What's the beaver 'damming' up YOUR business?
What do we business owners share in common with beavers? You're gonna kick yourself!
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...
How do you beaver up your business?
I was scrolling through my social media feed the other day when I stumbled upon the most peculiar video: a beaver diligently collecting household items to create a dam inside someone's bathtub.
It struck me how instinctual it is for these creatures to obstruct the natural flow of water—and then I realized, isn't that what we often do in our own businesses?
I’ve now coined the term: "beavering your business as a result of this lesson I've learned."
Often, ADHD entrepreneurs unconsciously create energy blocks that prevent success, clients, and money from flowing naturally.
How do we create dams in our own success?
It's all about the stories we tell ourselves—stories about our ADHD, our relationship with money, or our skill sets.
Instead of treating these as minor hurdles to overcome, we magnify them into insurmountable obstacles.
For instance, constantly blaming ADHD for our challenges not only limits our actions but also keeps us in a perpetual state of powerlessness.
We even use our "bad relationship with money" as a convenient excuse to avoid asking for the compensation we deserve.
By acknowledging and tackling these stories head-on, you’ll learn how to redirect that blocking energy into something more constructive.
After listening to this episode, you'll gain valuable insights into recognizing and dismantling the barriers you've been unknowingly placing in your own path.
We’ll cover practical strategies for transforming your mindset around ADHD and money, empowering you to step into a position of control and opportunity.
You'll be better at identifying the sabotaging narratives you tell yourself, and more equipped to make decisions from a place of strength rather than weakness.
Whether it's overcoming your fear of failure, rejection, or just breaking a long-held belief that you “can't” succeed because of your ADHD, this episode will arm you with the tools to stop being a weenie and start running a successful, profitable business.
Timestamped Summary:
00:00 - Introduction: How beavers and business blocks are connected.
01:50 - The concept of "beavering your business" and the negative impact of energetic blocks.
02:49 - Common self-imposed barriers ADHD entrepreneurs create, stemming from blaming ADHD.
03:49 - The power of shifting away from blaming ADHD to taking control.
04:54 - Specifics on how untreated ADHD symptoms can impact business tasks.
06:06 - Discussing the myth of insurmountable obstacles, especially around money.
07:09 - Steps to improve relationship with money and move past paralyzing beliefs.
08:54 - Overcoming my "I'm bad at writing dialogue" block.
10:10 - Breaking down the psychological mechanisms behind magnifying obstacles.
12:34 - Empowering yourself to overcome the beavers in your business.
This episode is your guide to stop letting beavers dam up your path to success.
Click play, listen, and let's break down those barriers together!
Your next steps after listening
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Transcript
What's the beaver that's damming up your business?
Speaker:Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And
Speaker:welcome to the Weeniecast. If you go on
Speaker:Instagram or TikTok and you search beavers,
Speaker:you're gonna find a whole bunch of videos of people who for some reason have
Speaker:beavers in their home and how these
Speaker:beavers randomly, like, just out of instinct,
Speaker:will start gathering things, taking things from all over the house to
Speaker:create dams in hallways, in doorways. It's like they
Speaker:cannot help themselves. There is one video
Speaker:that I saw where the beaver literally, like, dammed up the tub
Speaker:with just random objects he found all over the house.
Speaker:They have this innate desire to
Speaker:stop the flow of water, of people, of
Speaker:movement. They cannot help themselves.
Speaker:And like beavers, a lot of people do the
Speaker:same, but energetically, well, hopefully you just do it
Speaker:energetically. Hopefully you're not just, like, moving all of your shit to be in the
Speaker:way for people to not be able to get through. But also, if you're an
Speaker:engineer and you actually build dams, then, you know, good on you. You probably
Speaker:studied really hard for that, and you probably benefit society by
Speaker:allowing us to generate things like electricity and prevent floods. So thank
Speaker:you. Anyway, back to Beavers and how this is relevant to you as a business
Speaker:owner with ADHD.
Speaker:If you're beavering your business, which is the term I just made
Speaker:up, what you tend to do is you tend to create this big
Speaker:energetic block that prevents clients from coming
Speaker:to you, that prevents money from coming to you, that prevents
Speaker:a success in all its forms from coming to you. And how do
Speaker:we do this? A classic beavering move for the
Speaker:ADHD business owner is to constantly blame your
Speaker:ADHD and to make your ADHD this
Speaker:insurmountable obstacle that prevents you from doing what you
Speaker:want. And that's not to say that we don't have challenges. That's not to say
Speaker:that we don't have genuine things that pop up for us, that makes life
Speaker:hard. Your executive dysfunction will prevent you from doing
Speaker:things in certain days, you don't have enough dopamine to actually get
Speaker:the to do list done. Your rejection sensitivity dysphoria
Speaker:will absolutely make it really scary for you to get on
Speaker:those first dozen sales calls because you're terrified of hearing no. Your
Speaker:hyper focus could also get in the way of you being successful because
Speaker:you might hyper focus on the wrong thing. And that is absolutely
Speaker:valid to. What I'm talking about here is taking
Speaker:it all and just saying, oh, my God. Well, I want to do this thing,
Speaker:but my ADHD is just too bad and I can't do any of it. And
Speaker:we don't just do this with ADHD, we do this with our
Speaker:money story. Oh, I just have the worst relationship with money. I could never ask
Speaker:for more. We do this with skills. Oh, I'm just the worst writer. I can't
Speaker:write anything for social media or for emails. No, no, no. I'm just
Speaker:not going to do that. Holding up one of these things
Speaker:and making it the big ass obstacle that's preventing you
Speaker:from having all the things you want is like damming up a
Speaker:waterfall. It's like being that beaver that can't help
Speaker:itself but create a dam to prevent things from flowing
Speaker:through. And I understand why we do this, and I'm totally guilty of
Speaker:having done this in the past as well. The reason we do this is because
Speaker:we're terrified of actually going out and doing the thing and
Speaker:failing. We're terrified of the rejection that'll come. We're terrified
Speaker:of embarrassing ourselves by trying something and having it not work out
Speaker:and having people know about it. That's really scary and that's a valid
Speaker:fear. And the reason we pointed this big thing, we say, oh,
Speaker:well, this is the problem. This is the thing that's preventing me from getting all
Speaker:the things is because it actually empowers us
Speaker:to have an excuse for why we can't do the thing.
Speaker:This is one of the reasons why when I'm on the phone with a potential
Speaker:client and, you know, we're talking about the different persons programs that I offer
Speaker:and they say, you know, I'd really like to sign up for this, but I
Speaker:just don't have the money right now. I never try to convince someone to spend
Speaker:money that they don't have, but I don't want
Speaker:people making decisions from a place of powerlessness, you know, so someone
Speaker:genuinely does not have the money to work with me, that is absolutely fine.
Speaker:But I always say, okay, cool, can we find a better reason for you to
Speaker:not work with me? Can we find a more powerful reason for you to not
Speaker:work with me? Because saying you can't do something because you're just powerless
Speaker:by circumstances and everything that just trains your brain that you're
Speaker:just going to continue to be powerless, that you're going to continue to be a
Speaker:victim of all the circumstances of your life. When you start making
Speaker:decisions from a place of, actually, this is what I want
Speaker:more. Here's what I'm going to focus on for the interim. I'll come back to
Speaker:this later. When we put ourselves back in that chair of power,
Speaker:that's when opportunities start presenting themselves. That's when we
Speaker:start seeing things in a completely new light.
Speaker:And that's when we give ourselves permission to actually solve the fucking
Speaker:problem. So let's talk about the example of you have a shitty money
Speaker:story. You have a bad relationship with money, you have this belief that you're terrible
Speaker:with money, and so you never have enough of it to do what you want.
Speaker:You're just always at the mercy of your bank account. Imagine if you start
Speaker:working on your relationship with money. Imagine if you no longer use that
Speaker:as the excuse, use of your life to not do the thing.
Speaker:When you speak as though the fact that you have a bad relationship
Speaker:with money is just a fixed fact and it's always going to be true. There's
Speaker:no fixing it, there's no changing it. It becomes the obstacle of
Speaker:your life and it prevents everything you want from coming to you. And the
Speaker:beauty here is that it's not your fault you're not getting what you want.
Speaker:No, there's just this big obstacle that's always in the way. It can be really
Speaker:scary to look at that obstacle and see that you actually have more
Speaker:control over it than you have ever admitted to yourself. But
Speaker:everything changes when you realize, oh, cool,
Speaker:I can actually solve my relationship with money. I can improve
Speaker:it, I can do some really brave ass work, I can stop
Speaker:being a weenie and I can make this better. I have
Speaker:several clients right now who are really diving
Speaker:into a lot of uncomfortable work on their relationship with
Speaker:money because they realize that they are not powerless to
Speaker:it. And they realize that when they do this work and they're intentional about their
Speaker:relationship with money, they open up far more opportunities to
Speaker:themselves. They bring in far more money. They
Speaker:feel far better having that money and spending it than they did
Speaker:previously.
Speaker:If you listen to this podcast, chances are you're not the person who uses
Speaker:ADHD as your big excuse, right? Because you're listening to a
Speaker:podcast right now that's showing you how to improve
Speaker:things and be able to work with your ADHD better so you can be more
Speaker:effective. You see that you have power here and
Speaker:you're taking active steps. Even if it's just listening to a podcast,
Speaker:you're taking active steps to make yourself better in a lot of
Speaker:ways. Personally, I've had this novel kicking around in my
Speaker:head for years. When I first moved to
Speaker:Philadelphia, there was this house down the street from me. And I won't share too
Speaker:much because you're not supposed to share too much about your idea. But when I
Speaker:first saw it and heard it, in a weird way, you're gonna have to read
Speaker:my novel when I finally write it to find out what I mean by that.
Speaker:When I first heard and saw this house, it just
Speaker:clicked for me. This is the book I wanna write. And the big
Speaker:excuse that I was using to keep myself from doing it, because writing a novel
Speaker:is really scary. Especially. Cause, like, writing a novel is not just something you're supposed
Speaker:to do for yourself. Like, you're supposed to send it out to publishers and maybe
Speaker:get it published and have other people read it and have opinions about it.
Speaker:Terrifying. My big excuse for the longest time was, I suck at writing
Speaker:dialogue. Terrible at writing dialogue. Just can't do
Speaker:it so bad. And it was kind of a weak ass excuse.
Speaker:Cause when someone said, oh, well, why don't you just write the novel? I'd say,
Speaker:oh, terrible at writing dialogue. They'd be like, you know,
Speaker:there are classes that show you how to write dialogue. There are
Speaker:people who can show you how to write dialogue. I finally got real with
Speaker:myself and decided, okay, cool, if I want to write this novel, if I actually
Speaker:want to share this story with the world, let's invest in a class. Let's
Speaker:get better at writing dialogue. And what's funny to me is when I started
Speaker:that class, I realized very quickly that the reason
Speaker:I sucked at writing dialogue is because I had never tried writing
Speaker:dialogue before. It was just this big excuse, like, oh, no, I'm just terrible
Speaker:at it. Can't imagine doing it well, no, no, no. I'm actually
Speaker:not. I mean, I'm not good, but I'm not the worst at writing
Speaker:dialogue. And the more I practice, the more I learn about
Speaker:how to make it go well. It's a very weird
Speaker:coincidence. I'm actually getting better.
Speaker:Like, who would have guessed? So there's
Speaker:this, like, really weird phenomenon where we
Speaker:get so obsessed with this thing that we've built up
Speaker:as the reason why we can't have what we want, that we start assuming that
Speaker:it is an actual obstacle for us. We start believing that it
Speaker:is insurmountable. And it could be like, my ADHD is just
Speaker:holding me back. It could be my relationship with money is holding me back.
Speaker:It could be, oh, I'm just terrible at writing, selling,
Speaker:whatever, and it's all holding me back.
Speaker:But the thing that's actually holding you back is you deciding that
Speaker:that thing is holding you back. The thing you're actually doing here is you're making
Speaker:that thing far more powerful than it actually is. And you're putting
Speaker:yourself in this powerless position where you can't do anything about it
Speaker:because this is just the truth. And it's always been the truth, and it'll always
Speaker:be the truth, so help you, dog. And if you're doing
Speaker:this to yourself in any way, it could be something like a hobby,
Speaker:like a hobby novel that you want to write a. It could be in your
Speaker:business, it could be in your personal life. Maybe you have a story that you're
Speaker:just really bad at relationships. I'm calling bullshit right now. I'm
Speaker:calling bullshit that you're powerless in this situation. Now, full
Speaker:permission here to continue making that the obstacle. But I want you to be
Speaker:aware that you're making it the obstacle.
Speaker:You're the one that's placing yourself in the backseat here
Speaker:and letting this obstacle determine where you drive to.
Speaker:When you are ready to be more powerful, you just
Speaker:have to start working on those things. And I know that can be confronting
Speaker:and scary and super uncomfortable, but you know
Speaker:what? You're a brave ass weenie. You do things
Speaker:scared. You have a business or you're starting a business.
Speaker:You work on bettering yourself every single time you listen to to
Speaker:a podcast that shows you how to do something better. This thing
Speaker:does not have power over you unless you let it. So
Speaker:whatever that big block is, however you are
Speaker:beavering yourself. Cut that shit out. You're
Speaker:the only you that exists in this world,
Speaker:and you are the only one who comes with your unique set
Speaker:of gifts. And if you continue to let your
Speaker:damn hold up all the things that want to come to you, you're also
Speaker:going to prevent all the good impacts you're going to have in your
Speaker:life. You're going to keep yourself from helping a whole bunch of people.
Speaker:You're going to keep yourself from having a whole bunch of amazing
Speaker:relationships and making a ton of money.
Speaker:And you're going to prevent all the good things you could do with that
Speaker:money. There might be a charity that helps people
Speaker:survive life that you could start ten years from now.
Speaker:If you get over yourself and get over this belief that your money
Speaker:story just sucks and there's nothing you can do about it,
Speaker:beavering yourself is the most selfish thing you can do. So cut it
Speaker:out. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that
Speaker:makes money, then go ahead and book a generate income
Speaker:strategy. Call with me. By going to
Speaker:weeniecast.com strategy call
Speaker:on this call, we will talk about your goals, your dreams
Speaker:and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit
Speaker:for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together.
Speaker:Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel.
