The ADD Business Owner

Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs

I just had to share a video of this TED talk by Cameron Herold titled Let's Raise Kids to be Entrepreneurs. Of course, it won't surprise you to find out that Cameron himself has ADHD.

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P.S. Registration is now open for the 3rd Annual Virtual AD/HD Conference. Do check it out at http://ADHDconference.com!

Responding to Hate Mail: Do I Charge Too Much?

I’m very fortunate to make my living helping other people learn how to manage their ADD. This is something I had to learn how to do myself, and it’s something that I practice on a daily basis.

I get a lot of great feedback from people, and I never take that feedback for granted. When a client tells me that they could not have succeeded without me (which is probably not true) or a newsletter reader thanks me for giving them hope, I am happily humbled and genuinely grateful. So few people say “thank you” in this world, and it means a lot to me when someone takes the time to reach out with a kind word.

I also get the occasional critical email, or “hate mail.” If I had to guess, I’d say that I get about 1 negative email for every 10-15 positive. That’s a pretty damn good ratio! But those negative emails still sting.

The negative emails are always quite nasty. They are criticisms, as the people who write them don’t intend to be helpful. Some of them think that I am taking advantage of people by charging for my services. Some people think that the services offered by me and my company are overpriced. Some people think that I shouldn’t charge for my services at all, and a few people have gone so far as to say that they suspect me of just trying to make money.

So, once and for all, I want to address these points one by one.

Am I taking advantage of people by charging for my services? No. Believe it or not, there are many times when my staff and I discourage people from registering for a coaching program or signing up for private coaching sessions with me. I want people to succeed. I don’t want people to waste their money when something is clearly not going to work for them.

In fact, a number of the products we offer have a 90-day, 110% guarantee. If these products were subpar, I’d lose money on them. But I’m comfortable offering that guarantee because I know the products are quality, and I’m willing to stand behind them by “putting my money where my mouth is.”

Are the services offered by me and my company overpriced? No. Granted, private coaching sessions with me, as well as some of our coaching programs, are priced on the higher end. That’s because I’ve been doing this for a while now and have a lot of experience under my belt. I’ve been certified as a Senior Certified AD/HD Coach, I have a book published, and I’ve received international media coverage of my work. Even more importantly, my clients are successful. No one would pay the fees, and clients certainly wouldn’t stick around for years, if I wasn’t worth what I charge.

And just to further the point, think about coaching services like salon services. Newer stylists are priced on the lower end. Senior stylists always charge quite a bit more. You’re paying for experience. For some people, it’s the worth the extra money to get a fantastic haircut. For others, a good haircut is all they need. People choose their preference, and neither is right or wrong.

Why do I charge for my services at all? Am I just trying to make money? Yes. And no. Of course, I’m in business to make money. But the reason that I’m in this business is that I love it. And I’m good at it. And I make a real difference in people’s lives by doing what I do.

I wish that I was independently wealthy and that I could give everything I have to offer free of charge. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way. If I don’t charge for my work, then I don’t eat. And if I don’t eat, then I can’t help anyone.

Before I became a coach, I worked in the corporate world. There were things about it that I liked, but I didn't feel like I was contributing to society in a positive way. If I still worked in corporate, I’d be making a whole lot more money than I do now! But helping and happiness are more important to me than money.

Hopefully, one day, I’ll make a million bucks by doing the helping work that I love. I think that would be a really good thing. Hate mail be damned.

Cross-posted at ExperiencingADDvantages blog.

 

Finding Success in Your Online Business

There's a fine art to doing business online. To one side, you've got a bunch of Sleazy Guys who love to pose for pictures wearing expensive suits, standing in front of limos and jets, and showing off a beautiful woman or two. To the other side, you've got a bunch of Super Unknowns who desperately want to make the world a better place. Eye-rolls all around.

The Sleazy Guys are Internet Marketers. And yes, they are mostly guys. They know how to sell online and they make a lot of money, but probably not as much as they claim to. They love to tell you how much money they have and how much they love their lives. Then they try to sell you their formula for success. Often times, they don't have very much success at all, until you buy their formula. Confused? Don't worry. It's part of the game.

The Super Unknowns are Coaches, Consultants, and The Like. They genuinely want to help people, crave love and approval, and usually feel guilty for making money. Some work hard, all the time, and don't get very far. Others have nothing more than a hobby. Most don't walk their talk, and burn out sooner or later from spinning their wheels.

The Sleazy Guys have beautiful websites and expensive products that cost more than they're worth. The Super Unknowns have awful websites and don't charge enough for the value they provide.

The Sleazy Guys are rich. The Super Unknowns are poor. And neither group is worth aspiring to.

Extremes have their place in business, but not here. If you want to find success in online business, the answer is to be a Smart In-between. Here's how:

1. Be yourself. Get in touch with your unique voice, and use it. Know what makes you different, and express it.
2. Study copywriting and build your skills. If you're not selling, you're not in business. And if your business/sales copywriting doesn't make your English teachers cringe, it won't work.
3. Write. Record. Write. Video. Write. Social media dominates the online scene. Throw yourself into it.
4. Charge what you're worth. Base your product and service fees on your experience, your industry status, and the value you're providing.
5. Vary your offerings. Some people want a book. Some people want a video. Some people want time alone with you. Some people want everything you're willing to give them.
6. Pay attention to others. Learn from the successes of those who are doing better than you, and learn from the mistakes of those who aren't.
7. Evolve. Technology is constantly changing the way we do business, and they way people consume. Don't get comfortable. Ever.

The Smart In-betweens make a comfortable living, have self-respect, contribute to society, and sleep well at night. What's not to love?

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.