Are you wondering how to stop feeling overwhelmed as a business owner? In this video, I'm going to share with you my five step process for how you can beat overwhelm as a solo entrepreneur — and enjoy a true lifestyle business model.
This is ideal for any small business owner who runs a one person business: freelancers, service providers, product creators, online course creators, basically any kind of solopreneur can benefit from this.
All videos in the Solo Entrepreneur Overwhelm series:
- Top 3 Things You NEED to Know About Freelancer Overwhelm
- Small Business Overwhelm Assessment
- How to Overcome Small Business Overwhelm in 30 Seconds
- Step by Step Guide to Beat Freelancer Overwhelm for Good (that's this one!)
Step by Step Guide to Beat Freelancer Overwhelm...
Step 1 to beat entrepreneurial overwhelm: Do a goals assessment.
If you are consistently overwhelmed or if overwhelm is an ongoing issue for you, then you may want to consider that either a) the goals that you have set aren't the right goals for you at this point in time, and/or b) the way that you are going about achieving your goals has a lot of room for improvement.
Check in on your goals: Why did you set them? Are they goals that you genuinely want for you and your business? Or did you set them based on what industry experts tell you to do, or what a family member expects of you?
Even if YOU are the one who set the goal for yourself, ae you (still) excited by the goal that you have set? Just because some of your goals used to let you up, they used to be things that you really wanted, doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to still want them at this point. It might be time to let some of your goals go.
You might also find that the goals that you've set for yourself are really great in and of themselves, but it's the road to achieve those goals that feels like too much. The action steps that you have created for yourself, the strategy that you have put in motion for achieving your goals, is what really has that room for improvement and really needs to change.
In that case, check in on your methods: Did you choose your methods because they're what you enjoy? Or because you think that they're the only way for you to achieve your goals? Are you eager to use them or do you dread doing them?
You might need to try a new approach and different actions to take compared to what you're currently doing, in order to reignite that spark and to really reduce the overwhelm.
Another issue you may be experiencing at this step is that you don't feel worthy or deserving of your goals. In that case, pay attention to Step 4 in this process. We'll get to it in just a few minutes.
Step 2 to beat solo entrepreneur overwhelm: Restructure your business model.
Yes, I'm serious! Most of the time, small business overwhelm comes up because your business model is not conducive to managing that overwhelm. It is not built with you and your unique personality and lifestyle etc in mind.
In this case, you will want to assess your entire business model and the way that you have structured your business: Is it designed to serve you? Does it all collapse when you experience overwhelm? If your business cannot handle you feeling overwhelmed, then that's an indicator that your foundations are very rocky and they really need to be improved.
Restructuring your business model may include assessing any and all of the following: the logistics around the services and and products that you offer, your communication practices and boundaries, the strategies, processes and systems that you use, the schedule you work within and the timeframes that you have given yourself, the software and platforms that you use, your time management and task management methods, the people you work with, and a whole lot more.
Even if you realize that you need to restructure all of these things, you might find that there are small tweaks, little things that you can do that have really beneficial effects. Many of my clients are able to make immediate changes to their business structure without it feeling like a scary or drastic change, and they get to experience the immediate benefits of those changes. Little tweaks can go a really long way.
Learning exactly how to restructure your business model in a way that works for your unique situation is a key aspect of my Personality-Based Productivity framework — and you can get a full overview of how that framework works in my free training! It is my gift to you:
Step 3 for how to overcome business overwhelm: Create overwhelm management and prevention strategies.
When you have these strategies in place, you will know in advance exactly what to do and how to navigate feelings of overwhelm. You'll be able to stop overwhelm in its tracks when it tries to sneak up on you. You will also be able to reduce the intensity of it and take away its power on the off chance that it does manage to sneak up on you.
Your overwhelm management and prevention strategies can include the trigger points for your overwhelm and how you can identify that it is happening — for example by looking at past ways that you have dealt with overwhelm; specific methods for you to reduce overwhelm, energy boosters and detractors, and organizational tactics that suit your personality.
This is something, by the way, that I teach in my Productivity Powerhouse e-course… You get templates for how to create your very own management and prevention strategies, specifically around burnout — and you can absolutely apply those same concepts to overwhelm.
And guess what? My free training featuring the Personality-Based Productivity framework ALSO gives you a sneak peek of Productivity Powerhouse!
Step 4 to beat overwhelm as a solo entrepreneur: Prioritize mindset work and building your interpersonal skills.
Going back to Step 1, if you do not feel worthy or deserving of your goals, or if you have insecurities or doubts about your ability to accomplish your goals, you will definitely want to improve your intrapersonal skills. Doing this can help you differentiate between perceptions versus facts.
The more inner work you do and the more that you work on your mindset, the better equipped you will be to handle overwhelm. You can more easily identify it, manage it and even prevent it. Work on yourself, and you will make incredible progress on overcoming small business overwhelm.
By the way, I have a free masterclass that will help you with this as well!
The Activate Your Intuition masterclass is specifically designed to develop your interpersonal skills:
Step 5 for how to manage overwhelm in business: Differentiate between a project and a task.
One of the biggest frustrations with being overwhelmed is that it can manifest itself in an inability to accomplish tasks. You might feel really overwhelmed by all of the things that you have on your task list.
A very simple way to work through this issue is to make sure that you are clear and honest with yourself about what is a project versus a task. You probably have items on your task list that are so big that they're actually a project; they are not a single task.
Check in on this by going through your full task list and asking yourself, “What would this task look like if I broke it down further? How many parts can it become? If this task were to happen in three stages, what would each of those stages look like?”
Suddenly, you might find that a particular task on your to-do list can be broken down into much smaller, more manageable bite sized chunks. This makes it quicker to do, easier to accomplish, less stressful and faster to check off your task list. It ceases to be a three day task or a three hour task. It becomes maybe several 30 minute tasks. It ceases to be so daunting and becomes a lot more doable. You're focusing on one real task at a time rather than big projects that you think are tasks.
What’s next?
There you go! Now you have a step by step guide for how to stop feeling overwhelmed as a business owner.
Your next step is to begin using personality based productivity to completely quash your overwhelm and increase your success as a solo entrepreneur. That is where my Personality-based Productivity for Small Business Owners training comes into play…
It is an EPIC training and one of my personal favourites to date! In that training — which, by the way, costs you $0 — you’ll learn the following over the course of a single hour:
- 3-part plan to master work/life balance, making faster progress than ever on your business goals without sacrificing your values or your personal goals or your lifestyle wants and needs.
- Top 9 most common productivity and business problems that freelancers and other solo entrepreneurs experience — plus the *anti-hustle success secrets* for how you can FIX them.
- Peek behind the curtain of my signature anti-hustle productivity framework (designed especially for small business owners across all industries and backgrounds) — how it works and what you can do to implement it in your own business.
- 9 examples for what other solopreneurs — like you! — have done to skyrocket their productivity (while avoiding the hustle and grind), so that your personal life gets to come first.
- PLUS, you will self-assess your current productivity “problem areas” — so you know exactly what to do to improve them — using the Self Assessment Checklist that we go through together on the training.