The ADD Business Owner

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Interview: What's the Reason for Your Success?

Casey Truffo of the International Therapist Leadership Institute popped me an email this week to ask me some questions for an article she's writing on "why coaching hasn't taken off as a career avenue for therapists." I know there are quite a few therapists who read this blog and I'll be happy to share Casey's article with you when it's published! In the meantime, I think my answers to her questions will be an interesting read for ADD business owners.

1. Has having a defined niche helped to you build your business? If so (and I  assume so) why do you think that is?

Having a defined niche has definitely been an integral part of building my business. However, I didn't start with the niche in mind. I started with my knowledge and experience and built my business around that. The niche found me, so to speak. Over time, I have been more and more upfront about the types of people who will get the most out of working with me. While it seems counter-intuitive, I have found that this actually creates more demand for my services!

2. Have you always had an interest in being an entrepreneur? What did you do before you started ADD Management Group?

When I was growing up and when I was in college, I NEVER thought I would be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to get a PhD and become an English Professor. Ultimately, that didn't pan out and I worked in advertising and marketing for about 5 years before starting my business. I enjoyed the creative and strategic elements of my work, but I didn't fit into the corporate world.

When I look back, I certainly had an entrepreneurial spirit as a kid. At 13, I created a marketing campaign for my babysitting services with flyers, phone calls, and networking referrals. I had no idea how out-of-the-ordinary that was for a 13 year old. I just wanted to make sure I got the jobs!

3. What types of marketing did you need to learn?

In some ways I had an advantage because I worked in advertising and marketing for a couple of years. But the world of online marketing (which is important to me now) is a lot different than the world of offline marketing (which is what I primarily did in corporate.) When you're trying to reach people online, you need to know how to catch someone's attention in a split second, because the Internet is one big distraction! Email marketing knowledge is a must, and it's very important to stay on top of the latest social media trends.

4. What do you think is the reason for your success? Beyond the need  — is it marketing? Is it your business acumen?

I attribute my success to the fact that I am not afraid to get personal. My business has been built on the concept of "Been there, done that...and still doing it!" Clients and customers trust me because I share my personal stories and experience. I come from a place of understanding, and personal success. When I have a problem, I prefer to work with someone who's "been in my shoes," and so do my clients.

How would you answer these questions? Feel free to comment!

Join Me for a Free Teleclass: Unleash Your Inner Maverick

Did you hear about the free teleclass I'm hosting next week? It's called Unleash Your Inner Maverick: How to Be Happy and Successful by Breaking the Rules, and I want to personally invite you to attend. Here are the details:

Date: Wednesday February 17, 2010
Time: 8pm-9pm EST (Not on EST? Get your local time here.)
Note: Don't worry if you can't attend live. Everyone who is registered will receive an email with the teleclass recording.

To Register: Visit http://www.addmanagement.com/coaching/mavericks.html

While this teleclass is not specifically about business, I think you'll get a lot out of it that you can directly apply to your life both personally and professionally. Join me!

Turning Ideas Into Reality: Who's Your Opposite?

People, especially coaches, are fond of inspirational sayings like "You can do anything you set your mind to!" The sad truth, however, is that you can't change the world all by yourself. Not in business, anyway.

ADDers and entrepreneurs are "idea people" by nature. We have so many ideas that it's hard to keep track of them all. The ideas, the big picture, and the strategy are the fun parts of business. The follow-through and the details are boring and tedious. This is why so many of our great ideas never come to life. It's easy to succumb to burnout when you're the only person charged with making things happen.

Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely be successful by being the person who does everything, but your success will have a cap on it. One person can only handle so much, and your growth is limited if you insist on flying solo.

If you want to be successful without limits, then you've got to have a partner who is your polar opposite.

Now I know this sounds weird but, believe it or not, there are people in the world who enjoy the details. They also enjoy crazy things like managing projects and deadlines, working within budgets, and playing with spreadsheets. You don't have to feel bad about leaving the details to your business partner because, as hard as it is for you to imagine, they really enjoy that stuff!

Your partner need not be an equal owner of the business. Your partner can be a partial owner, an employee, or a contractor. As long as you are both passionate about what you're creating together, and you both feel appreciated and respected, your partnership will be fruitful.

And when you have a team that begins with two partners united behind a passion or cause and working in their individual strengths, you'll be amazed at what can actually happen. Of course, the bigger your business gets, the more people you'll need to make it work. But things will really start moving when the core team of opposites is in place.

Could You Have a Business Addiction?

Dr. Charles Parker, one of my favorite people in health and medicine, was quoted in a blog post today about people who become addicted to the selling process. Part I of the two-part post looks at "closing addicts."

Closing addicts rarely talk about their personal lives and believe that taking a client to a ball game is a waste of time. They carefully conceal their own feelings and don't want to deal with anything emotional. To protect themselves, they wear a polite yet unemotional mask. To some, they may appear to be cold-blooded sales sharks, but in reality they tend to feel quite vulnerable. Why? They tend to believe that their self-worth depends on racking up big sales. [Emphasis is mine.]

I find this interesting because I think the problem of warped self-worth applies to many ADD business owners, not just people who are addicts. 

ADDers and entrepreneurs alike have a tendency to hyperfocus during periods of "flow," which forces sacrifices. It's not uncommon for a person to abandon family time, miss meals, or even skip out on sleep. The "pressure to perform" and be successful is so great that the person becomes focused solely on business, and their personal life suffers. There is no balance, and work becomes the only thing that provides satisfaction.

While this will happen to everyone from time to time, it's not the kind of thing you want to make a habit of. When business becomes all-consuming, it's time to seek help. Depending on the severity of the problem, working with a coach, therapist, or doctor is a good idea. 

Our businesses should absolutely bring us joy, satisfaction, and self-worth...but they shouldn't be the sole source good things in our lives.

Boo-Hoo: The GRAMMYs Remind Us that the Music Industry is Suffering

Does anyone have a tissue? Because the executive babies in the music industry are crying again.

The GRAMMY Awards were last night and, as usual, GRAMMY President Neil Portnow just had to find a way to get on his soapbox and remind us all that musicians are people, too. They work hard and they need money. Your money!

But he wasn't talking about the musicians. The music industry has never really cared about the artists. (Many ultra successful artists end up broke not because they mismanage their money, but because their contracts suck.) What he really meant was, Music industry executives are not making money any more and it's not fair! (Imagine some whining and stomping to go along with the words and you'll have a better idea of the sentiment.)

I'm so tired of hearing this. I'm tired of the Neil Portnow's and the Lars Ulrich's. I have no sympathy for people who walk around with their heads in their asses. It's not just stupidity, it's arrogance.

One of the first things I noticed about the GRAMMY awards show last night was that they were desperately trying to appear "hip," for lack of a better word. The stage setup had an electronic look and feel. The visuals that go along with the nominees recaps were created to look like web downloads. And, my personal favorite, the event was referred to as "the GRAMMY telecast" instead of "the awards show."

Well, you're on the right track, GRAMMYs, and now the industry as a whole needs to embrace not only new technology, but new expectations of the marketplace. If the music industry really wants to make money again, then it needs to stop crying about how the world has changed, and start changing with it. For example...

Make your music easily available for me to listen to and/or download online. You can charge me for it! I'm totally willing to pay. But if I can't find a song that I'm looking for on iTunes or wherever, then I'll search for a pirated MP3 file before I go out to buy the whole CD.

Give me a reason to go out of my way if you really want me to buy that CD in a store or order it online. Because I have no need for a physical CD anymore. BUT...I might actually buy one if something extraordinary comes with it. (By the way, I have plenty of ideas about how you can do this, but I'm not telling. You never know when Bono is going to call my office and ask me to consult on the marketing strategy for U2's next album.)

Oh, and while we're at it, don't try to charge me $20 for that CD you want me to buy just because something special comes with it. I'm not stupid.

License more music. Movies and TV are great, but there's a huge market out there that's being completely ignored. Do you know how many everyday people would love to have a song for their websites, programs, and videos? Give me a reasonable price and I will absolutely license some music for my own ADD management videos.

The bottom line is that the world has changed. We're in the middle of a technological revolution, and things are moving quickly. The industries and individual businesses that embrace these changes will find a way to remain relevant. The industries that whine and complain about not making money anymore just piss us off. It's easier than ever to "stick it to the man," and people enjoy doing it...whether that means giving a bad album review or downloading music "illegally."

Stop whining, Neil Portnow. Start changing.

P.S. Technology has given musicians (not the industry execs, but the actual musicians) more power than ever before.You no longer need a big following to make a good living as a musician. More about this another time...

A New Direction for The ADD Business Owner Blog

Wow. I just took a look at the home page of this blog, and found that it's been dormant for over a year. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad!

This blog, The ADD Business Owner, was originally intended to reach out to adults with ADD who are business owners. My goal was to offer tips and advice for managing a business and being successful while also managing adult ADD.

Somewhere along the line, however, I lost my passion for this blog. There were other things going on in my personal life that left me with less time in my own business, too, and even my main blog, Experiencing ADDvantages, suffered. I just stopped writing.

But in the past month or so, I've been itching to write about business again, and I've been trying to figure out exactly how to revive this blog. One day, quite randomly, I realized that the name "The ADD Business Owner" is not really about the ADDers out there who own a business. It's about me. Epiphany: I am The ADD Business Owner.

Now that doesn't mean that this blog isn't for ADDers with businesses, because it is. And I hope that it will also be utilized by non-ADDers, as well, and that it will inspire them to break a few rules and embrace their maverick nature. After all, this is the underlying message in just about everything I do.

It's been said that if you compare the "symptoms" of adult Attention Deficit Disorder with the traits of successful entrepreneurs, you'll find two lists that overlap greatly. By nature, we're all creative, driven, strategic, problem solvers, and big-picture thinkers who also tend to be disorganized, forgetful, inconsistent with our attention and focus, and poor managers of time. So those amazing business owners who don't actually have ADD often times act like they do.

And many of the rule breakers and game changers in business have actually been ADDers. David Neeleman of Jet Blue invented the e-ticket. (Leave it to an ADDer to find a way to get around forgetting your plane tickets.) Paul Orfalea built the Kinko's empire on "common goals and trust." These are just two examples of ADD mavericks who shook up the world through their businesses; there are many more out there.

So, beginning with my next post, things will be different here at The ADD Business Owner. I have a lot to say, and I hope that I can inspire you to embrace your inner maverick and shake up your own business.

Why I Don't Barter My Services

I've seen a number of articles this week about how bartering products and services can help businesses save money. I strongly disagree.

Every now and then I get a request to "barter" for my coaching services. Usually, the person on the other end is offering marketing or administrative services, two things that I have paid for in the past and will no doubt pay for again in the future.

However, I turn down barter offers every single time. In fact, a few years ago I made it an ADD Management Group "company policy" to not barter services.

Here are the 2 very simple reasons why I don't barter my services, and why you should think twice about bartering in your business:

1. I don't value free or "bartered" services as much as I value the ones I'm paying for.
2. YOU (i.e. the person on the other end of the deal) doesn't value free or bartered services as much as you value the ones you're paying for.

Think about it... If I allowed you to attend for free, you might show up, and you might not. You might use the strategies, and you might not. What's the difference? You didn't pay for it. No skin off your back.

If you pay $197 to attend my Time Management Masters Seminar, you'll likely attend the sessions and do the work because, well, you paid for it, dammit! It's human nature to want to get your money's worth.

If your products and services are really worth something, then don't give them away. Charge for them, and then prove their value. If I need what you have to offer, I'll be more than happy to pay for it.

Successful AD/HD Business Owners Aren't Panicking

In my book, Odd One Out: The Maverick's Guide to Adult ADD, I make a distinction between those adults with ADD who are happy and successful, and those who are not. I point out the 5 essential ADD management skills that the happy and successful ADDers have worked to build.

Lately, I've made a somewhat similar observation: The happy and successful business owners with ADD are not panicking in this economic slowdown.

Rather, these business owners recognize that:

1. The economy moves in cycles. It slows down, and it will pick up again.
2. A down economy presents different opportunities than we find in a thriving economy.
3. Leaders will emerge amid the turmoil. Now more than ever, your client and customer base need you to take a leadership role and prove to them that you and your company have valuable contributions to offer.

Jen Recommends: Web Design & More

One of the most popular questions I'm asked by ADD business owners (especially coaches) is "Who is your web designer?"

Actually, I am no longer working with the person who designed the main ADD Management Group website or the templates for the AMG blogs, but I do have a fantastic web designer who I enthusiastically recommend.

Amy Taggart of DesignFormare designed the following websites for us:

• Odd One Out: The Maverick's Guide to Adult ADD
• Virtual AD/HD Conference (she did the logo, too)

And she designed the following product packaging for us:

• Master the Art of Time Management
• Kiss Your Clutter Goodbye!
• Taming the Family Circus

Here at the ADD Management Group, we consider Amy a part of the team. She's got a real talent for turning our ideas into beautiful and effective designs. She's down-to-earth and easy to work with. And she's got that maverick streak in her, as well, which everyone knows I appreciate! (If you work with her, ask her about her band and you'll see what I'm talking about!)

Amy recently came through for us in a major way, and I thought it would be fitting to thank her in a blog post while recommending her services. If you need a designer for your next project, look no further!

Perfectionism: Are You Doing a Two-Ass Job?

In working with a client recently, we had a discussion about some tension with her non-ADD business partner. "It's just that she always does such a half-assed job," the client said. "I'm busting my butt and she's hardly trying."

In fact, this client does work really hard. Too hard. She gets caught up in perfectionism, works long hours, and is always stressed out.

"So she's doing a half-ass job," I said to the client, "and you're doing a two-ass job."

I have no idea where the term "half-ass" came from, but it certainly is an interesting way of describing a shoddy job, isn't it? And it stands to reason that if there is such a thing as a half-ass job, then there is also such a thing as a two-ass job.

While you might think that ADD would cause a business owner to do half-assed work, I find the opposite to be true. ADD business owners often get caught up in old patterns and belief systems, worrying about what others will think of their work and overcompensating as a result. They do two-assed work. This is a form of perfectionism, and it leads to overwhelm and, ultimately, burnout.

My client laughed and agreed. And the point became clear: the best work is done with one full ass. No more, no less.