In case you noticed that I updated my standard disclaimer and got back in the habit of adding it to every post. Or even if he didn’t… I thought i’ll explain a little bit more about what it means to me and how effective it has been.
Marketing oneself as an ADHD coach is not easy. I actually do almost no marketing. I rely on some networking. I benefit from occasional referrals from colleagues in other niches in the ADHD world. I am particularly grateful for those referrals. I very rarely get direct client referrals, especially with adults. It happens a little bit more often with late teens and young adults because their parents talk. And lately I’ve been starting to get referrals from psychologists and psychiatrists who work with current or past clients and I’ve seen the benefits of the work that I do. That has taken many years to build. But I’m very proud of it. It’s nice to be respected by your peers. And as a coach, it’s nice to even be considered a peer with medical doctors and PhD’s.
So what’s my point? The main thing that I do to be visible is keep my website up-to-date with new contact. I don’t actually change the main part of the site regularly. I generally overhaul it from soup to nuts about every four or five years. But I’m constantly producing new content by posting new blog entries. I am hardly a tech genius. But I am told that by having my website constantly refreshed with new content instead of being static, that has helped me climb higher with search engines. It seems to be true. Because the vast majority of my clients have found me online.
I also like the side benefits of knowing that my blog is a way to get many of my ideas out there to people who can’t work with me one on one for whatever reason. But I’d like to be more read. That’s one of my next objectives. But right now, I’m so busy with clients I don’t really have time to figure out how to do that. Good problem to have. And I think a lot of that is due to my consistency in posting.
So how do I post consistently and what does it have to do with the standard disclaimer? Even at the beginning of my journey as an ADHD coach, I’ve been living with ADHD for about 30 years already anyway. And I’m a pretty introspective guy by nature. I am fully aware of the way that my ADHD can potentially turn it well-intentioned thing into a dumpster fire if I let it. I very rarely let that happen anymore. And that’s because I turned my awareness into action.
I was extremely clear with myself when I started my blog. I did not want to be that ADHD guy who had a blog and posted like a madman for a month and then never post it again. On principle, I wanna be more reliable than that. But I also didn’t wanna deal with the guilt of being that guy. I chose to focus my attention on my blog for the reasons listed above and I convinced myself of the following:
- Posting consistently was a marketing necessity for my business. If I thought about it for too long, or a really knowledgeable person told me it wasn’t true, you might be able to talk me out of it. But much like with religion proof can be less powerful than faith. And I believe!
- I believe 100% that I have ideas, call it content, that can benefit others. That is what matters. I did not have to convince myself of this. Believing this is why I do what I do.
- I believe that I worked really hard over the years to become a very good writer. I’m very good at expressing myself. I was pretty sure of this.
- Then I convinced myself that my ideas were powerful enough and my overall writing style was good enough that my post didn’t have to be perfect to be effective. This was the hard part. And this is where the standard disclaimer comes in.
I have always joked with my clients that I’m going to write a book called, “How to write a B paper and hand it in on time.” The funny thing is that if you can use this mindset to take the pressure off, you’ll probably end up writing an A paper and handing it in on time. But that only works if you honestly, truly, deeply, to your core believe that it’s OK not to be perfect and do something it’s just very good. Then, once you clear all the bullshit away, your best usually shines through. At the very least done is always better than not done.
And if you want empirical evidence, within my small readership, I got a lot of feedback that’s positive about my blog. And I’ve never had anyone complain that the ideas for good but sometimes a word was misspelled. And frankly, I don’t need that person reading my blog anyway. Who is it we’re trying to impress anyway?
Standard disclaimer. As a person with ADHD, I made the decision when I started my blog, that I didn’t want it to be that thing that I avoided out of perfectionism. I made the decision to get my ideas out there with very little filtering and rarely any editing. Adhering to this philosophy means that I may never have put out a perfect blog post. But it also means that I put a really good blog post out most weeks for the last decade. So please continue to bear with me by overlooking awkward phrasing, typos, grammatical quirks, etc. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the heck out of the contact. P.S. I’m not even gonna read this before I start slapping it on the end of my blog posts. Ha!