I’ve been running a digital marketing agency for the last decade and since the pandemic I started speaking much more openly about my ADHD and I discovered that the majority of my clients also have ADHD (both diagnosed and self-diagnosed).
This got me thinking how I could tailor my agencies services and coaching programs to better cater to entrepreneurs with ADHD.
That led to starting ADHD Flow State Coaching in the spring of 2024 and a long trip down the rabbit hole reading as many ADHD books, lectures and documentaries as I could to gain deeper insight into the challenges of entrepreneurs with this condition.
I started with an ADHD Mastermind Group and then branched off into providing ADHD Business Coaching, which combines 1-on-1 coaching with done-for-you marketing agency services.
Why No Social Media?
I find social media to be toxic for my ADHD brain.
I don’t have any social media apps on my iPhone and even though I do have social media accounts I only use them occasionally on weekends to mainly share photos of my hikes as I don’t want to waste hours a day mindlessly scrolling or DMing complete strangers.
With the average person using their smartphone 4-5 hours a day today, I believe a lot of people are ruining their attention span because highly-addictive social media apps literally combine the addictive elements of porn, gambling and drugs into one irresistibly seductive package.
This led me to create my program Flow Experience Design, which helps people reclaim 2-3 hours a day from their digital distractions and re-direct all that valuable time to building an online business they enjoy (and get paid for their time instead of using it to enrich trillion-dollar tech companies).
So, while a lot of coaches and agencies use social media to get clients, I have made a conscious decision to focus entirely on a keyword-driven SEO and Google Ads strategy to build my coaching and consulting businesses.
It took me 6 months to hit my goal of $10K/month with ADHD Flow State and in this post, I want to document the strategy and processes I followed to build out my ADHD coaching business, which will work in any coaching niche if you want to follow it yourself.
1. Niche Research
I had previously wrote a few posts on my self-education and biohacking website DIY Genius about ADHD that had got good traction and led to a lot of insight calls where I got to understand the unique challenges that ADHD entrepreneurs face.
This is when I started to identify the key pain points and core problems faced by ADHD entrepreneurs because there’s no better way to understand the market than speaking with them directly on strategy/insight calls.
This also allowed me to start clarifying and selling my first ADHD Business Coaching program. Along with the insight calls, I did extensive research around everything I could find online about ADHD, neurodiversity and entrepreneurship through Facebook Groups, Reddit, Quora, Research Papers and ADHD blogs.
This helped me clarify my niche: ADHD entrepreneurs who want to start or grow a coaching and consulting business that gives them the freedom to work anywhere and do meaningful creative work they enjoy.
2. Keyword Research
After I had clarified my niche, I set about doing keyword research in Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMRush and Mangools Keyword Finder (affiliate links).
I identified about a hundred keywords with consistent search volumes each month and relatively low competition.
Then I set up a series of landing pages to book an insight call with me and I ran began to run Google Ads to find which keywords had the best conversion rate to a booked call with me.
I had a general idea of which keywords would have the best intent for hiring an ADHD business coach but it’s also a good idea to spend a few hundreds dollars testing a variety of keywords to find some hidden gems.
Naturally, I don’t want to have to continually spend money on Google Ads to acquire new clients so my next step was to map out an SEO strategy to rank organically for these keywords.
I continued to run Google Ads to custom landing pages for important keywords where I couldn’t easily rank in the top 5 and I also set up retargeting ads to continually reach visitors who had visited strategically important pages on my website.
3. SEO Strategy
I’ve been doing SEO for over a decade and I’ve built many niche websites of my own and helped hundreds of businesses rank near the top of Google so this was the easy part for me.
The SEO space has changed dramatically since Google’s massive Helpful Content Update (HCU) in the fall of 2023. Around that time Google decided to destroy niche websites with lots of ad spam and affiliate links as part of their battle against the flood of generic AI-generated inundating the web.
In my opinion, they definitely overreached and killed a lot of great websites as well as dramatically diminishing the quality of the search results page leading (SERPs), leading to a huge opportunity for AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT Search and Perplexity to challenge Google’s search monopoly.
Generally, the HCU update absolutely slaughtered many travel, education, business and marketing websites, with many bloggers seeing 95% traffic drops from Google. This has affected some of my websites negatively, particularly those that earned a lot of income from affiliate links and covered a broad range of topics.
This further motivated me to build ADHD Flow State because it is a hyper-specific niche: ADHD entrepreneurs.
While the HCU update has crushed a lot of hopes and dreams, it’s actually made it much easier to rank on Google if you have subject matter expertise and you’re running a hyper-specific niche website that is monetized by coaching, consulting or software-as-a-service.
The kind of websites or blogs that I would recommend avoiding is anything that involves being a middle man and leveraging affiliate links and non-Google Ads like Ezoic or Mediavine (which Google now seems to penalize heavily) to monetize your content.
So, my SEO strategy has focused on hyper-specific keyword topics related to my core audience such as entrepreneurship, coaching, freelancing, productivity, flow states, mindfulness and remote work.
As an entrepreneur with ADHD who has been working with startup founders, coaches and all kinds of different businesses for over a decade it is easy for me to be a subject matter expert in this niche and it’s something I enjoy researching and writing about so creating content is easy.
4. Content Strategy
Once I had planned out my SEO keyword strategy, I began to create content using a very specific content marketing strategy I’ve used for years to rank.
In 6 months, I wrote 35 posts and built the website’s traffic up to about 150-200 highly-targeted visitors a day.
Here’s the content marketing strategy I followed:
Step 1: Build a topic triangle with the only three blog post formats
Step 2: Test keywords conversion to free insight calls with Google Ads
Step 3: Promote linkable assets to scale my domain authority
Step 4: Make a content marketing funnel to acquire new leads and customers
Step 5: Step up marketing automation system to systematize the sales process
Now, let’s unpack of how each of these steps of the content marketing strategy works.
5. Keyword Topics
I started by planning out my topics and keywords and then I broke down the keywords into 3 kinds of blog posts:
1. TOFU: Top of Funnel
For people who want to learn. (e.g. ‘How-to’ posts)
Example: 7 Ways To Get Your ADHD Brain To Focus With Binaural Beats
Naturally, the biggest challenge most entrepreneurs with ADHD is staying focused and focusing in on the right things that grow their business: attracting leads, closing sales and generating results for clients being the big 3.
This post generates interest and curiosity that I can use to get visitors on my email list and retarget the ones that fall into my target demographic with ads to move them down my content marketing funnel.
2. BOTU: Bottom of Funnel
For people who want to buy. (e.g. ‘Best’ list or strategy posts)
Example: How To Sell With ADHD And Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
The biggest challenge that most entrepreneurs starting out face is they don’t have a marketing automation system set up to nurture visitors, qualify leads and pre-sell them so they struggle with poor conversion rates on sales calls, which can trigger rejection sensitive dysphoria.
Typically only a few percentage of people will book an insight call right away and most people need about 7-10 touch points before they can go from problem aware to solution aware and product aware of the value of ADHD business coaching for accelerating their growth.
I wrote this post to give advice on one of the biggest challenges that my clients face and it includes a call-to-action when they finish reading to book an insight call to build automated marketing and sales system that attract qualified leads and pre-sell them so they feel a lot more confident on sales calls.
3. LINKS: Attract high-quality links
For people who want to link. (e.g. ‘Glossary’ posts)
Example: 10 Facts About ADHD, Neurodiversity And Entrepreneurship
These post are designed to position me as an authority in the ADHD entrepreneurship niche and attract high-quality links naturally. For these posts, I like doing glossary and posts about interesting facts, statistics and trends because bloggers regularly link out to post like this.
I also found there wasn’t a lot of great content about just how many entrepreneurs have ADHD and the reasons why that is. I dove into a lot of research by Johan Wiklund at the Whitman School of Management on why adults with ADHD start businesses and then wrote about some of the most interesting and surprising facts about ADHD and entrepreneurship.
This post has generated a large number of backlinks from huge blogs like Hubspot and Digital Entrepreneur, which has been instrumental in boosting my domain authority. This makes it much easier to rank highly for competitive keywords.
6. Qualifying Leads
To qualify leads I set up a series of automated email sequences to better educate adults with ADHD about how I can help them and what I offer.
I have made it easy to book short insight calls with me where I don’t sell anything, I just help them overcome the ADHD paralysis and procrastination that comes from lack of clarity and identify the key levers for how to grow their businesses the fastest.
If they are good fit then I offer them a more in-depth strategy session where I can map out how I can work with them over an initial 90 day period to add at least $10K to their business.
I enjoy doing these insight calls because there is no pressure and I like connecting with other entrepreneurs with ADHD so it makes the sales process feel nature and authentic.
7. Closing Sales
I follow a 2-step sales closing process that starts with the short insight call and then if they’re a good fit for my services then I offer them the 45-minute strategy mapping session.
I’m in a unique position among ADHD coaches because I have a lot of marketing automation experience and a team to actually set up their business system fast so they can start seeing a significant boost in sales within a month of working with me.
Most ADHD coaches, even business coaches, focus too much on high-level strategy and when people go to implement they get stuck and they fail to get the results they envisioned. This leads to the typical ADHD paralysis cycle of losing motivation, procrastination and constant pivoting.
My focus is to work with my coaching clients to build the systems right away that will free up their time, energy and attention to focus on the key activities in their zone of genius. Entrepreneur with ADHD have a lot of strengths that are superpowers but also many weakness that are kryptonite for running a high-growth business without constant burnout.
To do this, I provide a lot of technical expertise, I get in the trenches with them to build out the strategy and I give them access to my team to help them set up a platform I use daily for marketing automation called GoHighLevel.
In addition to selling my ADHD coaching services, I also have a mastermind group for entrepreneurs already making $5-10K/month and digital marketing “done-for-you” services for entrepreneurs that lack time and just want to hire my team to do it for them.
All of this makes it easy to close sales with qualified prospects because I can guarantee they will get results very quickly with the customized lead generation, sales systems and a small ad budget.
8. Referrals And Retention
I’ve also been able to leverage a referral system that gets most of my clients to recommend me to other people in their business network. ADHD entrepreneurs tend to have huge networks so when I get results for a client, they often tell other people in their circle.
For retention, I offer a series of done-for-you digital marketing services to clients who have achieved the initial results promised and are actively interested in continuing to grow their business.
While attracting new clients is important, I’ve found it’s much easier to grow by focusing on working long-term with the right people who I know I can generate huge results for you and asking them to give me referrals.
In any online coaching and consulting business, the lifetime value (LTV) of a client is one of the most important metrics so having good retention and ongoing services or a software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform is important for building a high-growth business.
I’ve also found that having a mastermind group is creating for long-term relationship building and it also helps keep me focused and accountable each week because I’m an active participant as well as the group facilitator.
9. Key Insights And Challenges
Here are some key insights I learned building this ADHD coaching business:
1. Less is more with ADHD clients
Initially, I let my ADHD run wild by adding way too much complexity to my program and over the months I’ve been able to refine my coaching program to only the essentials to get them to the goal of an increase of 10K in income in the first 90 days of coaching with me.
2. Clear boundaries prevent burnout
I don’t work with many clients directly as I run 2 other businesses so by refining my coaching process, I’ve been able to offer my services at a lower cost through my group mastermind community, which has helped me onboard many clients through chat and email (without having to do long sales calls).
3. Simple systems beat complex ones
People don’t need complicated funnels, it’s important to start small and build a strong foundation before developing advanced funnels. If the foundations aren’t working then running ads and doing joint ventures will lead to disappointment.
4. Authenticity attracts ideal clients
I’m not a great storyteller but I have been an entrepreneur for over a decade and during that time I’ve developed a lot of strategies, tactics and automated systems to help with my ADHD struggles. I openly share my ADHD struggles and only work with clients where both of us are likeminded.
5. Find your zone of genius
There are so many things that need to be done to scale up an online business. Clarifying those key activities in your “zone of genius” so you can focus on them consistently can make all the difference in not burning out and losing interest in your business.
10. The Road Ahead
With the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence, our devices are only going to continue to get better at harvesting our time, energy and attention for profit.
This is particularly problematic for adults with ADHD because a quick hit of dopamine from our smartphones is literally our kryptonite.
But it’s not just ADHD people suffering, most people today are addicted to their phones spending 4-5 hours a day and the resulting fragmentation mimics the negative traits of ADHD. It’s gotten so bad that 25% of Americans now think they have ADHD.
Many creative adults with ADHD are better suited to running their own business. The paradox of being an ADHD entrepreneur is that our strengths make us great at coming up with groundbreaking ideas and our passion and enthusiasm makes us better than average at selling them but our weaknesses like procrastination, getting bored over time and tendency to burnout tend to derail our business success.
That’s where ADHD business coaching comes and I think this is an area of coaching that will continue to explode in popularity as more people exit the corporate matrix and decide to create their own job around their ADHD strengths.
I also believe that many more people will want the flexibility of entrepreneurship and remote work as major American and other Western cities become increasingly unaffordable and more people realize that you can now live in eco villages, intentional communities and artsy neighbourhoods all over the world that are significantly cheaper and offer a healthier lifestyle if you have an online business.
I also believe the future of online business is building communities, which is something entrepreneurs with ADHD thrive at. I know from personal experience being disconnected from community, networking and regularly meeting new people during the pandemic made my ADHD a lot worse.
That’s why I’ve been doubling down on building community through mastermind groups, retreats and coaching with other people who I resonate with on a deep level since the pandemic.
I want to end with a quote by American philosopher and social critic Eric Hoffer: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
As entrepreneurs with ADHD, we see the world differently and we are the creators, innovators and connectors that can help change the world in times of great change like today.
So, I would say… put your sunglasses because the future is very bright for ADHD entrepreneurship.