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Pre-PS: This post was first written at the end of 2023. I updated the post with a few points on how things are going. Scroll down to the bottom if you want the update!
One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is to reflect back on the year that passed and use those reflections to plan for the year ahead in both my life and business. This year, I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes peek of my year-end business reflections and how it’s shaping my thinking about what I’ll focus on in 2024.
Even though this is only my second full year in this business, I’ve learned a lot, especially as a diagnosed ADHD adult. Prior to my diagnosis, I had no strategies for running a business as a neurodivergent person because I didn’t know I was one. Now, armed with that knowledge, I’m more skilled at creating systems, rituals, and processes that keep me focused and on track with my goals.
Celebrating Wins in my ADHD Coaching Business
Let’s kick this off by celebrating some wins from the past year. It’s important to acknowledge our achievements and store them in our long-term memory and self-concept. Here are a few wins I’m proud of:
- Revenue Goal: I made over six figures overall in my business this year. Not only am I thrilled about the income, but I also busted through a long-held limiting belief that I can’t make money doing what I love. BOOM!
- Email Subscribers: I more than doubled my email subscribers in 2023.
- Youtube Views: My Youtube channel grew by 15x in 2023. Wow!
- Hours worked: I kept my work hours to less than 40 per week (I think).
- Enjoyment of work: I rate it at 3.5 – 4 out of 5.
- Other Accomplishments: I was a guest speaker for two online summits, coached over 30 new clients, and launched two new offerings (Aligned to Start and The Organized Business).
Challenges I Encountered in Running my ADHD Coaching Business this Year
Even though I had a great year in business overall, it wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. I learned a lot about my own energetic limitations and realized that the traditional coaching model didn’t fit well for me (or my clients).
First off, the 1-1 coaching model, is ideal when you’re starting out, but it’s not sustainable long term. You can only charge so much for hourly coaching before you completely price yourself out of the market, so in order to scale my revenue, I had to build other streams of income.
While doing this was a smart move, it was a huge effort to maintain my client calls while building out new products and templates. I personally find that creating things can be intimidating at first, and my process was riddled with self-judgement. This made everything harder than it needed to be.
The good news, is that the more you do it, the easier it gets.
I also realized that not everyone is well suited for coaching. Sometimes my clients invested in coaching services assuming that I would have the magic insight to cure their ADHD problems. This would lead to disappointment, because the fact is, no one knows what will work best for you except you. As a coach, I’m here to help clients figure out that process, but we don’t produce the results. That’s 100% on the client.
The last challenge I encountered was purely an ADHD problem. Sometimes my clients would simply forget about our appointments, or not follow though on the commitments they had made to do certain things. As a fellow ADHD’er I get this, but it also hurts my heart when people pay for things and not get their full value from it.
This is another reason why I’m looking for other ways to support my clients that don’t require appointments on the calendar.
Reflections + Plans for my ADHD Coaching Business in 2024
Looking ahead to 2024, I’m reevaluating the way I approach my ADHD coaching business to make it more efficient and enjoyable. Here are some questions I used to structure my reflection, along with the insights and actionable takeaways for the coming year:
- What would I recommend if I were my own business coach?
- Since I know that meetings and complexity are my least favorite thing, my first recommendation would be to narrow down my offerings and eliminate 1-1 services so that I have far fewer appointments on my schedule every week. Appointments give me anxiety!
- If my business were simpler, what would that look like?
- I would shift focus away from Zoom calls, even for group coaching, as that can be tricky to manage, and prioritize building out my blog, YouTube, and give extra love to my email subscribers. That said, I would still do the occasional live group cohort so I can stay connected to my community.
- Which parts of my business do I enjoy vs. not enjoy?
- Enjoyed: creating content, making products, collaborating with other creators.
- Didn’t enjoy: Appointments and managing the energy of a group on Zoom.
- How can I cut out or reduce the parts of my business that I don’t enjoy?
- Stop offering group coaching on Zoom and turn off my 1-1 coaching packages.
- How can I make 2024 a year of fun and enjoyment?
- Condense work hours, free up time for our move back to California, travel more, join (or host?) a mastermind group.
- What activity brought me the most peace this year?
- Creating content on a structured, weekly routine and having lots of meeting-free days on my calendar. I find that having a simple, predictable workflow helped me stay consistent and prolific, and as a result, built the trust of my community.
- How can I add more peace into my routine in the coming year?
- Create content with intention! Even though I have my business systems running well, I’m still not being as thoughtful as I could be with the content I’m creating. I’d like to be more strategic about how I plan my topics and work on doing more collections or “series” so I can go deep on certain topics. I also want to continue decluttering and streamlining my business practices and my environment. I’m so much happier and at peace when I’m in a clean, simple space. Aside from that, maintaining a gratitude practice and along with Heart Coherence breathing will help me managing my self-regulation and keep my anxiety at bay.
- If I had to double my revenue in the next 6 months using only one marketing channel, which would it be?
- YouTube and my newsletter (yes, I realize that’s two.)
- What tasks eat up my time and energy that I could automate or outsource?
- 1-1 coaching (we covered that), editing video (I’ve tried outsourcing this, but it hasn’t gone well), and also creating content for social media. To make this more streamlined, I’ve started using Descript to edit videos (it’s so easy) and then using Opus one to create short videos from my long form content. I’m also using metricool to schedule everything because otherwise I would forget and nothing would get posted.
- How can I optimize my workflow in the new year?
- Reduce tech stack, upskill my knowledge to maximize tool utilization and also reformat my content creation templates to help me be more strategic with my topics.
- Of all the clients I’ve served, what interests, needs, or characteristics am I most drawn to?
- Notion users, ADHD entrepreneurs, late-diagnosed ADHD’ers interested in personal growth + productivity.
- How can I engage with more people like them in the coming year?
- More Youtube content that serves this group. Also consider a broadcast channel on IG.
ADHD Business Reflections – Takeaways + Final Thoughts
Doing this reflection process has been really helpful in honing in on my “strategy” for next year. Personally, my goal with my business is to make useful things that help ADHDers and do it in a way that honors my own energy and interests. This way, I’m always walking my own talk and eating my own “dog food” so to speak.
If you want a peak behind the scenes of my business and how I’m planning to streamline in 2024, then stay tuned for the next blog post.
The post after that will walk through how I’m streamlining and simplifying my LIFE in 2024 – and that one will be a doozy!
Happy new year!
xo Caren
Mid-year Check In on My ADHD Coaching Biz
It’s September as I write this update, so not exactly mid-year, but wanted to provide some insights on how this was going. If you want the TLDR, you can see it here in an Instagram Post.
Beyond that, I will say that I am so grateful that I ended up focusing on growing my business outside of 1-1 clients, because this year was FULL of surprises that I wasn’t anticipating.
- We had a massive leak in our kitchen which resulted in a full home renovation. We got new floors throughout the house, so we had to move everything out of the house and live elsewhere for 6 weeks. That was a big disruption, so I would have had to step away from coaching whether I planned to or not.
- Then my husband ended up selling his business, so we decided to take the summer off and travel. While I was able to keep my business going as we were on the road, not having the time pressure of meetings on my calendar was such a huge bonus.
- The last thing I’ll say about intentionally expanding my business beyond 1-1 coaching, is that I was able to reach and help a lot more people. 1-1 coaching is an investment that not everyone can afford. Creating a series of affordable tools enables my audience to benefit from the structure of coaching, without the high cost.
Will I Go Back to Coaching Again?
I know I’ve made this decision sound wonderful (and it is!), but it’s not without it’s limitations. My coaching clients provided so much insight into what others with ADHD experienced. This helped me broaden my awareness of ADHD traits, and also stay connected to how it felt to live with a neurodivergent brain.
That said, I know I need to get back into coaching again soon. I’m not sure if 1-1 is the best format for me, but I do want to do small cohorts and perhaps a few 1-1 clients.
But the format for my coaching will evolve. Stepping away from coaching has given me the opportunity to see where my practice could use some refinement and I’m excited to come back to it with a fresh approach.
We still have a few more months of the year, and I still have one more big trip to complete, so there is more to come on this topic.
For now, I’ll end by saying that I still love what I’m doing so much. I’ve never enjoyed such meaningful and rewarding work before in my career, and I am eternally grateful for having found this path.
Cindy says
I feel seen! 🥳