Empowering Neurodiverse Entrepreneurs: Strategies for Scaling Your Business

[00:00:00] Angela Mondor – The Geeky Girl: Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.

Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor also known as the Geek Hero. And whether you’re listening to this In an audio version or whether you’re here with me on YouTube, either way, love to have you. Thank you so much for being here. Today, I want to talk to you about strategies for scaling your business with this twist of neurodiversity.

There’s some really cool, let’s let’s be honest. There’s some things that can really throw some wrenches into what we do, but if we embrace it and really look at how we can be using our skills, To empower ourselves instead. There’s some really cool shit we can get done. Language warning, I guess.

Okay. Number one, I just talked about this. You have to understand your strengths just because you’re not like a neurotypical person doesn’t mean to say you don’t have strengths. Understanding what your strengths are and what sets you apart is really important. It can be difficult to identify those strengths because we’re so busy being told that we’re not good enough or that we’re not fitting into the square peg holes that they would like us to, yadda yadda yadda.

However, I want you to think about what makes you special. What makes you amazing. It might be that you have to enlist some help from some really close friends. Maybe you need to start hanging around with some other entrepreneurs and business owners who are there to support you and ask them, what is it that you see about me that you think is special?

Or what do you think that I bring to the table? What are some things that you see and you’re thinking, that’s really cool about who I am as a person? It can be hard to ask. It can be hard to ask what that is or ask people to tell you those kinds of things, but it’s very important for you to understand what those things are for you.

Now, I remember having really hard time seeing these things and sometimes I have a hard time seeing them still, depending on what they are. However, what I ended up doing was I took a legal size piece of white paper and I attached it to my wall over there with some sticky tack. Okay? The reason why I did that is because sticky notes do not stick well to the painted surface.

Unless you get a special kind of sticky note. I’m just not getting into that. Regular sticky notes, people. And different sizes of regular sticky notes too. But what I was able to do was write notes on the sticky notes and stick them to the white piece of paper over there. Okay? What did that do for me?

It allowed me to take snippets of information that people gave me. I was able to write down what they told me and I was able to put them on the board over there. Okay, then I can actually look at this and see all the things that the different people had said about me. And now I can formulate this idea of What do other people see in me?

And then I can say, do I see those things in myself? And how can I use those as strengths for myself? Okay, that’s one way to do it. There’s a multitude, different ways to do it. Certainly if you want some assistance with that, you could give us a shout and we’ll happily, happily help you out with those kinds of ideas.

But when you’re thinking about this, your strengths are what’s going to make you amazing. It’s gonna what’s, that’s what’s going to empower you to be amazing in your business. Building a supportive environment is number two. This is something that’s really also important for you. And it leans back to the first one when you’re looking for assistance.

What makes, how can you help me see what I am unique? Or what makes me unique? What are the things that are good about what I do? How do we get that from the people that are in our supportive environment? Surround yourself with people have a supportive community that can help you. It might mean finding a mastermind group that is not only supportive, but is also uplifting for you to be part of, making sure that you are the star of your own stage rather than just following blindly against somebody else.

Find a community that has resources that are going to be helpful to you as a neurodiverse individual. Something that’s going to help you to allow you to be able to see outside the box, allow you to flourish in the concept of, I think differently than other people. that allow you to be unique, but also support other unique people as well.

Thriving inside that environment is really important. So when you’re looking to scale your business, it’s important, like I said, understanding your strengths, but then finding that supportive community, number two. Number three. is implementing some adaptive strategies. This comes from hanging out with other people who also are looking for this information, who are understanding of your needs and what is going to help to make you better.

When we find multiple different ways to solve a problem, then we can look at them and say, which one is going to work best for us. And there is a trick one. When you first hear it, you’re like, that’s the one that’s going to be right for me. And then you give it 90 days, because there’s always a 90 day window.

What you do today will show up 90 days later in your business. So do it for 90 days. If that, that particular strategy doesn’t work, that’s okay, because you’re surrounded by a bunch of really supportive people that’ll give you some other strategies. And you can try another one. There’s not just one way to do things.

And so many of these business masterminds that are built, they’re built for neurotypical people. Find yourself a neurodiverse place where you can think differently and you can come up with an abundance of different ways different strategies that you can adapt them to work best for you. Because. Even the way I think is different than the way you think.

The way that somebody else in that community thinks is also different. So when you can create these fantastic supportive environments and find these adaptive strategies, it’s going to allow you to change your routines, change the way you see how things happen. You can try different technologies.

There’s different ways that you can do things. And to even alter the use of the smallest piece to you. Maybe it’s in terms of the sounds that you’re surrounded by, or the smells that you have available to you while you’re doing certain things. Your senses are on fire, but they can be actually calmed by a lot of these things as well.

So the overwhelm you’re feeling could be. That maybe your sounds are out, or maybe your smells are out. There’s a lot of different cool things you can think of from a sensory perspective that can be helped by discussing it with other people who understand these things and help you find a new way to be able to work within your own environment and make it much more powerful so you can scale your business.

Scaling requires people. There’s only so many hours per day that we can possibly put towards our business. And eventually we’re going to run out of time. So it is important to make sure that you are running a profitable enough business that you can actually build a team. Now, your team doesn’t have to be huge.

Your team doesn’t have to be full time. Even one person that works a few hours a week. Is a team. Okay. So let go any of those boundaries that you might be thinking about in terms of, you know, what a team looks like and empower your team to help you. Become a, if you think about a bicycle tire and you have the hub in the middle and you’ve got all the spokes that run out.

If you start breaking the spokes, the tire is going to lose its integrity and it’s going to not be able to hold that circle quite as well. So if you think about that wheel and think about the spokes as being all the people on your team, okay? I want you to become one of those spokes. Don’t be the hub.

Don’t be the thing that everybody has to go through that’s going to create bottlenecks. I want you to be a spoke on that wheel as long with the rest of your team so you can all inter depend on each other, you can support each other, and you can be an integral part of each and every one of the people’s jobs and roles so that you guys can all create an amazing business together.

It creates an amazing culture inside your business, and it’ll help you scale in ways that you never thought possible because these other people are going to bring ideas into your business that you didn’t even think about yourself. So your spoke is doing its job. Somebody else’s spoke is doing theirs, and somebody else goes, Hey, hold on, there’s this really cool idea I just heard.

Would you like to hear about it? And you can integrate some new ideas, which is going to help scale your business. Also, because you’re interdependent, you can each help each other out. One spoke might fall down and the other spoke might say, that’s okay. I can pick up where you left off. No problem. Go heal yourself and come back.

Okay. Empowering your team to be able to look after each other is a great way to make sure that you are able to scale inside your business. And then, of course, there’s always seeking professional guidance, and that depends on what kind of professional guidance you’re looking for. Maybe you need to speak with a bookkeeper, or an accountant, or a lawyer, or maybe you need to speak to a business coach, or a mentor, or a mentee, a mentor.

Yeah, this, I was right the first time. But you want to speak to somebody who has the skills or who’s gone through something that you’re trying to go through and get them to help you see that in a different way. There’s lots of different reasons why we would seek professional help inside our business.

And make sure that they’re comfortable with the concept of neurodiversity. That they’re not stuck in some way and they’re going to try to force you into some kind of little hole. Okay? There are lots of different ways to solve a problem. And if they can only think of one, then maybe they’re not the right person for you.

Or maybe they can help you find somebody who can find the right answer for you. But you want to look for personalized support. Somebody who can help think outside the box as well. So it is important to surround yourself with other people who think differently so that you can continue to think differently and grow your business in freaking amazing ways.

So don’t forget the five things. Okay. Understanding your strengths, building your supportive environment or your culture, people around you looking for adaptive changes and strategies to help you empowering your team, also important, and then seeking professional and guidance. These are the five things that are going to help you to be able to scale your business in whichever direction it is that you’re looking to grow.

I hope you have a fantastic week. We’ll talk to you next week