Adult ADD and Money

Why New Small Businesses Fail and ways to avoid it - Poor Marketing

People with ADHD often have the traits that make them ideal small business owners. The Small Business Administration estimated that over 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years. For some of these small businesses failure is inevitable, sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop a business from failing. However in many of the cases the owners made key mistakes that could have been corrected. The Women's Enterprise Centre has a list of the Top 10 reasons why small businesses fail. I really liked the list and will go over how ADHD entrepreneurs can overcome the reasons on the list.

I think that if you ask the majority of ADHD business owners they will tell you that marketing is a personal strength. On the surface there are several aspects of marketing that would seem to suit ADHD business owners. Marketing requires passion and creativity, aspects where ADHD business owners typically excel.

However there are several marketing mistakes that ADHD business owners are more prone to make.

1. Inconsistency - In order for marketing to be effective it needs to be done on a consistent basis. It could take several times for your audience to respond to your marketing. The message that you are trying to send to your audience also needs to be fairly consistent, mixed messages will confuse potential customers. Therefore it is important to ask yourself what key points about your business you want to communicate to your customers, and to make sure your customers are receiving your message.

2. Not responding to feedback - An important part of marketing is getting feedback from your customers to see how they view your business. Owners often downplay the role of customer feedback because they are so focused on delivering a product or service.

3. Too much creativity – Adults with ADD are drawn to visual cues, and ADD entrepreneurs tend to focus on the visual portion of their marketing. While the visual cues are important, they are worthless if the consumer is not getting the message that you want to give them. The extra creativity can also lead to overspending on marketing, and unnecessary spending can doom a growing business to failure.

  

Why New Small Businesses Fail and ways to avoid it - Ignoring the competition

People with ADHD often have the traits that make them ideal small business owners. The Small Business Administration estimated that over 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years. For some of these small businesses failure is inevitable, sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop a business from failing. However in many of the cases the owners made key mistakes that could have been corrected. The Women's Enterprise Centre has a list of the Top 10 reasons why small businesses fail. I really liked the list and will go over how ADHD entrepreneurs can overcome the reasons on the list.

The second item on this list is ignoring the competition. Acknowledging that you have competition can provide an additional spark of motivation that will propel ADHD entrepreneurs to succeed. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors is critical for success. It allows you to see exactly what your potential customers are interested in, and you can get more insight on the strengths and weaknesses of your own business.

Keeping an eye on the competition can be a challenge for many ADHD entrepreneurs. ADHD business owners often are hyper-focused on providing superior goods and services. When this happens you lose sight of how to manage your business and more importantly you can lose sight of your customers needs and wants.

It is important to set aside some regular time to monitor your competition. You can do a lot of research on line at home. Make sure you go beyond just looking at their websites, make sure to use search engines to find out more information about your competitors and their key personnel. However, the best research is done in person, so take the time to see your competition live in action, the information that you get will be critical for your organizations success.

Why New Small Businesses Fail and ways to avoid it - Procrastination

People with ADHD often have the traits that make them ideal small business owners. The Small Business Administration estimated that over 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years. For some of these small businesses failure is inevitable, sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop a business from failing. However in many of the cases the owners made key mistakes that could have been corrected. The Women's Enterprise Centre has a list of the Top 10 reasons why small businesses fail. I really liked the list and will go over how ADHD entrepreneurs can overcome the reasons on the list.

The first item on the list is procrastination. Michelle Novotni PH.D. wrote an informative article for ADDitude magazine titled "Stop Procrastinating! How to Get Motivated with Adult ADD" . In this article she goes over five steps to stop procrastinating on a task. A couple of the key points that I liked about her article are:

• Doing something pleasant before you start a task, that way you will be in a positive frame of mind when preforming a task and you will associate a task with a pleasurable experience.
• Having someone else sit with you while doing a chore. This will make you more accountable to start and finish the task.
• Just picking one step of  task to start, this makes you more likely to start because you can feel you accomplished something just by completing one step.

Just say No

When thinking about the word NO, I tend to think about the negative connotation that the word NO has attached to it. NO I can't do this, NO I can't afford that; it makes you feel like a failure when you have to tell someone NO. Many people with ADHD have additional issues with feeling like a failure because they often have had issues with school, chores, and other tedious tasks. This makes it more difficult for the ADHD adult to tell a client, their boss, a salesperson, or anyone else that they are unable to do something.

Telling someone NO can be difficult for anyone, but it is a critical skill in order to manage you finances, career, and personal life. Here are a few tips to help you to Just say NO:

1. Employ the 24 Hour Rule - Before making any major decision wait 24 hours so that you can take the time to process and discuss whether you should do something. Often we get caught up in the heat of the moment and say yes to something that really is not necessary or agree to do something that we are not passionate about.

2. Write down in a notebook what your passions, hobbies, and interest are. This will help to remind you what is really important to you and will help you to feel better about declining opportunities that don't fit in with your goals. This is something you want to update periodically because passion and interest change.

3. Find benefits for saying no.  Examples of this include:

"I am not buying this state of the art vacuum because it is unrealistic that I will use it enough to justify the cost. I can spend my money on buying new web designing software so that I can expand my business."

" I will not accept a project to maintain a company's website, because I will be bored and the quality of the job will suffer. I can use the additional time to find work designing new site which I enjoy better."

" I will say no to my friends invitation to join his running club, because running does not bring out my passion and I do not want to become resentful toward my friend for joining his organization."

Telling someone NO should not give you a negative feeling, as long as your are saying NO so that you can better use your time, strengths, and money to better reflect how you want to live your life.