Today’s podcast interview is with Morgan Balavage, a yoga teacher and business coach for yoga teachers and wellness professionals. Morgan discusses building a sustainable business for those with ADHD brains by allowing flexibility, finding the right medical and community support, practicing self-forgiveness, giving herself permission to write extensive daily to-do lists to stay focused, and licensing her work rather than relying solely on social media marketing. Enjoy Splendid moments with ADHD with Morgan on Embody!
Morgan’s Journey With ADHD
I have spent the last eight years building up my business so that I can run it from my phone. I help them create passive income streams and live more in alignment so that they can skip the burnout of what it takes to live in this patriarchal, capitalistic world.
And instead live in joy and have time and financial freedom to actually do the things that they enjoy doing. So that’s my path. I’m currently here in Reno because one of the things I love to do is ski and I have family here.
So yes, let’s just, I do, I want to dive right in. So in terms of creating alignment, creating a business for alignment, especially for like ADHD, that is a big thing in the entrepreneurial world. And a lot of the times it feels like it’s really hard to build a sustainable business around that and how the brain works. So just let’s just dive right in. So as someone who was diagnosed late in life with ADHD.
I found that my life function best when I worked in a startup world where I was doing a million different things with heavy deadlines during the day. I was so good at that. And it turns out I learned that’s because I have a neurodivergent brain that can switch from task to task to task very quickly and in fact needs to, but as a result is incredibly efficient, which is very successful in the startup world because that’s what’s really valued their efficiency.
So I went through a fortuitous layoff with that job and I had been teaching yoga on the side to handle the extreme burnout of working in that world because it was exhausting just dealing with a global industry, a 24 seven work cycle.
So when I went through a layoff, I got a severance package. I poured that into teaching yoga and I hired a business coach and I learned how to make a living teaching private yoga. as well as offering yoga online.
The Shift
So from there, other yoga teachers noticed what I was doing and asked me how to do it. And so my business just blossomed from there really intuitively. I’ve always had this entrepreneurial spirit, I get to do a million different things in my day because my business demands a million different things from me.
The trick is ADHD people tend to have hyper-focus on things. So if I don’t care about it, I can’t force myself to do it. If I don’t have a deadline, can’t bring myself to do it. And a lot of people who work in the wellness space are like the only people doing their business, right?
They’re solopreneurs, they haven’t hired help yet, or they haven’t hired the right help yet or trained them correctly. So while they really thrive in this space of doing a million different things during the day, it’s hard for them to actually be productive and get anything done and move their business goals forward.
Business Coaching For Yoga Instructors
So that’s where I come in as a business coach, I hold them accountable to their goals and I help them clarify which of the million ideas they have at any given point is actually aligned with what they’re trying to build and actually exciting for them to do in that moment.
Because that’s to me what makes my life worth living. If I want to wake up and spend the day at the gym rather than sitting in front of a computer, I want to have the freedom to give myself that space.
If I wake up and want to work on my website all day, I want to have that space for myself and I go through those phases. But if I try to force myself to work on my website on a gym day, I’m not getting anything done.
And then I just get frustrated with myself. Totally, no, I think that’s super. So let’s, if we can, if you can, if you’d be willing to, I’d love to share like just some nuggets for those people who maybe if you’re listening and you’re like, oh yes, this is me, I feel this.
What would you say to those entrepreneurs that are doing that, that are living that world of like, I just, I don’t want to do that today and I can’t find myself, I can’t bring myself because I feel like a lot of times with entrepreneurship, we hear the word discipline, right?
And I’ve heard it from coaches, like coach that I had, it was like, you just need to be disciplined, which I can do that, but I’m also like, I don’t have ADHD. So that is a lot easier, but then it’s not a one shoe, you know, one size fits all.
Tips For ADHD
So can you give me some nuggets and give our audience some nuggets if they’re in that realm? Yeah, so the most powerful things for me are, I have to give myself permission every morning to write down every single thing I think I might be able to accomplish that day, every thought in my head.
And then I’ll estimate how much time I think it’ll take me to do that thing. And when I add up the time, it’s like 14 days worth of stuff. So it helps me be more realistic about like, okay, probably the first couple things I wrote down are the biggest priorities.
Support System
So let’s just focus on that. The second thing ADHD people need is a support system. I am someone who has medicated for my ADHD, so I need my Western medical doctors. Acupuncture and Chinese herbs are also very effective for helping me manage my ADHD symptoms.
So you need to find the support system in the medical community to support this neurodivergent brain. You just need additional supplements to make your brain work. It’s okay. It’s not a big deal. You just got to take the time to figure out what’s going to work in my body so that I can wake up, have this thought of I’m going to do this thing.
Then you go do it. Instead of the billion other thoughts that get in the way of you just doing the thing that you know you want to do. And the third thing that I think is really crucial is having a really strong self forgiveness practice.
Because a lot of people with ADHD have spent most of their life feeling like they’re strange. Like why can’t they get it? Am I just lazy? Am I crazy? Why does this seem to be so easy for everyone else?
And so hard for me. And so I just want to validate like, yes, it has been harder for you. This world was not built for your type of brain. It’s okay. You came here to kind of shift the status quo. Part of that is going through this period of self forgiveness of, it’s been hard for you.
Forgive Yourself
For every time you’ve had, a missed deadline. Every time you feel like you’ve miscommunicated in a relationship, when you locked your keys in your car. If you can learn to laugh at the little things because your brain functions a little bit differently and requires slightly different systems to make your life function correctly.
I think there’s so much, they always talk about like how much shame they felt and like, I can’t, I don’t, so I don’t understand it. I can totally have compassion for it. And so thank you so much for just taking the moment to be like, it’s okay.
And like, there’s nothing wrong with you. Yeah. You just need different tools and no one told you because we didn’t know until relatively recently that this was such a thing.
A Little Bit Of Guidance
So I have done consulting for a wide variety of businesses. I love working with yoga teachers and people in that wellness world. And because they, first of all, they need the help. Uh, they, a lot of them just don’t understand how money in business works, which is totally fine.
They’re so good at the yoga. Um, they just need that guidance. It’s the particular path that I like to put people on is getting people into licensing their work. And if you work in the healing realm, you can license your meditations.
And this works for everyone from of course, yoga teachers, sound healers. I have a lot of musicians who I work with who put their songs on various meditation apps and license them out. Um, this works for doctors and therapists, um, especially therapists who want to move more into the coaching world.
It works beautifully for coaches, but it provides this service to a community that just kind of gets that they need help. As opposed to using traditional social media and trying to build a marketing funnel through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Where you’re just, there’s a lot of noise that you have to cut through.
Social Media Era
Also often you’re competing with your audience to put content out. They’re trying to get their content seen as much as you’re trying to get your scene. And so when you focus on licensing your work, all of the marketing is done for you.
The people out there are just searching for resources, right? They’re not just trying to be part of the noise. I encourage the people who are attracted to my energy as a business coach to put forth some sort of healing work. We can translate that to a lot of different industries.
Any creativity is healing, right? I had a paint artist who was like, well, how would I translate this? And we were like, well, we’ll just do an art as therapy. And you just teach people the basics of like how to paint with your heart, right?
It can be super complicated. But anything you’re doing with creative energy is going to be healing. So those are the people I love to work with. I do work with a lot of corporations as well, just helping with social media marketing.
What got you into shifting the perspective , I’m not going to do what the world is telling me to do? Which is get on the social media apps and push content out.
So first of all, I am a social media nerd. I love social media. And it’s a big part of my business. I realized through market research, my clients did not like creating content for social media.
For the full episode of, Splendid Moments With ADHD you can click here. You can also head to The Embody Podcast on google, apple, or spotify!
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