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ADHD Experts Podcast
540- The Neurodivergent Female Entrepreneur: How to Build a Business That Works for Your ADHD Brain
00:51:36
Diann Wingert discusses why people with ADHD and autism make good entrepreneurs (risk tolerance, creativity, and more), the unique challenges neurodivergent female business owners face—and how to harness your strengths to overcome these challenges....
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- [00:00]
Rubrik AI Agent Announcer
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- [00:33]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Hello everyone, my name is welcome to the Adhesive Deficit Disorder bringing you to today's ADHD Expert Presentation titled the Neurodivergent Female Entrepreneur how to Build a Business that works for your ADHD Brain. Leading today's presentation is Diane winger. After a 20 year career as a psychotherapist and serial entrepreneur, Diane pivoted into coaching neurodivergent entrepreneurs. She helps her clients build businesses that balance passion, purpose and profit. Diane is also the host of the top rated ADHD ish podcast. You can learn more about Diane by visiting www.dianewingercoaching.com. in today's webinar we will discuss entrepreneurship from the lens of neurodivergent women. We'll learn about the traits that make people with ADHD and autism great entrepreneurs and about the unique challenges facing neurodivergent business owners. We will also learn how to determine if entrepreneurship is the right path and how to set ourselves up for for success. Finally, the sponsor for today's webinar is Inflow. Does running your business feel like a constant game of catch up? Do ideas get lost in the chaos of never ending to do lists? We've been there. Inflow knows that building a business as a neurodivergent entrepreneur comes with unique challenges but also unique strengths. That's why Inflow developed a program tailored to help you harness your creativity and manage the overwhelm. Using proven evidence based strategies, Inflow helps you build systems that actually work with your brain instead of against it. Click the link on your screen to get your ADHD traits score and kick off your Inflow journey attitude. Thanks our sponsors for supporting our webinars. Sponsorship has no influence on speaker selection or webinar content. Okay, without any further ado, I'm so pleased to welcome Diane Wingert. Diane, thank you so much for joining us today and for leading this discussion.
- [02:53]
Diane Wingert
This is my favorite topic, so I've been looking forward to this with so much excitement. I'm going to take it away by saying hello bosses. That's what I call all of my clients, regardless of what stage of entrepreneurship they're at. Because I think women in particular can have a difficult time identifying themselves as a boss. And just remind all the bosses here that our goals for the talk are to recognize the unique strengths that neurodivergent women bring to entrepreneurship and how to make the most of them. Clarify the challenges we have that make it more difficult for us to succeed as entrepreneurs and how to address them. And for those of you that have not yet started your entrepreneurial journey, how to help you determine whether this is the right path for your success? Questions we will be answering are what is the importance of gender when it comes to being an entrepreneur? Which traits give us an unfair advantage and which make entrepreneurship harder? What are the common mistakes that neurodivergent female entrepreneurs make and how can we avoid them? What are strategies for mastering your entrepreneurial adhd? And how to recognize what kind of supports you need and when? Now, because setting boundaries and calibrating expectations are two of my core principles and practices, I'm going to give you a quick reminder of what I will not be talking about today. For example, what kind of businesses are best for neurodivergent women? I couldn't possibly answer that. Or what business models or industries to recommend any legal, financial or technical information or advice. What marketing strategies work best? Or business coaching or consulting on specific struggles or situations. Because as always, the answer will begin with it depends because each of us is unique and so are our businesses. Now I see because Annie has already taken roll call, I'm going to go ahead and slip through this one. But I'm kind of curious. How many people here are adhd? And how many of you identify as being on the autism spectrum or both autistic and adhd? I'd also like to know if you are already an entrepreneur. So if you are, type the word entrepreneur in the chat and if you have yet to start, type the word launch. And I appreciate knowing what the makeup is so I can be ready for all of your questions wherever you are in your journey. You are amazing because a very small percentage of people actually become entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, quite a few of them are neurodivergent. Now, why do I care so much about this topic? And why should you even care what I have to say about it? Well, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD in 2016, probably the last one to know. I am the parent of three adult children who all have ADHD diagnosed at different ages. My only daughter diagnosed late. I did my master's thesis on whether ADHD persists into adulthood years before it was eventually added to the adult section of the dsm and I've diagnosed hundreds of clients with ADHD as a psychotherapist while simultaneously running several businesses. In 2015, however, I became obsessed with the ADHD entrepreneur connection and as of 2017 I shifted to focusing exclusively on coaching neurodivergent entrepreneurs to be more successful in their businesses. So if you haven't started yet and you are still in a job, here are some signs that entrepreneurship may be for you. Here are some of the thoughts you may be thinking. For example, you may always be thinking of how things could be done better, even if you're not allowed to implement them. You may think you know more than your boss, and I'm guessing you probably do. You are often wanting to do things your own way, thinking that other people move and think too slowly. There are too many meetings, too many rules. You need more flexibility and more freedom, and the work culture just isn't aligned with what's important to you. Well, congratulations, you are entrepreneurial. In fact, there are many people who are what I would call intrapreneurs. They are still working inside someone else's business, but they're doing so in an entrepreneurial way. And that may be you. Right now. You are in very good company as a neurodivergent who is entrepreneurial whether you have a business or not. There are a variety of studies that confirm somewhere between a third and two thirds of all entrepreneurs are neurodivergent. And if you would like to know some names of some very prominent and highly successful women entrepreneurs, I have different avatars that I use for them and I'm going to share a couple of them with you now. Many of you probably know of Barbara Corcoran, my personal favorite shark. I refer to her as the nothing to Lose entrepreneur because everyone was betting against her and has she had the last laugh. There's also Mel Robbins, who was recently diagnosed and I think of her as the thought leader entrepreneur, followed by Chalene Johnson, who has brought her entire family into her business and was smart enough to marry someone who is very different in his skills. And then we have two younger entrepreneurs, Linda Yee and Kada Burke Williams, who are ambitious outliers and independent creatives. So there are many, many paths to successful entrepreneurship and these women are just a few examples. So why do we do it? Why do so many neurodivergent women start their own business? Well, it all comes down to our brain chemistry. Brain Chemistry 101. If you haven't heard about these two chemicals, you need to know them intimately. We've got Serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin is the feel good neurotransmitter. And when we're doing something that feels good, we get a lot of serotonin. It improves our mood and our focus. Now if we keep doing that thing, we get dopamine. So serotonin makes us feel good and dopamine rewards us for continuing to do it. So it kind of makes sense. When we're doing things that feel good, we want to keep doing them and it's why we become entrepreneurs. Yes, we want more freedom and flexibility. Yes, we want to do things our way, but ultimately we get more dopamine when we're doing what we want to be doing. Here's the problem though. We don't have a deficit of attention. I really think and hope maybe sometime in my lifetime they're going to change the name of adhd. We have a dopamine deficiency or dopamine regulation problem. It's not that we can't pay attention. We pay plenty of attention. When something is innately interesting to us. We have a persistence problem because even when we really enjoy what we're doing, we get distracted and, and we have impulses. We have an interest based brain, I refer to it as boredom is a life threatening condition. So if you are an entrepreneur and you aim to be successful, managing boredom and staying consistent are the challenges to overcome and the ways to succeed. And by the way, so many of us waste so many years looking for what I call magic pills. It may be a literal pill, like which pill should we take? There isn't one magic pill that works for everybody. There's no magic planner, no magic project management system, no magic business model. There's no one thing that's guaranteed to win and guaranteed to work for everyone that has adhd. And we can waste a ton of time trying to find it. However, there are a few things that help pretty much everyone I've ever met or worked with with adhd. Like the idea parking lot. That just refers to when you have an idea, you want to pursue it, you want to chase it, you want the dopamine, but it's going to disrupt what you're already focusing on. You put it in the idea parking lot, go back to it later. Many of us find tremendous success batching our work, blocking time and using theme days so that we're not always task switching. Environmental engineering simply means crafting our work environment, whether that is home or somewhere else, to be conducive to creativity and focus. Accountability is probably the biggest thing that most of us need. We just don't like admitting it and outsourcing or delegating the things that we don't enjoy because we're going to have a hell of a time being consistent doing them. These are the three foundations Regardless of where you are in business and where your ADHD symptoms land, the three things that help all of us be more successful are support, community, and accountability, especially from other neurodivergent female entrepreneurs. I cannot emphasize this enough. Too many of us are trying to succeed on our own and it's so much harder and takes so much longer that way. All of us need coping tools to deal with overwhelm and occasional emotional dysregulation, whether that's meditation, journaling, affirmations, yoga. We all need something in that toolkit. And we also need structure, systems and ways to capture our ideas so that we're not constantly switching our focus from one thing to the next. Even though I say everything depends on your situation, these are the universals that we all need now. It also kind of depends on what your subtype is, what your specific challenges are going to be. If you are hyperactive and impulsive, you're going to need help slowing your role so that you're not acting on every single impulse. If you're inattentive distractible, your challenges in entrepreneurship are going to be taking action before you feel ready and dealing with anxiety, distractibility and rejection sensitivity. So we further determine, you know, different types of ADHD are going to have different influences on your entrepreneurship. Now I'm curious to know how many of you think that one subtype is more prominent in entrepreneurship than others? Put your answer in the chat. Which of these you think it is? I'll get the information later from our moderators, but to keep things moving because we had a delay, I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag and tell you it's the combined type. The reason for this is that in order to move forward, we have to take action. Combined type ADHD are more likely to take action. It also means they've had more experience with failure because they're more likely to take action. An experience with failure is an advantage because when we're too afraid of failing, we take no action and we don't move forward. However, I'm imagining plenty of people attending this webinar and who will be listening on the replay are inattentive distractible. Because more women fall into this category, you will still be able to succeed as an entrepreneur even though you're not combined type, your challenge will be managing procrastination, perfectionism, rejection, sensitivity, and this internal sense of feeling that we need to feel ready in order to take action. Actually, we don't and it slows us down.
- [15:09]
Rubrik AI Agent Announcer
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com I want to draw.
- [15:41]
Diane Wingert
Your attention to one of the episodes of ADHDISH that I think will be beneficial for everyone here. It's episode 210. I interviewed Johan Viclund. He's a professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University and he had been a professor studying entrepreneurship for decades before he was diagnosed with adhd. And now he focuses on the intersection of ADHD and entrepreneurship with a specific interest in women. So I'm keeping close tabs on his research, which I hope will be published for all of us soon. Now, many people like to say that ADHD is the entrepreneur's superpower. I think that is dismissive of the fact that many of us really struggle with these traits. But it's undeniable that some ADHD traits, if you have them, are definite entrepreneurial assets and advantages. Preference for Action I've already mentioned curiosity which drives many of us to innovate when we're able to see business as an adventure instead of something that we are either going to fail or succeed at. Our out of the box thinking, our willingness to try things out on a hunch, follow our intuition, work well under pressure, and a higher than average risk tolerance. Those are all excellent traits for someone who wants to be entrepreneurial. Now there's the other side of the equation. Some of our traits cause us to struggle. The one I see more often with women than any of the others is rejection sensitivity and emotional dysregulation. I have a number of podcast episodes talking about this on ADHD ish and I've been interviewed many times on the topic. So you can just google Diane Wingert Rejection Sensitivity and find all of that information. When we are impatient and impulsive or lack follow through that is absolutely going to slow us down. When we get overwhelmed by too much information, we start signing up for everything, reading everything, listening to everything, and we think we need to do all that before we can take action. That will put us on the struggle bus and we won't move forward. We can also wear other people out with our intensity and our energy. For me personally, I had to go through several virtual assistants before I found ones who didn't find me, well, frankly, too intense and quite annoying. So building a business that works for your ADHD brain depends on, number one, really understanding your ADHD traits and practicing radical self acceptance of them, understanding which ones you can work with and which ones you really need help and support for. When we're doing what interests us, we have fewer symptoms, we're less distractible, we're less impulsive, we're less hyperactive, we procrastinate less. When we are able to craft and create conditions that support us, we're less symptomatic. And most importantly, and this is what I focus on with my clients, crafting the business that matches our strengths and then delegating, outsourcing, or limiting the things that we need to do that really are not in our zone of genius. We're going to be less symptomatic when we do that as well. Now, in my experience of coaching predominantly female entrepreneurs for the last seven years, the most common mistakes that I see and that I try to help them avoid, unless they made them before we met, are these. Starting without a Plan we are passionate people and most women who are ADHD or autistic and start a business do so based on passion and a sense of purpose. They often do so without a plan, not even a basic one. And they do so without paying attention to the need for profit. We need to balance those three things. Many of us have grossly unrealistic expectations about how long long things will take. Like people finding us and growing an audience and generating leads and making money making a profit. We think it's going to happen instantaneously and that can set us up for failure. We will also spend money and time on things that don't move the needle, like expensive group programs and courses and expensive logos and things that really don't matter in the big scale of things. But I'd also say the two biggest things are trying to do everything on our own. It really slows you down and when we shift our focus too often so we are not consistent at any of the things that matter. It comes down to managing your entrepreneurial adhd, which is this formula. Leverage your strengths, minimize your struggles. That may seem really obvious, but there are things that we can do that really, really matter. For one, if you are always saying yes to everything, yes to every new idea you have, yes to every opportunity to collaborate with other people. Yes to every social media platform you need to install a pause button and create an algorithm for what you are willing to say yes to and putting everything else on the maybe or the no pile. And this, this takes a little bit of doing. I practice and teach radical self acceptance, which means we will no longer hate ourselves, blame ourselves, shame ourselves for being who we are. When we accept how we are, we can manage what's manageable and get help with the rest of I refer to our bandwidth or our capacity, which varies widely from person to person and also at different stages and ages of our life. We craft our personal fly zone so that we can set realistic expectations and not over commit or take on too much. We need to manage our extremes of overthinking and impulsivity and I think about this as like decision support. Things we say yes to are in alignment with our values and in alignment with the things that naturally stimulate and reward us. Structure is a must. Most of us have a love hate relationship with it, but it's the first thing people notice when they quit their job and say I'm going to start my own business, especially if they're working from home. The lack of structure is a huge hindrance, so we have to create structures to get us to show up for our business and ourself. I've already referred to the decision matrix and the need for systems, and I also personally find that most of the women that I work with really benefit from what I call transition rituals. Morning ritual, evening ritual, yes, but also starting your work day, stopping, and also switching gears from one kind of task to another, because those are the times that we're most likely to give in to procrastination and distractibility. I hope that this introduction has been helpful and you can get a lot more information from me for free by listening to the ADHD Ish podcast. Or you can go to my website with the address listed above and get your copy of Mastering youg Entrepreneurial adhd, which has a lot more practical applications and strategies than what I had time to talk about today.
- [23:38]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Wonderful, Diane. Thank you so much for that introduction. We have a very engaged audience here, so before I get to their questions, I would like to quickly thank Inflow once more for sponsoring today's webinars, and I will return to the survey results. I know not everyone had a chance to answer the survey at the outset, but I think it's a pretty representative sample. We do have about 45% of our listeners today are current entrepreneurs, and then it's really a split between Those who are just exploring the idea and those who are actively thinking about and wanting to pursue entrepreneurship. And then you asked. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to know that because I think it's important for the Q and A to follow that. We did have quite a high prevalence of listeners who identify as both ADHD and having autism. I'm not surprised necessarily, but it does add a nuance to everything. So I wanted to share that. It's hard to quantify exactly how many because not everyone shared, but it looks like higher than, you know, the standard population.
- [25:05]
Diane Wingert
That's fascinating because I realize so many, well, the vast majority of women, whether they're entrepreneurs or not, are late diagnosed. I was very late even though I studied ADHD and I have the kids who are all adhd. The awareness came late to me because I am what others would say is high functioning. But I think that's more typical for women. And I also think that women who are late to the ADHD party oftentimes realize, you know what, this explains a lot, but it doesn't explain everything. So they keep following their curiosity and they find their way into self identifying as having autistic tendencies as well. So I do think this is something that I've seen and heard a lot and have been following that a lot of us actually have both, which is fascinating.
- [25:56]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Yes, yes it is. And so I wanted to dive into. We had asked about the challenges that people face that they feel most impair their careers and their entrepreneurial ventures. And number one was procrastination. And it seems to me like the roots of procrastination could be varied. And I wanted to touch on a few of them that came up in the comments here. One was basically avoidance due to overwhelm. And as business owners and leaders, the stream of emails and questions seems never ending. Can you offer advice for people to cut through the noise, to prioritize, to be good communicators without succumbing to the very understandable overwhelm?
- [26:55]
Diane Wingert
This is such a great question. And I'm not at all surprised that procrastination is the thing that people refer to the most and that it is triggered by overwhelm. Let's be honest, when we start a business, we don't really have the money to get a lot of help. Oftentimes we are bootstrapping it, we are shoestringing it, and we are just trying to figure everything out on our own. And when you begin to look at all the different business models, all the different ways to market your business, all the different social media platforms and all the people giving us advice saying, you've got to have an email list, you've got to have a course, you've got to write a book, you've got to do speaking, you need to have a podcast. It becomes completely overwhelming because they all seem viable, but it's absolutely impossible. And I will tell you from my own business experience, I listened to that advice. I thought I needed to be everywhere and do everything. So I set out trying to attract and serve clients, be on multiple social media platforms, grow an email list, write a book, have a course, launch a podcast, and of course, the inevitable result is burnout. And also, I didn't even want to do this anymore. I wanted to find the next job I could get myself into as quickly as possible. What I've learned over time and what I now encourage my private clients to do, is I created an algorithm around what our values are and what our unique ADHD strengths are so that we can really stay in our lane. I think the biggest cause of overwhelm related procrastination is that we don't think we can sustain things. And when you think about it like, why would I want to start this task, whether it's blogging, writing emails, you know, starting a YouTube channel, creating a course, why would I want to start something that I don't think I can be consistent with? Because I have a history of not being consistent with things, right? So that just makes sense why we wouldn't do that. One of the first things I encourage people to do is decide to only check your email twice a day. I know this is controversial and I know there are many people who think that's impossible, I can't do that. But when I've been able to convince someone to try it as an experiment and say, check your email in two discrete periods during the day, late morning and middle of the afternoon, and then prioritize getting your most important work done before those times. They have found that they were able to create a lot more consistency and get a lot further. Because you know what email is. Email is other people's priorities. Email is other people's priorities, wanting to hijack you from yours. So when you can limit the time that you spend in email, you can get more of your most important work done. The other thing about procrastination is most of the time we don't have any accountability around the things that we're trying to do. So when it feels hard, or when we feel some self doubt, or when our imposter syndrome kicks in or when we think, oh my gosh, if I finish this thing then I'm going have to publish it and what if I get clap back? What if people don't like it? What if they reject me? So then we don't do that thing either. That's why I think getting a support network of at least one other neurodivergent female entrepreneur in your camp so that you can create an accountability partnership is absolutely crucial to addressing the procrastination. I just had a conversation with someone about this this morning. She kept saying I'm not showing up for my business, I'm not showing up for my business, I'm not showing up for my business. I said okay, the next time we're going to talk, I would like you to have done these three things. Will you agree to that? Put them on your calendar, check in with me if you need to. That was what she needed because otherwise she would just keep kicking the can down the road because nobody was paying attention. I think this is the number one challenge for solopreneurs in particular is that we don't have the structure and we don't have the accountability to get us to overcome the perfectionism and the procrastination and the self doubt. So that would be the one thing I would say everybody needs in whatever format you get it. If you don't know anyone that can provide that accountability and you can provide it to them, then go to one of the virtual co working platforms. There are many of them I happen to partner with focused space but just signing into one of those virtual coworking sessions and saying this is what I'm going to do during this session. The total stranger on the other side of the screen is your accountability partner and it actually works.
- [31:50]
Webinar Host / Moderator
I love that. I will say Attitude has a Facebook group for adults with adhd. We will go ahead and start a thread in there right after this webinar inviting current and future women entrepreneurs to join and you can meet each other and perhaps connect in that way. So if you're looking for a neurodivergent entrepreneurial community specifically we can help to facilitate that in some small way. And if anyone has a community that they have found and they would like to share that with this group, please put it in the Q and A and I will, I will share more information about that. I did want to follow up Diane, because you were just talking about the importance of support and you mentioned earlier about a virtual assistant and it taking some time and effort to find a good fit. Can you offer Some advice for discerning who would be a good fit as an accountability partner or a virtual assistant. Someone to help with that. With that accountability that you were talking about?
- [33:04]
Diane Wingert
Yes, absolutely. Okay. A couple different thoughts about that. I would, I would consider those two different. Two different needs, two different solutions, two different roles. An accountability partner would be someone who is at the same stage of business, same stage of entrepreneurship, not necessarily the same type of business as you are or a little bit further ahead, but you need to be able to kind of upgrade those relationships from time to time. Because I think what I see happening a lot is when a lot of beginners hang out together, they all remain beginners for far too long. So I think sometimes we need to recognize, okay, this is where I am and I need to kind of partner with other people who are at about the same stage. But if those people are not moving forward, you will not move forward. Because it's just we stay where we feel comfortable. So it depends on how ambitious you are. It depends on your timeline. If you have all the time in the world to figure things out, by all means, take your time. But a lot of people are starting their business as a side hustle. So they've already got a full time job and maybe they have a family and other responsibilities and they're trying to start something in their so called spare time. And if you're a woman, you have none of that anyway. So I think it's really important that we choose the right accountability partners who are actually action takers, especially if taking action may be a little bit challenging for us. It might be a lot of responsibility if it's just one other person. And sometimes, you know, resentment can grow out of those situations. So I think it's better. Like you said, the Facebook group I wish I could join. My Facebook and Instagram accounts got hacked in November, so I no longer have access to them. Otherwise I would be happy to participate in that group. But I think one other person that might be might be limiting, but a small group or even a bigger group. But I think the importance is try to align yourself with an accountability partner who's an action taker. Because if they aren't, you won't. That's really crucial. As far as a VA goes. I think a VA is something that many people really, really need and they hold off on hiring for far too long, including me. And then I made a series of bad hires, which then reinforced my idea that I don't want to go that way. I finally figured out what I needed and I've had virtual assistants supporting me in my business for the last. Going on four years, the same two people. What I realized for me, and I think this will be helpful for many of the listeners, is that initially I thought it would be good for me to have a virtual assistant who was also neurodivergent because they would naturally understand me and they could learn a lot from me, and they would probably be, you know, really enjoy working for someone that they could learn from. Well, you know, as it turns out, we have the same struggles and the same limitations. So what ended up happening? This is kind of amusing. Every time I got a new idea, I would tell this to my assistant. She would get wildly excited about it. We would both want to drop everything we were already working on and jump on this new thing, which was very exciting for both of us. But I realized within a few months that, like, wait a minute, this is not a good thing, because she's indulging this very tendency that I have that is making me start and stop and start and stop. So I realized that was not actually the ideal person for me. So I was able to put her in a different role. The person that now manages me as my VA is neurotypical. She's very organized. She's very detail oriented. She catches mistakes that I make. She catches things that I say I'm going to do and then I forget. She tells me when I'm overwhelming my schedule or over committing to things. And normally you wouldn't have that kind of relationship with your VA as a business owner. But as I said, I made several mistakes in hiring people that maybe meant to be helpful, but it really wasn't helping me. And I finally got really honest with myself and said, these are the things I'm really good at and I don't need help with. These are the things I'm going to need help with for the rest of my life. And I told her, this is how I need you to manage me. This is how I need you to help me. And because I'm an ideator and I'm constantly getting new ideas, and I constantly want to act on those new ideas, at first I thought, just shut me down. When I have a new idea and I try to pitch it, I try to get you involved, just tell me, no, we don't have room for this. And then I realized I was getting mad at her for doing what I told her to do. And I said, okay, tell you what, let's try something else. When I get a new idea, let me share it with you. If It's a good one. Be excited. If it's not, tell me, tell me it's not a good one. Let me have that moment of dopamine and excitement and then ask me, where does this fit in our current priorities? Diane that's going to make me come back to earth. I'm going to look at my schedule, I'm going to look at my commitments, and then I'm going to say, oh, yeah, we really don't have time for this right now, do we? She'll say, I don't see where we would, but I'm going to put it on the schedule for reconsideration next quarter. And then I say, excellent idea, and we move on. That may sound like strange, but I think for people listening who get a lot of ideas and who, once they get the new idea, they shift their focus, you know how frustrating it is that you keep starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. And also it feels really lousy that you have all these wonderful ideas that never make it to the finish line. So working with an assistant who, whether they're neurodivergent or neurotypical, you empower them by sharing with them what your struggles are and where you need help. It was a point at first, I was kind of ashamed and I thought, well, that's what she's here for. And I'm constantly praising her and even publicly for how good she is at keeping me focused and on task because that's where she shines. She could never do what I do, I could never do what she does. So we need each other. And that's what I needed to be successful working for myself.
- [39:51]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Very helpful. A quick follow up question is just do you have any recommendations for where someone could start the search for a virtual assistant?
- [40:03]
Diane Wingert
Well, I think there are many, many places to look. But for me personally, I work with, my team is in the Philippines. I'm in the western United States. My team is in the Philippines. And I have recommended this for some of my clients. I don't remember the name of the website. There's a website where you can find Filipino VAs in particular. I can get that to you later and you can share it with people. But the reason why I chose this route was because I was at a point in my business where I had wasted a lot of money on things that didn't move the needle and I needed to have a more affordable solution than hiring someone in the US that would have cost me $35 to $50 an hour. Being able to hire someone outside of the US specifically in the Philippines, where being a VA is a very popular choice and there are many, many people who choose to do this and are very good at it. You can hire someone in the range of 10 to $15 an hour. They are excellent at their work. And even for someone just starting out, you can hire someone for just a few hours a week to help you. If you don't want to do the search to find someone on your own, you can also partner with an agency, one I know of, I have not worked with personally, but they have outstanding reviews and their name is Ripple. And this is an agency in the Philippines where they assign, you hire the agency and they choose the VA for you. You can have just a few hours a week and if you have someone for a lot of hours a week, in a month, you can have a dedicated va. But if that person quits or gets sick or you know, decides to do something else, the agency replaces them. So you don't have to start over from scratch. And I think for a lot of people that might be a good choice because most of us don't have any experience hiring help. And when you partner with an agency like Ripple, they have already trained that person and they've, they also have a system where they find out exactly what kind of help you need. Like some people only want to outsource their social media, other people actually have their VA writing content for them, editing videos. One of my VAs wanted to learn how to edit my podcast and she was self taught. She initially did my, my social media marketing but she was really interested in learning how to edit podcasts. So she, she has been editing the podcast for the last couple of years and I think she does an outstanding job. So I think that that would be my suggestion if you're on a shoestring, shoestring budget or just getting started. But one thing I must say, there is a significant time difference if you are in the US and so for some people, if you are doing your business after hours, if you're Talking about a 12 to 15 hour time difference depending on where you are, that might be a deal breaker. So in that case you'd need to go a different route. But this is the route that I've gone and it's been very good for me.
- [43:18]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Wonderful, thank you. And the community members here did suggest some other resources both in terms of community support and in terms of virtual assistant networks and agencies. So we will gather all of those from the comments and share them when we distribute the replay and the slides for this Webinar. So if you're listening live, stay tuned. That'll come to you in a few hours. Now, all of this talk of virtual assistants, of course, brings up another sore spot for many, which is delegation.
- [43:58]
Diane Wingert
Yep.
- [43:59]
Webinar Host / Moderator
A lot of people reporting for various reasons. Some say they. They struggle with delegation because they feel that no one else shares their passion and vision. And others cite. You know, I think it goes back to what you were saying about imposter syndrome, feeling that you really need to do everything and do it perfectly. So I wonder if you can share any strategies that you have used personally or with your clients in helping them kind of develop that muscle of delegation.
- [44:32]
Diane Wingert
This is a complex question and a complex subject because you're right, some of us have trouble delegating because we don't yet feel fully confident to have other people's eyes and ears on our work. And so it can be kind of like this little cluster of imposter syndrome, perfectionism, self doubt, rejection, sensitivity, all wrapped up in this little ball. And sometimes we don't even realize that it's not that we're not willing to delegate, it's that we're not actually willing for other people to see our stuff. So sometimes where this is going to crop up is I remember a woman once hired me for a single hour, hour just to get her to push publish on her website. Because she had created a beautiful website, she had everything, but she had not been able to publish it. And what we broke down was that she was absolutely terrified that people would see it and reject it. And so I. She did publish the website. They didn't reject it. She has a very successful business now. But I think overcoming fear, uncertainty, and doubt are things that we kind of all have to do and we all have to get better at doing. I would recommend for people who are not already familiar with the book the Big Leap and the concept of upper limit issues. If you haven't read this, it's one of my most recommended. I've got podcast episodes and blog posts talking about this where it helps us kind of understand exactly what it is that's holding us back. And you're right. When it comes to delegating, sometimes it's not imposter syndrome. Sometimes it's that we believe that the way we see things and the way we do things cannot be duplicated by another person. And I would say this, that's probably true. And not every aspect of your business requires you being able to. And sometimes we need help. Sometimes we need to work with a coach or a consultant. Or our accountability partner to say, obviously my capacity doesn't allow me to do absolutely everything. So what are the things in my business that I must do and what am I willing to let someone else experiment with? You're not going to get very far out of the starting gate if you decide to do a bunch of things and not get help. But learning how to delegate, yes, it does come down to taking risks, communicating, and being willing to cut loose when you've made a wrong hire. I think sometimes we don't want to delegate because we've hired someone, realized they weren't the right person, and then didn't end the relationship. We just kept struggling. I actually worked with a business owner recently who has people on her team with assigned tasks that she then fixes after they do them. And luckily I was able to get her to stop doing that because she had so much resentment and it was costing her a lot. So this is a bigger issue that probably needs a bigger answer. And maybe you should just have me come back and do a more in depth on. On delegation and working with the team. I would be happy to do that.
- [48:14]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Oh, my gosh. I think that's a fabulous idea. Because as you're speaking here, people are introducing all sorts of other reasons why delegation is tough. And one that really hits home with me is that forget about all the executive function required to figure out the tasks that need to be done and to set up parameters and instructions. It's delivering criticism, delivering that feedback.
- [48:42]
Diane Wingert
Yes. This is a whole. This is really. I mean, I would love to come back and talk about this because many people are solopreneurs, not because that's their choice, but because the idea of having a team and managing other people is absolutely terrifying to them, even though that would really be the ideal business model. And I think there's so many reasons for this, including the fact that. And it's why I refer to my clients as bosses. When I start each of my zoom calls with my clients, I say, hey, boss, because I think we need to overcome the feminine conditioning that prevents us from stepping into roles as leaders and as authority figures. And when you combine that with ADHD or autistic traits, where we are worried about offending other people, it becomes. It can become an insurmountable obstacle. But I think there are ways to do it that are ADHD friendly. But we would need to make that a whole other conversation.
- [49:44]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Right. I really appreciate, and I know I'm over here nodding, I imagine everyone else is as well, that you add what you mentioned earlier. The common experience of rejection, sensitive dysphoria on top of this, and it can be crippling and can stop you from doing all the things you just said were really essential. Is leaning into your strengths and delegating everything else.
- [50:09]
Diane Wingert
Absolutely.
- [50:11]
Webinar Host / Moderator
Yes, yes. It's been such a pleasure. I feel like I will just say for those of you listening, our current tally is 703 Comments during today's webinar. You are a very engaged audience with wonderful questions and experiences. Many of you seem like you are bursting with really compelling ideas and I hope that today's webinar gave you the confidence to take a step forward. Diane, this was incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for leading today's conversation.
- [50:50]
Diane Wingert
Sincerely, my pleasure.
- [50:53]
Webinar Host / Moderator
And thank you to everyone who joined us. I will remind you, yes, a lot of you have asked if we'll be sharing the resources. We will indeed. You will receive the slides, the replay, as well as the resources that were suggested during the live event in a few hours after we wrap up. And you also can access this presentation in our podcast and that is the ADHD Experts Podcast. You can find it in all of your streaming platforms. This will be episode number five.
- [51:28]
Diane Wingert
When.
- [51:28]
Webinar Host / Moderator
It comes out and we hope you will join us for more free Attitude webinars. The next one that we have next week is with Dr. Sandra Kui on sleep disorders and how they affect every aspect of life with adhd. It's going to be really compelling. To make sure you don't miss any of our upcoming webinars or articles or research updates or this winter issue which Diane contributed to, just Sign up@attitudemag.com newsletters and you will get all of that information and more. So one more time. Diane, thank you so much and thank you to our audience. We wish you all luck in your ventures and we will definitely talk about a follow up on delegation.
- [52:16]
Diane Wingert
For more Attitude Podcast and information on living well with attention deficit, visit attitudemag.com that's a D D I T U.
- [52:26]
Webinar Host / Moderator
D e m a g.com.
- [52:36]
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