Why solo business owners struggle with overwhelm (and what to do about it)
If you’ve started your own business, and you’re a creative soul, chances are you have loads of ideas. Whether that’s ideas for content, services you could provide, workshops you could create, marketing you could try or something else entirely. If you’re anything like many of my clients, you have more ideas than you know what to do with. That’s a great thing, isn’t it? After all, if you didn’t have all those ideas, you probably wouldn’t have a business.
But what do you do when all that inspiration leads to overwhelm, stopping you moving forward?
Well, Liz Mosley and I discussed this on her podcast, Building Your Brand. As a graphic designer working with small businesses, Liz is herself a creative genius and so understands first hand the challenges of being a solo business owner with a million things to juggle.
Her experience and insights, and my years of helping solo business owners get stuff done, led to a conversation full of nuggets that I hope you find helpful!
Why it can be hard to take action when you have so many ideas
In my work, I often see business owners struggling to choose between all their brilliant ideas. They want to do all of them now, and the idea of picking one and going all in on that feels scary.
They might think there’s a right or wrong choice, and worry about getting it wrong. An idea might feel so huge that they don’t know where to start. Or they might know what they want to be doing but can’t get out of the starting blocks, and they’re now riddled with self-doubt.
Whatever’s going on, the net result is the same: they stay stuck.
The trouble is, when they’re busy and overwhelmed, most people feel they need to keep their heads down, glued to their desk, working all the hours and trying to do all the things.
But that actually makes the problem worse, because it means you’re not giving yourself space to think.
This resonated for Liz, who shared a realisation that’s helped her look at things differently:
“Recently when I’ve felt overwhelmed, I've started to look through my to do list and be really honest about what does not need to happen right now. What surprised me is that a lot of the things on my to do list are self-imposed pressures.
It’s like I have deemed a marketing activity absolutely vital, and it has to happen this week, even though I've got a whole bunch of client deadlines. I often feel there’s so much pressure on me, so many people asking me for things. And then I realise actually most of the pressure's coming from me. I'm the one that has these really high expectations of myself and what is feasible to achieve in the time.
It's quite interesting how much I can remove from my list if I'm just really honest with myself about what doesn't actually need to get done.”
Let go of the things you ‘should’ be doing
In the online world, people are always shouting about the way we ‘should’ be doing things. Quick fixes, shiny objects, the latest Tiktok trends – we’re bombarded with ideas from other people, and it’s easy to get swept along by the buzz of it all.
And so things get added to to-do lists without much thought, because someone somewhere said it was a good idea.
But if you don’t stop and question whether those things are actually aligned with your goals, you’re only adding to your overwhelm and, as Liz pointed out, creating pressure that’s completely self-imposed.
One of Liz’s previous podcast guests, Sophie Cliff, talked about how the word ‘should’ is a huge killer of joy. That idea made a real impression on Liz, who now realises she can’t do everything she wants to do all at the same time:
“I am such a sucker for this! I want to try to make it big on Linkedin. I want to go viral on Instagram. I want to do this. I want to do that. And ultimately, realistically, I can't do it all at the same time. And it is overwhelming… The impact it has on me is subtle, and it takes a long time to realize that I've absorbed some ‘shoulds’ that I then need to unpick and get out of.”
What problem are you trying to solve?
To prevent them from taking on unnecessary tasks, I often ask my clients “what problem are you trying to solve with this?” Quite often, there isn't one. They’re looking for solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.
If everything is working fine in your business, why do you feel a need to add something else? For some people, it’s about the fun of the new, and they’re craving a creative spark, which is fine as long as you’re not trying to do too much and you’re intentional about what you’re doing.
“What problem are you trying to solve” is a simple question, but one that Liz found enlightening!
“That is a revelation. That question really hit me because actually, you're right. I've got enough work. Maybe I don't need to be marketing myself so hard. It’s just because I see other people doing that, I feel like that is what I need to do as well.”
Knowing what’s a yes and what’s a no
Liz suggested that an important part of combating overwhelm is knowing what to say yes to and actually being able to say no. I agree, and it’s not always easy!
Working with the Progress Cycle helps, though, so I explained how it works:
First, we pause, then we reflect, and then we choose. And only then – once we’ve made a choice about what’s important – do we take action and finish what we start. It looks like this:
When you’re saying yes to everything, it’s often because you’re not doing that first part of the cycle. You’re not taking a pause and reflecting on what’s important. Instead, you’re in reactive mode, diving straight into action and feeling like you need to say yes to every opportunity or idea that crosses your path.
But if you allow yourself to pause and reflect, you get to remember what you’re trying to achieve in your business. You get to look at your capacity. How much time would this thing take? Do you have that time? Do you have the energy? Is this thing aligned with the direction you want to be traveling in? Is it aligned with you, your personality, your preferences?
From there, you get to choose what to say yes and no to.
Give yourself space to think
If you’re a chronic people pleaser and the first thing you say when someone suggests something to you is “yes”, practice saying “let me get back to you” to give yourself space to pause, reflect and then choose with intention.
Liz identified with that, and shared that she’s also working on the internal pressure she feels to reply to people straight away, when it would be better if she took a moment to think before replying.
It helps her to remember that if she says yes to something, that means she’s saying no to something else.
“These are all difficult lessons that we have to learn, but I think they're quite universal.
The key message I'm taking away from what you're talking about is prioritizing that space to work out what’s right for me and what I want my business to look like.”
Use your goals and values to help you stay on track
Liz talks a lot about brand values in her work, and suggested that those can be helpful in working out whether something is right for you. Every time she does something that goes against her values, it feels bad and she realises she shouldn’t have said yes. She’s getting better at spotting that before saying yes now, and having such clearly defined values is helping her be more intentional
Regular reflection is so important – if all you do is write down your values and goals and then never think about them again, what’s the point?
As Liz so beautifully put it,
“By regularly checking in and asking yourself ‘are these still my values? Are these still my goals? Do they feel right to me?’, they’ll always be fresh in your mind and will be much more effective in guiding you.”
It’s ok to change your mind
Liz has learnt not to hold onto her goals too tightly, to leave room for things happening that weren’t even on her radar in the first place. Sometimes opportunities come up that we would never have thought of, and if it’s aligned and feels good, that’s great! It’s important to be willing to let another goal go, or deprioritise something else, though, or you risk spreading yourself too thin.
As I’m working with 1:1 clients, sometimes they might recognise they’re not as close to meeting their goal as they’d like, but they still feel excited by it so we leave it as it is and continue to explore ways they can move closer to that goal.
But a different client in the same situation might start judging themselves, feeling bad and demotivated whenever they look at that goal, and in that case we’d adjust it. Because it’s not just about the goal; it’s about the feeling underneath the goal.
So if one of your goals is making you feel like a failure, find a different way of framing it so it’s still stretching you out of your comfort zone, but feels exciting rather than restrictive. The changes can be subtle, but when you come at it with curiosity and experimentation, kindness and compassion, you can build a strong, beautiful relationship with the goals and values that are there to guide you in your business, so you can live the life you want to be living.
Your overwhelm doesn’t have to last forever
We all feel overwhelmed from time to time. When you’re wearing all the hats in your business and there are amazing things you want to achieve – not to mention life happening all around you – it’s inevitable.
But that doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck in that overwhelm for long. There are things you can do about it:
Let go of ‘shoulds’
Know what’s a yes and what’s a no
Remember to pause, reflect and choose before taking action
Let your goals and values guide you, by revisiting them often
When you incorporate these ideas into your life, you’ll find it so much easier to take action on what matters most.
And if you know you need to pause more often so you can invest your time and energy more wisely, I have a free resource that will help.
It’s called Ten powerful pauses for productivity and progress, and you can download your copy here.
About Liz Mosley, host of the Building Your Brand podcast
Liz is a graphic designer, specialising in branding for small businesses. She wants all small business owners to be able to build a business they LOVE and feel confident about promoting.
She has over a decade of branding and design experience, and with the help of her guests, shares tips around marketing and branding, to take away the fear of selling and help you build your brand.
Liz’s superpower is using design and branding to help business owners get excited and motivated to promote their business and shout about the value they offer.
You can follow Liz on Instagram here
Visit the Building Your Brand podcast website here
Find out more about Liz’s design work here.