Doing Business Differently: How to Make Your Business Work For Your Brain

Claire Paniccia: Hi there, I’m Claire Paniccia, the host and creator of the Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit. I’m really excited that you’re here today and I’m really excited to dive into my presentation with you. It is called Doing Business Differently, How to Make Your Business Work for Your Brain. Let’s get started. Today I’m going to be talking about why things as they’re usually taught might not be working for you, why it’s important for us as neurodivergent people to make our businesses work for us even if that goes against the usual advice.

You’re going to see a lot of air quotes. I’m also going to go into a few things that I’ve done differently to make my business work for me, and a few tips to help you figure out what will work for you. Before we get into the meat and potatoes, I just want to talk about who I am and who I am to be talking about this topic. I’m Claire. Like I said, I have ADHD, probably autism, I have anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and fluctuating and unpredictable energy levels. I’ve been an online entrepreneur since 2016, and over the last seven-ish years, my business has evolved a lot and many, many times.

First, I was a freelancer and blogger. The blogging thing did not last long, was not for me. Then I pivoted from freelance writing to SEO. Then later again, I pivoted from SEO to content strategy. I’ve created courses, I’ve done project-based client work, I’ve done consultations calls, I’ve written proposals, I’ve done retainers, live trainings, eBooks, affiliate marketing. I’ve tried social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, blog posts, a co-working community, content repurposing, and I’ve helped clients with even more types of content marketing in the content marketing strategy part of my business.

Basically, I’ve tried or been involved with buttloads of different ways to run a business online, though I will admit not all of them. Through all of that and all of those changes and evolutions of my business, I also got my depression under control, I figured out I had ADHD, went a year and a half before I could get meds for it. Built my business during that time to be able to support me at a pace that worked for me. Most recently, I’m also realizing that I’m on the autism spectrum. Basically with all of this, what I’m saying is that I’ve been doing online business and tweaking it to make it work for my wacky brain for a long time, and also helping my clients do that same thing with their content marketing too.

Before we get into all of the practical, actionable stuff, I just want to address how things might be or feeling for you right now. You might have been trying to build or grow your business by following the advice of that course or that mentor, or based on all of the noise on Instagram telling you you have to do X, Y, Z, fill in the blank strategy if you want to be successful in 2023 or ’22, or whatever year it is. But I’m willing to bet that you might be struggling to see the kind of growth that you’d like from those things, or maybe you’re doing those things and you’re getting some results, but you’ve fallen out of love with your business in the process.

Or you’re doing things that way and it’s fine for now, but they’re not what you want to be doing long-term because you can tell already that it’s not going to be sustainable for you, it’s just not doing it for you. Here’s the thing, the world is not built for us. As neurodivergent people, our brains are literally and physiologically wired differently than the rest of the world. Our brains are all also wired differently from each other, but what we all have in common other than a few overlapping symptoms and traits is that we operate differently from the rest of the world and how the world expects us to operate.

That includes all of those courses and mentors, and the usual advice you see floating around social media. All of that, that advice, those roadmaps, those courses and strategies, and all of that stuff, those were all created with neurotypical brains in mind, so for a lot of us, it’s just not going to work. What the people saying and selling that advice don’t tell you is that you don’t have to do things in that way in order to grow and have a successful online business. They just pretend that you have to do things that way so that they can sell more of whatever it is that they’re selling.

Or I’m sure in many cases, they honestly think that, but you can do things differently and still have a successful business. One more time for the people in the back. You can do things differently and still have a successful business. All the speakers at the summit are prime examples of that. I’m a prime example of that. Everyone that is speaking at this summit are neurodivergent and they’re doing things differently because it works for their brain and they are all successful business owners and online entrepreneurs. We weren’t meant to struggle just because we’re wired differently.

Let that sink in. Because masking and trying to force ourselves to do things the way that neurotypicals expect us to takes a lot of energy. We can’t get our message or our work, or our impact, or our gifts out there in the world if we’re too drained from forcing ourselves to do things in ways that don’t work for us. For a lot of us, that’s how our whole life has been. Especially if you’re only diagnosed as an adult or if you’ve gone your whole life untreated, things have always been that way where you’re constantly exhausting yourself trying to do things the neurotypical way, the way that we’re supposed to, and you’re constantly burning yourself out doing that.

Now that we’re entrepreneurs and we’re running the show, we have the chance and the opportunity to change that and to do things differently in the way that works for us. By making your business work for you, it will make things easier, which we’re all more likely to do things when they’re easier, it’ll be more fun, which also means you’re more likely to stick with it, and you’ll get better results. Because you’re more likely to do things that are easier for you and more fun for you, and you’re also obviously going to get way better results for the things you actually do than for anything that you don’t do.

Before we get into the rest of everything, the practical and actionable things, I do want to touch on this. No one can tell you how to do this. No one. There’s just no way for me to straight up tell you what you should do differently in your business and how in order to make it work for your unique brain because everybody’s brain is different. Even if you listed off a bunch of traits and a bunch of different diagnoses or different neurodivergent identities, I still wouldn’t be able to because all of those things show up differently in everybody. I can’t tell you what to do.

Honestly, none of the other speakers can either, but that’s the whole point of this summit, is to give you a big old permission slip and a few ideas for inspiration on how you could do things differently based on our expertise and our experience. With that in mind, here are a few things that I have done and still do, in many cases, in my business differently to what the usual advice is. The first example is the service that I offered. I started offering this back in 2020. I don’t offer it anymore. It was I originally had the idea of I wanted to do a VIP day, basically.

I could tell even as I was designing it that the style of doing it all in one day would never work for me because of how my energy works and how my creative process works. Instead, I structured it, it was a Conquer Your Content Calendar intensive, is what it was called. I was creating long-form content calendars to cover three months of content planning for my clients. Basically I made it last a week or sometimes two, but it was still one call for the client, but then I could take the time that I needed to go through my creative process, recharge after the call, and do all of the things that I needed to do to make the deliverable awesome.

Communicating with clients. Here’s how I have made that work for me. I’m terrible at responding to client emails for any of my one-on-one clients especially. I’m so, so bad. I used to beat myself up for that and I’d feel really super guilty and embarrassed, and ashamed, but then one time I saw a TikTok from an ADHD content creator, I can’t remember his name, but it was something about hating emails or panicking and avoiding emails as soon as you receive an email that needs a response. I realized, that TikTok is what made me realize, oh, it’s my ADHD, it’s not me, it’s just that the system doesn’t work for me.

I started thinking and I realized, I’m really good at texting, I know I like that, a lot of the people that I tend to work with, especially in my one-on-one work, tend to already have Voxer. I started requesting clients use Voxer to communicate with me. I told them ahead of time that they were free to send me a voice memo if that’s what worked for them but that I would respond in text. It worked. All of a sudden, I started responding to my clients so much faster. I will say I still have the occasional client who doesn’t habitually use Voxer, so they still email me or they don’t see my messages in Voxer.

For those clients, I have canned or templated emails or responses to common questions. It’s not a perfect solution because I still don’t like it, but it’s good enough for the small handful of times it’s necessary. If it was all of my clients, it wouldn’t work, but for just one or two at any given time, it’s fine. This one is fine. This is a way that I’ve changed my content marketing ecosystem to work for how my brain works. I have a project-based brain. I do better at going all in on one thing at any given time rather than having multiple things to focus on on an ongoing basis.

Instead of trying to sustain a consistent ongoing social media publishing schedule, instead of using social media as my primary visibility platform, instead, I do this summit. Once a year for two or three months, I put all of my attention on the summit alongside all my client work. That’s how I do my visibility all in one go instead of in an ongoing trickle. I do still do other things for visibility. I participate in other people’s summits, I contribute to bundles, I do some collaborations occasionally, but this is my primary channel for visibility. This one is fun. This is about the way that I do big picture planning.

My energy is super fluctuatey and unpredictable. Because of that, I try to not plan too many projects to be happening at once in a single month. This year, I started a new system for big picture planning that I really, really like. Basically I started a post-it note system. I have a big wall calendar on the wall that shows all 12 months at a year, and then every time I have an idea for a project or a collaboration, or a new offer I want to create and launch, I take a post-it note and I either keep the whole post-it note or I cut it in half, and I write the name of the project on the post-it note.

I estimate, is this going to be a half a post-it note’s worth of energy or a full post-it note’s worth of energy? Each month can only have two full post-it note’s worth of projects in it. That way I can make sure that I’m not putting too much on my plate at any given month. Also because there are post-it notes instead of writing directly on the calendar, I can easily move things around as I get new ideas or new things come up, because ADHD. I mentioned earlier that I used to do a VIP day-style intensive, I no longer offer that. Now, my primary way of working with people one-on-one is through a retainer.

Because over the years I’ve noticed that when I need to make money, it cramps up my creativity in creating new offers and in showing up and selling. My anxiety and trauma get really activated, and all of the good ideas and creative energy, and good stuff is just gone. Just my energy gets really off and desperate, and it doesn’t feel good, I don’t like it. Now I have created a retainer that is the main way that I work with people one-on-one. It’s not my only source of income but I always make sure that I have at least two active clients in my retainer and that is all that I need in order to cover the absolute bare minimum of my expenses and needs.

That way, I always feel secure financially, and when I do come up with a new offer or do a collaboration or create new content, I don’t have that desperate energy, that anxious energy, and so everything I’m creating is better and I get more ideas, and it’s all from a much more secure and confident place. Because it’s more confident, I sell more because I’m showing up in a better space. That’s one thing that I have done differently, because I don’t want client work to be my primary source of income, but I like having it as just that security blanket.

This one is fun. This is about my day-to-day productivity and how I do task management. My get-shit-done system is super loosey-goosey. This works regardless of what task management system you use. Each week, I have an idea of the tasks that need to get done by the end of the week. None of them, or most of them, it doesn’t matter what day of the week they get done, as long as they’re done by the end of the week or in many cases by Monday the following week. I’ve got my to-do list for the week, and then each day I make a list of, these are the things I feel like I can do today.

Sometimes that’s based on urgency, sometimes it’s based on just what I feel like doing. Also important to note, I almost never get the entire today list done. Something or multiple things always gets moved to the next day. That always happens. I never get a whole today list done. What this does is allow me to listen to my body each day and be as productive or unproductive as I feel capable of or as I want to be. It just gives me the flexibility and the breathing room to do what I need to do in terms of my energy management. These aren’t all the things I do to make my business work for my brain, of course.

There are other things that I just didn’t think of and didn’t put on the list. I’m sure there are also things that I don’t even realize are accommodations that I’ve created, that I’m not even aware of that I’m doing them, they just happen. I just wanted to put these in front of you as just different pieces of inspiration just to show you, hey, here’s a few ways that it can look, get your brain juices going about what and how you could tweak things to make things work for you. I have known that I’m ADHD for five or six years now. That’s about when I started consciously making changes to my business to make things work for me.

That’s a long time to be tweaking things to work for me. Based on my experience of doing that and based on conversations I’ve had with other neurodivergent entrepreneurs who are on a similar journey, I just want to go through a few tips that might help you figure out what works for you. Be an inquisitive two-year-old. When you first start noticing an area of your business that isn’t working for you, start digging in to try to find the real sticking point. Because the first glance at it, the first emotional reaction you’re going to have is that you’re the problem, or you’re going to blame yourself, because that’s what society has conditioned us to do.

I want you to remember, it’s not you that’s broken, it’s the systems and environment around you. What is it about those things that’s blocking you or has become a sticking point here? As you dig in and as you start identifying things, you’re going to start noticing big pieces, broad things, and then just keep saying, but why, but why, but why? Each time you’re going to get deeper and deeper, and more narrow and narrow, and specific, until you get to the real and very specific point of friction. That’s just going to make it easier for you to identify the very specific thing that needs changing instead of lopping off whole chunks of your business.

I want you to take your whole neuroidentity into account as you start making changes to your business to work for you. We are all neurodivergent here, but one, there are lots of different ways to be neurodivergent, and two, we’re not just neurodivergent. There are other aspects of who we are that impact how different things will work for us or not. It’s important to make sure that you take your whole neuroidentity into consideration as you make your business work for you. As an example, I’ve talked a lot about energy management.

That’s not technically a neurodivergent identity, but it is probably a symptom of some of my neuraoidentity or neurodivergences, but also, it’s just a part of who I am and a part of my neuralodentity that I take into consideration as I make tweaks to my business. What is a neuroidentity? This is a term I made up a while back. This is not a medical term, this is a word that I made up. It is the unique combination of traits that makes up how your brain works. It includes your neurodivergent identities like ADHD or autism, but also includes things like being introverted or extroverted, being low energy or high energy.

It includes your personality profile or whether you’re a night owl or a morning person, or if you’re a slow processor or a fast processor, or if you’re ambitious, you’re not ambitious. Those are all things that could be included in your neuroidentity. These are just examples. This is not a comprehensive list of what goes into your neuroidentity. There are so many things that could be included in your neuroidentity. I think you should keep it all in mind as you make your business work for you, not just your neurodivergentness. Again, these are just examples.

There are a million other things. Whatever is important to you to include on this list is what you should include in your neuroidentity as you consider tweaks to your business and how you do things. Another thing I want you to do as you start figuring out what you want to do differently in your business is keep experimenting. Sometimes, you’re going to try a tweak or a solution to make things work better for your brain, and then it turns out that that new thing doesn’t work for you either. That’s okay. Reminder, it is not you that’s the problem.

Don’t go down that anxiety thread of, oh, the common denominator is me. No. None of that. Nix that. I’ve been down that road and it’s not fun and it’s not accurate. It’s not you that’s the problem. All it means is that that particular thing wasn’t the thing for you either. It just means that it’s time to try something else. Remember, it’s all an experiment. Just keep testing new hypotheses until you find the one that works. That’s all it is. These things are all morally neutral. Things like productivity or running the perfect Instagram, whatever.

All of these things can often, especially productivity, can be highly moralized in our society, but I at a certain point started embracing moral neutrality and it made it a lot easier to let things about me just be the way they are instead of constantly trying to change myself. For example, having a tidy desk is not morally superior, and having a messy desk isn’t morally inferior. They’re both morally neutral and don’t mean anything about you as a person. Having a chaotic Canva folder system is morally neutral. Is it inconvenient? Sure.

Maybe it makes a hard thing for you to find your Instagram templates or your slide deck, but it doesn’t make you bad. Being bad at responding to emails, morally neutral. Being a slow creative processor, morally neutral. Being an introvert, not wanting to be on video, morally neutral. It’s totally okay for you to be the way you are. These things that we’re doing differently aren’t crutches, okay? They’re not crutches to make us better, and they’re not signs of our failure to be normal. That’s not what these accommodations are. They’re just systems that we’re using that are different from other people’s systems.

That’s all that’s happening here. That’s it. Morally neutral, end of story. This is another thing that is probably going to come up for you as you start doing things differently to work for you. What works might change over time. After a while, you’re going to find that something that used to work like a charm for you just stops working. It’s super scary, but it’s totally normal. As the world changes, as your industry changes, as you change, as your life changes, as your business changes and evolves, sometimes your things that work for you are going to change too.

That’s not a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a sign of a good thing because you want your business to grow and evolve, and you want you to grow and evolve. It can suck when our secret weapon suddenly stop firing as it were, but don’t panic. It just means that you have to go through this process again and find a new way to do the thing in a way that works for you. If you remember nothing else from this presentation, this is what I want you to remember, the world is not built for us, but we weren’t meant to struggle just because we’re wired differently.

Make your business work for your brain, even if that means doing things differently than you’re being told you should be doing them. Last but not least, very much not least, you absolutely can still have a successful business while doing things differently. You can absolutely still have a successful business while doing things differently. Let’s put this into action. Let’s talk next steps. I have a free email series. If you want to start figuring out how to make your content marketing specifically work for you and your brain, definitely check out my free email series, Content Marketing for Neurospicy Entrepreneurs.

It’s at that link right there on the slide, clairepaniccia.com/neurospicy. It’s also the button right below this video. For help with figuring out and implementing what works for you in the rest of your business, I have something super exciting coming after this summit. Still hammering out the details. That’s all I can say for now, but more info to come, so definitely stay in touch. Thank you so much for your time and for watching this video.

I’m really, really excited that you’re here for the summit. I think it’s going to do really amazing things for your business. I can’t wait to see how you start making your business work for your brain and how you start doing things differently, because you can and you should, and it’s going to be amazing. I’m just so excited. I’m really bad at wrapping up presentations, but anyway, I’ll see you around the summit, I’ll see you in the Facebook group. I hope you have a great rest of your day and enjoy the rest of the presentations.