As an ADHD entrepreneur do you need more fun in your business?
Are you having enough fun, for fun's sake?
Let's get into the significance of embracing fun and joy purely for the sake of enjoyment!
Not for content!
Hi! I'm Katie McManus, ADHD entrepreneur business strategist and money mindset coach.
And welcome to "The Weeniecast."
The Importance of Fun in Business for ADHD Entrepreneurs!
Hey there, squirrel squad!
This week we're getting down and dirty with a topic that hits home for all of us hustle-and-bustle ADHD entrepreneurs - the blurry, messy line between work and fun.
You know what I'm talking about, right?
That sneaky pressure to have our brains always dialed into business mode, as if our minds are some kind of non-stop idea factory.
Now, let me throw some real talk your way, 'cause I've been there, done that'.
I just had a conversation with my business bestie, Laura Bernhard, and boy did we come to quite the realization...
We need to slam the brakes on this nonsense and inject some serious joy into our lives.
It's not just fluff – it's the fuel that keeps our creative engines roaring.
I'm throwing down the gauntlet here – I challenge you, yes YOU, to carve out time for stuff that makes your heart sing.
And I'm not just talking about a quick giggle or a fleeting smile.
I mean those deep-down belly laughs, those moments where you forget to check your phone because you're having such a damn good time.
And while you're at it, surround yourself with people who get it, who cheer you on in chasing what makes you uniquely happy.
'Cause let's face it, our brand of success isn't cookie-cutter – it's as quirky and individual as we are.
So, make some time to join me for this unfiltered, no-holds-barred episode where I'm sharing my own struggles when it comes to striking that elusive balance between work and play in the entrepreneurial circus.
It's time to get real about finding joy.
Are you with me?
Towards the end of the episode, I set a challenge for you to share with me some ideas for things via a message on my Instagram.
Here's the link for you to find me on Insta - https://www.instagram.com/katie.the.coach/
And here's the link if you want to get yourself onto the waitlist for the hyperfocus group - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus
Timestamped summary
00:00 Balancing work, passion, and personal enjoyment.
05:19 Value joy and productivity, make impact. Consider life's purpose.
07:40 ADHD and business owners struggle with joy.
11:29 Variety crucial for relationships, business, and content.
17:36 Importance of community and personal growth through cooking.
20:12 A top tip for exploring local unusual and fun activities. Spoiler - goat yoga!
22:22 Seek supportive community, fun activities, self-discovery.
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...
Transcript
1
::Squirrel. In this episode, we're going to talk you through why you
2
::need to have more fun. For fun's sake. For
3
::sake. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money
4
::mindset coach. And welcome to the Weenie cast Squirrel.
5
::Here's the story of something that never actually happened. My friend Laura.
6
::Laura Bernard, I met in Denver this past year. It was a whole LinkedIn
7
::networking thing. We quickly became name business besties and we chat fairly
8
::often. Anyway, towards the end of the year, we decided we wanted to
9
::do like a whole manifestation live, where we would go through and kind
10
::of organize all of our goals for 2024. And we do it on a live.
11
::We make it a lot of fun. And she had this brilliant idea
12
::that we would do it as bingo cards. So instead of just having list
13
::of goals that you check off and cross off throughout the year,
14
::it would be like a year long game of bingo. Bingo.
15
::And if you're familiar with bingo, you have to have five categories,
16
::right? Bi N-G-O. We were trying
17
::to come up with our five categories of what we
18
::wanted to focus on, and so work, obviously, that's
19
::a category. Money. Great. Yes. That's another
20
::category for goals that we want to hit. Health was
21
::the third category. Working out, eating healthy, being
22
::our best selves, all that jazz. But then we couldn't figure out any other
23
::categories. And we spent a good 20 minutes on the phone
24
::trying to figure out. What we both did for fun,
25
::because. We don't really do anything for fun. We do business stuff.
26
::And this is one of the pitfalls. Of having
27
::ADHD and being so excited and hyper
28
::focused and obsessed with what it is that you do for work is that your
29
::work becomes your fun.
30
::But at a certain point, it kind of stops being the fun thing that
31
::you do. It stops being the hobby that you do in addition to your corporate
32
::job. And it becomes your job, it becomes
33
::how you support yourself. And there's a lot of pressure on that. And so
34
::I think we settled on. We weren't going to do bingo. We were
35
::just going to do bing. Because we couldn't come up with that
36
::fifth category. It wasn't landing. And it's like we didn't want to
37
::give ourselves goals that we weren't actually excited for. But then, of course,
38
::I got sick. I had Covid between Christmas and New Year's,
39
::and we didn't do it. So it didn't actually happen. So you wouldn't have seen
40
::this live ever. But it triggered this conversation that I've been having with myself
41
::over the last month around. Am I boring?
42
::Is this what I want to do with my life?
43
::All the existence stuff, walking my dog, cooking meals, which
44
::I do enjoy cooking, working on my business, which I love. It is
45
::something that brings me so much joy and inspiration, and I'm very
46
::passionate about it. Doing this podcast, for example. I love doing this
47
::podcast. And I thought back to when I considered
48
::myself the most fun. And it was really when
49
::I worked in corporate, it was when I worked in sales and I was doing
50
::well in pretty much all the facets of my life. And there's a difference
51
::between working for a company and working for yourself,
52
::obviously. And when it comes to fun,
53
::it's that you can walk away from your work for the weekend, you
54
::can leave work at work for the most part. You might have a couple
55
::of thoughts about, I need to get that done on Monday. But you're not
56
::responsible for everything, right? You get to go and
57
::have little adventures, do things that you really
58
::enjoy and really just go and live life in your spare
59
::time. And that changes when you become a business
60
::owner. When you're a business owner,
61
::every moment you're awake and mostly
62
::conscious, you're thinking about stuff you should be doing in your
63
::business. And I know I'm not alone when I say
64
::I fall into the trap of thinking of fun things to do,
65
::but then making it a work thing because I make the fun thing
66
::into content. Carving pumpkins, that's
67
::content. Going to a museum, that's content.
68
::Cooking something for the first time, that's content trying
69
::to get my dog to go swimming with me when she really doesn't want to
70
::go swimming. Content. Although you're never going to see that video anyway.
71
::So instead of actually having fun, you make the fun things
72
::into more work, which is not the point of having
73
::fun. Let's talk about the benefits
74
::of having fun.
75
::A. It's fun. It brings you joy.
76
::Joy is valuable. I think as a society, especially in western
77
::culture, we don't create space in our
78
::lives for joy. Right. And I think also we see
79
::other people having quote unquote fun, and they're doing so in a really
80
::expensive know, they're having fun on their private
81
::yacht. They're having fun by spending gazillion
82
::dollars at, I don't know, a designer place like Chanel. I was
83
::buying time. I couldn't remember the name of a designer. Anyway, let me see.
84
::I'm honestly struggling for other things that people do for fun. This is
85
::how out of touch I am with fun right now. We
86
::don't value it. We don't value just pure joy.
87
::We value productivity, we value getting things
88
::done. We value making money. We also value
89
::things like having impact about fulfilling our
90
::passions. But without joy, without creating space for
91
::joy in our lives, how are you going to feel when you're on your
92
::deathbed? Wow, we just went dark, didn't we? Okay,
93
::so as an existential question, like what is life without
94
::joy? And how do you want to look back on your life? Do you
95
::want to look back and be like, oh, I crossed off my to do list,
96
::got everything done? Or do you want to look back and think about all the
97
::times that you experience pure, unbridled joy
98
::or a combination of the two? It's up to you. But as business
99
::owners, there is a consciousness that we
100
::have to approach joy with. There is an intentionality that
101
::we didn't have to have when we worked in corporate. Because all of the
102
::responsibility of this business lays on our shoulders. And
103
::especially for those of us with ADHD, with our
104
::minds that go a million miles a minute and constantly
105
::make connections to things that we have at work, things
106
::that we have ideas for, creative ideas, blah, blah, blah, that's constantly
107
::in that swirl. We have to find a way to get ourselves
108
::out of work mode and into joy mode.
109
::Now, the perks to your health, experiencing joy on a
110
::regular basis lowers your stress levels. When you
111
::have less stress, you live longer. When you're joyful
112
::around your friends and family, guess what? Those relationships become
113
::stronger. And even as I'm describing this, my brain is going
114
::to the perks to your work. When you really set aside time for.
115
::Joy, when you're in flow, when you're. In flow in something
116
::that you really enjoy, this project, it's creative, it has different parts of
117
::your brain working. You're going to get ideas for work.
118
::You'Re going to get ideas for how you can serve your clients better, you're going
119
::to get ideas for how you can make some system easier on the
120
::back end for what you do in. Your day to day. You're not going to
121
::have those ideas if you don't invest your time into. Things that are
122
::joyful. And this is not as easy
123
::as it sounds. I mean,
124
::granted, I've only been really focusing on this for about a month,
125
::but in that month I've really struggled to figures
126
::out what I do for fun, what I find fun.
127
::This is something that a lot of ADHD people go through cycles
128
::on, right? Because when we're hyper fixated on a new hobby,
129
::that's the thing that we do, and it brings us so much joy. But when
130
::that hyper fixation ends and we have to find a new
131
::hyper fixation, going back to that old hobby isn't actually as fun as it used
132
::to be. So we're constantly in this cycle of
133
::going through things that bring us joy until the
134
::point that they no longer bring us joy. And the more business owners I speak
135
::to with ADHD, the more convinced I am that this is a
136
::specifically tough challenge for business owners. With
137
::ADHD, it's so common to
138
::burn out through all your hyper fixations, but then you're working for yourself, and so
139
::that kind of becomes your hyper fixation and you stop making
140
::time for fun in your life. In my whole self
141
::exploration of what brings me joy, there are a few things
142
::that I've identified that I think will be fun, and I kind of have
143
::fun with already that I'm consciously making more time for.
144
::Now, one of these things is cooking, and there are two kinds
145
::of cooking. There's the cooking for meal prepping, which is fine. It doesn't bring me
146
::joy, it doesn't make me miserable. It's just kind of like a neutral thing that
147
::I have to do and a neutral thing that I do that sometimes I don't
148
::even eat the food because I don't want to eat it because I'm hyper
149
::fixated on another food group at the time. But this is my routine.
150
::But what I'm talking about with cooking is like cooking something you've never
151
::tried before. This past weekend, I decided to
152
::venture into making lobster risotto arancini the next
153
::day. And if you're not familiar with what arancini is, it's
154
::a roman dish where they take a bottle of risotto, they bread it, and then
155
::they deep fry it, and they usually have a little bit of cheese in there.
156
::But with a lot of lobster, I didn't think cheese would be necessary, and it
157
::wasn't. It was delicious. It took a fucking ton of time.
158
::I had to go buy the lobsters. I had to kill the lobsters. I had
159
::to cook the lobsters, then remove the meat from the lobster
160
::shells. I had to use the shells to make a broth that I then had
161
::to use to make the risotto. And if you've never made risotto before, you basically
162
::have to stand there for almost an hour stirring it. I had
163
::to chop up vegetables for the stock, like all these things. And I know I'm
164
::describing this, and this does not sound like fun. This was so much fun. I
165
::got so invested in it, and it was like this new adventure that I got
166
::to embark on. And the
167
::best thing about cooking for me is cooking for other
168
::people, right? Because you spend all this time
169
::following the instructions, seeing how things turn out,
170
::and then you get to serve it and you get to see people's reactions.
171
::I'm not cooking risotto all the time. It takes too much time for me to
172
::do
173
::so. When we think about fun, we make fun complicated.
174
::But it doesn't have to be fun. Can
175
::be having an adventure in your own kitchen. You know, another thing
176
::that I've been toying around with over the last couple years is I have
177
::an idea for a fantasy novel. Now, it may be
178
::terrible. Who knows? It probably is a terrible
179
::idea. But I decided as part of my
180
::goals for 2024 that I want to. Take a
181
::whack at writing this novel. So I signed up for a fiction 101
182
::class. I may start this class and think it's terrible and not have
183
::fun with. It at all and then give it up. There's something to the
184
::adventure of trying. Something new, and it's something that is.
185
::Really hard to incorporate in your day to day life. But it is so necessary
186
::to people. With ADHD, because we don't just like.
187
::Variety, we have a need for variety. If you're not
188
::giving it new experiences, it's going to come up in your business,
189
::it's going to come up in your relationships, and it's going to royally fuck you
190
::over.
191
::Because if you're not feeding that need for variety with
192
::hobbies and little adventures and fun, then it's going
193
::to transfer to your business where it's going to undercut all the
194
::consistency, all that momentum that you've built. The other
195
::thing that I really had to set aside is having fun and then creating
196
::content out of it. As soon as I'm
197
::doing something fun and there's a pressure to record
198
::and to track it, it stops being fun for me.
199
::It starts being a performance. And I
200
::know, like, everything is content and we want people to feel
201
::like they know us and we want to have kind of an
202
::interesting story that we can tell on social media. But
203
::for the vast majority, the people that you connect with on social media
204
::aren't going to remember you 40 years from now. Are
205
::you living life for them, to entertain them for a few seconds
206
::now? Or are you living life so that at the end
207
::of your life, you don't have any regrets?
208
::And it's hard to take time off from your business to do something that's not
209
::productive in any way, shape or form. That isn't helping you
210
::make more money, that isn't helping you reach your goals, that isn't helping you get
211
::more clients. But it is so necessary
212
::to living the life you want. Something I have to remind
213
::my clients about all the time, when they're first starting out or
214
::when they are scaling their business to multiple six
215
::figures. You need to be really intentional about how you do
216
::this because it's fairly simple to design an
217
::arbitrarily successful business that brings in a certain amount of money, that helps a
218
::certain amount of clients. But that's not what we're after
219
::in the brave weenie world. We're not after arbitrary
220
::success. We're after individualized success. We're
221
::after designing a business that is successful in all the right
222
::ways that it can support you in living the life
223
::that you want. That's absolutely terrifying,
224
::because to be able to design a business that supports you in living the life
225
::that you actually want, you have to actually figure out what you want. And you
226
::have to have the ovaries to state it, to demand
227
::it, to ask for it. You have to be
228
::brave enough to have those conversations with your
229
::partner and with your family and with your friends.
230
::As people with ADHD, we've grown up knowing that we don't
231
::quite fit in to this neurotypical world. But we've also
232
::been bombarded by all the same messaging that everyone else is getting about
233
::what a successful, happy life looks like. It's the spouse
234
::with the 2.5 children and the dog and the cat and the white
235
::picket fence. At least it is in the United States. It may be different in
236
::your country of origin.
237
::We're handed this vision and we're told like, this is the thing that's going to
238
::make you the happiest. It's like a conveyor belt. You go through elementary school,
239
::middle school, high school. You're supposed to go to college, even. Though
240
::in the United States it also involves crushing debt. And then
241
::you have to go and. Get a job where you work 40. To 50 hours
242
::a week, hopefully have enough to save for retirement. You work for
243
::40 years, maybe longer, and then you retire, and then you
244
::die. At no point in that story
245
::is there a point where you're supposed to. Stop and ask,
246
::is this actually what I want? Do I actually want the white picket fence?
247
::Do I want to get married? Do I want to have kids? Do I want
248
::to work in corporate 40 to 50 hours a
249
::week? One of the hardest things about knowing this and
250
::going for it is you have to explain to a bunch of other people who've
251
::been sold on that. Story, and they're not going to get it. This
252
::is one of the biggest reasons why you need a community that
253
::understands exactly why you're
254
::making these changes, why you're breaking out of the mold. Because for them, it doesn't
255
::work for them either. I've said this before, and I will say it a million
256
::times more before I die. Building a business takes a
257
::village, and. Not because it takes a lot of people to do all the things
258
::to build the business, but because you need the village around you to
259
::remind you. That you're not crazy, that there's nothing. Wrong with you for
260
::not accepting the status quo that has been sold to. You your whole life,
261
::that it's okay to want something different, and it's okay.
262
::To go after whatever it is that you want in a way that feels
263
::aligned to you. So here's where this conversation kind of becomes the chicken and
264
::the egg. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep
265
::listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,
266
::squirrel.
267
::So here's where this conversation kind of becomes the chicken and the egg. So
268
::if you need to design a. Business that will be
269
::successful in all. The right ways to support you in the life that you actually
270
::want to. Live that brings you joy, then you. Have to know what it
271
::is that you want, what you want that life to be that brings you joy,
272
::so that you'll have time for things that are fun. But in order to
273
::know what any of those things are, you have to. Start having fun now. You
274
::have to start experiencing Joy for Joy's sake now.
275
::Because who knows? Like, in my ideal life, one of the things
276
::that I cannot wait to have happen
277
::is to have a house that has a beautiful garden
278
::with tables set up, and pretty much every Sunday night to have a
279
::family dinner. And not just family. When I say family, I mean adopted
280
::family, too. I cook something special. Everyone kind of brings
281
::a dish. If they have kids, they can kind of run around and do whatever
282
::they want. But you hang out, you have
283
::that final bit of respite before the week starts,
284
::and you have your community around you. That's
285
::something I really look forward to. And I wouldn't know that that's important to me
286
::if I weren't making time for the joyful act of cooking.
287
::And this is one of the reasons why I'm launching the community, like, hyper
288
::focused. Because for you to be able to identify those things that
289
::you want, you have to have a sense of safety, that
290
::it's okay for you to want those things
291
::and for you to have that sense of safety, that it's okay for you to
292
::want those things. You kind of have to be around other people who are
293
::already going for the things that they want, setting up their own vision
294
::for what their own ideal life looks like, and
295
::unapologetically going for it. There's a saying that
296
::I heard about ten years ago, and it was really painful to hear
297
::when it first came up. And it has continued to be painful as I've grown
298
::as a human, as I've changed, as I've evolved, as what I want has
299
::evolved. And it's that you are the sum total of the five people you spend
300
::the most time with. Now, the reason this is painful is because sometimes you
301
::look around at the five people you spend the most time with and you love
302
::them and you cherish them. And also, if you want the
303
::things that you want, if you're ever going to get them, you
304
::can't continue spending time with these people, or at least not as much
305
::as you have been. There's a distance that has to be
306
::created, and there's a new group of people out there that you
307
::need to start spending more time with. So I ask you,
308
::what do you do for fun?
309
::What are the things that bring you small moments of joy?
310
::And I challenge you this week to block
311
::off three to 5 hours to doing that thing.
312
::And it can be ridiculous. It could be making a blanket
313
::fort in your living room. It could be dressing up as a wizard and just
314
::going to a coffee shop and sitting there with your
315
::cappuccino and, like, chanting weird things over it. Actually, that sounds like a lot of
316
::fun. And I do have a wizard costume because I was Dumbledore for Halloween one
317
::year. However, the glasses never arrived. And you just can't be
318
::Dumbledore without the half moon glasses, which I
319
::get. He's probably reading old texts with weird, scribbly,
320
::small writing. But doesn't that drive you nuts? Doesn't it just feel like
321
::they're about to fall off your face? I wouldn't know because the glasses never arrived
322
::and I couldn't wear them.
323
::If you're struggling for ideas, here are some different areas you can check
324
::out. Eventbrite, I always forget exists, except when I'm going networking. There
325
::are tickets to goat yoga on Eventbrite. There are like haunted
326
::house tours, there's cooking classes, Airbnb
327
::experiences. That's another venue where you can figure
328
::out local fun things to do that get
329
::you out of your comfort zone. Weirdly, where I am now,
330
::there's a lot to do with like alpacas and llamas, which for a
331
::seaside town seems odd. I didn't realize
332
::we had that many alpacas and llamas here. This fun thing that you go to
333
::do will probably bring you joy. Probably isn't going to be like, oh my
334
::God, this is the thing I want to do for the rest of my life.
335
::But you're going to continue making time for fun things that
336
::are outside of your norm until you find that thing.
337
::Because again, you cannot strategize and
338
::plan and work on a business that is going to be successful in all the
339
::right ways that supports you in living your ideal
340
::life unless you know what that ideal life includes.
341
::So your work right now is to figure that out
342
::if you take this challenge and you find something that's fun, weird,
343
::wonky, outside your norm to do. I would love it if
344
::you found me on Instagram at Katie
345
::the coach, not Katie the
346
::couch, which a lot of people mistakenly thought I
347
::had. Katie the coach. I would love it if you found me there and sent
348
::me a dm and just tell me about what you did
349
::and if it was fun or not. That's
350
::data that tells you that's not something you want in your ideal life, that tells
351
::you you do not need to structure your business in a way. That lets
352
::you do that thing because. You don't want to do that thing. That's fine. I
353
::don't like being on boats. They make me sick. I'm not going to design my
354
::business around the idea that I want to be on a boat all the time.
355
::And I will personally keep you posted about what brings
356
::me joy and if. Things work out in this writing class, you might be
357
::seeing a fantasy novel for me in the coming years. Who knows?
358
::Wouldn't that be funny to be like, yes, I'm the host of the Weenie cast
359
::and I teach business strategy and I write fantasy novels. For
360
::a young adult, that would be the most adhd life.
361
::It would be so on brand. You see here, I'm already
362
::planning how. This could work for my business. We really can't
363
::help it. If you realize that you need people who are
364
::more supportive of you, branching out, doing fun things,
365
::trial and erroring your whole life to figure out what it is that you want.
366
::Then I want you to get on the waiting list for the hyper focused
367
::membership. My producer asked me when this is launching and my
368
::answer was when I get my shit together and he was like cool. If I
369
::asked your OBM Heather when this is launching,
370
::what would she answer is the date? And I said she would
371
::answer when Katie gets her shit together. But the community is absolutely
372
::going to be incredible because it's going to be people like you
373
::who want to create a life on their own terms
374
::and have to do so in a different way from
375
::all the neurotypicals. And I'm really excited for it and
376
::I really do need to get my together. And to get on the waiting list
377
::you want to go to weeniecast.com
378
::hyperfocus and you'll find that link in the show notes.
379
::I asked my clients about what she does for fun and she's like, I don't
380
::know. I bought a sign that says life is short, lick the bowl
381
::and it's meant for your kitchen, but I put it in the bathroom. Other than
382
::that, I'm not that fun. Squirrel, squirrel,
383
::squirrel, squirrel.
