While people with ADHD do have an entrepreneurial advantage, their “hunter” mentality of can also eventually become a struggle once the business reaches a “midlife” stage and is no longer as exciting as the startup phase. This is not unlike pursuing a career and becoming bored or uninterested in a job that was exciting for the first few months.
The midlife burnout phase can lead to the entrepreneur falling into the trap of creating more of a “job” for him/herself which no longer becomes fun. Just like with job hopping, it can then lead to the “hunter” searching for new business opportunities to start over.
So how does an aspiring business owner with ADHD avoid this trap before it’s too late? You systemize it in the early stage, before that becomes a problem.
I’ve revised some of the steps from Thom Hartmann’s 8 steps to organizing a business if you’re an ADHD “hunter” so they are more relevant to the “solopreneur” startup model of online business.
1. Focus the business
Find a niche and hone in on it, create a marketing manual for that niche. Become an expert in your niche. That requires being truly passionate about it to avoid losing interest down the road.
If you are passionate about your niche, you’re constantly doing research, taking notes, building a body of written material for copy, content scripts, blogs, and newsletters. This way, you are always starting with abundance instead of a blank slate.
Using an external brain or “second brain” system in an app like Obsidian or Notion can be a huge advantage for collecting, curating and creating content for your niche as it links all the information together and makes it easily searchable.
2. Define all the jobs that need to be done by function
Think 2-3 years down the road, what kind of jobs would you need to hire out to scale the business, if any? Hartmann suggests considering your first hires to fill the roles that you do not enjoy doing.
Do you suck at accounting and finance? Hire someone to do it for you. Make a list of a handful of roles you’d be happy to pay someone to do so you can focus on what you’re good at – innovating and being the creative engine of your business.
3. Write a detailed job descriptions for each job, from start to finish.
This can be tedious but it helps to lay out a plan in advance so the chain of command is clearly defined. Having job descriptions on hand allows you to be prepared in advance so you can hire out as soon as you feel the burnout coming. This of course is once you have reached the “midlife” phase of the business and have enough capital to payroll employees.
If you are a solopreneur, you can apply both this step and step 2 for yourself. How would you divide up the different roles/jobs you perform for your business if you were to have a staff? Define those roles and write job descriptions for them. This helps you maintain clarity and allows you to focus specific times and dates on performing certain jobs and tasks so you don’t feel overwhelmed by.
These roles should not require special knowledge. Make them as accessible as possible to maximize hiring potential, should you go that route.
4. Write a list of your technology and skill stack
Yes this is a lot of questions, but they are all necessary questions you must answer in the startup phase and entering into the midlife phase for your business.
Always be thinking at least 3 steps ahead. Automate as much as you can to avoid burnout. If you have no idea where to start, list the things you want to make easy for yourself and start there.
If a technology or platform does not offer that, don’t use it.
5. Systematize content creation
There aren’t many businesses I can think of where content creation isn’t necessary. This is how you acquire new leads and build your audience so you can advertise your products or services for free. The reason you are reading this email right now is because you found a piece of my content so compelling that you signed up for more of what I have to offer.
Just having to crank out content regularly and consistently can easily and quickly cause overwhelm. This is why you need to systematize this process as well.
Doing something like batch shooting could really help a lot. This is when you assign a day to shoot 10-30 videos at once in the span of a couple hours, then you have all the content you’ll post in the next 2-4 weeks so you dont have to make a new video every day. For more details on this process, I highly recommend this video on systemizing short form content.
So there you have it, 5 ways you can scale your business to avoid overwhelm. I do realize that building these systems in itself can be overwhelming and you might not even know where to start.
Do you want to shortcut this entire process?
You can book a call with me to discover some ways that you can optimize your business to work with your ADHD brain and not against it, allowing your brain to do what it does best by being the creative engine that propels your business towards success.
Thanks for reading! I hope you have an amazing week my friend.