Standard business advice that’s awful for self-employed Autistics and AuDHDers, part 3:
“Put yourself out there.”
Why this is crap
Most of us who have spent our life feeling weird or out of place, but who didn’t get the label of autistic or ADHD or neurodivergent until adulthood, have a long history of being told to ‘be yourself.’ And then we did that, and then we were rejected, or had painful experiences, like getting ‘comments’ about who you are or the things you do, or the way you phrase things, or being too intense or too much.
And most of us have learned, to varying degrees, to hide, to rein it in, or to mask. The idea of ‘putting yourself out there’ can feel like painting a target on your own chest, inviting all that criticism right back in. And why would you do that? No reasonable person with that kind of history would be excited to be more visible in that way.
And honestly, it’s taken me years to work through enough of my complex relational trauma to be able to make my YouTube videos, and put my actual picture on my social media accounts, and do things like share the things that I’ve made with my real name on it, like this self-employment course for neurodivergents.
But you don’t have to work through all that trauma history before getting started. Although, at a personal level, I will say that it has been incredibly useful in so many areas of my life.
What’s the purpose?
But let’s look at what the purpose of this is: the purpose of visibility, in terms of business, is to get clients or customers. That is, people who will willingly pay you for the thing that you’re offering. Bottom line, that’s what it comes down to.
Like I talked about in my last video on bad business advice for neurodivergents, on networking, the formula is to get really clear on what your goal is, and then make a bee line for that.
So if the goal is for people to want to pay you for the thing that you’re offering, then what do they need in order to willingly (and I’ll add genuinely, not being manipulative for anything like that) trade their money for your thing?
Well, those people need to know that the thing you’re offering exists. And in order for them to find out that it exists, some information of some kind does need to be accessible in places where they would look for it. This is where we often get stuck on visibility. But making yourself more visible is only one strategy. It does not mean that you personally have to be all that visible.
What can you do?
There are arguments that can be made about how it helps to build trust if they can see you, and there is some value in that, especially in certain industries, if what you’re selling is essentially you (I’m going to circle back to this), but it’s not the only way to get sales.
What’s really needed is to have the relevant information available about your product or service, like what the product or service is, how it will solve a problem they have, and, to the extent that it is relevant, about your point of view, how you approach that problem, etc., with enough information for them to be able to decide whether that’s what they want or not.
To rephrase that: essentially, what needs to be more visible is the thing that you’re offering, not necessarily you. You can shine a light on the services that you offer. You can shine a light on how you do what you do. You can shine a light on your point of view, how you approach working in your particular industry that sets you apart from others.
Those are the things that need to be put out there. It doesn’t need to be you personally.
And even in those industries, or for those services, where you are much more the product, where it’s about your expertise, your lived experience, even in those cases I would still argue that you can largely get away with having a little bit of information about you, but keeping the focus on what it is that you can do for your client. What problem you can solve for them. That’s what they really want to know. And knowing about you gives them confidence that you’ll be able to deliver, but it still doesn’t have to be a spotlight on you.
I’ll be sharing several strategies for how to do this in my upcoming course that’ll cover this, and many other aspects on how to be self-employed as an Autistic or AuDHDer, and how to do so without burning yourself out. For info on the course you can go here, or to sign up, go to: autismchrysalis.com/alchemy. We start May 2nd.
Wishing you a neurowonderful day.