Business Owners: Your Brain Isn't Broken, Your Systems Are | The Visible(ish) Podcast Ep.5

Business Owners (ADHD?!): Your Brain Isn't Broken, Your Systems Are | The Visible(ish) Podcast Ep.5

What if your ADHD quirks, tangents, and hyperfixations aren't holding you back in business - but are actually what makes your brand magic? 🧠✨
In this game-changing episode of The Visible(ish) Podcast, host Melissa Howard shares her journey from spending 3 years offline due to visibility shame to embracing her neurodivergent brain.

In this episode, you'll discover:
✅ Why traditional content calendars and CEO days might not work for your brain
✅ How to build visibility systems that work WITH your ADHD, not against it
✅ Why being multi-passionate is your competitive edge (stop trying to niche down!)
✅ Alternative productivity methods like body doubling and energy-based scheduling
✅ The difference between needing discipline vs needing support
✅ How to turn "rules" into experiments that serve you

Chapters
0:00 - You are your brand magic
1:40 - Before my ADHD diagnosis: The shame spiral
4:00 - Permission to pivot and be multi-passionate
7:01 - Reframe #1: Rules as experiments
10:40 - Reframe #2: You are multifaceted (and that's okay!)
13:39 - Reframe #3: Systems should serve, not strangle
16:12 - ADHD-friendly techniques that actually work
20:11 - Building visibility YOUR way
21:30 - Client story: From "not cut out for business" to thriving

Connect with Melissa here:

Ways to work with Melissa: https://itsmelissahoward.myflodesk.com/

Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/itsmelissahoward
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/itsmelissahoward/
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsmelissahoward/
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@ItsMelissaHoward
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/itsmelissahoward

#ADHDBusiness #NeurodivergentEntrepreneur #ADHDProductivity #BusinessVisibility #AuthenticMarketing #ADHDSupport #MultipassionateEntrepreneur #ContentCreation #VisibleishPodcast #NeurodiversityInBusiness

Connect with Melissa here:

Ways to work with Melissa: https://itsmelissahoward.myflodesk.com/

Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/itsmelissahoward
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/itsmelissahoward/
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsmelissahoward/
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@ItsMelissaHoward
TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/itsmelissahoward

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You're listening to the Visible-ish podcast for the bold, confident-ish, but ready to show up business owners that are ready to do visibility on their terms. Let's go. So what if I was to tell you that your ADHD quirks, your neurodivergent traits, your tangent, your hyper fixations, your lost in the scroll moment chaos aren't actually working. holding you back in business, they are what makes you and your brand magic. So today I'm not going to be talking around how you can make fantastic content systems and whatnot. This is around building a way of showing up that feels like you, messy, brilliant, completely non-linear and with no shame. Because the way that we are told to do visibility is full of judgment and that ain't okay in my place. So if you've ever tried to stick to a content plan, a launch schedule, a visibility calendar and it all fell apart within a week or less. You are not broken. You're not undisciplined. You're not flaky. You're neurodivergent. You're trying to force your incredible, creative, visionary brain into a one-size-doesn't-fit-all marketing box. And let's be honest, that box is hella boring anyway. The whole Visible-ish concept was born out of that there is no right or wrong way of doing this, that you can show up in a way that works for you on your terms with the space and the rhythm that works with your brain, your life, your business. You don't have to be on all the time or in the game all the time. Before I knew I was neurodivergent, in every way of life I kind of told myself and had this belief that I was great at starting things but awful at finishing and you know even up to six to eight months ago I was still saying those things to myself pretty much on a I wouldn't say daily but on a weekly basis about certain things and it's not that I wasn't good at finishing because obviously I finished things. But that story was because I lacked follow through because those systems, those ways just didn't work for me. Now, I was sort of the queen of ideas, but allergic to systems. Or every time I tried to do something and follow some certain rules, you know, post daily, be consistent, pick one niche, it would fizzle out quicker than it fizzled in. and I'd feel guilty, I'd avoid it altogether, I'd go in this massive shame spiral and it actually is really unwarranted. I went offline for the best part of three years. purely because of all of the noise of what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. You know, I do this as a job. I do this as a vocation. This is what I tell and teach people. Yet I was finding it difficult myself to do because I didn't have the energy or the structure that was consistent to be able to show up. the way I was supposed to because it didn't work for me. But when I found out I had ADHD, it all seemed to make a bit more sense because it wasn't that I needed to try harder. I just needed to work differently. And I hadn't found anyone that helped me to see that that's what's needed. I was only told the one way. or a particular way that didn't work for my brain. And I didn't realize that that was okay. It sounds really weird saying this out loud now, but when I finally gave myself permission to build a business in my way, to pivot, to play around, to be a photographer, a videographer, a strategist, a branding queen, All at once or not at all. Things started to click. Things started to happen because things just flowed a lot easier. It made more sense to me. I felt an alignment. The disconnect shortened. And then I could find ways that worked for my brain to actually be consistent to do things. Until it didn't work anymore. And rather than having shame around it. Of this doesn't work for me. I can't continue to do this. I'm not good enough. It was right. That system doesn't work for me anymore now. I've grown it. I need to do something different. And that to me was like such a light bulb moment. Because I had so much shame for years. Literally since I was a teenager. Of... Starting something and then stopping. Having loads of hobbies and then stopping. Starting crafting and then stopping. Doing particular sports and then getting bored of them. These are all, for me, positives because I've got so much experience, so many skills that a lot of people don't have because they... feel like they have to be doing things the one way or they have to be in a job for their whole life or they have to you know love doing x because their family loves x you know they need to love nature and only do paddle boarding and don't look at other elements of jumping out of planes not that i do that or going to the gym or learning how to crochet i could find it really easy to go off in a I really don't want to get into step-by-step content systems now. Because one, there isn't one content system that works for everybody. And I'm really passionate about showing the multitude of different ways in which we can show up and we can have systems that work for us. What this episode is, is more of a celebration of what's possible when we stop trying to fit in to somebody else's model. So... I want to talk you through a few reframes and approaches that might just help change the game for you, that might just loosen up some of the friction and the shame and the guilt that you might have around showing up, being visible in business and life, whatever it is, and showing you that maybe those differences that we do have with having a neurodivergent brain is actually something that sets us apart in our uniqueness and that makes us our brand our business our special source of what we do the key reason why people love us want to work with us and be in our world so the first reframe that i want to talk around is around rules and I've talked about this on a different episode around, you know, you making your own rules and you giving yourself permission for this. But I want to see and talk around rules on this episode as a bit of an experiment. So rather than it to be fixed and I'm doing this and I've got to stick with this forever and a day is having some flexibility and seeing what works for you. You don't have to niche down to do one thing. You don't have to post every day. You don't have to stick to the same strategy forever. Now you could do those things, but that might not work for you. What works for somebody else and what works for the guru and works for the masses might not work for you in your particular business, in your particular industry. Now there are themes and yes, we'll get into that, but you are allowed to test and tinker and tweak as you go. The best system is born out of curiosity, not shame. So if something is not working for you, lean into it and see what is not working for you. And it might be that you just need to rip it all up and start again. But what I would do from a personal opinion is not to attach so much time, attention of our identity to a particular way of doing things, a particular strategy. We can be fluid sometimes. We can change. That is probably one, especially if you've got ADHD, potentially, depends on how it affects you. Change is something that, from a dopamine perspective, we can crave. So rather than seeing it as a bad thing, see it as a good thing. See that as curiosity. Does it work for me? Oh, that little bit really worked for me when I did this in a certain way, but that didn't. That didn't work for me for some reason. I don't know why. I don't need an answer for that. But actually, what if I then tweaked it again slightly differently and went deeper on this level? So rules aren't rigid. See them as experimentations of what works for you. And What I like to think about is, I know there's a lot of things in the world right now. There's a lot of things. Everybody's thought of something and AI's thought of even more. But at one point, when you think of sort of inventors, when they come up with a system, when they come up with a methodology, when they come up with a product or an idea or an innovation, it was so different and unique and new. And nobody had ever seen that before or experienced that before, but they ran with it. They had the curiosity to go with it and then to share it. The people with those brilliantly creative minds decided one day, God, I can't share that because I'm going to be judged. I'm going to be like, nobody's going to believe that I can ring someone on this mobile phone without it being hooked into a wall. Or even before then, that I could even speak to somebody with something hooked into a wall. So somebody had to be the first to go to step ahead. And that might be you. That might actually be you in terms of how you work and how you find systems for your business, your brain and your life. So experiment. Experiment and be curious about what it could look like for you. The reframe number two is... You are multifaceted and potentially multi-passionate and that's okay. So I do a mix of things. I'm a branding strategist, a photographer, videographer, creative director, newly trained ADHD practitioner and ADHD coach. And for a very long time, I was told that I need to simplify and only pick one thing. And that just does not suit me. that was something that I felt real disconnect with because actually I am the whole package what makes me different and what makes me help other people get results is because I have so much experience so many different skills I am multi-passionate I am neurodivergent that magic is in the mix of all of that it might confuse people sometimes but that's not a reason to shrink that's a reason to get clear on how you communicate it, clearer on your messaging, clearer on your positioning. Your audience doesn't need you to shrink to fit. They need you to explain it succinctly on how it all works together and why you are the package. Why you over the thousands of others that can do on paper what you do. It's your edge. that extra special source it's everything all of that amazing multi-dimensional brain that you've got that experience those skills that you can be all of that we just need to make sure we articulate that in a way that makes sense now i'm sure you'll have seen a way in which you can do this is from an outcome-based perspective. So rather than saying, like me, hey, I'm Alyssa, I do all the things all the time doing X, Y, and Z, is, hey, I'm Alyssa, I help people show up as their true selves online and offline, which helps them grow their business and their bottom line. Then the supplementary question is generally, how do you do that? And then I say, sit back. How long have you got? But the way in which we can do that is not trying to fit ourselves into, I am only X. Now it's absolutely fine. If you want to drop all of the different titles and the different elements of you that you've outgrown, you don't want to do that anymore. That is absolutely fine. But if there is something in you where you use a modality that is, you know, from social media management, but actually you are I don't know, a coach, a business coach. We need to talk about that. We need to... Make sure that that comes through your messaging, that they can see that that is your difference in your special source. So reframe number three is systems. Let's talk systems. They should be there to serve us and not strangle us. I'm talking around the content planning, the CEO days, the social media schedulers, the colour coded calendars, all the must do setups that look great on somebody else's feed. But when you try it, it doesn't seem to work for you. Now, I've personally tried like the full blown CEO day where you block out the whole day. Make a list of what you want to achieve in that day. Have an ocean board ready. You know, I even let a frigging candle for God's sake. Like by hour two, I was scrolling on Facebook. TikTok, reorganizing my emails, which I just don't have the time or patience to do, but I just didn't want to do what was on that freaking calendar because I wasn't in the flow. It wasn't what I needed to do that day energetically. And it turns out my brain doesn't like being told what to do all day. If it hasn't got that flexibility and The same with time blocking. I can schedule a content session at 2pm. I say I can. I haven't for a very long time. But I used to schedule content sessions for, say, 2pm. And then somehow at 2.47am, I'd still be playing around in Canva on three random sessions. documents or three random posts like time blindness is a real thing and it even messes with the prettiest of google calendars so if your brain is like mine and those ways that you wish you could do you wish you could set aside a day just to do all of your admin but that doesn't work for you like that's okay but if it does work for you fan freaking tastic where you're finding particular systems don't work for you, let's look for patterns. Let's look for ways in which they do work and when they don't, we change it. So what I want to do is go through a few different techniques and strategies that may work for you or may not work for you and you can just absolutely strike them off before we even start, which is great. This is not exhaustive. There are hundreds. I wouldn't even know all of the ways to do it because there are so many different ways to do things. But some that may work for you is working in shorter bursts. So rather than having a full day to do something, you work in 20-minute bursts or 90-minute bursts when you really let hyper-focus do that sprint, which is great sometimes. And instead of berating ourselves for not doing everything all at once, it's We actually are flexible with the way in which we get those little dopamine hits of just finishing something, ticking it off after a really short period of time. The other thing that I love, love, love as well is body doubling. If you have not heard of the concept of body doubling, you need to Google it, go and Google it. There are loads and loads of platforms whereby you can, uh, sign up to basically be in a zoom room an online virtual room and work alongside people on mute but you have that accountability for a short period of time sometimes it's half an hour sprints or a two hour period of time to get stuff done and psychologically it is incredible it was one of those things where i thought what the blummin hell is this this is just so weird but it it's really, really helpful for some people. So go and try it out. Sometimes you can do it for free. There are a lot of communities on say Facebook that do them for free, but there are also a lot of business groups as well where you can sign up for sort of mentoring and coaching and that is included within there. So visual tools, this could be sticky notes, this could be mind maps, post-it notes. If you can see it, you can remember it sometimes. Obviously, this is for some people. So for instance, an example within my business is I'm now going to start bringing blog posts into my business now that I've got the rest of the system set up. But to be able to do that, I need to visually see where it fits in with where is the information coming from? Then where is that information going? Do I share that information on email? Does it go on to social? So It all needs to, for me, be a visual path. Otherwise, that system would just be something that just seems so alien, hard, new, in a box over there that I don't need to look at, but I should look at, and I get really guilty and shameful about. So seeing what works for you in that way. Schedule things based on your mood or your energy, not on the clock. So it could be that you record when you feel particularly chatty, and... You write when you have a coffee or you go for a walk with the dog. Whatever it is, schedule it based on what you know your moods are, your energy is. If you don't like creating content sitting down, do it standing up. If you find that you get a pang of inspiration when you are driving in the car, find a way safely of when you stop, you just get your phone out and do a voice note. That voice note can zip itself straight over to Otter AF for example which can transcribe it and then you have what you were thinking all those golden nuggets in in the palm of your hand when you've actually finished driving or whatever you're doing. A little phrase I really like to use is keep your strategy loose but your message clear. So before we wrap it up I want to share with you how we can build visibility your way using what we've covered working with your fabulous neurodivergent mind. Number one is embracing experimentation. Treat visibility a bit like a creative lab not a rule book. The second one is map out your magic, list out your passions, your skills, your quirks, and how they could all work together. Third one is design flexible systems, choosing the formats and the tools that meet you where you are, not where somebody else thinks you should be and puts you And you're there forever. Remember, the goal here isn't to match somebody else's consistency. It's to create a way that keeps your fire lit. And when your fire starts to waver and the light starts to go out, is without shame, finding another way to light your fire. Before we wrap up today's episode, I just want to share with you a client story and a client journey and a client experience that... she recently shared with me, which was that she doesn't think that she's cut out for business because when she was an employee, it was a lot easier. She had some sort of invisible accountability that she knew she had to do the job because it was her job. But because she was a business owner, she could put things off and I literally was sitting there like going, yes, I know what you mean because hand on heart, she is not the only one that's felt like that. Like I felt it too. I still feel that. The loss of the external accountability is so, so real, especially when people your brain thrives on urgency and deadlines and suddenly you're the one setting them and you can be the one moving them as well. So it can kind of feel that everything kind of just floats into the abyss. And what you're focusing on is the stuff that you actually want to do rather than stuff that needs to be done. So instead of forcing her into some rigid CEO style productivity plan, we built in some support systems that supported her like check-ins. coworking sessions, little nudges on WhatsApp, just enough to give her some structure to create that momentum without suffocating her. Once we started to bed this in, she started taking that consistent action, not because she changed who she was, not because she felt like she was an employee, but because she stopped trying to be someone else's version of a business owner. She stopped trying to do it alone. She stopped beating herself up and feeling guilty for not some of the flaws that we have when we are neurodivergent business owners so if you're listening to this thinking why can i not just get it together maybe you're not the problem Maybe it's time to stop building discipline and start building in support. Working with your brain, your energy, your business rather than working against it because you get to run your business for you. That is one of the key things about not being an employee and having a business is that you don't get to do it alone but you get to set the tone. If you haven't already subscribed to the Visible-ish podcast to know when the next episode is landing why not go and do it now make sure you like subscribe and share with your besties your business besties to make sure that we are sharing the love and sharing the learning so for today thank you so much for your time it is an honor to help you along this journey if you want to share any of your takeaways you know where i am on all the socials at it's melissa howard and I will see you soon. Stay visible-ish. You've been listening to the Visible-ish podcast. Subscribe, share and show up again next week. Every Thursday, we will be dropping the hood with messy chats all around visibility and showing you how you can find your voice, get visible in your way and then grow your business. See you next time.