The Real Reason Your Business Feels Overwhelming | Autistic & ADHD Entrepreneurs

Starting your business…

Hi. This is Heather with Autism Chrysalis, and I want to talk to people who are neurodivergent and who are trying to make their life better by working for themselves, rather than for some large corporation or inflexible system, and are finding it overwhelming. So here’s a little bit of insight.

And by the way, I’m teaching a course about how to work for yourself without burning out as a neurodivergent person. I’ll share a little bit about that at the very end of this.

And they’re like, oh, what do I need on my website? I need an about page, and a home page, and some offerings. Ooh, I need an offering. Okay, I need something that I can offer. Like, what am I going to sell? Am I going to sell a package or a service? Do I need some photos? Websites need good photos.

So they either dive into taking photos and getting some good headshots of themselves, or they go looking for stock images for pretty background stuff. Then they put those on the website, and they’re like, oh, I need an email. People need to contact me. So they go look for an email provider — maybe their hosting company provides one, maybe they get Gmail. They figure that out, get it set up, and make some sort of professional-looking signature line.

And then it’s like, what else do I need? And they just kind of proceed like this. It’s one thing after another. Do I need some way for people to buy the thing? Like, I need scheduling software — if it’s a service, people need to be able to schedule appointments. Okay, so let’s go look for scheduling services, pick one out, set it up. And then you’re setting it up and they require you to enter your payment processor information. And you’re like, payment processor, what’s that? Stripe? What’s that? Square? PayPal? I know what PayPal is.

And this is how it goes. It’s just one thing after another. Whatever’s in front of you that needs to be solved right now gets the attention.

Figuring out marketing…

And then you’re like, yeah, but how do I let people know that this exists? Do I need to make flyers or business cards? Should I put flyers around town? Should I put flyers all over the internet? How do I do that? Oh, if I’m going to put flyers on the internet, do I need social media accounts for the business? Which platforms do I need to be on? I should probably go make some of those.

And you go get those set up, pick out handles that match the business name — hopefully — and then you go back to marketing. How do I make graphics to advertise a thing? Do I need Canva? Everyone’s using Canva. Okay, you get some graphics going, start advertising some kind of an offer, putting it on social media, but not really getting a response, because no one knows that it exists.

Do I need to pump up my social media accounts? Do I need to spend a ton of time on social media connecting with people and answering questions? So you go research online: how do I boost my social media following?

Okay, they say go into groups for the topic that you work in and answer people’s questions, establish yourself as an expert, and don’t offer anything — just do it to gain reputation and to be seen as an authority in your field, like you know what you’re talking about. And then later on, you can post some sort of an offer and it’ll go a little bit better.

Okay, so you spend tons of hours on forums or groups answering lots of questions and offering great info. And maybe you make a freebie — another suggestion you’ve come across — a free info page or a free thing they can download, to build trust as an expert. And you do that, and it gets out, and people like it and make good comments about it, but it doesn’t actually turn into clients.

I’ve seen many people making resentful-sounding posts on these groups, saying things like, “I’ve been giving and giving and giving, and no one’s signing up. You’re just takers.”

So you go look for another strategy. Someone else says try this, and you try that for a while. Someone else says try this. And you see other people who did that strategy and it worked for them, so you pour your energy into that.

And this is the cycle — whatever’s in front of you, whatever fire needs to be put out, whatever good idea pops up.

Getting your first client…

And then you get a client, and you’re like, ooh, I got a client! Someone’s actually interested. They’re going to pay me. And then you have to figure that out. How does that work? How do you keep track of information about the client? They ask you a completely reasonable question that any service provider would get, and you’re like, ooh, I need to invent an answer to that. I have no idea. Let me go figure that out and then come back and try to look professional, like I’ve answered that question a hundred times.

And maybe they’re satisfied. Maybe it goes over well. Maybe your improvised answer wasn’t what they were hoping for, and you get a little pushback, or a disappointed response, or a follow-up question — even a potentially quite neutral one — but it feels like a big threat, because now you’re about to lose this client. Your very first client. You’ve been working all this time trying to get a client, and now maybe you’ve got one. Okay, maybe I just need to accommodate them.

And you take away from that experience that you just need to be more flexible. You need to accommodate your clients, because really, you just need a few paying clients — or even one paying client would be great. So when you get someone who expresses interest, you’re like, alright, I need to bend over backwards. I need to be more available, more receptive, more of whatever it was.

And this is kind of how it goes. You get a few more prospects. Eventually some of them turn into clients. Things work out. You figure it out as you go. You build systems or procedures piecemeal — they work well enough, they solve the problems you’ve got at the moment. But what you’re doing is building often unnecessary procedures.

Making it work on your own

And here’s the thing: this is fairly normal, because you’ve never been taught what you actually need and what you don’t need. You’ve never been taught this in a systematic manner. You don’t have any kind of list of what to do, what you don’t need to do, why, in what order, and whether any given thing is even relevant for you.

And if you do find some sort of list like that on the internet — like how to start your own coaching practice, or massage therapy practice, or meditation practice, or how to start your own small business — it generally doesn’t really apply to your business. Even if you find ones that are more industry-specific, where it’s a known industry and someone’s created a list, that’s probably going to be more helpful. But I’ll bet you anything that those lists, even the helpful ones, aren’t really going to set you up with the systems for how to run your business.

They’re just a list of things that you need — not procedures, not tying things together, how this influences that and how that influences this other thing.

You’re going off and making it up, more or less trying to replicate what you’ve seen in other businesses, because that’s your only model — the businesses you’ve worked for, or the businesses you’ve been around, the business advice you find on the internet.

And it’s not necessarily that any of that is bad business advice, but it’s not built for a neurodivergent brain, or a body with fluctuating energy capacity, or chronic health needs, or different goals — when your goals aren’t to scale as big as possible, or to build a multi-million dollar business, or to make $100k within six months. When you just want a little side business, or something that might support you eventually, or a side business that will work while you keep your main job. It takes different structures to get there.

Getting stuck in your cycle

And this is kind of how business proceeds, because it’s hard to get out of this cycle once you’re in it. Once you’re doing this and you start getting a few clients, that keeps you busy and you don’t have time to rework everything, to set up those procedures.

And it probably doesn’t even occur to you to do that. There might be some twinge inside that feels like, oh, this probably could go better, or there’s probably a better way to do this, or if I just had some time to think this through I could probably make it easier. But you’re too busy to take the time to take the load off.

And then you’re in it, just trying to keep your head above water, trying to keep money coming in, trying to keep clients happy, trying to keep everything working and running. And it is running — sort of — but it’s just on a different treadmill than the one you got off of from corporate life. Instead of being on the rat race, you’re on the hamster wheel.

And then you come across someone else who’s doing some cool idea for marketing their services, or connecting with other service providers, or making a partnership. And you’re like, ooh, let’s make a podcast, or interview other experts, or network using this particular strategy, or this thing or that thing. And you just pop from one good idea to the next, investing a whole bunch of time and energy into it, and it pays off somewhat, to some extent — you get a little bit from it, but not as much as you were hoping.

So you move on. Then you see some other thing, or come up with some other good idea, or a new offer, or a new lead magnet, or a new service, or whatever, and you just move on to the next thing.

And I’ll admit, I’ve fallen into that trap more often than I’d care to admit, especially with my previous businesses. So I know what this is like.

When you’ve got all these different things you’re juggling, it’s just so much. And then something happens in your life, or you get a flood of six new clients at once — and that sounds great, like, ooh, six clients! But you forget how much work the onboarding will take, and all of a sudden your month is just packed with everything it takes to onboard all six clients at once. Or you decide to start up a podcast, and then your month is packed with: I need to figure out everything there is about podcasting. And you deep dive into that. Or something happens in your life and someone needs you for a while, and you need to take some time off, and then you get behind.

Of course you’re constantly harried. Of course you’re constantly on the verge of exhausted, or stressed, or on the verge of collapse. Because you never stepped back. You never got intentional about building the systems that would support you.

That’s not intended to be a criticism — simply a description of what’s happening. And I’m not immune to this. I’ve done this with multiple businesses.

Making a system that works

But each business I’ve run, that startup phase got smoother and faster, because I have that list in my head. And at one point I even made a physical list of exactly what I need to do in what order, so I didn’t have to try and come up with it. So this last time, that startup phase was really easy. By the way, I’m going to be sharing that list in my Alchemy course.

And I’m far less likely now to just go from ooh, good idea to ooh, good idea. But even I will still fall into that trap too sometimes. And yet, I have gotten a whole lot better at saying no to about three quarters of those new “good ideas”, because my systems prevent it. My systems block me. My systems make me stop and question: is this going to fit into the model that I have? What will it cost me to do that? What will it really take from me? What else will I have to say no to in order to do this? Do I already have something that’s working and I don’t need to do that?

And so in my current business, I’ve been really intentional about building those systems from the very beginning. And at several points I’ve taken a step back, recalibrated, and fixed some things I saw going a little bit haywire before they got too far off. And that has made a huge difference for me.

What I want to share in AuDHD Alchemy is how to be intentional from the beginning — or from wherever you are — and how to step back and recalibrate before things go too far off. How to build systems that prevent that desperation cycle instead of just reacting to whatever’s in front of you.

AuDHD Alchemy is about how to work for yourself without burning out as a neurodivergent person. We start May 2. There’s a link in the description, or go to autismchrysalis.com/alchemy. Hope to see you there.