s1e6 bts: first year as an AuDHD biz owner

Welcome back to the Colorful Futures Podcast! In this episode, I’m giving you a sneak peek into what it’s really like to be a neurodivergent biz owner in my first year of self-employment. Spoiler alert: it’s not all cozy mornings and coffee shop work vibes (though those do happen). We’re talking work-life balance, the struggle to set boundaries, and the reality of letting go of that corporate mindset one day at a time.

I’ll share my highs, lows, and all the messy in-betweens—like how delegation became my bestie, why burnout is a thing✨, and how having a financial safety net made this journey a little less bumpy. If you’ve ever felt the pull to start your own thing but don’t know where to start, or if you’re just curious about what goes down behind the scenes, grab your fave fidget toy and get comfy. Let's get into all the nitty gritty about the world of self-employment and all the colorful messiness it brings. 💖

Transcript

Speaker: Liora Alvarez 

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of the Colorful Futures podcast, where we talk about all things between the intersection of intersectionality, and careers, and business. I'm your host, Liora Alvarez, career coach and HR consultant. And today we are talking about the realities of being self-employed, of having your own business, your own company. 

This actually came up, I think, last week with a client that I was talking to about business coaching and just like, they were bringing up sort of these different perspectives and realities of being self-employed, and how we often kind of romanticize being self-employed, especially like the dude bros out there who are like, oh, just quit your nine to five, start a business. But it's not always that simple. And frankly, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. 

Don't get me wrong. I love having my own company, I love being self-employed. is the thing that has just solved so many of my struggles when it's come to my workflow, and my work, and just working with my brain, working with my natural body and mind cycles. But it's hard. And I think especially as a neurodivergent person, it can be really difficult to set and maintain boundaries so that you actually have work-life balance or as I prefer to call it, work-life integration.

Early in my business, we'll say like a year, a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half, I remember having these conversations with my therapist, specifically about how I just felt like I always needed to be working, especially in the beginning of my business when I hadn't quite earned revenue yet or if I had, was just a little bit and I was still like, very much early stages building resources to sell, figuring out my offers, figuring out my services and marketing them. And I just always felt like I needed to be doing something, and that if I wasn't doing something, then I wasn't like, taking my business seriously or I wasn't like, working hard enough to meet my goals.

 And she reminded me that a lot of the thoughts I was having were very much still ingrained in this, sort of, corporate 40-hour work week, nine to five mentality. But that was the whole thing that I was walking away from. That was the whole thing that I was avoiding, and that I didn't want to take part in. And it takes a long time to sort of release that mentality, those expectations of like, well, if it's 9 a.m., that's when you got to start your day. If it's 5 p.m., that's when you end your day. And, you know, we work Monday to Friday, and we work 40 hours, and like, that's what we have to do. 

When in reality, if you look at the studies, this is very similar studies on like the four day work week. For example, like, people don't actually work 40 hours a week. You know, you are taking breaks, you're taking body bio breaks, you're taking mental breaks, you are chatting with your coworkers, you know at the water cooler, or you're taking a lunch, or whatever, like, you're not actually working 40 hours. 

And so when I started my business, and I felt like I needed to be following this like, very specific schedule, it took me a while to realize that I had control over my schedule. And what that meant for me at the time was that I could kind of work when my brain was in that mode. I could rest when my brain wasn't in that mode.

I could take my time getting ready in the morning. I remember very specifically, like early biz days, my wife and I would go to a coffee shop, we would take a leisurely walk. We would go get a latte, go get a drink, get a little treat. And I would be back at my desk at like, 10:30, 11 o'clock starting my day and getting ready for calls. And by like, four o'clock I'd be back on the couch, watching TV, hanging out, chilling. Sometimes I'd work nights and weekends, but it was because I was inspired to do something, so I would start working.

And I was probably working maybe like 30 hours a week or less. It wasn't really, it was definitely a lot less than what I was working when I was in a corporate environment. So that was really nice. It was nice to finally feel like I had more autonomy over my schedule. I had more freedom, more flexibility in my schedule.

But I also want to sort of add a disclaimer that while I felt a sense of pressure to make my business work, to make sure that I could get revenue from my business, I was laid off in March of 2023, which is what eventually led to me deciding to start a business, because it was just a really tough time for recruiters and HR in general to get work. It's important for me to add this disclaimer that my dad had passed like six months, five months prior.

And I had, frankly, the privilege of having some generational wealth passed down to me. It wasn't an obscene amount, but it was enough that I wasn't necessarily concerned about paying the bills, especially at this time in the early stages. I was still on severance from being let go from my prior role. And so I was able to kind of approach my business without that sense of desperation. 

I've started businesses in the past that didn't go anywhere, that didn't do well, that I really struggled with. And I remember, you know, years back with other businesses, having the sort of desperate feeling of really needing it to work. I didn't have any money to fall back on. You know, signing a client would mean being able to buy groceries. Getting a second client would mean I could pay rent. Like, it was like, money in, money out. There was no wiggle room, I was desperate. The cash flow wasn't there and I didn't have a buffer.

So things were a lot different and I know that I was very privileged in that sense. I still am. There are still a lot of things that I don't have to stress about because I've got that safety net. So I do like to be transparent about that because I never want anyone to be like, well, you've got it all together and you're, you know, stress free and it doesn't, like, having a business doesn't have to be hard. It is hard, you know. Being in control of your own revenue and your own pay and stuff is hard.

However, working for someone else and constantly changing jobs, and feeling like you're masking all the time, and being burnt out, that's a different kind of hard. I feel like I got a little, like, off on a side quest there. But I, you know, I was having this conversation with this client last week, and we were just talking about sort of these different ups and downs of being a business owner, and just like the realities of what you go through. 

And again, you know, I love having my own business. I love being self-employed. I love the opportunities I've been able to create for people, and growing my team, and things like that. But, there are things that you need to be mindful of so that you reduce the chance that you'll get burnt out as a business owner. And it might still happen, but the best thing we can do is just try to be proactive about the work-life integration. 

So, there were some things that I really struggled with early on in the business, like I mentioned, kind of releasing that 40-hour work week mentality. I do think that I struggled with setting boundaries. So frankly, this is something I still struggle with, but we'll get to that. Setting boundaries, meaning, you know, I would have my work email connected, my personal company email connected to my phone so even if I was like, sitting having dinner, or out having plans or, you know, visiting my in-laws, visiting my parents, anything like that, I could see my email. 

And there were times where I actually kind of remember seeing an email like, as we were pulling into my in-laws driveway that was just some random person giving me like, unsolicited feedback that I could tell this person had felt like their nervous system was activated maybe, when they saw some of my content. And they decided to send me like a novel email about just like, the things I was doing that were wrong and just like, putting a lot of the blame that they were, things that they were experiencing, and just kind of venting to me about it in a way that made it feel like it was my fault. 

I didn't even respond to it. I just was like, this isn't it. This doesn't feel like it's actually about me. So I'm just gonna let it go, but it's still stuck with me. And I thought about it for like the next hour while I was trying to visit family. So that was really difficult. 

There were also things that I struggled with early in business, like having tasks that took me way too long because they were tedious, and I would take a long time to get it done because I didn't want to do it. It was taking forever. It wasn't like, within my zone of genius. It wasn't something that I specialize in. 

Ironically, it was creating content, which is technically something I specialize in because my undergrad degree is in graphic design. I worked as a photography assistant. I've been a photo editor. I've created video content since I was like, in middle school. So these are things I'm certainly qualified to do and can do, but I didn't want to be doing them. I mean, let's be real, there is a reason I left the graphic design field. Because I don't want to be a designer. 

So there were just a lot of things that kind of came up and tasks that would become almost like distractions for other things. Like if I was trying to make a carousel to, you know, post a tip or like resume advice or something, I would procrastinate doing that by like, tweaking a spreadsheet, or by messing with an automation, or by researching something. And I would just end up doing these tasks that weren't progressing my business, that were just really distractions. 

So I kind of worked my way through that. A few months into my business, I realized that creating content, especially like static carousels or graphic posts and things were taking me too long, and they were taking me away from my client work. As I was getting more clients, I realized there's fewer hours in the day that I can actually work on my business. As I got more clients, I had less time in my day to do these tedious tasks that I didn't even want to be doing in the first place. 

And that's when I brought on a virtual assistant, Kristina. I knew that like, Kristina is a good friend of mine. And I knew that she was doing VA work and different things. I remember I just texted her and I was like, hey, I'm struggling with this.  And I kind of laid out the tasks that I was doing that were just taking up so much of my time, and I was like, is this something you do? Is this something you could take on? She said yes. 

And I was so grateful for that because I was able to delegate some of those tasks. I'm still learning this. I'm still growing this skill as a business owner, as a leader to delegate strategically. But we'll talk about that a little bit more soon as well. That was like the first time that I was able to actually bring someone else on to do some of this work. And that way I could focus on my clients, I could focus on developing offers, developing programs. 

Being able to pass off this one part of my business that was just a brain suck, a time suck, and energy suck. Posting graphics, posting carousels, keeping up my Instagram marketing, was so important, but it took me away from the most important work, which was having good client experiences and expanding my offers. And so being able to delegate that allowed me to develop my group coaching program, because now I had more time to sit down and look at my schedule and see, you know, what are people needing? 

I had more time to meet with more people one-on-one, so I could learn more from working with different people, and being able to complete 50 one-on-ones in a couple months and then, taking everything I learned from their experiences and developing new offers, which is how Claim Your  Career started, because I saw this need for community, and more like, structured support. And now I'm currently hosting my third cohort of that, and I have future cohorts already planned.

So it just opened up this whole world of like, I can take the things that are eating up my time, eating up my energy, and shift them to someone else. Then eventually Kristina became more of my true VA and taking on more things like my website, and SEO, and other social media writing, and just like, keeping my brain organized. 

So now, you know, fast forward from that point, a year or so we'll say, it's September 2024. And if I'm honest, probably since the start of this year, in January, when I hosted my very first Claim Your Career cohort, I have been working nonstop. I did start taking ADHD meds back in December, so that made a big difference, but I just kept adding more stuff. 

So like, in January, I was hosting Claim Your Career, I had signed a couple new one-on-one clients. I was working a part-time recruiting contract, supporting a nonprofit. I was taking a marketing and branding class. And yeah, that didn't bode very well for me. In fact, I'm still catching up on the marketing and branding class now four months after it's ended. The recruiting contract was really helpful, but I couldn't extend it. I had to end it right at the three month mark because I did not have the time or bandwidth, and it was pulling me away from the things I really wanted to do, which was work in my business. 

And now that we are, you know, a year and a half into Colorful Futures, and having this company, I am doing the job of like, at least five people. I'm still creating content, I am managing and delegating team members, delegating tasks to team members is what I meant to say. I am supporting clients in various capacities, whether they're long-term one-on-one clients, or they book just a one-off consult, or they're alumni and graduates of prior programs, or they're in my group coaching program. 

So I've got a lot of clients to support, but I now have, sort of, a new level of business things to do. Creating more offers that don't require my active time and attention, like downloads and courses, navigating through rebrandings, and website development, and writing new copy for different things, writing emails, I mean, the list goes on and on. 

And for a long time, I've been working probably over 50 hours a week, because many days, you know, I typically start my day and I'm sitting at my desk around 9:30, 10 o'clock most days, and then I don't leave until six. So that's like a solid eight hour day, I take like a half hour for lunch. So maybe seven and a half hours. And then I sometimes work a little bit at night because I'm kind of finishing up something, or there's like, a focus task I didn't get to like, writing an email or scheduling an automation or something. And then I often work weekends to kind of catch up on work when clients don't need me, but I can actually get my focus stuff done.

Last week, my beautiful, lovely, smart friend and VA, who's now more becoming an Operations Manager, Kristina, very lovingly and gently reminded me that at the start of the summer, I told myself and I told other people, my family, my friends, my social media community, I told Kristina that I would be taking Fridays off. My plan was to take July and August Fridays off as a way to help recover from a little bit of burnout I was experiencing, from having such a busy season in my company. 

And I think of like, those eight or nine Fridays that I had intended to take off, I only took off like, one, maybe two. I'd even planned to take off the entire week of my birthday as a way to recover. And I did not because I had so much to do, and so Kristina last week was like, if you're not taking Fridays off, which is understandable because we're super busy, you should at least take your weekends off. You should at least like, step away from work a little bit at night. 

And she was so right because I am still struggling with boundaries with work. And this is also to do with the fact that I'm neurodivergent. I love my business, I love the work I do, the tasks I do, and I get excited about it. But, my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and the first thing I do is open Slack. My day ends and I sit down and I'm waiting for Lauren, my wife, to finish up dinner and I'm checking Slack. I'm checking email. I'm thinking about business stuff, and I'm having very little time to just turn off that part of my brain. And so this is something I've been actively practicing. 

The whole point of sharing this is just like, being very real with what that could look like, especially as a neurodivergent business owner. I don't practice what I preach and I really need to. 

So some of the things that we're working on and that I'm practicing to try to have better work-life integration, is that I set my Slack notifications on a schedule, so I only get them between, I think, like nine and six. I am practicing using the schedule send feature when I'm sending messages to my team, which I actually kind of loved. I did that this weekend for the first time and it was really nice. And I felt like, less chaotic with my messages because instead of sending six different messages on things I noticed about the website or social media content or whatever, I just scheduled it and then I was able to go back anytime I had a new thought, I could just add it to that list. So then when Monday morning came around and my message sent, it was just one clear, here's a couple of things I noticed and then bullet point list instead of like, these random messages that can often get lost. 

I'm also learning how to delegate smarter and prioritizing revenue impacting tasks. I went through what contractors I hired, what services I hired, and seeing, are they really making an impact? Are they the things that I know will help increase revenue? And if not, then we need to reallocate that investment somewhere else. 

So delegating smarter as well, if there's things on my plate that are taking up a lot of time, but that I don't necessarily have to be the one to do it, someone else needs to do it, or we need to hire someone else to do it.

Honestly, truthfully, I've been playing small. I've been actively avoiding marketing in some aspects, or I'll market for a week or two, and then I'll stop. Or I'll post consistently and get a bunch of new leads, get a bunch of traction, and then I'll stop because suddenly I'll see my calendar fill up and I'm just like, where's the time? How am I going to support this influx of clients? I can't.

And so, in hiring people and really deciding what do I absolutely have to do that no one else can do? No one else can be on these one-on-one client calls. No one else can host my programs. No one else can record these podcast episodes, for example. But someone else can edit them. Someone else can write the social media captions, especially if they know my brain voice. Someone else can delegate tasks that I can just share and they can trickle them out to whoever needs to get them. Someone else can monitor my inbox. There's so many little things that add up that I need someone else to do, so that I can focus on the things that only I can do. 

Now, not every business owner is going to have the option to hire more people. So I also have some advice for you in that regard too, which is as you're filling your day with different tasks, especially in your early days, it's important to really check in with yourself and as you learn more about the impact of your tasks, as you gather data on what kind of social media marketing, what kind of social posts and stuff are doing well. If things aren't doing well, don't waste your time on them. Carousels for me on Instagram were really helpful. I've heard from many people that they were supportive and I can see it in the data that they were helpful. 

But videos, talking head videos, like TikTok style were way better. So if I spent a couple hours on an afternoon recording a bunch of videos and then maybe spend a few hours the next day editing them, getting them posted, I would get so much of a bigger return on new leads, on new client signups, on programs sold, all that kind of stuff, then if I spent that same amount of time building out a carousel or paying someone else to do it.

Something I'm changing now in my approach is I'm dialing down the type of content that doesn't necessarily bring new clients in, new revenue, and I'm dialing up the things that do bring in new clients and new revenue, because your time is limited as a solopreneur. It's really important that you look at those things and gather that data so that every task you're doing is going to help you scale and going to help you increase your income and your revenue as soon as you can. 

I'm sure there are a bunch of more things I could share about having a business, owning a company, especially one that is growing and you're starting to bring on contractors and things like that. But I'm going to leave it there for now. This is already a lot longer than I kind of anticipated it would be, but I hope that it resonates.

And if you're considering starting a business, I would love to hear from you and what you found interesting about this episode. Any questions you have, you can DM me, can email me, reach out through some channel and it will make its way to me. And maybe we'll have a follow-up episode on this, but I'm going to leave it there and I'll see you next week.