It’s not easy to get out of bed every day with your eye on building and growing your own business. Whether you have people depending on you as a part of your own team, or you’re working as an indie contractor, the responsibilities, emotional, and intellectual weight on you as a business owner is simply different than it was when you went to work for someone else.
This week, we’re talking about the experience of owning your day. We talk about the pros and cons of hustle culture and the value of time blocking. We talk about finding the support you need to get the work done and the challenges to memory and organization that come from the outside — the state, licensing entities, and regulators.
It’s not easy, being the boss, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you find your way forward. From two people with more than a decade each owning their own businesses, we bring our hard-won experience to you this week.
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by The ADHD Podcast Community on Patreon
Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on TruStory FM I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hi, Nikki. How’s your business?
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s going great.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know what’s going on in the business?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. But I don’t know what you’re talking about specifically today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I know we’re talking about business, but what’s going on in my business right now?
Pete Wright:
What?
Nikki Kinzer:
Group coaching.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That’s very exciting.
Nikki Kinzer:
Just throwing it in there.
Pete Wright:
Well, we’re going to talk about that minute, but we got to do the whole rigamarole here.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s true.
Pete Wright:
So we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to today’s conversation. I think today was a suggestion. Was today a request, a special request, or was it a spinoff of a conversation we had last week?
Nikki Kinzer:
It was a spinoff from our lovely guest last week about entrepreneurship, and we happen to be entrepreneurs, you and I.
Pete Wright:
Recovering entrepreneurs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, which is why you asked about my business.
Pete Wright:
That’s exactly why I asked about your business. And so today we’re talking about a lot of stuff. The premise of the show is building your day when you’re the boss with ADHD. But we’ve got some more to talk about than just that. So stay tuned before we dig in. Head over to takecontroladhd.com, you can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we will send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, @TakeControlADHD. But to really connect with us, join us on the ADHD Discord community. It’s super easy to jump into the general community chat channel. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/discord and you’ll be whisked over to the general invitation page and log in.
If you’re looking for a little bit more, particularly if the show has ever touched you or helped you understand your relationship with ADHD in a new way, we invite you to support the show directly through Patreon. Patreon is listener supported podcasting. With a few dollars a month, you can help guarantee that we continue to grow the show, add new features, record more podcasts, get more guests, and just generally invest more heavily in the community. Visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more. Now, Nikki, tell me about group coaching.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, we have a couple of groups going on over at Take Control ADHD that I’m very excited about, and enrollment is going to be closed here soon. So if you happen to be listening to this episode live or in real time or within the next week, please check out the website. Even if you’re listening to this episode later, still check out the website for future group coaching opportunities because we can put you on the wait list and you’ll learn about what those groups are as soon as we have them up and running.
But the two that are going to be starting at the end of February, the first one is the ADHD book club, which we are very excited about. This is something new that we’re going to be trying. And the first book that we are going to be covering is A Radical Guide with Women with ADHD by Sari Solden and Michelle Frank. I’ve done this group before. It is fantastic. It’s inspirational. The connection and the community that you get with the group is amazing. And it’s not just for women, even though that the book says it’s for women with ADHD, we’re opening it up to anyone who wants to learn more about radical acceptance, because that’s really a lot of what the book is about, is accepting your ADHD, understanding it, and learning how to thrive in it.
The second group coaching that we’re doing is the overwhelm group with ADHD. We’ve done this before too, and this is a fantastic group. It’s six weeks, it’s a little shorter than the other one. But what we’re doing as a community is we’re talking about the different aspects of ADHD, how they can become very overwhelming, and what tools as a group do we have to work through that. And so you actually end at the end of the group with a toolbox, literally a box full of ideas and strategies to get you through those times where you’re feeling really overwhelmed. So please, I invite you to go check it out on the website, look at those groups, join us, be a part of our community. If it’s too late, put your name on the waiting list because we will be doing more groups in the future. There you go.
Pete Wright:
It’s going to be a big year, big year for groups. Big big year. We’re excited about groups. Okay. Well that out of the way, I think we should get into our businesses.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, let’s do it.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Nikki Kinzer, we’re talking about building your business as an entrepreneur, living with ADHD. We have been doing this, when officially did you open the doors? Do you have a start date for Take Control? I guess it would’ve been Take Control Organizing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, it would’ve been Take Control Organizing. I will tell you, my first client, my first real client as an organizer was in August of 2008.
Pete Wright:
Okay. August 2008. That’s actually funny. Mine was August 2006. August 1st, 2006, I opened the doors as… I’ve rebranded the company name so many times. I don’t even know what it was then. But was it Rash Pixel then? Maybe it was just Damon Wright, or I don’t know who knows what it was. PeteWright.co?
Nikki Kinzer:
I don’t think it was Rash Pixel. I think it was before that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s been a long time. So we’ve been doing this as first solopreneurs for a long time and we now have-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I’ve never really been a solopreneur. You’ve always been there with me, Pete Wright
Pete Wright:
Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair.
Nikki Kinzer:
You’ve been there with me since day one. So you’re in this with me.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s right. Okay. I’m in it. That’s actually fair. And I guess to that point, I was only really solo in any of the businesses for a couple of years. But we manage to somehow keep things going. And we want to talk a little bit about some of the ideologies that go into being an entrepreneur, to starting a business, to being a business owner and thinking about how you manage your time and your responsibilities, which are different when you are a business owner compared to when you’re going to report to somebody as an employee. And so we’ve got some things to talk about. Where do you want to start?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think that one of the biggest challenges, and we saw this in COVID when a lot of people went from the office to working from home, is that balance between when you’re working and when you’re doing personal, it’s that whole scheduling thing. And especially so when you’re scheduling to work, and then how do you decide what to work on. Because when you’re your own boss, the deadlines aren’t necessarily real. They can be pushed. A lot of procrastination can happen. So I would say maybe start here. How do you just even balance a schedule?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So talk about it. How do you balance a schedule? Can you think back to how you did it when you were just starting out?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. It looks very, very different than it does now. And I guess that’s something that I would say right away to people that are starting businesses or even if you’ve been in your business for a long time, it’s constantly changing depending on what’s going on in your life. So when I first started, I was at home with my kids, my children… Let’s see, my daughter would’ve been like six, maybe? Five or six. And my son would’ve been like eight. Is that right? 2008. No, she would’ve only been three because she was born in 2005, so she was only three. And then my son would’ve been six. So they were young, young kids. And my husband was working full-time at the time. So this was really a part-time gig. This was just something that I asked you to put up a website. So it was a very side hustle is what you would kind of consider it to be. So there was a lot of weekends and evenings kind of work, very sporadic.
I remember working on a Saturday morning on getting my name licensed or whatever put into the Oregon name bank. I don’t even remember all the stuff I did. So it was very sporadic. Now it’s not so much now, it’s very intentional. So I would say that I went from something that was all over the place to being very intentional and going from a very part-time status to a full-time status. I don’t know. If you were to add the number of hours that you actually work, do you think it’s more than you would do in a 40 hour work week at a company or do you think it’s less?
Pete Wright:
It’s more, but it is under my control. And so it’s not as consistent as you would have if you were coming. And that goes back to my story. I made a conscious choice to do this as well. And if you track it back, I was working, I was a VP of PR at a big company and I spent a lot of time traveling. And my son, child number two was born April 2006, and I started my own business August 2006. It became an easy four month choice to decide, I have a kid who is four years old and a newborn, and I need to make the conscious choice to sacrifice whatever growth potential I had working the day job for doing something that I love with the people near me that I love the most, my kids and my wife. And I wanted to be more present knowing that there would be sacrifices there.
And one of those sacrifices is frenetic, whiplash scheduling. Because there would be days when I would work late into the night but do that because then I would take the kids to the zoo and see the giraffes walking around the stroller for a few hours the following day. So it was sort of manifested in radical swings and that were largely out of control. I didn’t have any focus. I was just doing and making calls without any sort of strategy to it. And I happened to get very lucky that I had a lot of referral business that helped me to start seeing income right away. But it was, I think, maybe the most generous word I could use to define those early years was haphazard.
I really struggled with it, and it was only aspirational when I discovered how time blocking could help me. And not just time blocking, but activity blocking within certain time constraints. When you have control over all 24 hours of your day, you know, have control to decide what goes where. And when you screw up those time blocked schedules, at least you have rails to come back to when things go haywire. So that was important for me to learn.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. And I think that the difference too or how time blocking can help is, and I never have had this issue, and I don’t know what this says about myself, so we’ll see. But I have never had the issue of leaving housework behind. If I’m going to work, I’m going to work. I don’t care about the dishes in the sink. That doesn’t pull me. And I know that for a lot of people it does. When they’re working at home, they get pulled into other directions. I think it’s harder if your kids are home for sure, but if your kids aren’t home, I can go straight to my office and the whole house could be a mess and I don’t focus on that, I focus on work. And I know that’s really hard for people. And so the time blocking can help in the sense of, okay, really having that definite separation of this is when I’m doing work time and this is when I can focus on the home. And so I live in a really dirty house. No, kidding. I work all the time and my house is really dirty.
Pete Wright:
But one room is pristine.
Nikki Kinzer:
The office is so nice.
Pete Wright:
The office is always perfect.
Nikki Kinzer:
No. And that’s not true. I don’t work all the time. Answering my question that I asked you, I’m pretty sure I’m working at least 40 hours, probably a little bit more. But again, it’s under my control. And there are times where I don’t put in 40 hours either, because we can do that. So there’s times where we can take a day off, or if I notice that I don’t have a lot of clients on a particular day and I feel like I’m really done at three o’clock, I’ll leave, I don’t force myself to stay. Whereas I’m in an office and you’re working for somebody, you have to stay. There’s definitely those pros to that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. I think the other piece about the… So before we get off of time, one more thing that I was thinking about with regard to how I think about time is in, I love templates. Templates are a lot saver for me. I love templates. I find I think about my days in the form of templates too, based on the number of say podcasts I have to record or the number of meetings that I have or strategy or writing or whatever I have to do, I often apply a time block template to that schedule, knowing that if I’m recording a lot, I’m going to give myself a break on the other things, the other responsibilities that I might normally do on a given day. Or if I’m just sitting, I don’t have a lot of meetings, then what are the kinds of things that I’m going to do? Because I know that if I didn’t sleep well the night before, if I have any sort of cognitive distress, then I’m not going to be functional doing the things that I normally would expect of myself.
So I try to give myself breaks based on time templates. And I say time templates as if I have that documented somewhere, or if I just text expanded it and boom, all my meetings are set up and I really don’t. This is just a mental model for me that says, okay, I look at my calendar the night before. The next day, I have a certain number of things going on that define the sort of mental model I use to approach the day. So every day can be different. Every day can be totally fluid, but understanding how I’m going to apply the time depends on whatever sort of structural or cognitive or emotional state I happen to be in.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and the time blocking specifically is a kind of tentative schedule in itself. Because things can change, things can happen but that doesn’t mean that time blocking doesn’t work. And so that’s where I would say for people that, oh, I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work for me. I really want to push back a little bit and say, why isn’t it working? And really look at everything that’s going on. What did you say you were going to do? Was that a hard task, an easy task? Did you know what you were going to do during the time block? Is it the right time? Did you manage your energy in a way that it makes sense that you would’ve gotten that done at that point? Let’s not just assume it doesn’t work. Let’s dig in a little bit and figure out how to make it work. Because it can be a beautiful thing in how to structure your schedule. It can work and it can work really, really well.
Pete Wright:
I guess in the spirit of pushing back, I think I have a new response to that, which is great. If you are completely averse to time blocking, then what does work for you? And if you have a really good answer for that, awesome. Then I don’t care.
Nikki Kinzer:
Keep doing what you’re doing.
Pete Wright:
If nothing works and you don’t think time blocking works for you, then really, you probably haven’t tried it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Let’s keep exploring it. Or you’ve tried it but it didn’t… Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Keep exploring.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, there’s a lot of ways to make it work, so that’s a very good point though. I’m not sitting here saying everybody should do it. If you’re going through your day and it’s working and you are very happy, then yeah, don’t force something on yourself that you don’t need. But if you see the value in it and you see how it might help you get some things done that have been pushed into the next week and the next week and the next week, then, hey, let’s explore this. Because all of those tasks that get pushed over, we need to identify why they’re getting pushed over. And one of the best strategies in getting them done is to intentionally plan for them and then tell somebody about it. So you’ve got the accountability and you’ve got the intentional time blocking, you’re steps closer to getting some of this stuff done. Not everything on your list, but one thing.
Pete Wright:
No. And are you ever going to wake up in the morning and look at the list of all your intentions and just be able to see it all and not start something? Yes, that’s going to happen.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
You’re going to see things on the list that you have time blocked and you’re just going to look at it and you’re not going to act. You’re just going to look at it. And that happens. I do that all the time. I just look at it. It’s not even that I’m actively thinking I can’t start that. It’s like I’m not actively thinking at all. It’s just looking. It’s the act, the verb of looking.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then what do you do with that?
Pete Wright:
I just look until I’m interrupted.
Nikki Kinzer:
Then what do you do? When do you get it done? Do you move it over?
Pete Wright:
Yes, absolutely. Eventually, I move it around. My system, I love having my tasks and my time all in one system, and I just drag the things around so I have a new time to intend to do that thing. And usually, usually now going into that sort of paralysis, fugue state that happens, once I go through that and realize I just lost a half hour, I just lost 40 minutes staring at my screen not knowing what to do next, usually that is enough to push me to be better about whatever comes next on the list.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and you know what I love what you’re saying here though, is you’re giving yourself permission to move it, but you are moving it. And there’s a lot of empowerment to that. If I was coaching you, I would say, Pete, that’s a huge win. Because you acknowledged that you didn’t want to do it. You gave permission and you rescheduled it to do it at a different time. So it’s still a decision you’ve made, versus, oh, I didn’t make that decision. The decision was sort of made for me because I just didn’t even try to get it done. It’s still just sitting on my list. So there’s a very different, I want to empower people to make those decisions. Don’t let them be made for you. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
Yes. 100%. I think that’s really important because there’s so much judgment that comes with that experience. You can go into this state of rejection, self-rejection.
Nikki Kinzer:
There I go again. Yeah. I suck. I didn’t do it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, there I go again. I’m terrible. I didn’t do the thing I agreed with myself that I was going to do so I guess it’ll never get done. And I don’t want to get stuck in that place. I know what that place feels like and I don’t want to be there.
Nikki Kinzer:
You chose not to do it today but that’s okay. You’re going to do it tomorrow. And you’re going to keep with that attitude of you’re going to get it done. Yeah. Because that’s what gets it done.
Pete Wright:
Well, and it goes to this idea of when your intention is to start a new business, you hope that business is something that you love, that you are passionate about, that you’re super into.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yes. Because if it’s not-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, then it might not be the right thing to start your own business. Because it’s too hard to do this if you don’t love it. And hopefully that love and passion will give you enough sort of oomph to create some structure around how and when you’re doing the work, like for example, time blocking. Having this clear schedule and a list of activities that you know need to do, creating a little bit of a routine that you can gait for yourself that says, I know what I’m going to do for the business to move the business forward a little bit every day. It might not work every day, but at least it gives you enough documented routine that when it doesn’t work, tomorrow you’ll have rails to push you back into back on track.
That’s the most important thing. When we talk about permission to move things around, that’s exactly why we do this, is so that you have structure and you don’t forget. Even if you’re having trouble doing the things, you don’t forget that the things have to be done. Because there are things that you have to do. You talked about the big name database, I don’t remember what you called it, but the Oregon Registry of Businesses. You have to register your business. That’s a thing you have to do. And once you do that, you get a tax ID number, then you have to pay your taxes. There are things you simply have to do that come with repercussions if you don’t do them if your intention is to start a business.
So you have to do those things. There is a deadline to them. You can file extensions, but you know what? There’s a deadline to extensions too. There are lots of ways to do this, but there are things that are implied by the act of starting a business that you have to do. And so you have to make sure that those are documented because if you don’t, they will get dropped. So they need to be on some sort of a calendar system. They need to be ingrained as repeating tasks if they need to be in this repeating task, paying your annual business registry dues, those kinds of things. You can’t forget those. You can’t lose them in the mail. You have to have a system that allows you to put the important things first to keep the business alive and afloat and growing. I don’t know. Am I just ranting at clouds?
Nikki Kinzer:
No. It’s very true. No, you need to do all this. There’s definitely things that have to get done
Pete Wright:
Of course. Yeah. And it goes to the next logical question is, goodness, what if I really, really can’t do those things? Well, you can always delegate them. Even as a small business, can you afford to hire a new accountant for an hour or two a week? Can you afford to hire a VA to keep track of some of the important mail and notices that your business that you have to do as a business owner? That is absolutely an option, finances not withstanding. You’ve got to figure out how to pay people who do the work for you. But there are systems and services and people who can help you do those things. And delegation is a gold standard for new business owners. Once you can do that, find a way to do that, it will make the business run better and you’ll be happier, I think.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and I just want to add to that, especially for coaches out there because I think I get a lot of phone calls where people will want to talk to me about my coaching business who are newer coaches. And I think that the most important thing that I will tell people is that you have to look at your coaching as a business. It’s not just coaching. It’s not just doing the one-on-one sessions, but there’s a lot more to it. So there’s a lot of business aspects that you have to look at. And one person, that’s a lot to ask of yourself, plus to coach and to build a business. And so delegation, I think, is really important, is to understand what you’re good at and what are you not good at, and what are the things that only you can do, and what are the things that another person could do?
Because if you can free up your time with a VA or an assistant who can do the back and forth with inquiries or to do some of the admin work or bookkeeping or whatever, and that frees you to have more clients, then it’s a win-win. But if you’re trying to do all of this stuff plus work with your clients, it’s just a lot. It’s a lot. You got to delegate. What are you good at? What are you not good at? What can you afford?
And this is the thing too, is that I think that a lot of times when you’re starting a business, and I know I was like this too, you don’t want to pay for the service like a calendar service for example. You might think, oh, I’ll just do my own scheduling. But once you pay the extra money per month to get a calendar schedule like Calendarly or something like that, and you realize how much time it saves you not to go back and forth with the client and they can just schedule an appointment with you, that’s worth it. You got to figure out what upgrades are worth it.
And it’s expensive to be in a business. You have to spend money. And so that’s the thing I would look at too, is that if you’re starting a business, expect that you’re not going to probably make a profit for a while because you’re going to have to pay out some of these other people to do these things for you. And it’s why I talked to Pete. You, Pete Wright, at the very beginning.
Pete Wright:
Present.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because I knew I had an idea. I kind of knew what I wanted to do, but I have no idea how to do a website. I have no idea how to market myself or how to tell a story about why I am doing what I’m doing. And thankfully, I knew you and I was able to say, hey, I think you do this. I don’t know for sure, but I kind of think you might have something to do with websites and stuff.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that was funny.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that’s where our relationship… But look for your Pete Wright. Look for the person that can help you that knows more about technology than you do, because all businesses have a tech feature to it.
Pete Wright:
Well, that’s the important note about delegating. At no point here are we talking about hire somebody, bring somebody in to deliver the core service of your business to work directly with clients immediately out the gate. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about hire somebody who knows more than you do about a certain thing or can take something off of your plate that is something that gets in the way for you, but is easy for them. So I think that’s really important. And delegating is incredibly difficult.
So I mean, you delegate, I delegate. I work with two other partners on my side of the thing of the business, and it is incredibly difficult to let go of certain tasks, tasks that you’ve done for a long time, and you feel like you have a way of doing it. Getting over the hump, while difficult, is critical if you want to run a business that’s growing, you need extra hands. You will hit capacity. I have hit capacity so many times and just bang my head against that capacity ceiling because I wasn’t willing to let go of certain things. I’m doing it right now. Right now. And I’ve been doing this business for what? 17 years.
I am still learning those lessons, and I can see a horizon in which getting out from under these certain tasks that are clogging tasks for me is going to allow us to grow into new areas. But I haven’t been able to do it yet. So I’m not saying I know how to do it specifically, but when I have done it has been grand. It has been absolutely terrific. So I think just evaluate. Evaluate. We’re not saying put yourself at risk by delegating to people that know less and have less interest in the business than you do. We’re saying find the people who want to serve a specific role and do that role well.
Nikki Kinzer:
And sometimes it’s very short term. So it could be just hiring somebody to do your website and then that’s done. So it could be a short term thing too that doesn’t have to be a monthly expense. But I think to your point too, that’s really important to understand is your business, depending on what it is that you’re doing, it does change over time. And I’m pretty sure that what you were doing in 2006 is very different than what you’re doing right now in 2023.
Pete Wright:
Oh, absolutely.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I know you’ve been on my journey with me, you know how much it’s changed on my side as well. And so I think that being successful in your business is also opening it up to new ideas and opportunities and being willing to try things and being willing to fail and be willing to take on those risks at some point. But that’s also how a business grows. Because you know what? That one idea can grow into something that really works well for people and it really is a great service.
And I would have to say in my own business, that was GPS. When I had this little idea about this program and I had this group of beta people who were helping me with what they thought people would need and want and be able to listen to them and grow it, that was from one little idea. And it’s something I’m really, really proud of and it’s transformative for a lot of people. But I can tell you that prior to that, we had a lot of failed things too. So you try and try and try and then you find something and it’s like, okay, this is going to work. And who knows? Maybe in 10 years I will have something different and GPS will be long gone. I don’t know. But I know that it’s worth trying stuff. You got to try stuff and just see what works.
Pete Wright:
Well this too-
Nikki Kinzer:
I just say one more thing? I’m sorry.
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Now I’m on my own rant. Going back to what you believe in too. I think it’s so important to have that passion because the reason I am so proud of GPS is because I believe in it and I believe in it because it wasn’t something that I formed by myself. It was something that I have formed with people in our community. They have been with me. Every person that has ever been in GPS I’ve listened to. You know what I mean? So it’s that passion, it’s like you’ve got to really believe in it and know what’s going to make a difference.
Pete Wright:
Well, it gets to my next point, which is prioritization. And we talk about prioritization a whole lot. But when we talk about prioritization, we usually are talking about that individual. How are you going to prioritize the big blocks in your day? And when you’re talking about managing a business, got to talk at a new level. You’ve got to sort of lift yourself up and talk about prioritizing the business. What are the most important day-to-day tasks of the business? And what are the most important strategic blocks of the business? What is the core of your business and what can all you and only you do to drive that business forward?
And that is just a muscle, and it’s a muscle that is unique to your experience with the business. Only you can write out all of the tasks that you need to do for the business only you know why, to your point, Nikki, why you wanted to start a new business and only you can define how that core element of the business that is yours and only yours is going to manifest in your day-to-day activity in the relationships you have with clients, the way you write and speak about the business that you’re doing. And so I think that’s a very challenging thing for business owners, especially new business owners. It certainly was for me, I would get mired in the day-to-day minutia and it took me way too long to think about the bigger stuff. What was your experience?
Nikki Kinzer:
This is so hard because this is one of those muscles that I think you work out every single day, whether you are a new business owner or you’ve been doing it for 15 plus years. Every day I have to prioritize. Every day I have to look at my list and say, okay, what is the most important thing for me to work on right now? What is the most important thing that’s going to impact others? And really go through my kind of list of how I prioritize. Because it is a constant decision that you have to make every single day on how you’re going to spend your time because you could spend it in so many different areas. There’s so many choices. And so you have to decide what is the most important.
And it’s not easy. And it’s especially not easy with ADHDers. And I would say that that’s where you do want to have a partner or you want to have somebody that you can talk to help you with that. Because it’s going to be difficult. And as a coach, I see this a lot with my own clients, and I had somebody reach out to me recently who said, do you think you would be able to help me with my business? And I said, I know I could help you with how to schedule things in your business. There’s a lot of things I can do, but I don’t know if I’m the right person for what you need. You need a business coach. You need somebody that’s really going to sit down with you and help you prioritize and say, these are the things you need to get done. I’m not that person. I know how to build my own business, but I’m not confident that I can build yours.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s a really great differentiation.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. And so I referred to her to a business coach, and that is where we have to… Where do you need support and it’s not just delegation of them doing stuff, but also where do you need support just to help you with prioritizing or talking things out or brainstorming. There was a conversation that we had in one of my groups where we were talking about verbal processing and how important it’s for an ADHDer to verbally process to somebody what they’re thinking.
So if you’re an entrepreneur and you are solo, I really recommend finding that person who is that partner in your life that you can talk to about your business, bounce ideas off, talk about prioritizing, and help you through that. Because without that support, I really feel you’re setting yourself up to just keep banging your head on the wall. And we don’t want to give up on something that could be your great idea, your great business that could really impact others. Let’s not give up on that. Let’s get support so you can really blossom, have it bloom. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but you know what I mean. You get it.
Pete Wright:
Well, no, I think you said it. And there’s something to having somebody surrounding yourself with people who aren’t in your business or aren’t in your field. I get there is an instinct to join a mastermind or to have a business coach or somebody who knows your business inside and out. But sometimes you just need to say things out loud and you need somebody who’s disconnected from your business who can just listen and say, that’s hard. Or somebody you can celebrate with and say, God, that sounds like a really great thing. Congratulations, can really crow about for you to keep you kind of moving forward. And so I would suggest you need all kinds of people who can absolutely support you in your business.
Also, I’d written down, we talk about mindfulness and self-care journaling, but I want to talk about journaling as a business owner. I use Day One. I have a specific journal within Day One, the app, that is just about daily learnings running the business. What did I do? Who did I talk to? What clients did I get? What clients did I maybe lose or who moved on from me? What are the challenges of running the business? And that was incredibly useful and I would go back to that and I would search that for things that were a struggle over time. And for the first five or seven years I was pretty zealous about it and I stopped needing it. But when starting out, it’s incredibly useful for documenting the overall arc of your days and weeks and months and years running your own business and reflecting on accomplishments that you otherwise might forget. So it’s not necessarily-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well and that’s the key.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Otherwise it’s not like, oh, I need a mindfulness journal. I have an action journal. I have something that defines what I did.
Nikki Kinzer:
And it’s a balance. It’s not just all the negative and it’s not just all the positive. It’s a balance of this is what I learned from this experience, but this is where I really succeeded. I got this great email from someone or I ended a session and I knew that that person had that aha moment. Yeah, definitely recognizing what’s going well and good. For sure.
Pete Wright:
Let’s talk just briefly about hustle culture. Can we before we break up?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
So you hear this a lot right now. I think it used to be sort of the side hustle. What’s your side hustle? You’ve already dropped that term in this conversation.
Nikki Kinzer:
I did, yeah.
Pete Wright:
So the side hustle, it’s the thing you’re doing while you were also doing stuff.
Nikki Kinzer:
Doing other stuff.
Pete Wright:
And I did that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Not the main thing. It’s not the main thing.
Pete Wright:
And in fact, I tried twice before I actually started the business to actually start the business as a side hustle and work on it nights and weekends.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s hard.
Pete Wright:
And you know what didn’t work? Any of that. It didn’t work at all. And it was partially because I couldn’t get any clients to take me seriously when they knew, even in any just straight communication, they knew that I was working on their business as a side project. That I was only answering email when they were asleep. And that is not a great way to gain commitment and long-term relationship with new clients. So it just didn’t work. I also set my rates at introductory rates way too low, and nobody bought my services at those rates. It was only when I set my rates at competitive market rates that people took me seriously. And so I had to quit my job and get out of the side hustle business and get into the hustle business.
Nikki Kinzer:
Now I’m hustling.
Pete Wright:
Just getting into the business. But the hustle culture has taken on, I think, a real negative tone. And I worry about it specifically with ADHD because I think it’s a shame-based culture.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think so too.
Pete Wright:
The whole thing of hustle culture is that the idea is it values hard work and grind over leisure and relaxation. It’s really an either or. That work and constant tireless work is the measure of success and that there is this direct correlation between the amount of effort you put in and the rewards you reap. I’m a hustler, I have a nice car. I’m a hustler, I bought a new house. That’s the kind of thing.
It is really pervasive in startup culture. And I think it’s a really easy trap for people who own their own businesses because of fear and uncertainty and doubt and RSD that harder and harder work and longer and longer hours are somehow the cure for the negative feelings and the fear that we’re experiencing when we’re starting a new business. I believe that that’s not true. I think that feeding fear with longer hours just perpetuates the fear for if you try to get control of your life, if you try to pull back on those hours. And that equation is unsustainable. It is unsustainable. So I think it’s useful in phases when you’re going after a big client, when you’re doing a big project-
Nikki Kinzer:
If you have a launch or something.
Pete Wright:
… And it’s something you’re really proud of. If You have a launch hustle, yeah, through it, work hard. I’m not against hard work, but there is this pervasive sort of ecology of hustle that I think is dangerous and terrifying and it’s not good for mental health.
Nikki Kinzer:
It really isn’t. And the guilt and the shame, I have to say, I really want to highlight because I see that so often with clients is feeling guilty on the weekend because they’re not doing enough. Where weekends, whatever your weekend is, whether it’s a Saturday and Sunday or a Monday and Wednesday, whatever your job is, but those days off are supposed to be days off. But yet we have this feeling that we have to do, do, do and every hour of the day has to be filled with some kind of productivity. I also see a lot where clients feel like they need to bring work home because they don’t feel like they did enough during the day. I see that all the time.
The truth is some things just take longer for you to do, but that doesn’t mean that you have to bring it into your home life. It means that you tell your boss, if you can, if you have the liberty to do this, and especially if you’re an entrepreneur, you are the boss. You get to say, I need to extend this. I’m not going to get to it… I can’t give this to you tomorrow, but I can give it to you next week or whatever. Give yourself that buffer type.
Especially as an entrepreneur, because you get to decide what you’re giving out and what makes sense to give out, especially if you’re working with a client. Don’t push yourself into a commitment that you know can’t keep or that you can’t keep, it’s just not going to happen, that you’re trying to please that person so you say something. So we want to pause. We want to really pause and think about how we are using our time and how long things take.
But it is okay to have time off. It is okay to not have every hour scheduled if your energy, we talk so much about time management, but sometimes it’s just really energy management. If you have a lump during the afternoon and you really just need to go take a nap, take a nap. And if you get that second wind, again, we’re talking about entrepreneurs and you can work a little bit later and sleep in a little bit, then do that. It doesn’t have to be this normal 8:00 to 5:00 job that maybe you’ve done in the past. That’s the pro of owning your own business. If your hours are from one o’clock in the afternoon until nine o’clock at night, great. Let them be that.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that is one of the great joys of running your own business is the flexibility of calling your hours the way you want them to be. That is a great joy. It doesn’t mean you’re working less, but it does mean you’re not working the same. And that’s okay. And I absolutely know what it’s like to work on a project until late into the night, just because I’m in hyper-focused mode and I can’t turn it off. But when the project’s over, there is downtime, there’s got to be. There’s got to be some downtime.
So I think there’s a constant sort of cultural swing around what is the sort of popular gestalt around work. And right now, I think post pandemic people, there’s a lot of energy around work and starting new businesses and getting out of the traditional 8:00 to 5:00. And you get to set your own work culture. And if your interest is in growing your business with people who are like-minded and want to join a healthy culture, it starts with you when you are a solopreneur, when you are alone. You set the culture and the tone for the second person who comes to work for you. And I cannot underscore how important it is that you are in alignment and that your culture is in alignment with the kind of people you want to attract.
Nikki Kinzer:
So I have to say something real quick on as we are wrapping up. This last weekend, and I thought, and this is directly to you, Pete, there was a mistake that we had in our podcast. So there was a podcast, the one that I did with my daughter and Dr. Oliver Veria. And for some reason the last 10 minutes cut off, like it just wasn’t on there.
Pete Wright:
It was the you and me part, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. It was just not there. And I had sent you a message on Discord and I told my husband, I said, I know he is not going to see this because he sets boundaries and that’s okay, but I want to actually just write it out so I know that it’s sent.
Pete Wright:
Except… Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I did. I actually said that. I’m like, I know he is not going to see this today. And that’s okay because he sets boundaries. I get it. This is on the weekend. It can wait. It’s not a huge thing. But I do think there’s something about that is, I wrote it to you over the weekend, but I wasn’t expecting you to necessarily answer. You did the next day and I appreciate it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. it was like right away the next day, the next morning was Sunday morning, bright and early. I fixed it because podcast errors, that’s core to my business and I fixed those. And so that was an easy one to wipe out that corruption and replace it with a new file. But that’s another point. Because my schedule is flexible, I no longer really feel guilty about picking up the computer and doing a few hours of work on the weekend, because in all likelihood, I cut out of work early to drive carpool on Wednesday. And so the hours even out over the course of seven days and it’s not like I’m not taking a healthy downtime, but sometimes I am on the weekend and I’m working and I’m putting stuff together. So, yeah, that’s important. But to your point, having an expectation that it’s okay to document stuff and know that it’s okay that they’re not going to get back to you right away because they set boundaries, is also important to not have a constant expectation that it’s right away.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and that’s so true as an entrepreneur because you have access to your email. So when I used to work at the credit union, I didn’t have access to my work email until I was at work. So I would come in on Monday morning and I would see anything that came over through the weekend. Now I can see it at any given time. So I do have to catch myself, and this is for all entrepreneurs out there. I do have to catch myself and say, okay, do I want to answer this right now? Is it as important as, like what Pete is saying, this is part of my business and I really do need to take care of it. Or could I really wait until Monday when I’m really working? And I do ask myself for that a lot. And there’s a lot of emails I don’t get back to because I know that if I was in an office, I wouldn’t get back to them until Monday. So you do have to set those boundaries and question it before you just respond.
Pete Wright:
For sure. For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Same thing with the laptop. I’m sorry I could keep talking about this, but I thought getting a laptop would be a great idea. And it is a great idea because I can go work outside and work out in other places. But I’ve also noticed I work a little bit more than I used to when I’m not in my… Because I can take it out of my office, so I have to be careful. What am I doing? So anyway. There you go.
Pete Wright:
Well, this stuff is really important and I think setting the expectation for yourself defines the expectation for the business. And you don’t have to worry about that when you join another company, the culture’s already set. The culture around work and habits and organization and the tools you use, it’s already set. But don’t forget that that responsibility is on your shoulders and that’s one that you don’t have day-to-day doing other stuff. So set the culture that you want to live in. And I think that’s really important. So that’s that. Thank you, Nikki. I had fun talking about the reliving our business experience.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. It is fun.
Pete Wright:
We’ve been doing it a long time and you sort of forget because days just sort of add to other days, but you forget. We’ve been doing this a long time as starting businesses ourselves. That’s huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
We have. And I just have another idea. Oh my gosh. Okay. I know I will stop talking eventually, I promise. My daughter asked me and my husband the other day, how would you rate your day? I don’t know where this came from. It was out of nowhere. But all of a sudden she just says, Mom, how would you rate your day? And I had a pretty good day. So I was like, I’d rate it an eight. And she’s like, oh good, that’s really good. Why was it an eight? And I kind of tell her why. But her asking that question was really interesting to me because now I almost want to rate my days every day. I want to rate my day because I want to know what makes an eight compared to a five.
Pete Wright:
Oh, we’re going to continue talking about this. You’re absolutely right. This is a great question. For sure. And in fact, we’re going to continue talking about it in the after show, which only our members get to listen to.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good.
Pete Wright:
So become a member, patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. You’ll get notified of the live streams. You can watch along with us live. You can chat with us in the Discord chat room for the show talk channel. There’s a thread for each live stream. Join us because we’re going to keep talking about this in just a second.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. Yes. I’m interested in hearing what you have to say.
Pete Wright:
So thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don’t forget, if you have something to contribute to this conversation, we’re going to be in that show talk channel on the Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you next week right here on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
