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Welcome to Make More Money without Selling Your Soul with me Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert. This podcast is for you if you are an online entrepreneur who is looking to simplify their business to scale.  On this podcast you can expect to hear regular talk about wealth, about selling and about wellbeing. Because I believe these three core fundamental things are pivotal to your growth moving forward.

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Hello, and welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer.

And today we are talking about ADHD business hacks. I’m so excited to be recording this episode because I already have an episode in this series under make more money without selling your soul, which is something to do with ADHD is ADHD really a superpower. So I think it was the fourth or third episode that’s ever been published. And it’s probably one of my most listened to episodes, I’ve also had gorgeous people reach out to me and share with me how they’ve added it to their directory of ADHD resources. So it means a lot to me that so many people found it eye opening helpful. Some people even came back to me and said it had kind of motivated them to investigate whether they themselves may have ADHD. So I’m so glad. Something that was very much just recorded predominantly from my own experience has been so helpful to so many. And I really hope that this episode will be really helpful to now I’m going to start with the same caveat that I did on a previous episode. If you know for any reason you haven’t been there since day dot, I mean, come on. Definitely go back through all those old episodes. There’s so many amazing golden nuggets in there. And certainly if you’re interested in ADHD, I highly recommend you go check out that original episode as well, because it really is I’m very proud of it. I do I did love it. But the caveat I gave in that episode, which I’m also going to give here is that no, I have not got an official ADHD diagnosis. Nor do I have an autism diagnosis, I will share something new with you that I didn’t share on that episode is that I am finally have made the decision that it is worth pursuing a diagnosis. So that is something I will be looking into towards the end of the year. And I will make sure to keep you in the loop I basically heard from somebody that there is such a thing as neuro affirmative diagnosis. And that totally flipped the script on my desire to find out because essentially, the process of getting my children diagnosed is so depressing. You have to literally write about them on their worst day. I didn’t want to do that for myself, but apparently you don’t have to. So I’m all over that.

Anyway. So that’s the caveat I’m giving here, I do not have an official diagnosis. I am not a medical professional. I am speaking from my own lived experience. And particularly sharing because you know, I myself have worked with numerous neurodivergent and business owners at this stage. And I’ve gotten really closely acclimatised to all of it, not just through working with them, and they do have diagnoses. But equally through my own lived experience as somebody who highly suspects I am considering my daughter is also very likely to get a diagnosis to and what I’ve learned about her certainly is basically looking at me as a child. So if you’re interested to know more about the first episode, because these are things I will not be delving into on this episode. In the first episode, I talked about shiny object syndrome and how that impacts ADHD business owners. I talked about impulsive financial risk taking, and how that’s very prevalent among ADHD business owners. I talked about the propensity to overthink and how that can hold us back. You know, that may be more of an artistic reflection. I don’t know, again, I’m not an expert. But you know, I do come with it through that lens of most likely being what they refer to these days as audio HD, and sensitivity to rejection and how those can really hinder you.

So if you are interested in all of this do to go check out that episode because I think it’s really helpful. But so today we’re talking about different themes. And I guess I also wanted to touch on those other themes so you can understand why it’s probably not talking about the obvious ones. Today, I’m probably talking about the less obvious things I see happening, not just for my ADHD clients, but to be honest with you something that’s really hampered my experience as a business owner for the last few years. And I know it’s a hesitation a lot of people have had when they’ve explored the idea of becoming an industry leader and having an evergreen offer. One of the hesitations and I love how honest people are when they get on calls with me. They’re really honest and they kind of go but once I get bored of the offer, what if I get bored of what I’m standing for? What if I get bored of the kind of clients I’m working with and To always highlight to them that ultimately your business evolves with you, you know, like, and as you grow, if you got to the stage where you’re still talking about something two years later, chances are, you’ll be doing well enough that you can outsource or be repurposing or doing a lot of those pieces. But I myself fell a little bit victim to this, in the last six months, there was an element of when it came to creating social content of feeling like I’ve said all of this before. And I don’t want to say it again.

And what’s really interesting, of course, is I often see that mirrored in my clients to where you know, when they’ve chosen a niche, and they’ve been talking about it a lot. It can just feel so kind of soul sucking, to find new ways to talk about the same theme. Because ultimately, when you have expertise in a certain area, you are going to be talking about it quite a lot. And I think this is particularly a big challenge for those with ADHD, those people who are always chasing the shiny new thing, the people who are really driven to follow their desires, their dreams, their passions, and like, oh, business, my business, I’ve somehow always coped by flying by the seat of my pants that says, carry on this way. It’s so exhilarating, exhilarating, until it’s not exhilarating, until they’re coming back to me going, why is it not working? I’ve always done things this way. And it’s always worked for me. But now it’s suddenly not working for me. And it’s really, really hard. And I pause her for a moment, not just for dramatic effect, because I genuinely appreciate it’s really, really hard to kind of, I’m gonna say like rain that side of yourself in. Because that’s what makes you feel alive. That’s why you’re working for yourself. And it’s also the thing that sees a lot of business owners going through these repetitive cycles of like borderline burnout, exhilaration, borderline burnout, acceleration, burnout, acceleration, burnout. And speaking of ADHD, and you know, particularly burnout and and that cycle I am going to be inviting Makayla Thomas on for a guest as a guest expert soon to talk about this more, because she’s a psychologist, and she can bring that psychologists perspective. And now I’m going to talk more about tactics and strategies, I’ve helped my clients to deploy to figure out how to get around feeling bored, because let me tell you an unavoidable truth about online business. online business requires a lot of repetition. If you want to be known for something, you have got to be happy still buying in that same drum, my friend, if you just allow your emotions to dictate how you show up, when you show up, you will be inconsistent.

And the truth is, the more visible you are, the more money you make. But if you are being inconsistent with how visible you are, and if when you are visible, you’re allowing your emotions and your whims to call the shots as to what kind of content you’re sharing. If you’re not looking at it through a strategic lens, and instead seeing a real that you’re like, Oh, that’s so cool. I think I could do a real like that. Oh, yeah, I’ve got that footage from when I was in the park the other day, I’m going to share something really funny. And you know, it may do okay, it may get great engagement. But if it’s not getting new sales, then you know, your attention isn’t going in the right area, right. And this is a challenge, as I say, because, you know, there’s an element of like, we want to work with who we are, we want to tickle those little itches in us. And at the same time, we want to have a successful business. We want to be regulated when we’re regulated, we have the most fun and we can make the best decisions because there’s also an element of here, right? Like when people say to me, I love flying by the seat of my pants, I love making up things as I go. That indicates to me you like living with chronic stress. And you like to not know what’s coming next. Does that need to be within your business? Or could you find some like high adrenaline hobby? Like, I don’t know, Cliff Diving, instead of treating your business as a space as a place to be cliff diving. And then wondering why it’s so stressful and wondering why the money is so up and down. Like, you know, it’s really interesting how so often as online business owners, we can really tie so much of our personalities and our lives to the work we do and we get so much satisfaction from it. We then put everything of us into our business. And that’s just not necessary.

When I look at the most successful business owners, they’ve got really delicious, clear boundaries around what is work and what is playing. And they recognise that there are elements of their life like when they when they create a balanced enough business that you don’t need to be on all the time and you have time for play. They’re suddenly not needing to get their shits and giggles. Through their business. They can get it through the business that successfully giving them enough time to play outside of their business. So So, what I’ve essentially just highlighted here is that boredom is something that can regularly creep up on ADHD business owners and sabotage their success. It will make them distracted. It will make them inconsistent. It will make them go off piste. It will allow their emotions to call the shots, their personal brand will be to dictated by their person and not be acting professional, which then will make people see them as unsafe, untrustworthy, it will undo all the work you’ve been doing. Like this is what breaks my heart. And I’m so regularly really clearly calling my ADHD clients out on this when they kind of go Yeah, well, this bits got easy now. kind of bored.

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I think I’m gonna go do that really random thing over there. And I’m always having to say, Okay, I know that feels exciting right now. But when you get into the reality of what it is to almost essentially build your business up from the ground again, does that still feel good? The majority of times they turn around and go? No, that does not feel good. I don’t want to have to write all my sequences again, create all my sales pages again, or hire somebody to do all those pieces. Okay. Okay, so you’re with me up to this point. Boredom is really dangerous, and yet still such a natural reaction to being an online business for a while and getting to a stage where like, things are pretty good, you know? And if we can avoid allowing our emotions to call all the shots, which I know I’ve talked about this so many times before, I’m like, to what do we do to avoid boredom? What do we do to avoid our emotions dictating how we show up and where we show up in business every day? Well, you know, I’m a big fan of systems and processes. And I know when someone hears that, they can be like, Oh, tune out, don’t want to listen, don’t worry, I’m not really entirely talking about this right now. What I do want to say is, firstly, if you can’t change the thing, change your relationship to it. So one of the things I’ve regularly asked myself, like one of my favourite questions to ask myself, when I hit like, something in the road of my business where I’m like, I really hate working with I’m just gonna make this up. Because I do not hate working with Antoine. So let’s say, I definitely have in the past said, I hate working with one to ones. I’m no longer gonna work with one to ones anymore, I’m going to remove it from my one to one, right my office suite menu, and I’m going to focus on my group program, because one, two ones deplete me. Now this isn’t true. It was true, because I was allowing my people pleasing tendencies to come through. It was true, because I felt the need to carry all the emotions for all my clients all the time.

And if they were having a bad day, it felt like I was carrying that bad day for them as well. It was true, because whenever they had a blip with finances, I would be the one dealing with it. And that would really muddy the waters of our coaching relationship, because I was one trying to get payment out of them and to try to support them emotionally through a blip. Now I’ve overcome all of these things through different strategies. One, I don’t manage my calendar or my finances anymore, my team member Kim does, she’s amazing. I love her could not live without that, you know, I no longer people, please, I now recognise what is my responsibility and what is theirs, and that ultimately, all people, myself included, will have wobbly days, and that it doesn’t help me or serve them to meet them at their level. And instead, it’s important to hold the space of opportunity and possibility for them when they are in that space, even when that is triggering for them. I mean, this is a slight off pacing. But anyway, what I’m trying to share here is that’s a really gorgeous example of me recognising one to ones weren’t the problem. The way I was showing up for the one to ones was the problem. And the truth is had I taken those same toxic habits and concentrated on another area of my business, that area of my business would have still felt like crap, because I would still be the people pleaser with no boundaries who didn’t you know? And that is like I say, not just unhelpful for me, but unhelpful for my clients too. Okay, so when you have something that you’re like, I am bored, I hate posting on social media every day. Look at well, how are you posting at the moment? Like where are you creating your content from?

Are you shoehorning it in at the end of your day? Or are you taking a lovely luxurious day to have a deep focus day in a beautiful hotel reception or a gorgeous cafe, serving yourself up a delicious slice of cake, getting yourself a delicious coffee and promising yourself that you’re going to spend two hours knocking out all your content for the next month and then you will go off and do something nice or body dabbling, having someone join you for a morning and have them film you for your B roll so you don’t have to think about your B roll for the next quarter or setting up a system with your VA where you send them voice notes so that they are transcribing of voice notes and turning them into content. Maybe it’s using AI. I mean, there are so many different ways. But the truth is people more often than not find it more comfortable and easy to go, oh, I don’t like this, it’s not working for me, I’m not doing it anymore. And that is not helpful. Because there is always a way to change your relationship with what you’re doing. And oftentimes, that means changing your actions around it too. Which leads me on to another thing, I highly recommend to avoid our emotions, calling all the shots in our business all the time, which is batching. Batch your content, please. I remember a beautiful reflection, I’m sure I’ve shared this now several times, because it’s just every time it touches me. But I remember when I was working with a client who was having a really real rough patch, like personal shit was coming up, and it was impacting her business. And she said on this group coaching call, she’s like, I’m so grateful to the version of me that batched content a month ago, so that even today, when I’m having a bad day, I’m reminded of myself at my best. And that’s it. That is it. You know, I’m not talking about toxic positivity here. And at the same time, when you see someone having like a virtual meltdown on social media, no, that doesn’t have me lining up around the block to go and work with them.

Okay. So you know, it’s that whole thing of like, speak from a healed wound, rather than an open one. If you’re going through shit, that is not the time to be creating content, and we will all inevitably go through shit time to time, we will also have moments, you know, big life moments where suddenly what we’re doing seems so minuscule and meaningless in comparison, you know, death of a loved one, for example, I hate to be triggering her. But shit like this happens, you know, divorce, like all this stuff. And in those moments, you can feel like what is the blimmin point of showing up online, but there really is a point, because you are collecting credits. Every time someone sees you, every time someone interacts with you, they’re that much closer to choosing to buy from you. Okay. And if you let that slide, not only are you going through the rough patch that life is giving you, but you’re also going to come out the other side and go shit wherever my clients gone. So you know, don’t assume every day is going to be a good day and build your business based on everyday being a good day. And instead, get ahead. And this is where it really pays to have a signature offer to have one client one problem you saw, because it means it’s infinitely easy to constantly have inspiration for what you can be batching your content around. So that’s kind of the main premise of this podcast is like what to do to avoid boredom, what to do to deal with that, I hate this, I don’t want to do it anymore, and how you can reconnect to that thing you hate and find a way to love it again. And finally, the other thing I want to say that is a really personal rant was around ADHD and autism.

And something that’s been a real journey for me is learning to be transparent and owning it. And this applies in so many different ways from the VIP day I did with an ADHD client who said, I really I get so excited and motivated by you, Polly, but then I often forget the actions that we discuss. Can we please write them down? Can we please pause every so often, just to make sure I’m registering this because because it’s not a zoom call and we’re in person. That’s harder for me to do. And I loved her for that. I love that she made it possible for me to give her an excellent experience on our VIP day, because she had clearly outlined what she needed. Because you know, when ADHD person, you know, one ADHD person, we’re not all the same. Not everyone has, you know, for me, I’m the opposite. I like to be fully immersed. I like to barely write anything down. Because for me, if I get one big, valuable takeaway, that’s more than enough for me. So we’re not all the same. And we should never assume that equally. When I hosted my first mastermind day with eight attendees. And they all showed up and I was shaking. I just said it. I said, Wow, this is a lot for me. I’m really feeling the need to make this day great for you. And I’m just needing a moment. And actually I’d even brought in a breathwork facilitator so that she could do the breath work at the beginning, which not only supported my clients to feel regulated and be in the space, but it really supported me to but the moment I admitted that I was feeling shaky and that it was a lot. The moment the shaking stopped the moment I felt better. The moment I felt safe and I could see they felt safe safe to you know, when you try to hide these things. It’s much harder to work with equally with my team. I’ll say, Is this my ADHD brain? Am I overestimating how much we can achieve in the next week? I just own it, be with it, work with it, you know, if you try to ignore it, it will bite you in the ass.

So own it. And that’s why I’m so excited to have Mikayla on the podcast soon because she is the most beautiful example of somebody who owns it. I will make sure actually to link to her website in the show notes below. If you’re curious to find out more about this wonderful psychologist who is so knowledgeable about ADHD and the cycles of burnout. She’s really worth exploring and I will be transparent. She’s also one of my clients. Anyway, that’s it from me. I shall be back now. Next week to share with you the evolution of my office suite. I’m really excited to share it. I’ve had the biggest, most amazing breakthrough. When someone talks about having a full body reaction to their business ideas. I’m not gonna lie I am turned on by what I’m about to bring into the wild. So tune into next week’s episode to learn more about that which by then, hopefully, my fun will be ready and you can go have a little explore that sounded ruder than it was meant to but you know what I mean? I shall see you then. I hope you enjoyed. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it, particularly if you’ve got any ADHD friends. I would love this to help as many people as possible