I didn't plan on starting my own coaching business in my 20s. But a car accident that left me with a serious brain injury ended up being the wake-up call I needed to stop 'kicking rocks' down the road and finally go after my dream.

In this episode, I'm sharing the story of how:

The concussion I got from the accident turned into post-concussive syndrome, leaving me unable to work for 8 months

The limitations and loneliness of recovering from a traumatic brain injury made me reevaluate what I really wanted out of life

I finally found the courage to sign up for coach training, even though I couldn't really afford it at the time

If you've been putting off starting the business you've always dreamed of, this episode will show you why you can't afford to wait for the 'perfect time'.

You'll learn how to turn your perceived weaknesses into your greatest strengths.

And you'll walk away ready to pick up that rock you've been kicking down the road and finally do something with it.

Timestamped summary:

00:00 Intro - Why a brain injury ended up being a gift

02:41 The car accident that caused my concussion

04:50 Struggling with post-concussive syndrome and having to take months off work

09:50 What helped me get through the loneliness and limitations of recovery

13:46 Finally finding the courage to sign up for coach training

15:23 How a toxic work environment gave me the final push to go all-in on my business

17:30 Why you need to stop waiting for the "perfect time" to go after your dreams

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In this episode, I'm going to tell you why a car accident and a

brain injury was actually the greatest gift the universe ever gave me.

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

welcome to the Weeniecast!

Starting my business was

the best thing that I've ever done for myself. But honestly, I don't know that

I would have done it when I did if I hadn't had a really serious

accident and had to make some really dramatic changes

to my life. And I think a lot of us go through this. You know,

we have this dream, and it's like that someday dream of, someday I'm gonna

do this, and someday I'm gonna do that. When the stars align, when I feel

ready, when I've saved enough money, you know, when this happens, when

that happens. And most of the time, unfortunately,

those dreams just get kicked down the road like a rock until

it's too late to actually do anything with them, or until

you get down on yourself enough that you think, oh, well, you know, I haven't

done it yet, and I probably will never do it, and then you just give

up on it. I was absolutely on that trajectory.

I had my very first coach when I was 22 years old, had an

incredible experience, really thought, okay, I want to be a coach,

quote unquote, when I grow up. And I had this idea in

my mind that I had to be, like, a certain

age, and I had to have a certain level of experience, and I had to

be taken seriously and have a certain level of respect

already before I could start a business, before I could go and

coach with other people. And so, you know, I was in my twenties, and I

was figuring out life, and I was kind of, like, sampling everything. You know, I

was in wine, I was a sommelier, and then I acted, and then I nannied,

and then I worked in the solar industry and then the cybersecurity industry and

the fitness industry, and managed a yarn shop at some point in there and

taught knitting. But every single time I got to that point in

a job where I wasn't happy, where I was

frustrated and just ready to move on to something else, I'd hire a

coach, and that coach would help me figure out what I didn't like

about that job and what I was kind of looking for in the next job.

And more than once, I jumped without having

anything lined up on the other side. And the magic of coaching

is that I always landed somewhere better. I always landed somewhere where they

treated me better where they paid me, better, where I was more interested in the

thing that we were doing. And every single time I had this experience,

it just reaffirmed, oh, my God, I want to do this for people. I want

to do this for other people. This is such an incredible thing to be able

to do for others. But there was that voice in my head that's like,

well, you're too young. Who's going to listen to you? You've jumped jobs how

many times you've worked in how many industries, like, come on,

no one's going to take you seriously. And, I mean, the problem was, honestly,

that I didn't take me seriously. The problem was that I

saw all that as a hindrance rather than a

superpower. And fast forward to October

22 of 2017. I remember the date. I was

driving back from visiting my goddad and his wife in

Sacramento, and I went to take a left hand turn because I was

lost into a driveway, and the person behind me sped up and

tried to pass me on the left. As I was taking the turn, she t

boned me and totaling my car completely

and giving me a very serious concussion. And honestly, having that

concussion was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me in my life,

because the concussion actually turned into post concussive

syndrome, which is basically where the concussion doesn't go away

and it actually gets worse over time. And so. And the

concussion was really bad. It was. It was really interesting because a couple days

after the accident, I was so sore, and my car was totaled, and

I had called out of work, obviously, because I was recovering, and they

told me to keep an eye on certain things that could be

happening if it was a concussion. I noticed that, like, I was having a hard

time reading, people would send me text messages, and if they were short text

messages, like, one line, I could read it fine. If it was two lines,

it got really blurry, and if it was three lines or more, without

any spacing, all the words started floating out of space

and out of order. It was really frightening. I also was having a really hard

time focusing. One of my roommate's friends came over to check on me at some

point when I was home listening. Katie. Katie. And

I had the tv on, and she was talking, and I literally just couldn't track

what anyone was saying.

If you've listened to the podcast, I think you can probably glean that. I'm usually

a pretty fast thinker, and I can absorb a lot. You know, like, I have

ADHD, I can watch a tv show and have a full conversation and be texting

other people and know what's going on with all three of them. So this was

really disconcerting for me. And so I went to the emergency

room and they diagnosed me with a concussion, and they recommended that

I take a couple weeks off of work, which I did. My manager, thank God,

was so supportive of me. And after a couple weeks, I went back to

work. And of course, like, during that time, I had to go and get my

eyes checked. There was nothing wrong with my eyes, they concluded, and I had to

get an MRI. And there's, like, nothing visibly wrong with

my brain. And the theory was that during the accident, the part of

my brain that deciphers what my eyes see just got bumped.

Just got bumped and a little bruised. And it really did limit what

I could do. And of course, I was working in software sales at the time,

so my whole life was on a computer. My whole

life was looking at very, very fine print in

salesforce, trying to figure out, like, how to reach out

to different people to close the sale and having those really

complicated conversations because we were in Internet security and it

just, like, there was no way, I mean, I couldn't even read, so

it was really not possible for me to go back to work. And,

like, I even played with, well, what if they just printed out huge list

of everyone and I could just call through and have everything in, like, really big

block text? Maybe that'll work. I think we even tried that

for a day. But what happened is, like, I went back to work

and after an hour of trying to look at my computer, I had the worst

migraine and I had to go home. And the next day the same thing happened.

And the next day the same thing happened. And I went to my doctor and

I was beside myself. I was crying hysterically.

I was sure that, like, my brain was broken and there

was just, there was no fixing it. And she was so

kind with me. She listened to everything I had to say

and did some tests. And she's like, you know, I think you have post concussive

syndrome, which is something that happens. And it's very common with women who get

concussions. And it's basically where the concussion just doesn't get better.

And it's basically the concussion becomes a mild traumatic brain

injury. And her prescription

was two months off of work.

And, like, I was hysterically crying before.

I was crying even harder after hearing that. For

one, I was scared. I was scared to lose my job. I was scared for,

like, my income and would my insurance be taken away and all that stuff. The

things that, you know, Americans really have to stress about. But also, I love

working. I love working with people. The idea of having to

stay home was just excruciating to me.

A side note, I was having a hard time reading, so I was also having

a hard time, like, texting correct things. One of my coworkers,

Forrest, had asked me, like, text me after your doctor's appointment. I want to hear

how you're doing. And I texted him, and I thought I texted him,

my doctor gave me two months of sick leave. Except

when you text, the s and the d are very close to each other. So

I accidentally texted him that my doctor prescribed two months of

dick leave, which was great anyway,

which he thankfully thought was very funny.

He didn't get weird, thank God. But anyway, the road to recovery was really

hard. I ended up having to take eight months off of work. In that time,

I started working with a neuropsychologist to really help me understand my new

limitations. You know, when you're. When you have a mild traumatic brain injury, you can't

listen to music. You don't realize

how much brain power it takes for you to actively

listen and decipher music. You don't realize how much

brain power it takes to make sense of ambient noises like

cars driving by. So when I went walking,

because walking was the only exercise I was allowed to do, because they didn't want

me upping my heart rate and maybe causing a brain bleed if there's something that

they missed. On the MRI, I had to wear earplugs to block out the

sound. I couldn't hang out with friends for more than about a half hour. Cause

it was just too draining. And, like, the amount of energy I had to

do basic things was abysmal.

And the reason I'm sharing this a is to, like, explain

how I ended up doing my job and to kind of give you some insight

as to what it took for me so that hopefully it calls bull on you

kicking the stone down the road, right? Because I

know you have a dream. I know you have something that you want to do,

and I know there's that voice in your head, just like I had, that's telling

you, well, not yet. You can't do this yet. You have to

wait. And here's all the reasons why you have to wait, and you're not good

enough yet. And I don't want you to have to wait until the universe is

like, shut the up. Here's a car accident. Now go do it.

But also, I wish there had been a resource, something for me to listen

to when I was going through this and trying to make

sense of what was happening in my own head and trying to,

like, not freak out that this is just going to be my life forever.

So I invite you, as you're listening to this, if you know anyone who has

a concussion, if you know anyone who has had a

mild traumatic brain injury and they're recovering from it, send this to them.

Send this to them so that they can see that they're not alone and that

things do get better. And really, you know, I've

talked to several people who've experienced traumatic brain injuries. And what's really

interesting is that if they didn't have ADHD like symptoms

before, they tend to have them after. And of course,

there's a lot of research that talks about, like, the overlap of PTSD

and ADHD. But I also think that there's a fundamental way in which

the brain changes once you've had a traumatic brain injury. And

I can tell you there are things to this day that I still find

challenging, not debilitating. It's not limiting, it's

not. It's just different. My brain started working in different

ways. But if you have had a concussion and you're listening to this, I want

you to know that you only have a few spoons per day going grocery

shopping, a big spoon. It's going to take a big spoon for you

to do. And don't be discouraged if you're

exhausted afterwards. Watching a movie

is also usually, that's something that's seen as something that's restful. It's

not. When you're recovering from a brain injury. Absolutely not. It takes

so much for your brain to decipher. Understanding how to ask

friends to be there for you is something that I never figured out until

afterwards. It was probably one of the most lonely parts of my life because

my friends would go out and they'd want to go out to bars and they'd

want to go to dinner or brunch or they'd want to go to the park.

All things that I love doing, but I couldn't do them because it was too

taxing on my brain. And the things that make a concussion

worse, that prevent it from getting better, is physical activity and thinking.

Literally, your brain thinking and processing stuff makes the

concussion harder to recover from. And in hindsight, I

wish, because I had a lot of friends I could have asked this of. I

wish I had just asked people to just come over and bring a book

and just read around me. Just body double. Just be

in my space. Just for an afternoon, order

food, hang out. Like, just be in my

space. And if you're going through this, I want you to have full permission

to reach out to some friends and explain what's going on with you

and invite them to do something like this, because the loneliness is the hardest

part.

Something that I didn't realize was happening that got

reflected back to me after I got better is that my temperament changed during this

time as well. I had one colleague

who used to be, we were very, very close before this

happened, and apparently

I was awful to him. I was really mean. I. Like,

I. My temperament, like, my. And he said this, your temperament

completely changed. You snapped so many times

at us. And of course, like, I don't actually remember it.

My brain was working so hard to just make sense of the world around

me. And thankfully, afterwards, you know, I was able to apologize. But I don't

think that our friendship actually ever fully recovered. So

if you're going through this, know that your temperament is going to be different,

know that you're going to have a shorter fuse. And part of it is just

the frustration that your brain isn't working the way you're used to it

working. And prepare the people around you, you know, make

sure that they know, like, this is just a symptom of this, and

you're preemptively apologetic for anything that you say that's sharp

or unkind or for losing your temper in any way.

And pay attention to that, because it's usually a sign that you're taxing

yourself too much now, because I wasn't allowed to watch

tv, I wasn't allowed to be on computers. I wasn't allowed to, like,

look at my phone for too long because literally the backlit thing

was way too taxing on my brain. A few months into

recovering, I was going absolutely insane. And it got

to the point where I was like, okay, well, like, what if I can't go

back to work? What if I literally cannot go back to a sales role where

I have to look at a screen all the time? What do I want to

do? And my mind kept going back to, well, you've always wanted to be a

coach. You know, that's always been your dream. And I'd been stalking this

website for forever. For the coactive training institute, which one of

my coaches previously had told me was the one of the best training

programs that I could possibly go to. And,

you know, having a brain injury and being bad at math at that time,

I signed up even though I couldn't technically afford it. And it

started me on this path where I was no longer kicking

that rock down the road where I'd actually pick the rock up

and was doing something with it. I decided, you know,

like, I could have died in that car accident. If

my car had moved 1ft forward, her

bumper probably would have come through my door and caused either

incredible injury beyond the brain injury or

been fatal to me. And also, I just had a ton of time on my

hands. So I went through the training. As I got better, I

also went through certification. I went back to work. And going back to

work was really painful because, you know, my brain no longer worked the same way.

Looking at screens was really hard. It was very emotionally taxing

also, and partially because I discovered what my calling

was, I had figured out the thing

that I wanted to do that I had always been searching

for, being able to help people get what they want. And of

course, you know, like, I started off with three other niches before I ended up

helping people with businesses and really honing into helping people with

ADHD. But regardless of the fact that I wasn't in the

perfect niche yet, I couldn't do anything else. Like, literally, I couldn't

make my nervous system do anything else. And one of the greatest gifts was

that going back to work was actually everything had changed. We had a new

manager. It was incredibly toxic. And honestly, thankfully, when I went back

to work, my manager had changed, the head of our department had changed.

Everything had gone from being so supportive and so kind to

the most toxic environment you could possibly imagine.

And that mixed with me understanding,

like, this newfound passion and understanding that, like, I really

wanted to do that, as my business was the perfect combination

to really, like, push me out of the nest and make me just go for

it. I think back, and honestly, if. I think if I

had gone back and had the same manager and I had gone back and had,

like, the same job with the exact same responsibilities as I had

when I left, I don't know that I would have had the guts

to actually leave it and go and start something different.

Going back and having that, like, the complete structure

of my day and my work and the respect that was paid to people in

the team changed was probably one of the best things that could have

happened to me. If you have a concussion or a mild

traumatic brain injury or a very serious brain injury, I want you to

know that you're going to heal over time. It takes time, though, and it

takes rest, and it takes rest. That you are probably going to be

very bad at, because you're ambitious and you're a

hard worker, and you're intelligent, and you're going to hold yourself to a higher

standard and you're not think, oh, my God. Well, what's wrong with me? Why can't

I do this thing? And it's just that you can't do this thing

now. It's just that you need your brain

to have a break. And there are going to be moments where you're like, oh,

my God, this is my new normal. I'm always going to be this messed up,

and it's never going to get better. And that's honestly just the nature of

being human. We adjust to different circumstances

incredibly fast. It's a survival mechanism. It's how we

survive really traumatic events. It's how our ancestors

got through wars and famines. We just kind of

adjusted. This is our reality right now. And then our reality changes, and that's our

reality now. So know that that's not always going to

be a reality, but for you to move through it faster, you actually

have to do a whole lot less than you're trying to do now. And for

those of you who have an idea for a business or who

want to scale the business you have, and you keep kicking that rock down the

road because you're like, oh, I'm not ready yet. Oh, it's not the right time.

Oh, I'm not old enough. Oh, I don't have this. Oh, I don't have that.

Shut the f up. The thing about the universe is that the universe

wants you to win. And the universe doesn't give a damn

how it gets you to go there. If you're dilly

dallying and you're kicking that rock down the road of all your dreams,

everything that you want to have come true, the universe is going to get tired

of it at some point, and the universe is going to send something like a

car accident, gives you a mild traumatic brain injury to get you off

your ass and to go and do the thing. And let me tell

you, it's not great. I definitely would have

preferred to have just, like, stopped being weenie magically and decided,

okay, now's the time I'm gonna do this, and just made it work from

there. And I hope after listening to this, this could be that

thing that gets you off your butt and gets you going for it.

Now kick me.