Lisa Princic - From ADHDish Chaos to 6 Figure CEO Focus

00:00  Hello and welcome to three ways to focus your ADHD ish brain so that you can clear the path to six figures i just want to remind you to get focus, put away your distractions this is the anti distraction presentation because I want what I teach today to really sink in for you so that you can make some decisions around whether or not you need to make some changes in order to reach the next phase of your business growth. So I want to just say before we start is that you are in the right place if you constantly feel distracted and like you're juggling too much, if you feel behind all the time no matter how hard you work, and if you're struggling to focus on tasks that matter the most.    

00:46  You are also in the right place if you love what you do. Shine when you're in your zone of genus and you'll know when that is and also know that you can go so much farther than where you are right now if only you could harness all these good traits and energy that you have. So I am Lisa Princic I wIll give you the full background, but I have had an interesting journey of going to Business School and then discovering that my true passion is really human behavior and psychology.    

01:18  But I didn't love school enough to continue on and add extra years just to pick subjects that I like the most i had a real urge to get out into the world and see everything and in the way I found myself through all of my journeying, traveling trying things, moving, taking on new challenges. Eventually I started to kind of settle down a little bit and became a life coach in 2008 and I just found learning about how change actually works for people fascinating.    

01:50  So then I started developing more of a passion for business strategy, helping out small business owners. And so now I run 2 brands, ADHD ISH and Scaling Deep which focuses on helping membership business owners develop sustainable scalable memberships for the business. So I just want to say that I never identified as having ADHD until recently, so you might be in a similar situation to me. So what I want to ask you right now is if you feel like this, like you're running around, staying busy, falling behind and still not making enough for the amount of time that you're investing in your work.    

02:27  This is the typical ADHD ish challenge. If you feel this way, you're not laser unmotivated it's really just because of your how your brain works. And this is cyclical, but it starts with too many ideas. So then you over commit to all these things. Then you reach burnout. Then you get the emotional roller coaster that you experience when you are in a burnout phase, which then makes you distracted and whether or not you're on that high or low and that you start to come up with more ideas and then the whole cycle starts again.    

03:04  And in case you're not sure if you're even ADHD, well, you're not alone, neither am I i have never been diagnosed and it wasn't until recently that I put it all together and realized that I definitely I'm ADHD ish, which means I have all kinds of neurodiverse traits that have amounted up into a way that I've gone through my life and the things that I've chosen the how I've handled it. Because I know all too well the cycle of excitement over commitment, burnout, distraction and the giant emotional roller coaster.    

03:40  So I definitely think it's an ADHD ish thing other people will go through it, but not as chronically or as often from the result of their own habits and their own ways of doing things. All right, So I just want to mention these three truths because this is what I think that really is the real deal for ADHD ish entrepreneurs. You are incredibly innovative and creative. You've got some superpowers there, but you're not just battling market highs and lows and external circumstances you're battling yourself a lot of the time and so you will need to harness some really good habits and practices if you're going to become the CEO you want to be and not just be running around flying by to the seat of your pants all the time because consistency is critical in a business that can grow so This is why we're covering number one the only way that you can really make lasting change and it's not as hard as you think.    

04:41  The schedule of a successful CEO and how to build daily motivation into your life even when you don't feel like you have any to draw upon. I want to say right up front, things just don't suddenly get better problems don't magically disappear it took me a long time to realize that I was the only one that was going to really make change happen for me. And it wasn't going to be just easy all of a sudden like I'd surmounted this big mountain and it was just like rolling down the hill after that. Challenges are constantly cropping up and we're always going to have to face it so we're going to have to learn a little bit about how to build a structure in that helps support us through all these up and downs of what life and business really is all about.    

05:28  And the truth is, they only really compound as you get busier so any inefficiencies or ways of doing things that aren't supporting you now are not going to actually get better and easier as you grow. They're only going to get harder so it's time to really work on them intentionally and that's what I'm going to show you today because I firmly believe that change works in micro moves. It's not an overnight sensation kind of flourish it's actually more of a small micro things that you do that help you build up to a new reality without even really knowing it.    

06:03  And I love to say that practice makes perfect, but at the same time, people with ADHD don't like to practice because practice is kind of boring right so we want to learn as we go and learn by doing and that's exactly what I want to show you today. I remember being in school and loving to do things that had real world, tangible meaning but when I was learning for the sake of learning, I didn't find it very fun so I want to show you how you can just start building these things into your business right now.    

06:35  I want you to start to see progress build naturally over time so when you focus on really specific ways of doing things, it starts to become normal and the next thing you know, months have gone by and you are showing up differently you are way more focused and you had no idea real transformation really comes from those small intentional changes and then sticking to them, and then you gradually shift your entire baseline of being. So let's jump into these three secrets right now.    

07:04  And the first one I want to talk about is building a healthy schedule. This is really important for people who are trying to keep track of things in their head and random lists and really don't have a strategy for organizing tasks by the intensity and by the level of challenge that they may be. So I just want to write up front say that the keys to a healthy schedule are being realistic. It's got to be doable and it's got to be super, super clear so I'm going to show you what a typical schedule looks like. And this is using my favorite tool time blocking. Now a really ideal schedule has some clarity in it, and it could be a little messier than this, But if you can learn to put all of your tasks on a calendar like this and use different colors to show what different tasks are, you can start to plan out in advance what you're going to do and how long it might take and then you'll start to differentiate your tasks from really small 20 minute tasks to four hour projects that you know is going to take you a bit of time to get your head wrapped around.    

08:19  And that even though the actual task might only take an hour, it might be worth setting aside a longer block of time in order to get on it. And I think one of the biggest challenges people have with their schedule and with their tasks is they grossly underestimate the amount of time it takes to do something so you might have a client call, but then that spins off a whole bunch of other work, or you might even be meeting with a client and it takes way longer to get something done.    

08:50  And if you're just assuming that everything's going to be an hour, but it actually takes a lot longer than that, you want to make sure that you are blocking that buffer in and that's going to give you a realistic sense about how much you can actually pull off in a in a day or a week and how much you can actually take on and what I want for you is to have a realistic idea of what that is so that you're not always saying, I can never get to the things I really need to do i can never work on my business so start by just mapping it out, playing it out and then you can look at it, know what it looks like, know what you have to work on, ignore everything else that's not on that priority list and then you can start to figure out, well, how do I build more time into work on my business, say, than in my business? And how do I create more efficiency but having a visual like this is going to make a massive difference.    

09:38  And once you can add that structure to your schedule, the real benefit is, is that you get to put on your CEO hat to create, to experiment, to optimize you get to start working on those fun parts that's not always being responsive to everyone all the time you get to do your working on the business part, which is super fun so your schedule can eventually look like this. The orange is the working on the business as you saw on the other slide, your client time is these green.    

10:09  I mean, these are just the colors I've used my personal appointments, I even stick in there because it's really difficult to plan a schedule when you don't have realistic things in there and you, if you're running out to a class or you've got a doctor's appointment, you've got to make sure that goes in there. Because if you're trying to have planned tasks and you're ignoring the fact that you've got all these other things pulling on you, you're not going to get them done and on the flip side, if it's not on your schedule, it's just not going to get done and then you can completely ignore it and not even be looking at the things that you're going to work on in the future week.    

10:43  So if you want to learn more about this, I have a really in depth training on this on my website at ADHD ish dot com forward slash time i've got to actually even more in depth training so that you can learn to use this time blocking technique and get started on it because this is the kind of habit that's going to lead to hyper efficiency in the future. And I also want to say you've got to be kind to yourself you've got to give yourself some off time. And if you don't, you're going to take it anyway and then you're going to be really disappointed that you're not completing things when you never really were going to.    

11:14  So I think it's really important to set yourself up for that feeling of, hey, I nailed this versus always feeling like you're never going to ever make it so set it up realistically. The other really great thing is that you're going to train your body and brain to be on at certain times. Years ago, before I had my son, I had so much time on my hands and I actually ended up joining CrossFit because there was an eight fifteen class and I knew that would get me up and out of bed in the morning to go and hit that class.    

11:46  And that added some structure to me and that did help prepare me to have a baby and then be up really early in the morning because I'm not as much of A morning person. And this helped to curb my urge to stay up all night and really too late and work on stuff and then I ended up being able to help myself create a more sustainable schedule that was in more core hours and my energy came during the day where it didn't when I was younger so you can definitely train yourself to work productively within these schedules when you start mapping it out. And I know it definitely feels better to have some things done when you say you're going to do it than to be doing it last minute i mean, I know that I get grumpy and stressed out when I'm feeling that pressure deadline.    

12:31  So I really, really needed to harness this and that's why I started doing this and I've been doing it for many, many years. All right, so secret number two is the optimizing your energy flow. So as I mentioned in that last section is that you're going to be feeling energetic at certain times a day and less energetic at others and you want to really start to work with your brain and not against it so you're going to build a schedule that leads to a healthy workflow. And then you'll start to notice that maybe you already know that your energy isn't the same all day and you can start to find your peak hours and use them wisely.    

13:11  We are now working towards moving your schedule to a little bit more sustainable. Maybe it's daylight hours versus working late at night or at times that are very unsustainable. And at the same time, we're also noticing the energy and working with it so we're kind of coming from 2 directions we're not completely allowing ourselves to be at our own whims of bursts of mania where we just want to like work on something for 16 hours because we know that might create another couple days of like low, low energy.    

13:44  We know we want to give ourselves that boost, but we also want to recognize that maybe eight to ten in the morning is going to be really efficient for you or ten to twelve like you can figure out those core hours for yourself and then start to put your important tasks in those valuable, valuable times. The things that are a little bit harder to do for you, but you know are very important for you.    

14:07  So what I'm going to urge you to do is track your energy levels for a week, identify your high energy and low energy hours, and try to schedule the hardest tasks during those peak energy times. You're gently nudging towards mastering your day and you're informing it with your natural flow and it feels just fantastic. So the final thing that I want to share with you today is how to simplify with strategy now there are two ways to do your business. Hustle and then sometimes that gets you a result that you don't know how to repeat or strategy, which is figuring out a system to get results now I'm a big believer in strategy.    

14:46  Hustling is like a bunch of people running around. It's chaotic and you don't know where they're going or what they will do. Like, one of my clients who has a great personality, and she grew her Instagram following to a huge amount and when she launched her membership, she got 400 members come in right away, and they bought because of her instead of being really ready to use it and the challenge was that her number started to go down and even when she got new members in, she was not able to repeat that initial excitement that she got from her entire, like, Instagram feed being like, yeah, I want this thing.    

15:24  And that ended up being really challenged for her because she didn't really know what to do versus strategy, which is a calm, strong sense of who's going where and what they're going to do. And in my client's case, we really worked on filling up the gaps in her funnel with strategy that would be able to understand how to get people from here to there to there in order to be able to predict what her membership growth rate would be like. That is a way calmer and more relaxed next way to run our business than just trying to throw spaghetti at the wall constantly with never being able to develop a system for predictability because that's the only thing that we can really use to grow our business.    

16:13  So the one of the things that I wanted to share with you is this little idea about mission, vision and goals and what's the difference because I find that a lot of people have goals and big visions and they might not be connected and this can be very ungrounding for ADHD people and I really want to give you a little trick to figuring out how to get super focused when you were lost in what your strategy should be. So it definitely starts with your mission, especially as somebody who might be very motivated by impact, by values and it's really hard for you to get motivated about things that don't really have meaning for you.    

16:58  This is often very strong for ADHD ish people. So the mission defines your overarching purpose or why behind what you do. And it captures your core reason for being and serves as a guide for your decision making oK so we'll just park that for a second. Your vision is a forward-looking aspirational statement that describes what you hope to achieve so it's more concrete in an outcome and it can change over time whereas your mission tends to be something that it doesn't matter what area of your life you're focused on it's it really is stems from what you believe in and what you love doing and how you love helping people.    

17:38  And your goals are these specific, measurable, actionable steps that gives you a guide to achieving the big outcome in the vision. Ok, so let's just see how these work together now this looks kind of overwhelming for sure, but when you can figure out your mission, it doesn't really change a lot. But your visions can you can have different visions i mean, you probably are going to only work on one at once, which is what you should be like each business usually has one vision but this can just show you that the mission is the thing that you care about it's like your purpose in life it's probably made-up of your values and your superpowers if you want to fulfill that through your vision, and I want to let you know that your visions can change because some visions might just be not working out.    

18:24  But as long as you're grounded in your mission, you will feel like you're empowered to keep moving towards the things that you want in your life because you can come up with slightly different visions oK. And then the goals obviously are the work that you have to do to reach those visions. So just with a quick example, my mission is to help her tell about and overwhelmed women, simplify complexity, nurture their creativity, and take actual steps towards their vision, while allowing myself to simplify my life and celebrate my accomplishments and what's really valuable here is that it also includes me in it and it is very important for me to have a simple lifestyle that's not too complicated or too busy or too scattered.    

19:11  And then right now my particular vision is to grow my ADHD ish business to serve 10.000 thousand women in achieving, clarity self acceptance, and consistent progress towards fulfillment and then I've got my goals of how I'll do it. But I could have a different vision i could help Burt out and overwhelm women through writing a book or through launching a local nonprofit or just having a small group in my community that meets in person there's so many ways I can do it and right now, this is the one I'm focused on and therefore all the goals I have are really there to meet this one vision.    

19:47  So I believe that the mission is very helpful for keeping you on track and motivated and inspired to focus on what really matters to you so instead of getting caught up in goals that may feel insignificant or like, why am I doing this? I want you to do what feels very important to you and then start from there and that can help motivate you when you're wondering what you're doing, you look at your schedule and you're like, why am I working so hard? Is this really something that lights me up that's going to help you keep going? I think that the mission is what helps you when the going gets tough.    

20:25  For one, it does stem from your values and focuses on impact versus instant reward, which will get you out of this cycle, which is just the distraction, bright shiny objects, up and down emotions, missions going to help you cut through the noise in your brain. And also, it's not as outcome oriented and attached for one specific vision so you can be nimble and adjust to something that might be more happening naturally around you like say you're getting more attraction and certain aspects of your business or there's new ideas coming at you you can really sort them by like is, does this serve my mission? Ok, so let's recap quickly.    

21:07  Build a healthy schedule, track your energy flow once you start that practice, at least track your your scheduling for a week and simplify with the strategy knowing what your north star really really is. I firmly believe that people with ADHD ish tendencies can become very successful CE OS, but you're going to have to make some choices in order to do that. Sometimes we lack motivation to intentionally change your habits because we assume it's just our personality and we can't change it.    

21:46  We don't recognize the patterns, we lack connection to our deeper purpose, and we just don't believe it will make a big enough difference but all of those aren't true. We can change our habits and our ways we can train ourselves for things to be normal we were all children at once that got nurtured in a certain way and that has influenced how we do things now. And it will make a really big difference and I just want to reiterate one more time that real transformation comes from committing to small, intentional changes that stick and gradually shifting your entire way of being.    

22:25  So here are your options you can keep ignoring your challenges and hope for the best you can get one-on-one support by a coach or therapist who's willing to get you and find a functional approach for your goals, or you can learn the tools and practices that will gradually seep into your way of being and that will really stick. I think it can be overwhelming to take these steps, but I do think that when you have a guide, they're completely doable through monthly micro moves. And it's a lot of how I've helped people throughout my career is just understanding more about what they're doing, what they're missing, and how to approach it differently and that is the support that I really believe in and that I support people through the ADHD ish toolkit, which is perfect for you if you're ready to get off the emotional roller coaster.    

23:19  Want some life hacks to help you free up space for your next big project things like the time blocking tool, which I shared with you for free is in there and ready to embrace your superpowers. You really do crave a bolder yet more stable life, which is kind of an oxymoron, but it is a lot of what we want we want to live large and we also don't want to live in chaos. If you need some simple practices to calm your overactive monkey mind and you want more time and headspace to crank your business off a notch or 10, I'm going to invite you to join. It's a monthly micro subscription it's 9$ a month.    

23:58  It provides one simple and practical activity or tool that will help you build resilience and help you take steps towards your goals. One emailed explanation to get you focused and motivated so you can do and prioritize the activity with energy and inspiration. And one encouraging email to help you take action so you don't leave it to the last minute. This is going to be delivered to your inbox every month for 9$ a month it's going to be super different. Some of the things you might love, try on and do forever and other things you might be like, that's not me, but I'll revisit it at another point.    

24:34  It's just going to be there to infuse a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of motivation into your life in doable ways and I would love to see you there so come on over to adhdish.com because I know you can do this business thing and I'm here rooting for you 100 % all the time. And if you have any questions about anything you've heard today or about the subscription, then I'd love to hear from you on Instagram feel free to DM me at Lisa Princic on Instagram. Bye for now.