that attention to detail that we

sometimes just kind of gloss over. We're busy paying attention to

other things and it doesn't really jump out at us. And it's

embarrassing because it points out that there was a moment where you weren't

100% like everyone else, was able to do it right and you didn't do it

right. And kids are mean. When you do something wrong as

a kid or you do something that's different, other kids can make fun of

you. Sometimes teachers and adults can make fun of you as

well. So we grow up being extra sensitive

to doing things wrong, being extra sensitive to making mistakes

and looking stupid. Because sincerely,

growing up, when you make a mistake publicly, you're made

fun of for it as a child. It does kind of undercut your

sense of safety because it is a form of rejection.

It is a form of ostracization. Right. That's the

word. I'm just going to say that again so I don't mispronounce it.

It's a form of being ostracized. Speaking of

embarrassing yourself and making mistakes. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And growing

up, it really can affect your sense of worthiness. So it's

completely understandable that you're sensitive to embarrassing yourself.

Right. Because in your mind, even though you know it's not logical,

when you embarrass yourself, you're showing the world that you're not

capable. You're showing the world that you make mistakes, that you weren't

paying attention, that you do stuff wrong. And your subconscious takes that

as, oh, my God, they're going to kick us out of the tribe, and then

we're going to have to go and survive alone in the woods with the bears

and the lions and the tigers, and we're going to have to be sure not

to eat the mushrooms that'll kill us. And if we have pets or children,

we're going to have to take care of them, too. And that's really scary for

us. That kicks in a whole bunch of survival instincts.

But here's the thing about starting a business and

reinventing your life and doing something that you've never done

before. You're going to get it wrong. You're going to make

mistakes. Those mistakes will often be publicly viewable.

And there's no way of building a business without doing that.

There's no way of doing something you've never done

before without fucking it up.

So in 2019, I decided that I wanted to upgrade my

business. So I invested money I did not have in a coach that was

way more expensive than anything I had ever invested in in my life.

And at the same time, I went to Italy for the month of October.

I was doing a nomad year. It was fabulous. I highly recommend, if you

run a business that is virtual, go and do this whenever you can.

It really changes your perspective on life, but just

setting the stage. So I just started this program. It was all about

putting yourself out there and, like, producing yourself in the world.

And I remember I was doing this zoom call with the

cohort from my little kitchen in my roman

apartment that I had gotten for my stay.

And behind me, there was this mural, this

beautiful mural of, like, an agora. And there are just people, like,

milling around this fountain, this square. And my

coach pointed to it because I had asked a question, said, write

a post about that. Write a post about that painting in

your kitchen, in your little roman apartment. And he said this just as

an example of, like, anything can be content. And I was just

getting my feet wet with social media. I was just getting my feet wet with

posting online, because I'd really built my business up until that point by

networking in person, by going to happy hours

and networking events and talking to people through

LinkedIn, really connecting with people one on one. I hadn't really promoted myself

on social media yet, and so this is a whole new thing for me. And

I was terrified. I was terrified of posting something stupid. I was

terrified of writing something and having people react

badly to it. And so my coach really pushed me. He said, you know what?

Like, as soon as this call is over, I want you to sit down, I

want you to take a picture of that thing, and I want you to write

a post about it. And so I did. And I had just arrived in

Rome, so I was really jet lagged. I'll also own that I was in Rome,

and I was cooking, and I was drinking some wine, so I

wasn't drunk, but I also was not really sober. And so I wrote this post,

and, like, it was a very, like, abstract painting, and there were, like,

these symbols around it that I didn't recognize. And I kind of, like, made an

offhand remark in this post about the symbols meaning something, whatever.

And one of my old professors from

college commented on the post and said, those are

letters from the greek Alphabet, like, the symbols, like,

calling out that I'd made this really stupid, dumb mistake.

And I remember this woman, Sharon, who was also in the

cohort with me, dmed me as soon as she saw it. She's like, are you

okay? Because I'm sure she saw that, and she's like, oh, my God, I

would die. I would die if one of my former professors came

in and called out such a stupid

mistake, right? And in hindsight, I'm like, oh, my God, of course, that's

the greek Alphabet. But my brain was not on the level at that moment.

And I realized in that moment that this was just the first of

many embarrassing moments that were going to happen. If I wanted to have a business,

if I wanted to be sharing stuff online, if I wanted to promote myself and

put myself out there, and it really desensitized me

to future mistakes. Now, of course, there have been many embarrassing

moments since then.

There are endless ways to embarrass yourself as a business owner,

especially when you get into email marketing, let me tell you. Because

when you post something on social media, you have the control to go

in and either edit it if you had a typo, or delete it if it's

just a huge mistake. Embarrassment. Embarrassment

is the way you live to

win another day. If you accept

that. Imagine if you have an email

list of about 1000 people and you send out an email

blast and you do something wrong in that email. Like

you copied and pasted some stuff and you have like the same sentence three times

in a row. Or maybe you had a really dumb misspelling,

or maybe you, like, left in some lorem ipsum language from

the filler. I've done it all, let me tell you. And

there's nothing like that sinking feeling and

the heat just rising in your face as you realize, oh, my God, what did

I just say? People, like a thousand people

just got an email with me that makes me look like an idiot. Oh, my

God. And I remember the first couple times this happened, I would

call one of my business besties, Kelsey Letko, and I'd

be freaking out, and she's like, dude, it's fine. Absolutely fine. You're

gonna send them like a funny gif. You're gonna make fun of yourself.

You're gonna own it and laugh it off.

And honestly, every single time I did that, I got better

responses because people, like, appreciated that I was a human

who made mistakes. And what's funny about this is that Kelsey has

done this too. She's done something embarrassing, you know, along those lines, sending

out the wrong thing. And she calls me freaking out

so we can remind someone else that it's okay, it's not a big deal,

but when it happens to us, it's still humiliating. It still triggers all

that for us. So I just want to share this because there's no way of

avoiding it. Something that you're going to have to be comfortable with as you grow

your business and really embarrassment is the way

I want you as a business owner. If you really want to be successful, if

you want to be a public figure, if you want to grow this business to

multiple seven figures, then I'm sorry to break

it to you, but you're going to have to embarrass yourself to that

point. This really unfortunate

truth about starting a business, your level of

success will always cap at your level of shame. If

you're too ashamed to post on social media, if you're too embarrassed, guess

what, that's gonna be a really low level of success.

Cause that's the bare minimum, you know, if you're too ashamed to pitch

yourself to new segments, then guess what? You're not

getting on tv. Okay? That's going to be the cap of your success.

If you're too embarrassed to ask people for referrals, guess what? You're

not getting referrals. Your success will be capped there.

So let's talk through all the embarrassing, well, not all of them. There are

just endless embarrassing situations. But let's talk through some of the most popular

embarrassing situations that you will find yourself in as

a business owner, especially if you're a business owner who's offering a service and

promoting yourself online.

Let's start at the very beginning when you decide you want to start this

business. Oftentimes when you decide to start a business, it's a big jump.

You're usually starting something that is different from what you've done all

along. I know when I started off as a coach, like, I was coming from

sales and I had jumped jobs

so often, like, I was so convinced that people are going to

see that I was announcing that I was a coach, and they'd have this whole

judgment about, like, oh, my God, like, she changes her job every year.

Like, how long is she going to stick with this one? I projected that people

are going to be way meaner about it than they actually were. But

announcing who you are now, changing the narrative,

explaining to people what you're up to now, that can be

incredibly embarrassing. That can trigger a whole bunch

of negative projection on other people. And the biggest

thing that I hear, the most common thing that I hear from people in my

world, my clients, people who come to brave biz labs, which, if you haven't come,

I open up this group coaching call every fourth Friday of the month

to my whole network. So you can come and ask any

question you have about your business, how to get clients, how to market

yourself, so on and so forth. And if you wanted to join, I want you

to go to weeniecast.com bravebiz.

And we have that link in the show notes as well. But it's the most

common fear that people will look at you and look at your announcement about the

thing that you're doing now and say, who the did they think they

are? Like, is this a joke? No, they can't

do that. They've never done that before. Well, guess what? If you don't

push past that embarrassment, if you don't, like, announce that this is a

thing that you're doing and let people think whatever they're going to think about

it, you're never going to have a business, right? Because people

can't hire you if they don't know that you exist and who you help and

what you help them do. And if you're not even willing to tell the people

in your life that this is what you do, I mean, you're not going to

have any clients. It's impossible. Who do you think you are,

Batman? Let's talk about Batman for a second.

Implausible and not implausible that this guy, like, is rich as

all these gadgets and does a butler who sets him up to go and fight

crime. And let's not even talk about the implausibility of

all the villains and the weirdo they do and how organized

they seem to be. Also, what is the property value

in, what is it Gotham? Who would want to live there?

It sounds like a terrible place to set up home and have a family.

And also, like, the looting that happens. Who would want to start a business

there? Okay, so all that aside, here

you have Bruce Wayne, very wealthy, prominent

individual in the community. His big secret is that he's

Batman. What marketing campaign did they do for Batman?

How lucky did he have to be the first couple times that he

just so happened to show up where bad was happening and he

stopped it. And then people were like, oh, that's Batman. Cool,

let's call him. And then they made, like a bat light and stuff, and then

he shows up. I don't buy it. That's not

a plausible way of things happening, right? Unless he's, like, hanging

out in his Batmobile, dressed as Batman, listening to a police

scanner every night, and then maybe slipping little

flyers under the police officer's doors, like, hey, you

got a problem you can't handle, call Batman. Yeah, I'm just not buying it. By

the way, Batman was my favorite superhero, and is to this day.

But not because of how rich he is or how cool he is or

anything. It's because bats are my favorite animal, and I thought it would

be so cool to just design your identity around bats because they're my

favorite anyway, just in case you wanted to know that about me. So

the baseline of embarrassment that you have to be okay with,

you have to be okay with people knowing what your business is.

You have to be okay with the weird judgments that you're gonna get from family

members and from loved ones and from friends and from former

colleagues and former classmates from your third grade. They're all going

to have thoughts about it. And none of those thoughts are your business.

Your business is growing. The business, your business is putting yourself out

there and making sure people know who you

are, who you help, and what you help them do.

And that's it.

The next level of embarrassment is cringe. Social

media. And I know when you think of social media, especially if you haven't

done it yet, and even if you have been doing it for a while, I

bet you're thinking about, like, posting selfies and

sharing reels of you talking while you're sitting in your house that might be

a little messy, or people sharing really vulnerable

things on social media. All of that

can give you that sensation of wanting to, like, not just crawl out of

your skin, but rip your skin off and, like, crawl under a rock. Now, of

course, you're gonna get better at social media as you go, but it doesn't matter

what it is that you're posting. The first few months where you're posting about your

business and you're posting to social media and you're sharing about yourself

are gonna be the most embarrassing months of your life. You're gonna post something

that, years later, you're gonna go back and be like, that wasn't anything. Like, big

whoop. But you're gonna post something, and five minutes later, you're gonna have

this sinking feeling in your stomach, and you're gonna think, oh, my God, I can't

believe I shared that. Oh, my God, what are people gonna think? And

you're gonna have a full on shame spiral about it. That is

the cost of doing business. If you're not willing to

walk through that fire, you're not going to get any

clients, you're not going to start making money, and you're not

going to have a business. Embarrassment is the

way. And as you start growing your business, there are

going to be so many embarrassing moments where maybe you don't have any

clients. One of the most common questions I get around the holiday

season is, what do I say to family members when they ask me how

my little business is going, my cute little side hustles

going, and it's going bad. Cause you're not making any money yet,

but you don't wanna tell them that because you don't want them to say, oh,

well, maybe you should give up. Oh, that's too bad. Like, maybe you should just

go back to having a real job. Yes, of course. That is a really hard

conversation to have. There are definitely ways that you can answer that question,

but you're not gonna be able to avoid the question. You're gonna have to face

down the embarrassment of loved ones, well

intentioned, mostly well intentioned loved ones, asking,

how's your little thing going? And you're gonna have to find a way to answer.

As it grows, as you build up your business with one on one clients,

maybe you're consulting. Maybe you decide that you wanna launch some kind of

workshop or group program. Guess what? 50% of the

time when you launch a group program or a workshop, no one's gonna sign

up. Another 20% of the time, only one or two people are

gonna sign up for a group thing. And if you think no one signing up

is embarrassing, try showing up to your first

session with your quote unquote group, and there's only one person there. And

then what do you say when you go to talk about it? Oh, the one

participant that I had joined my group is doing really great. They're having

success in whatever it is that you're teaching them. All

that is part and parcel of growing a business. And in a moment, I'm going

to tell you a little bit more about some of the really embarrassing things I've

done.

So I'm the type of person that I lay the track as the train is

coming. So sometimes when I have an email campaign, I set up

all the logic in my email marketing so that there was a campaign

and I'd have, like, blank emails or emails that had, like, instructions

for what the email should be, and then I'd go and write them, like, right

before they were supposed to go out. And this one time,

I don't know, I got distracted and I didn't do it. And what

got sent out was like, email seven,

write about this, this, this, and this. And it wasn't the, it was

like, instruction for me for what I needed to write. And it went out to

my whole f cking list, and it was just like, oh, my God, I can't

believe I did that. And it was all my fault. It was literally that I

just forgot to do it. And it just didn't play

into any of my awareness for what I need to do in

that day. And I got several unsubscribes, obviously,

because that obviously is incredibly sloppy. But, you know, it's funny. You'd think

that would be enough to push me to pre write all of my emails.

I still don't write all of my emails in advance.

You know, I just can't. It's just like, it doesn't work for me. Like, I

have to do it as the train is coming. Now that I have more support,

that helps me, like, get everything organized. I have things done more in

advance. But that was honestly probably the most embarrassing thing that I've done

with my emails. I think we all kind of walk that line as we're learning

how to be vulnerable on social media and as we're trying to figure out what

vulnerability we're okay with. There have definitely been times where I

shared too much, where I shared something that I wasn't ready to

share and people wanted to take care of me and they wanted

to check in on me and make sure that I was good. And

I've always just gone back and edited those, but those are easier to

fix. And, like, once you send an email to a thousand people, there's no

taking it back. And, like, these are minor embarrassments, but

they still hit me like a load of bricks.

They still made me feel that shame spiral. They still made

me kind of jump into this panic mode of, oh, my God, I can't believe

I just did that. Everything's going to crash and burn. People are going to

hate me. They're going to think I'm an idiot. All this stuff. If you don't

have the stomach for that stuff, there's way worse things that can happen.

There's this great book by Shonda Rhimes, who's the writer creator of

Grey's Anatomy and how to get away with murder and Bridgerton on one of my

favorite shows. And it's this book called the year of yes.

And she decided that she was just being too much of a wimp in her

life. And she decided that for a year she was just

gonna say yes to whatever people asked of her. And

her alma mater, Dartmouth College, which is in Ivy League

college here in the United States, if you're not from the US, asked

her to do a commencement speech, and she hated public speaking. She was

so terrified of it. And going into it, she was

convinced that she would have fear snot. Like, this is what she talked about

in her book. So she was convinced that she would get up on stage and

breathe out of her nose and a bunch of boogers and snot would just come

flying out of her nostrils in front of thousands of people.

And while it was being recorded, because she was the writer, creator of Grey's

Anatomy, and highly successful person, who people would want to see the commencement speech

for, that absolutely can happen. We're all

humans. We all have snot. Like, it can come out of your face

unexpectedly when you don't want it to. It didn't happen for her,

but it could have. There are so many embarrassing

things, especially if you have a female body. It can happen.

Or you're out in the world promoting your business. If you're too

embarrassed to potentially make a mistake in your email or potentially make a mistake

in social media, how are you ever going to

handle it when something bigger happens? The queen

of shame herself, Brene Brown, her Ted talk that went

viral, her original Ted talk where she owned

having an emotional breakdown or a mental breakdown, she

got off stage, had a complete shame

hangover, called her friends, panicked at them. They were

like, oh, but, like, how many people are actually gonna watch this?

Over the next few days, this video went viral online.

And in the comments, like, she wants to say that she didn't look at any

of the comments. She read every single comment. Every single comment that called her

fat, that criticized her outfit, that called her

stupid, and then, of course, like, she had to then reconcile. Like, oh, my God,

I just admitted to millions of people on the Internet that I had

a mental breakdown. I can't remember which book she talks about this, but she

talks about, like, how she deals with most catastrophic things. She

just binge watched Downton Abbey and ate a lot of snacks,

which relatable. Yeah, been there, done that. But

also, look at where she is now. She is a household

name. I doubt anyone who's listening to this podcast has to go

and look her up. Most of you probably have her book on your

bookshelf or in your audible account if you want that level of

success. Like, it's not just sometimes the fire you have to walk through,

that is the fire you have to walk through. You have to walk

through being seen by people

as you are. There's no avoiding that. I want you to

think of every single celebrity that you've seen, like, have

a bad moment in public. Maybe they were

drinking. Maybe something bad just happened to them and think about

how they had to move through it. Some celebrities don't recover

from it, and they go into hiding and they give up others,

they push through, and that's really indicative of, like, how successful

they're going to be in the long term. Alec Baldwin, who's had so many

embarrassing situations and, like, awful situations in his life that,

like, are very shame inducing. He's about to have a reality

tv show with his wife who got called out

for having a fake spanish accent. The lady's from Boston,

her name is Hillary, and she had us all fooled thinking

she was the spanish lady named Hilaria from Espana.

Like, they have a reality tv show, they have the capability

to withstand a ton of embarrassment

and they're making money off of it. Like, come on. If they can

get through the embarrassing things that they've done and still be

successful, you can do anything.

If you're not embarrassing yourself daily, if you're not doing

something that's outside your comfort zone, if you're not putting yourself

out there in a way that, like, you might get it wrong, you're not trying

hard enough. There's no way to grow a successful

business without embarrassing yourself, without

making stupid mistakes, without public

failure. So if you're not willing to fail publicly, if you're not

willing to embarrass yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. But I

highly recommend you do not spend the time, money and energy on trying

to start a business. If you are willing to embarrass

yourself, but you want to be productive with your embarrassment, you don't just

want to embarrass yourself willy nilly all over the place and not have it get

you anything and you're not sure what's going to help you get from where

you are now to actually being successful in this business, then I

invite you to book a generated income strategy call with me. Because one of the

things that I do with my clients is I will not only help you identify

what is your fastest path to cash, I

help you come up with what are the things that can put you out there

that will communicate as elegantly and as quickly as

possible who you are, who you help, and what you help them

do. I also edit content for my

clients, so you're less likely to make a mistake. I don't guarantee

no mistakes in my edits, but you're less likely to embarrass yourself with my

eyeballs and stuff. And I'm going to show you the best

ways for you to launch your business, for

you to enroll clients, for you to start a group.

So your ratio of public failure to public success

is hopefully more in your favorite. And if you want to book a generated income

strategy call with me. Then I want you to go to winniecast.com

strategycall and remember, it doesn't matter what

you felt like as a child. It doesn't matter what you felt like growing up.

It doesn't matter how you were made to feel in former work

environments. No one is doing things perfectly.

And when you do make a mistake, it's not a sign that

you're less worthy. It's not a sign that you're stupid. It's not a sign that

you're a fuck up. It's not a sign that you can't do this. It's a

sign that you do not have the correct support for how

your brain operates. This is one of the reasons why I've

evolved my business consultancy business from just

helping people start businesses to helping people with ADHD. Starting

businesses, right. Because there's so much

neurotypical support out there that is great for

neurotypicals who have an easy time following all the instructions

and can check off the list and do all the

things. My clients with ADHD, they need something different.

I needed something different when I started. When you have someone who

understands how your brain operates and what

it needs to be able to be successful, you're able

to let go of all the what ifs. Maybe not all of the what

ifs. The what ifs will always come up, but you're able to let go of

more of them so that you can actually push yourself to take action,

even though you might embarrass the crap out of yourself.

Oh my God, I'm so freaking

embarrassed. No way. Cut that out of the

podcast. Just kidding. Keep it in.

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.