Part 2 Regaining Your Sparkle/Passion for your Business
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Jessi Romero: You are listening to A DHD owned a podcast for A DHD Entrepreneurs where we talk about everything that has to do with the unique struggles and laughter that comes with running a business with A DHD. Our goal is to empower you to thrive with your A DHD and teach you the tools that your brain can follow along with.
So it doesn't sabotage your success. We believe A DHD could be your business's secret weapon. The first step, believe that it can be, and just keep listening because we'll show you exactly how we do it and how we help. So many of you amazing badass A DHD entrepreneurs, kill it in your business and have fun while doing it.
I'm your host, Jesse Romero. Let's get started.
Hey, welcome back to A DHD owned podcast. A podcast for a DH ADHD entrepreneurs, today we are going to be going over part two and finishing this mini series on what to do when you lose the sparkle, the passion for your business.
This is a common occurrence that [00:01:00] happens to honestly every entrepreneur, not just a DHD ones, but I would say that us neurodivergent entrepreneurs are more at risk of this happening to us more continuously. And there are a few signs and things that should caution you, that you may be going down a route where you are about to lose your sparkle for this thing and or start heading into burnout.
So we're gonna be talking about that Last, two weeks we talked about. The sales aspect, and what I would say is the most common thing that leads people to lose that passion is when they are not experiencing the sales, the momentum, the attention that they should be receiving for their genius and for the things that they're putting out.
And that is just, it kills and destroys our confidence in ourselves. It makes it not fun for ourselves. It's a total downer. So today we're gonna be talking a bit more about the other reasons why this happens. , last week I gave you a lot of sales tips and things that you can do because. Your sales is a lifeline and it [00:02:00] does sustain your business, but it also sustains your passion and your mission and what anchors and ties you to your business, the reason why you even started it.
And if you do not get sales, and you do, which sales means people that you're helping, if you're not helping people and there's not this transaction happening in order for you to invest your time, invest your genius into them, then you're not gonna be. Doing the thing that you signed up to be doing, right?
So of course you were getting burned out. Of course. You were losing your passion and your sparkle and it was not exciting for you to do anymore, right? So today we're gonna focus in more on some of the more deeper rooted emotional things. Some of the things that honestly do not get talked about, but.
US ADHDers need to know this because we are at risk of this happening more. For those of you that maybe have been through it before, it is something that, it feels devastating and it feels hard because it's like. You want to get yourself to do things, and you just cannot. You just cannot stand the thought [00:03:00] of doing it and procrastination. My God, the procrastination becomes so heavy and just getting anything done, when before you could have gotten like 3, 5, 7 of those things done quickly, all of a sudden you're not, you don't have that capacity anymore.
And it's a real mind bend because. It's hard for us to see what we can put out. It's hard for us to see the potential and our efforts and our executive function on say a good day and then see it the next day when it's like flat out shot and we don't have that same capacity. That is an experience that all neurodivergent people have to deal with, especially ADHDers, because we really deal with this energy fluctuation.
This executive function fluctuation where that's not gonna look our normal and what our capacity is at is going to be different every day. You don't take inventory. You don't say, well, this is where my capacity is at every month, [00:04:00] every week, even every day. It changes. Especially for those of us who are menstruating, who have hormonal situations happening.
And just in our normal menstruating cycle, like our hormones are doing crazy things, different things every single week . It's wild. And so of course those things affect the way we show up, the way we feel about ourselves, the thoughts, patterns that happen. Like anytime you feel like you wanna burn your business down and say, F this, I'm moving on to a nine to five.
I'm so tired of this niche. Maybe I should do a new niche. Please pay attention and see if maybe that's your luteal phase. Maybe that's when you're about to get on your period or when you just started your period, because I have found that when I have the most negative thoughts about my business or scratch that about myself, when I feel just so frustrated and disgusted by myself.
That's because my period's about to start. And I have noticed this, pattern working with [00:05:00] A DHD women for so long now, and all of us have stories of when we wanted to burn our business down. And sure enough, it was because our period was about to happen and it was a hormonal directed thing, almost like if there's a time of the month every month that you start to feel that way.
We all finally put the, put the dots together and we're like, wait a. It's not just me, right? And then you feel guilty, then you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm such a fraud. Like how can I show up the next day promoting this thing when I just was contemplating shutting everything down yesterday?
You know, we have to remove it and detach from that shame, from that judgment that we placed on ourselves. It's a normal freaking part of the process. Every entrepreneur has fantasized about just doing something else. It's normal. It's okay. Don't shame yourself for it. So we need to talk about this, like losing our passion, losing our sparkle,
Remember why you started
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Because when you first started your business, you were all about getting to help people, getting to serve people with whatever it is that your business does, whichever problem your business solves, you were [00:06:00] so excited to get to help people because a ADHD. For most of us, we're authentic to our core, and we love to serve people.
We love to be the person that we wish we had, right? And so that's why a lot of us get into entrepreneurship. Another reason that we get into entrepreneurship is because a DHD brains are so good at finding and looking at something and immediately thinking of ways that that thing could be better. Sometimes it's an immediate knee jerk reaction that we don't even mean to be doing.
We just go on seeing how things could be better perfected, could be.
More elevated. And I think that that is a really cool part of our brain because it makes our business stand out from everyone else's, and it also makes us a really good employee for those of us that have worked for other people and have helped other people's dreams come true and helped other people's missions.
ADHD are so good. To hire and have, because they will look at what you're doing and tell you how you can do it better [00:07:00] and actually help you implement those systems. Now have that do that for themselves. They probably can't. They probably won't. But for you, they will, you know? And this can also be kind of a detriment to us because sometimes employers don't want us to do that.
And they're very married to the way that they're already doing things. And then we come along saying that they're not doing it right, and they take it personally and then you get fired. Or then you have a boss that hates you. This has happened to friends that I have, where they're constantly getting
in these dilemmas, I think this happens a little bit more to the Audhd people. The people that have autism and A DHD because they're very good at pattern recognition and they're very good at spotting the weaknesses and trying to make things better. Efficiency. It's all about efficiency. So. Anyways.
That's a bit of a rabbit hole there, but we are very good. Let's take at the things that our brain is good at and the reasons why we signed up to be an entrepreneur, right? Because we had a mission. We wanted to serve people with our genius, with the knowledge that we've accrued with [00:08:00] the trial and error that we've.
Done on ourselves with the rabbit holes of research that we've gone under, that we have done, stayed up late nights when we were avoiding something else. And we have accumulated all of this knowledge and we have a heart to help people, and we want to do that right. So that is why we started our business.
Most of us, I would say 90% of A DHD entrepreneurs do not start their business just simply to make money. Of course, we're not trying to do this for free. If we were, then we would be a nonprofit, and that's great too, but. You're an entrepreneur. You call yourself an entrepreneur. You call yourself a business owner, right?
You know that there needs to be an exchange for the services or the products that you are going to offer because they took you time, they took you knowledge, they probably took you materials, they took a lot of things for them to be made, and you can't give them away for free.
When misalignment begins
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Okay, so. When it comes to our business, when we are not aligned to our business, things start to malfunction. And how do you break alignment with your business?
Oh, babe, there's lots of [00:09:00] ways. That you can break that alignment. One of those is when you are. Providing things that you actually don't really care or are interested to provide. And I see a lot of people do this because this is the industry standard. Like this is what most people in their industry provide.
This is how they provide it. So you feel like you kind of have to as well, but then you hate that format of providing that service or that product. You don't like it. It doesn't jive with you. It doesn't jive with the actual capacity or the actual schedule that you have available, or your personality.
Maybe you're way too introverted for that form, but you're doing it anyways. Mm, mm mm Nope. That is an easy way to start losing your sparkle. Start chipping at your sparkle, at your passion, and could lead you to burnout, right? Because you're doing something that doesn't align with you, and your business is a direct reflection of you.
It's your personality. It's your morals, it's your heart, your passion, the things that you like, right? Why are we trying on business modalities that work for other people when they just do not [00:10:00] mix with us? Is your business supposed to be meant by that other person? If it's meant for it to be run by the other person, then cool, that works.
But you are the one who's running it, so shouldn't you choose strategies and formats that are gonna be good for the way that you like to run things? Yeah. Right. I would say so. But it's so easy to fall into the pattern of just trying to adapt modalities, adapt strategies, and running our business certain ways, because this six figure earner said that that's how they do it.
This other CEO expert said that that's how they get success, and that's what they teach their people. And then you see all the reviews of people that say, wow, yes, now I have 30 K months and not have blah, blah, blah. And you're like, wow, I guess this is just what I have to do. Just gotta suck it up. No.
That's not always true. Now, it's not a bad thing to observe and to analyze different formats and modalities. You wanna do that. But then the question is, will this work for me? And then you can experiment with it. You can do a test, a trial with it. Okay? This is what I do. If I see something that I'm like, you know what?
That sounds [00:11:00] interesting. I've never done anything like that. I'm gonna try it. Okay. Keywords, try it. Not just adapt and run with it and make that the way that I run my business, no questions asked just because someone else told me that that's how I should do it. No, babe. No, that's not what we do. We adapt to things for ourselves, things that are gonna be aligned with who we are, with how we run things.
Right. And so this creates, uh, a misalignment in your business when you have adopted things that do not actually jive with who you are in so many different areas, we have to pay attention to that, so let's say for example, the people in your industry, the way that they do their services is they have a one-on-one, they have a done for you, like VIP day, and then Like a group coaching format, and that's what you have seen that everybody does in their industry, and you're in this industry, so that's what you're gonna do, ? So you try that out, you realize that your people really are buying the, that those VIP days. And you thought that it would be cool. It sounded good on [00:12:00] paper, but you're realizing that actually I kind of dread when I have those on my calendar, even though it's a good, easy $600 a day type of thing, but I still dread it.
But what do you do? You continue to just force yourself to do it because that's what your clients apparently want and that's what everybody else. Does, and there's this fear of like, well, if I don't give it to them, then they're gonna find someone else and pay them. And I want them to stay with me. But that's coming from like a fear energy instead of an expansion energy, right? So you keep forcing yourself to run your business, to run the way that you serve people, the way that you are implementing and living out your mission for your business in a way that doesn't actually align with you,
align. So what do you do? You take that in and you say, okay. I'm gonna figure out a way that does align with myself. Why is it that you don't like the VIP day? Is it just too much on one day? Do you get bored? Do you not wanna spend a whole day with someone? Because honestly, I wouldn't. Some days, maybe you [00:13:00] were the week before your period or the week of your period you were leaving those open for those VIP days.
If we could just easily close those down and you only have two weeks outta the month that you're open for those VIP days that are not in your hormonal nightmare weeks, then maybe that would be better because imagine going through your period, you're over there bleeding out, and you have to answer this five minute Voxer from your client, and you're over there cramping like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You're over there crying because you looked at yourself in the mirror. Just no, we cycle syncing. That needs to be another episode. But that is very important. If you have not looked into it, please do a little Google search. Ask chat, GPT, do a little TikTok search cycle syncing to your business. So important.
So you have to find a way that's going to align with you, with your capacity, with your needs, because. I don't know who told you that You cannot run your business in a way that honors yourself, that still meets your needs and meets the needs of your clients, of your customers, [00:14:00] because both of those can be true.
You can do both of those. As a client, I don't want to know that my coach or whoever I'm buying from Serving me in a way that they hate having to serve me. That they would much rather do it a different way, you know why? 'cause that's gonna show up in their energy. They're gonna have to fake it.
They're gonna, they're not gonna be super excited when they come in and, and I'm excited 'cause I paid you. Right. It's a different energy that it comes from. And you know what, a lot of us are really good at masking. A lot of us are really good at faking. So then it's the faking the excitement, faking , so that your client can get a great customer experience.
But then you're adding onto the fact that this is so unaligned with you. You don't like the way it runs. You honestly hate having to be there. And then on top of that, you have to fake it the whole time. You have to pretend, that is just so draining. So then what do you do for the next 24 hours after that, you sit on the couch like a potato because you're trying to recover from what you created, from what you forced yourself to do.
But were the $600 worth [00:15:00] it though? That's what your brain says. Well, but it, you know, it was just one day sacrifice for $600. If I do three of those, I could pay my bills. And on that side it makes sense. But that is very much just steam rolling through your business instead of expanding, instead of it honoring you, instead of it being healthy for your body, for your mental health.
It's not organic, so we need to find ways that are going to be easy and aligned for you. If you're an introvert, stop getting on discovery calls. Who said that? That's the only way that you can do it. Find other ways. Sell them through the dm, sell them through the, a synchronous, I don't know how to say that word.
I know how to spell, but I dunno how to say it. , you know, like Marco Polo or Voxer, where you can kind of like chat back and forth. There's some apps where you can do like video chats back and forth, not like at a set time, but they can just send you like a little video and then you send one back.
This is what I was using I would use this as my discovery call and I'd be like, Hey, yes, I'd love to get to know you. [00:16:00] Download this app and we can chat and see if this service is gonna be best for you. And that's how I signed up a lot of my one-on-ones 'cause I'm just not getting on a call.
I'm not doing it. So find what works for you. Okay. That is step one. And it is what clears so much of this. Sabotaging that happens with losing your passion most of the times. It's because the way you're running your business or the way that you're providing something isn't actually aligned to what you need to your capacity to what makes you excited to wake up every day and go to work, right?
That is what we really have to look at. How are you running your business that doesn't align with you? What are the things that you just totally dread having to do, and why do you dread them? Why is it that you dread having to do that? That's the most important question. I think a lot of us, a DH, adhd, we are content with knowing what are the things we struggle with?
We're content with knowing, oh, I'm so bad at this. Oh this, I struggle with this so much. We could tell you easily, we could whip out a [00:17:00] long a list of that. But when you ask, well, why is it that you struggle with that? Why is that a struggle for you? Hmm. That's a harder question for people to answer. Some of them haven't even asked themselves that question, but that's where the gold is.
Because some of the things that I struggle with, I later realized that they were actually tied to a deeper emotional thing. It wasn't a physical, tip of the iceberg stuff. It was very deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. And so of course my nervous system was just not gonna get down to doing those things because it was telling my body, you're not safe when you do those things.
We have to be on edge when you do those things. And that's gonna be something that your body is going to continue to procrastinate and to avoid getting you out of doing that stuff. So you have to get really curious about what are those things that you dread doing and why?
Ask yourself. Go down into the deeper layers. Why is it hard for me? It's very important to do this. Okay, so that is one of the reasons why I see so many people lose their sparkle. Because when they run me back through what happened, I'm like, well, [00:18:00] yeah, you were doing all of these things and you just told me you're a new mom.
You don't have all of this capacity. A lot of your trauma has been like reignited and you have been exposed to a lot of it. Like of course, your window of tolerance was so minimal, but you were expecting yourself this huge amount from your business in a capacity in ways that you were not able to give yourself.
So of course you just. Didn't open your email one day and that was it, and that was you abandoning your business because you just couldn't bear to do it anymore. Right? It makes sense. We really have to find what are the things that we need from our business If you're gonna run a business. It needs to make sure that it, it's molded to you and that you're able to provide, that you're able to show up in a way that's reasonable, right?
And that may look different. And what's quote unquote reasonable may look different for everybody. But we have to find the way that we run our business, the way that we structure our services [00:19:00] or our products or the access that people have to us, that we structure. And we put down boundaries for that
that's what we have to do. Because if we do not do this, you're not gonna stay in business. You're gonna be a part of the percentage that says that businesses don't make it after the five year mark. And we are not trying to be a one of those statistics. We're trying to break the statistics, especially for 80 ish years, especially even more for women entrepreneurs.
We need to break that cycle. We need to make sure that we're not trying to run our business as if we were a neurotypical white man. I'm sorry to say. We need to run our business the way that we need, the way that your body needs, and we need to honor ourselves. When we do that, that energy shows up so clear, so attractive to your ideal people.
You become a magnet for your people. When you are in your own energy, when you are in your own zone and you stand 10 toes down for how you show up to your business, it makes a drastic [00:20:00] difference.
The Second thing you need to do to not lose your sparkle: Self-Care
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The second thing we need to look at is how are you caring for yourself? Because a lot of us think that running a business just means doing a whole bunch of things we don't like doing for the sake of us growing our business, and for the sake of us getting money, right?
Now a lot of us can be in this situation where it's like, look, Jess, I started this business 'cause I genuinely have to feed my children and like this is the way that I feed my children. So I totally understand that some of us come from an energy where it's like, this has to work and we have to put it in the effort because if not, then our bills don't get paid.
And I completely understand that and I respect that. That is, that's a little different, right? But even in that situation, there's still things that you can do that you can take things off of your plate, because sometimes we're just requiring things of ourselves that are just not a good fit for us to do.
Like you're requiring yourself to remember all these things. Why aren't you writing it down? Why aren't you getting an accountability buddy to help you? Why aren't you at least, at least even tell your [00:21:00] partner? If you don't wanna find like something, why are you not supporting yourself in order to do it?
Why are you just expecting yourself to do it? Well, I should just be able to remember, oh, that there's the shoulds, right? We cannot live in the shoulds, friends. We cannot live in the shoulds. We have to honor. What our capacity is. You'll hear me talk a lot about capacity because nobody told me this in the beginning.
It was all about executive function. Tips for your A DHD tips for you to manage. More tips for you to remember things, alarm clocks and sticky note notifications and planners, and all of those things that on the surface level can help you get organized. Nobody told me that it wasn't about productivity and trying to hack my productivity.
It was about growing my capacity, growing my capacity to take on more, and honoring and taking in inventory of where my capacity is on the daily. Some days I wake up and I'm on fire. I'm knocking things outta my to-do [00:22:00] list. I'm crossing t's, I'm dotting i's look at me, go I, I'm like, do I really even have a DHD?
Hey, you know, all of us that have the good A DHD days, we always question maybe I really don't have a h adhd and I just gaslit myself and the therapist. No baby. You still have a DD, but some days we have good brain days. But you may have also noticed that those good brain days don't usually last, right?
It is like one, maybe two, maybe max three days after that, we're back to couch rotting. We're back to doom scrolling. We're back to our lazy quote unquote lazy ways, right? If the procrastination happens, the executive function dies off.
Learning and paying attention to our capacity> seeking the solution in a quick hack or new tool
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So we have to know what our capacity is every day. Every day I check in with myself.
I'm very intuitive with myself, and you should too friend. If there's gonna be a should, this is the one. You gotta be intuitive with yourself because who else knows you better than you? Nobody. Okay? Nobody. Who else is gonna check in on your body more than you? No one can. You have to do that for yourself.
You have to [00:23:00] provide that and that support for yourself. You know why? Because you deserve it. You deserve to be cared for. You deserve to be in tune with what your body needs, with what your body is screaming at you that you keep ignoring and you're just continuing to steamroll, hustle, hustle, hustle. And your body's telling you, Hey, yo, we're on the verge of burning out.
You know? And I ignored all of those signs in my body for so long. I was just. Pushing through it. I was writing the momentum until one day it came crashing down and I couldn't do that anymore. And it mind boggled me how it was possible that I could post every single day, these incredible viral things that grew my account to thousands of followers so quickly to then not being able to post at all.
Like every time I tried to do it, I just couldn't. It was like I had writer's block, but it lasted years. It was so bad and it's so hard when you see yourself like hustle and beat out goals and be on the top to then being [00:24:00] like, wow, I do not have the capacity for that anymore. I don't even know how I did it back then, but it was so easy to do back then.
It's not easy to do anymore, right? Because we evolve, we change, and for most of us, we realized that the capacity and the energy of how we were doing those things, how we were showing up was not healthy, was not the greatest, so we really have to be in tune with ourselves. What is your body telling you?
If your nervous system gets frazzled, that's an alarm bell that's trying to tell you something. Be curious. Lean in what's happening to me? What am I experiencing? What am I feeling? What am I fearing? What's the fear behind this? The energy behind it. Get curious friend, because so many answers lie in that.
That's how you can get yourself to move past blocks. It's not always 'cause you need a new CRM or you need a new A DHD hack, or you need a new supplement that's gonna help you focus some of that. Your nervous system is fighting for it's life and you're over here trying to get a lion's mane mushroom supplement.
That's not [00:25:00] gonna change the game for you until. You acknowledge what's happening in your body, where your body is responding to, and so much of the A DHD niche is like always trying to sell us these new things that are supposed to be life changing, right? And , so many of those can be adapted and they can help.
They're little things that can help. But if you're ignoring your own body cues, if you're ignoring what your nervous system is telling you, if you're ignoring what your mindset, your emotional. Your inner child is telling you, then you're no better than the person that is just trying to drown out their sorrows with alcohol, you know, their coping mechanisms is what I'm trying to say. We all reach for a coping mechanism, and until you realize that what you're doing, the behavior that you're experiencing in the moment is actually a coping mechanism, it's gonna continue to happen.
GLP-1 mention my personal story about coping mechanisms I noticed
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Like this is something that has happened for me recently because I was on a GLP one shot.
And lemme know if you want an episode on that. In my experience of being on a [00:26:00] shot, for some of you that, dunno what that means. Basically, Ozempic, if you've heard of it, I was not on the exact ozempic, I was on a similar one, but. It was great and so useful for me and I have gotten so many wins, permanent wins 'cause I'm off the shot currently.
I may get back on it, but I needed to take a little break from it. And let me tell you some of the things I noticed. I used to deal a lot with food noise. I definitely had food noise. And food Noise is basically. Having lots of thoughts about food, like, when am I gonna eat next? What should I eat? And just any thoughts that have to do with food, my body was very much riddled with these. , And lots of like hunger. Even though I had already ate, there's no reason why I should be hungry. But it was just the munching, the binge eating.
I definitely struggled a bit with the binge eating and the snacking and just the like, compulsive, I just need to keep eating. Even though you finished the whole bag of chips, it didn't fill the need yet. You still need something else. I definitely struggled with those things and now that I haven't been on the shot for almost about to be a month and a half
I don't have [00:27:00] binge eating anymore and I don't really have food noise anymore, and I thought I didn't have those things 'cause I was on the shot. 'cause the shot helps you not have those things anymore while you're on it. But it's been a month and a half that it hasn't been in my system. So as I talk with my nutritionist, we've noticed that, man, this is really cool because now I catch myself, and for me it's like the speed of which I eat.
If I start to eat some chips, like real quick, I'm like, Ooh, that's my red flag, that I'm like, oh, this is some binge eating patterns, and so now that I am aware of the coping mechanism, I can nip it in the butt. Now that I notice, like if I start eating things too quickly, I'm like, Ooh, okay, hold on.
Let me slow down. And I just slow myself eating the food. And that helps just being in tune. Then checking in with myself and going, what's happening? Then I'm like, Hmm, I'm stressed about something that I just thought, and that's why I started to eat this. 'cause I felt like it was gonna make me feel better.
Step 3 you have to check-in with yourself and take the reigns of how you respond to stressors
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Okay. Checking in with yourself is so important, so I want you to check in with yourself. How do you feel [00:28:00] about your business? What are the things that you are being drained by? What are the things that you avoid the most? What are the things that make you feel very insecure? Because a lot of those things, no matter what you do or even the people you hire, it's not gonna get rid of this.
You have to work on it yourself. You have to do the work yourself to figure this out. So we have to be in tune and checking in with ourselves, caring for ourselves. If you're starting to feel really anxious around this area, cool. How are you gonna respond to that? There's anxiety in you. How are you responding to that?
You are just gonna scroll TikTok for a few hours. Talking to the choir here 'cause that's what I be doing some days, you know? But you gotta catch yourself in the act of it, of picking the coping mechanism.
'cause here's the greatest news. You have the power to choose how you wanna respond. Maybe your knee jerk reaction is gonna be one response, but you have the power to derail that and go, no, no, no.
I can pick something better. I can pick something more supportive for me. And that's a [00:29:00] journey that I've been on. Instead of going to reach for the chips I go in and I go, okay, what am I needing right now? What am I trying to fill? There's a coping mechanism. Something was triggered by it.
What triggered this and what could I give myself that's healthier, that's more caring of myself, and that's how you do it, because no one's coming to save you. No one's coming to do that. I know that that's not what we wanna hear. That's how you integrate yourself and you become your biggest support system.
Some of you guys, you need to hear this. Some of you guys are your biggest bullies. You, you, yourself are bullying yourself constantly in your mind, the way you talk to yourself. A bully. You would never say that to your friends. You would beat someone up if they said if they ever talked to your friend like that.
But that's the way you're talking to yourself, huh? Make that make sense. No, no, no, no, no, no, babe. That's not what we do. We look out after ourselves. We support ourselves. We are not our biggest bully. We are our biggest ally. [00:30:00] I'm partnering up with myself, with my brain, with my body, with my needs, in order for things to go the way that they need to go in order for me to be supported.
I deserve that. I didn't have that as a kid. I didn't do that for many years of my life. I realize that I deserve that type of support. That's the type of life that I should be living, and that's what I want for myself. That's what I consciously choose. That's what I'm saying. We have to consciously choose ourselves and care for ourselves,
When I say doing self-care, I don't mean candle and getting your nails done but actually...
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there needs to be self-care and aftercare, and when I talk about self-care, I'm not talking about lining up a candle and getting in the bath and getting your nails done. Those are cutesy little ways of doing self-care. But those are very tip of the iceberg ways. I'm talking about the deeper emotional things.
When you start to feel frazzled and your mind starts going off with the story that you tell yourself, it's 'cause No, I've never been chosen. Nobody ever picks me. Nobody ever wants me. Was silly to think that people would choose me, that people would want me, that people would think that I'm actually smart and could [00:31:00] see all the things that I have to offer.
If that's a story that's constantly being replayed in your mind. How do you think your actions are being driven by that? What does that lead you to do? It leads you to not be open to new opportunities because before you even get there, you start saying, well, what's the point if no one's ever gonna even see me?
You psych yourself out of things. People hopping your emails, talking about we love for you to be a guest speaker. What do you say? You never even replied. 'cause you're so scared that you're gonna mess it up, that you never even do it. Those beliefs are driving your actions, so we have to get deep into the work of supporting ourselves with what we need because we're being sabotaged by our beliefs.
We're being sabotaged by the way that we are just running our life. If we do not take a step back and take inventory of what are the coping mechanisms, what are the things, the needs that we actually have, and how can we meet those needs in a healthy way? Now don't hear this and shame yourself for the things that you do.
Okay. My podcast and my tone and the way I deliver things will [00:32:00] never be. In a shaming way, in a judgment way, because look, you have shamed yourself enough. All of these years, you don't need anybody else coming to shame you. That's not that Shaming is not a good business strategy, and some of us used shame as a business strategy to get things done.
Like, come on, you're just gonna leave that like that. You're just gonna be a bad business owner. Come on, get up all your ass and do it right. Like if that's the way you have to talk to yourself. We're gonna work on that. 'cause as much as that might be working on the surface level, you hired a terrible boss for your business, AKA you, and you have a toxic as boss for your business.
Mm-hmm. We left that corporate job. We left that job because they were toxic as heck. And then you came and opened up your own business. But now you're the toxic boss. No, no. We can do better. We can do better. Right. We have to look at the way that we treat ourselves. Because shame is never going to produce continuously what you need.
It may work a little bit, and I know that this is a [00:33:00] coping mechanism that a lot of us have to deal with, that a lot of us have used that we felt we used successfully, and that's the only thing that has worked. But you gotta step outside of that and find better, healthier ways of getting things done. It is possible.
So we have to care for ourselves.
The 4th thing- keep business fun- we work hard, and play hard
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The third thing is we need to find the fun. You need to find the fun in your business. What are the things that light you up? Some people realize that the main thing that they do with their business isn't even the fun part for them. The fun part for them is this other little thing,
but they, they don't have a lot of time to do that other fun little thing 'cause they're worried about all the other things that they're doing in their business. You need to find the things that light you up about your business. If maybe the fun thing is like playing in Canva and creating content, or creating new logos or new branding.
If that's a thing that that is easy for you to get up outta your bed to do. But if you have to respond to an email, oh, you won't get outta bed to do that, but you will get up to work on your new branding for your new program that you're [00:34:00] coming out. That's the exciting part for you. Pay attention to that friend.
Pay attention to that, and how can we lean on that even more? How can we use that for the benefit of your business? Because doing your business should also be fun. It should not just be hard in day in hustle. Hustle. No. You work hard and you play hard, and play is a very important factor of running a business.
It's super important for the A DHD or because we, our brain needs the most dopamine that we can get, and if something is going to create this dopamine for you. It's gonna feel fun and playful and light and exciting. You need to do more of those things. So find What are the fun things that you like?
When was the last time you felt so elated in your business the last time that you felt like you were on top of the world, that something in your business sparked that feeling? What were you doing? Pay attention to that. Those are the things that we should be seeking more of and making a bigger space in our [00:35:00] business to have more opportunity to do that.
So if you really love playing in Canva and that's fun for you, cool. Then maybe creating new programs or even giving a little upgrade to your current branding or your current programs, maybe even making that a product. Create all these, Canva templates and sell those as your business. Look for the things that you like and find a way to plug it into your business even more.
If working with people and seeing those light bulbs go off on them and seeing the results come in, if that's what makes you feel elated, then you know that you need to keep yourself. Helping people. And if the sales stop rolling in and you don't know what to do, then listen to my last episode. 'cause I had a lot of tips for you.
Little nuggets that you can do for your business that helps keep the sales process in your business going easy. Things you can do. And one of those things that I shared was providing something for free. When you all have completely burned out, you've lost your confidence, you're not [00:36:00] getting any, salespeople are not knocking at your door.
You go ahead and you say, Hey, I'm selling free lemonade. You'll see the whole neighborhood pull up. You know, start offering something for free just to get your ball rolling, just to show you that this is where you should be. And so many of those times that will unlock like a new discovery or that'll unlock new confidence in you.
It'll take you to that next step in your business offering something for free. And if not for free, something for super low. Something really cheap for your clients to buy into quickly so that you can see that you can help people, and that tells all your little imposter syndrome to shut up and sit down.
So you have to find ways that are fun for your business. Something that I love doing is playing in Canva. That's fun for my business. And my branding is very much set up on that. I, not to do my own horn, and I'm very biased on this, but I have cute graphics and the way that I run my courses and everything.
It [00:37:00] looks nice and aesthetically pleasing. 'cause that's what I like and that makes it fun for me, right? And so I allow myself to lean into that because that's what makes it fun. You need to keep your business fun. If it is just boring, then you are no longer living at this point. You're just doing something for the money, and that is just soul sucking.
That's not what you wanna do. You wanna keep the fun, the exciting, the playful in your business, dare to be playful in your business. I obviously with some boundaries, this does not mean that you have to, chase all of shiny object things and just chase new niches every week because you get bored of yours and you think that that's your way of fun.
No. Find ways that you can do that within your niche, within your industry. Look at some new skillsets that you can bring to your own thing that you're doing and that makes it new and different, right? Start side hustles, shoot, sometimes even starting a different side hustle for your business. Isn't always a terrible idea,
so we have to really take some inventory of the things that cause [00:38:00] us to lose our sparkle in our business because people need what you have to offer and they need it the way that you offer. They need it with your exact personality, with your exact human experience, with your exact stories, and the way that you package this up.
They could easily buy from other people, but it's the way that you deliver things. It's you. You are the package, you are what make your business great. That's why someone could buy your business and be the new CEO and it wouldn't work because it was you that was adding this special, unique factor to your business, right?
That's how we need to align and structure our business so that it's surrounded by our essence, because that's what makes it different.
So we need to make sure that we are keeping our business aligned because that's how we ensure that we can still show up every day. We gotta make sure that we're keeping our business with our mental health and our own health as a priority.
Checking in with ourselves, caring for ourselves, [00:39:00] not just letting us be accumulation of our coping mechanisms. Being ran by our coping mechanisms. No. We can be in control of that. We can be gracious and patient with ourselves as we work through those things, not have these super high expectations. Not letting the shame and judgment voice be the one that's overpowering.
No, the one that's supportive, the one that's understanding, the one that's gonna hold your hand and walk you through it as you do the hard thing. The third thing is we need to make fun. We need to make space to be playful, to do the things that are exciting for a business and see how we can turn that up a notch.
How can we include more of that in our business and include less of the other things that drain us? Surely, as you run a business, they're gonna be things that are draining, that nobody likes to doing, like taxes, accounting. Nobody likes to do that. At least I don't, and people that are normal. I'm kidding.
But I, I have Dyscalculia, so math is really bad for me and [00:40:00] I just hate everything to do with numbers. So don't come and ask me for tips on that because I will direct you to somebody else. But. Those things are unnecessary to do business, right? I'm, I can't just remove those, but I can make space for the things that I feel most excited about and see how I can make that , include that and infuse that more into my business.
Allow for fun to happen. When was the last time you had fun in your business? It, you should not say last month. 2, 3, 4, 5. When I went on a retreat last year, oh my gosh. How are you not burned out if you're not having fun in your business? Business should be fun. You never know when it's your last day on Earth.
And if you lived all of the days of your life, the last days of your life, running this business for what? Because it didn't even add to you. It drained you, it took from you. That's not what we got into business for. We got into business to make an impact and also to feel fulfilled, also to live a life worth living, [00:41:00] right?
That's why God gave you this dream. God gave you this mission to do these things for your business to help people, but you're over here being a dictator to yourself and doing it with no fun and. Hustle, hustle, hustle and doing all these things because that's how other people do it. No. We align our business to us, to the things that we need, and that's how you can keep your sparkle alive.
Keep it fun, keep it exciting. Focus on you and caring for yourself, being the support system that you need, and not just letting your coping mechanisms run your business and run your life. That's how a lot of us have lived for a lot of our years. That's how I lived for a long time, even in my early stages of entrepreneurship.
And I very much crashed and burned, and I'm barely just now building back up. So I speak from experience here. It is so worth it to do this hard work, to get in the nitty gritty and do this work, and it pays off because now when I show up to my business, I don't [00:42:00] have this procrastination energy. I don't have this , um, avoidance energy, feeling drain.
I don't have that anymore because I've structured my business to align with what I need, because I care for myself, because I'm checking in with myself constantly and giving myself the things that I need. Right. So I hope that this episode was helpful for you. Give me a DM at a DH ADHD owned and let me know what you enjoyed.
What was the nugget that you got from this episode? What's the thing that you're implementing in your business? Okay? Don't just let however long this episode was, be a waste of your time. Do something with this, let it ignite action within you, and that would be the best gift that you can give yourself and that you could give me because I'm cheering for you.
I am your cheerleader from all the way over here, and I wanna see all of us, A DHD owned entrepreneurs win. We can 'cause other people have and we can figure it out. Okay, friends, that concludes our series. I see you at the episode.
Jessi Romero: [00:43:00] Yay. That is it. Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed that conversation and took something out of it. If you did, I would love it if you send me a quick DM on , because that's gonna let me know what. Really can help you and what I can make more content on.
And also it's gonna help your brain soak that in even deeper. So win-win. I love connecting with you guys and if you want more of these conversations or even have questions about what we talked about or anything A DHD entrepreneurship related, then you must join my free Facebook group. It's called A DHD, female Entrepreneurs Community, and we have loads of fun there.
So go ahead and check. That out. If you're looking for any of the links of things that were mentioned in today's episode, make sure to check the show notes. Don't forget, friends. You are not alone and you are not crazy.
