But what if they don’t want beige? (AKA Lessons on burning down your business.)
Self employed.
Perimenopausal.
ADHD.
And ready to burn it all to the ground.
I’ve done this business thing before- twice, in fact! I know how it’s supposed to go: you start a thing, market the things, sell the things, make money. Right?
But what happens when the thing that worked for over 20 years, doesn’t?
Well, if you’re me, apparently you double down on what’s not working, ignore the little nudges from the universe, double down again, ignore the shoves, double down AGAIN- then get absolutely flattened by the universe because it’s had enough of trying to tell you gently and it’s just going to sit you on your 🍑until you listen!
TLDR: I put myself and everything I had on the line for the better part of 2 years to get this business off the ground. I did everything that I thought I ‘SHOULD’ do, showed up as someone that even I didn't recognise, and hid behind a corporate looking beige-coloured mask because I didn’t think anyone would actually want to see the real me. And although I learned a 💩-ton of stuff along the way, nothing was really working when it came to people buying what I was offering- the frustration was INCREDIBLE!!!
But WHYYY??? Yeah- I sat with that a LOOOONG time.
And finally I* realised that the biggest difference between my last 2 businesses and this one was mostly that I wasn’t letting people see the real me anymore. Crap- that also then meant I knew what to do, and that was scary as all h*ll!
It meant that I had to be my actual weird self, but in public this time, and potentially to a lot of people! The thing was, that was something I’d learned to hide at all costs as I grew up thanks to undiagnosed ADHD, so getting past THAT particular can of worms meant I had to face a LOT of inner demons that I’d managed to stuff into the darkest corners of my brain- ouch!
The other more practical thing that I realised along the way is that when you’re running a business with the double ‘blessings’ of ADHD and perimenopause, you HAVE to run it differently- but when you do, it turns the things that might have been drawbacks in another world into absolute SUPERPOWERS in this one!
So I decided that since the world loves a great comeback story (and also ‘cause I literally had nothing to lose except some very boring social media accounts), I pretty much put everything on the line. I completely changed EVERYTHING (we’re talking target market, message, offers, website etc- the lot!), turned up as myself on social media (even ditching the half hour pre-video makeup routine!), and just started talking about the stuff that other perimenopausal-ADHD-business owners might find helpful too. I was NOT going down without a fight, and I was heading into it all knowing I was about to throw the ultimate hail mary pass!
And holy 💩, it worked! (Ok, it hasn’t quite been 2 weeks yet, I don’t care 😉) Apparently weird, colourful, slightly disorganised and occasional unplanned and unscripted videos are much more interesting than something resembling a corporate training video, even if the information isn’t laid out in nice neat bullet points- aaaand yep, answered my own question there, didn’t I?!
So why should you care about any of this? First- you ‘shoudn’t’! If you’re interested and you want to know why, that’s awesome! But if you’re thinking ‘I should care because XYZ’, do yourself a favour and go find something that you’re actually interested in ❤️
If you’re still here, the lesson is simple. Don’t waste years of your life and literal THOUSANDS of dollars pretending to be someone you’re not. Don’t try and do things in a way that your brain flatly refuses to go along with, and don’t work in a sector that drains the very life force out of your body, no matter how well you know it.
Be you.
Be weird.
Apparently us weird kids grow up to be interesting people!
Until next time when I’ll probably give you some useful hacks and how-to’s (or maybe not, because honestly I’ll probably be as surprised as you are with what actually gets written!),
Nicki xx
*PS full credit to the phenomenal humans I have in my life for telling me this over and over again till it finally sank in- you’re amazing, thank you so much!!!