The Peaceful Mompreneur
Encouraging and equipping Christian Mompreneurs to have peace in their lives and business while staying grounded in Jesus Christ.
The Peaceful Mompreneur
Manage Time, Focus, and Energy for ADHD Entrepreneurial Success
Meet Cindy Baker, a dynamic productivity coach and ADHD strategist who transitioned from a middle school teacher to a beacon for entrepreneurs striving to manage their time and energy. Cindy's personal journey with ADHD shapes her mission to support others facing similar challenges. Her story is a treasure trove of strategies, emphasizing the importance of maintaining personal faith, family time, and health while pursuing business success. Especially for overwhelmed moms with young children, Cindy offers guidance on how to focus on essential tasks and play the long game to reach their dreams.
Listeners will learn how to combat overwhelm and organize their time effectively—vital skills, particularly for entrepreneurs with ADHD. Dive into the art of identifying top daily priorities, using techniques like time blocking and task batching to carve out a realistic schedule. Discover the nuances of choosing the right planner that fits your style, whether digital or paper, and gain insights into overcoming common ADHD challenges such as time blindness. Cindy shares her wisdom on understanding "now" versus "not now" timeframes to enhance planning and execution.
Cindy also tackles the often paralyzing issues of procrastination and motivation. Her strategies for managing impulsivity and avoiding the "serial signer-upper" syndrome are game-changers for staying productive. She shares vital mindset shifts essential for entrepreneurial success, like developing a healthy money mindset and building confidence through lifelong learning. Listeners can anticipate her upcoming book, "Focus to Fortunes," and a group coaching program designed to transform chaos into focus.
Connect with Cindy: https://waitnomore.net/
Grab the Healthy Sustainable Weekly Rhythm Guide for Busy Moms ► ► https://aliesehalcomb.com/weeklyrhythms
Hello everyone. We're so glad that you're here. Welcome to the Peaceful Mompreneur. I have a special guest today. Her name is Cindy Baker and I'm going to let her introduce herself. And so, cindy, tell us who you are, who you serve, and just a little bit about yourself and why you do what you do.
Cindy Baker:Yeah, well, thanks for having me. So I'm a productivity coach and an ADHD strategist. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and just other creative professionals, business owners, that kind of help them overcome that sense of overwhelm, help them manage their time, their energy and their focus so they can grow their businesses. And before that, excuse me, I was an educator, a middle school teacher and a school counselor. Did that for many years, and so now I'm working with adults.
Aliese Halcomb:Okay, all right. So what inspired you to start helping busy, distracted entrepreneurs?
Cindy Baker:Yeah. So it's interesting I was working with a lot of students who had ADHD and their parents and I thought, you know, I really recognize these symptoms. I think I have this and I ended up getting a diagnosis as an adult, Because when I was growing up nobody really talked about it much and when they did, it was only about boys, and so a quiet, smart girl just wasn't on anybody's radar, you know. But I was struggling and I think I just worked 10 times harder than everybody else just to try to compensate. But once I got that diagnosis, I looked back and everything kind of made sense. I was like, oh okay, so that's why I had a gajillion jobs and I couldn't settle and I was late all the time and over scheduled myself and and just all that chaos.
Cindy Baker:And I began to just learn everything I could about adult ADHD, mostly just because I wanted to help myself, figured out what worked, what didn't, you know, did a lot of research and tried different things. And then what? What happened is other people started to, you know, to hear about some of my strategies and it worked for them too. So I just decided I was kind of ready to do something different and I just decided I'm going to start my own business. I want to be my own boss and and have that time, freedom and, you know, still be helping people, but do it in my own creative way. So that's what I did.
Aliese Halcomb:Yeah, that's awesome. Ok, so so I know, because I talked to you earlier, that you were working full time still as a teacher during this time, or I don't know if it was a teacher, but in the education system during the time that you started your business and you just retired. Is that correct?
Cindy Baker:That's right.
Aliese Halcomb:Yeah, awesome, this is my first year to be a full time entrepreneur year to be a full-time entrepreneur Wonderful, so tell us about what it looked like whenever you were doing both right. So you have to practice what you're preaching and making sure that you are focused and not distracted by stuff, because you're working full-time and you're running a business.
Cindy Baker:Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, it was not easy. And you know, being an entrepreneur period is not easy, especially if you're trying to do it on the side while you're doing something else. So I had to make sure that I was doing my best at my main job. I wouldn't say nine to five because teachers work more than nine to five. I wouldn't say nine to five because teachers work more than nine to five, and I was a language arts teacher, so I had to grade writing and things like that at outside of school hours. So I couldn't go at the pace that I wanted to. I had to, like you said, be focused. I had to decide okay, what is, what is the main thing I need to focus on this week and today? And if you're an entrepreneur, you know a lot of times 20% of your effort yields 80% of the value, and so you can waste a lot of time doing things that aren't going to move the needle, or you can just let go of some of that and say, okay, what do I need to be doing? That's going to grow this business. It's going to make money.
Cindy Baker:I joined a business coaching program so that I could learn how to run an online business, and so I just made a schedule. And when I could participate live in the Zoom calls, I would, and other times I would watch the recordings on Saturdays. So I was working at night and on the weekends and I just had to make sure this is something that I teach my clients as well. I had to make sure that the big priorities were in place first. You know so, for instance, I'm a person of faith and so I made sure that church was in there. I sing in the choir and Tuesday night is choir rehearsal. That was in there.
Cindy Baker:Physical exercise time with my husband. You know, I had to put those things in first because otherwise I would just be all my time would be eaten up. So I kind of had to play the long game. You know, I had to grow it enough that I could do it while I was in school, even though I really wanted to do more, you know. So I don't know. There's a lot more I could say about that, but that's great.
Aliese Halcomb:No, that's wonderful advice. I love that. So a lot of our the audience here is they're young. They're not young. They may be young, I don't know, but they're moms with young children, right, and so they. They may be staying at home, but they also might be working full time, but they're also trying to grow a business. And I love what you said. You're playing the long game, right. You have to focus on what's most important and your priorities. Talk a lot about that here and I'm just leaning into those things, making sure they're important and doing the things that move the needle. But that's awesome. So if you were talking to a mom with young kids and she's overwhelmed, what would you say? Like, what would you tell her? Like, the first step. Like she doesn't need to know everything, she just needs to know what to do first. Like I want to have this business and I don't want to sacrifice my family because of it. I'm just overwhelmed.
Cindy Baker:Yeah, well, I mean it depends. I mean there wouldn't be just one answer. It would depend on the person and what their skills are, their interests, you know. If they have no idea what to do, I would say start with doing some research on a business niche. Or some people say niche, I say niche, I don't know. You know that might be profitable. I say niche, I don't know, you know that might be profitable.
Cindy Baker:I mean you can even ask chat GPT, you know, to give you a list, but you don't want to pick something that you're interested in but that no one wants to invest money in, and you also don't want to pick something that's profitable that you don't know anything about. So you have to look at your own skills. You know, in my case I had ADHD. Personally, I have a master's in counseling and a background as an educator, so it was a good fit for me. And it also was something that I saw that other people were running a business in, but not too many people, you know. So I would start there.
Cindy Baker:And then, as far as just that feeling of overwhelm, I would say just write down the top three things each day that you want to accomplish, just your non-negotiables, like, at the end of the day, if you didn't do those three things, you would feel frustrated, you know, and make sure those get done.
Cindy Baker:All the other stuff on your hundred item to-do list, you know that can kind of come later or maybe not at all, but those three things, that's what matters, you know. And then you have to learn how to manage distractions, especially if you have young children, if you are at home, I mean you have to figure out those little windows of time that they're taking a nap. Or you know you can't waste those little windows of time because if you're scrolling on social media, 30 minutes will go by and then the baby wakes up and you're like I didn't get my emails done or whatever. So you have to really guard that in-between time when you're a mom. So I don't know, that's hard to answer because you know I would say something different to each person depending on their situation.
Aliese Halcomb:Yeah, absolutely no, that's perfect and I would 100% agree with you. It's being very intentional with the pockets of time that we have. Yeah, so let's see. Um, so you were talking earlier about your schedule and you had created a schedule for yourself and you, you know, mostly, unless something crazy happened, I'd imagine you stuck to that schedule. So how did you create it? Like? What did that process look like? If, if someone's starting out and they want to say, okay, I know these are the things that are important to me, now, what do I do?
Cindy Baker:Yeah, well, there are different ways. Some people like time blocking, where you get a calendar and instead of you know, writing something like, let's say you had a doctor appointment at three o'clock instead of just writing on a horizontal line doctor appointment at three o'clock you would actually block off a whole square, so it would be 230 to four, you know, because that's more realistic. You got to have time to get there, find a parking place, fill out the paperwork. Doctor offices always take longer, especially later in the afternoon like that, because they're backed up. So you just have to trick with your brain to see more realistically how much time something's going to take. And that works for a lot of people. Now, you know, I tell people with ADHD make sure you block off some white space too, so that you're not just it's not just back to back to back, because then if one little thing goes wrong, it's like a domino effect Everything's thrown off for the rest of the day. So you have to schedule buffer time in between. And then one of the things that I do and this might be something that would come a little later, not right at the beginning when you start your business, but I batch tasks. So, for instance, on Monday of this week I recorded about four different videos of different trainings and I just changed my shirt in between each one. There's my little secret, and you know scheduled those to be posted and I did it all at once and so now I don't have to each week oh, I got to, I got to go record this. You know a batch similar tasks together, so different errands, all you know, all together at the same time, or emails or things like that, instead of just constantly looking at your phone checking email constantly, just pick like three times a day to deal with email and then don't look at it in between and because it's just, it can eat up your time. You know so little things like that help with the schedule and you know the schedule varies. I mean, like right now, now I'm talking to you in the middle of the day. That's not something that I do every day, so you have to put in those little one-time events as well.
Cindy Baker:But your main things need to be planned out ahead of time, you know. So like, for instance, last night I did a free live masterclass and that wasn't something that I could just do spontaneously, because I had to tell people about it and I had to send emails and things like that. So you have to look ahead, get a good planner, and people always say, well, what's the best planner? Well, I have a planner out on Amazon, you can look. If you look up Cindy Baker, though, there's a. There's a novel about a middle school kid named Cindy Baker that's not me, but there's a planner.
Cindy Baker:It's just a simple planner, but, honestly, the best planner is the one that you will use. So that might be digital, it might be paper. There isn't a magic planner for entrepreneurs or for ADHD. The key is just write everything down and then look at it at the. You know. Put it up at the same place at your desk, or open up that tab every day and look at it, so that you're not just walking into the day going. What am I going to do now? You know?
Aliese Halcomb:intentional ahead of time. You've thought about it? Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah, I really wanted to be a paper planner person. I can't be. My phone tells me what to do and when to be there and all the notifications. The paper planners are beautiful, but they don't set off alarms, so it's not for me, but they are for some people like in there. That's totally good. Whatever you'll use, that's the best, so okay. So what are some common challenges that entrepreneurs with ADHD face and how do you help them overcome those?
Cindy Baker:Yeah, yeah, we've kind of touched on it before, but one of the biggest ones is just what we call time blindness. People with ADHD view. They actually view time differently than other people and they don't. They live in like two time periods now and not now, time periods now and not now. So you know, if you have something that's due two months from now, your brain says, oh, that's not now, so I don't need to think about it. But realistically, you probably need to be working on it a little along the way before that two month deadline, two-month deadline. And so you know, a lot of times they don't see the passing of time in hours and minutes like other people. They just it's just now or not now, and that makes it difficult to figure out how long something's going to take to do, and so they tend to underestimate. That's why they're always running out of do, and so they tend to underestimate. That's why they're always running out of time. And then they kick it into high gear right before a deadline and run themselves ragged trying to do everything at the last minute, you know. So that's a challenge, and in my coaching program we have, we spend a lot of time on that.
Cindy Baker:We talk about procrastination and motivation, time management and there are a lot of ADHD friendly tricks and tips that I share. So time management's one, I think, focus, having clarity, knowing how to prioritize. Sometimes people with ADHD will have this giant list and then everything looks equally important and so they just start at the top of the list and start going down, when really some of those things could wait till another day, or some of those things don't even need to be on the list, you know. And so helping them learn to prioritize what's urgent, what's important and what things are going to move the needle in your business, those things, you know, revenue producing activities need to be the priority. And you know, if you're going to spend two hours picking out the perfect font on Canva, that's probably not a good use of your time, you know, even though that's easier and that's what we do a lot of times as we gravitate towards what's easy, the path of least resistance.
Cindy Baker:But if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to do hard things. You know, I used to have a fitness instructor and she would say my name is Cindy and I do hard things, and I was like, oh, shut up. But it's true, you know, you say to yourself I can do it. I can do hard things because hard things are what it takes sometimes to be successful. So there's a lot of other things, but the impulsivity is another thing. You know, I call it being a serial signer upper People will chase all these shiny objects and there's, oh, you know, I'm going to take this course or I'm going to sign up for this free thing, and then they just get scattered. So instead, just write down those three most important things each day and focus on those, you know.
Aliese Halcomb:Yeah, that's wonderful. So you touched on it a little bit, but we're going to let me ask another question about it. What mindset shifts do you think are essential for an entrepreneur to succeed?
Cindy Baker:you know there's a lot to that. One would be about money. You have to kind of look at your past and how you were brought up to view money. You know, for instance, I was a teacher and no teacher really makes a lot of money. So the thought of asking of um, asking for the sale is, was awkward at the beginning, you know, cause I wasn't used to doing that. So you have to, um, look at your, at your money mindset. You know, uh, that it's okay to make money, it's okay to charge what you're worth, um, and that your time is valuable, it's okay to charge for that, you know. And then why are you wanting to make money? You know what is the money going to be used for, what good can you do in the world with it? So that's one mindset shift.
Cindy Baker:I think another one is just that confidence and knowing that you can do it, that you are able to learn, kind of having that growth mindset. We talk about that in education a lot. You know a kid might say, well, I'm not good at math, and we teach them to say, well, I'm not good at math yet, but learning, and so there's that idea that, well, I don't know how to, you know, I don't know how to edit videos, so I can't. I can't do that, you know. Well, you can learn. You know, and especially for somebody older like me who's didn't grow up with all the technology that everybody has now, I had to learn a lot of things that were out of my comfort zone to be to have an online business and, um, you do get that confidence. Each time you learn something new, you're like, wow, you know, I can figure this out. I can watch a YouTube video and learn how to do this thing, and so so that's, that's part of it, that confidence. There's others, but a couple, yeah.
Aliese Halcomb:Those are great. That's perfect. Yes, I feel like entrepreneurs are figure it outers Like you. Just have to be willing to do the research and make it happen. All right, so let's see where. Do you have any upcoming projects or programs that you'd like to share with the audience?
Cindy Baker:Yeah, well, I'm actually writing a book, so you can be looking for that. Don't know exactly. It'll be this quarter that it comes out. What's it called? Do you know yet? Sorry? Uh, focus to fortunes, okay, which is also the name of my group coaching program, and so that's something I'd love for your audience to know about. Um, I help, uh, with productivity and I have different levels, so there's a there's a pretty affordable entry level, but then, if you want more of like business coaching, you can upgrade. I have a free gift that I would be happy to give your listeners, and that's a course to help. It's called the Wait no More System to help beat procrastination, which is something a lot of people struggle with. So it's WaitNoMorenet and they can opt in for that. So there's a lot going on. If they get on my mailing list. I have a free Facebook group which kind of has a long name. Let me see if I can tell you that. I'm going to look it up while we're talking.
Aliese Halcomb:Perfect, okay, yeah, so we will definitely link everything in there too.
Cindy Baker:Productivity, for Profits, for ADHD Professionals and Other Distracted Brains Perfect. That's why I picked such a long name.
Aliese Halcomb:It's very descriptive. It's wonderful, yes.
Cindy Baker:Productivity for Profits. That's why I picked such a long name, but it's very descriptive. It's wonderful, yes, so. So yeah, I do free training in there every week and just have a lot going on. So if they get on my mailing list and in my group, that's how they would hear about different workshops that I do and courses and the group coaching and all of that.
Aliese Halcomb:Wonderful. Yes, in your book I'm sure you'll be telling everybody about it and those things. That's very exciting, okay. So if you do, you have any other words of wisdom, things that you'd like to talk to tell anybody that is still listening? Anything else.
Cindy Baker:Yeah, just encouragement that you know I've helped so many people go from chaos and overwhelm to being focused, successful, reaching their goals. And they're just normal people and if they can do it, if I can do it, then anybody can do it. Most people just haven't had somebody show them how. So if they want that support and that help, reach out to me. I always tell people I don't ever talk anybody into joining my coaching program because I don't want somebody in there that feels like they didn't get to really think it through first. So if we connect on Zoom and I find out more and we mutually decide it's a good fit, then the group coaching might be a great way to start the new year, you know.
Cindy Baker:But it's rewarding to see that hope come in people's eyes when they see that there's a different way to live. You do not have to live. You don't have to say, well, I have ADHD and so I'm just going to always be unorganized. No, you know, it's a learned skill and you need somebody who understands ADHD to help teach it to you, you know. But that you can do it and if you are a person of faith, you know pray about what direction God wants you to go in and and lean on his help, but that's another thing that's always helped me.
Aliese Halcomb:Yes, absolutely Okay. Well, thank you so much, cindy. That's awesome, and I will definitely link that free gift in the description of this, so if anybody wants to grab it, it'll be right in there. Thank you so much for coming.
Cindy Baker:Thanks for having me.
Aliese Halcomb:Absolutely.