Five Tips to Manage Overwhelm As a Business Owner
It can get overwhelming trying to manage all parts of running a business while also trying to have a happy personal life. Here's some tips for managing the madness.
Some people become small business owners as a lifelong dream with zero hesitation. But then others stumble their way into a business venture at random. I’m the second.
Being a small business owner can be exhausting, and the task list is insane. For those of us who struggle with staying on task, getting things done, and organization, the daily to-do list can get overwhelming. Especially when you add in the pressures of being a parent, a partner, and a friend.
When there’s too much to do, my brain tends to shut down with paralysis. I put things off until the to-do list becomes so huge it’s nearly insurmountable.
I used to think I was the only one like this. But my social media feeds are full of others who express the same problems. It’s comforting to know I’m not as awkward as I used to think with my frequent ability to … oh look, a squirrel.
5 Tips for Managing Overwhelm as a Business Owner
When starting a new business, you have to do a ton of stuff. Most of us begin as solopreneurs, a one-person show wearing many hats.
The tasks vary by business, but there are some things that we all have to do to be successful. All business owners must:
Create a business plan
Plan an inventory of products or services
Manage pricing
Find customers
Promote your business
Bookkeeping
Handle day-to-day tasks
When there’s so much to do, it’s easy to forget things or get distracted and miss deadlines. My craft room and computer hard drive are cemeteries of projects abandoned in varying levels of completion.
Blog posts I never finished. Books I stopped writing in the middle of a chapter. SVGs for my Silhouette not ready for cutting. Sublimation crafts for last season’s kids’ sports. And hundreds of ready-to-buy digital products without a store.
Lately, I’ve made more of an effort to expand my online stores and social presence to create passive income. It’s a hard market out here for freelance writers. I’ve been dabbling back into fiction writing, dreaming of publishing one or more stories this year.
But first, business.
I’m adding several products daily at my online store for femalepreneurs who dream of starting, growing, or maintaining an online business. Shop Sarandipity’s. Want a sample of what I offer? Join my email list and get a free 2025 printable calendar for free. I have a three-year printable calendar available on Sarandipity’s if you’re the type to prefer a multi-year organizational opportunity.
I also have several awesome subscriptions and courses in the works. My BABS service will offer DFY (done for you) business packages. Imagine having your dream business set up and ready to launch without having to do everything involved.
I handle setting up your online service, from establishing an online presence (choose an online store platform or website) to stocking your inventory with products ready to sell and optimized for shopper keywords.
Your store will have full automation systems in place, delivering your products to the buyer upon receipt of payment, with creative mockups to display your offerings in a professional storefront.
Already got a store or business started? No problem. I’ll soon have plenty of stuff you can use to grow and maintain your business with fresh stock.
I’ll also be offering hobby subscriptions. For now, these kits will be digital. But I’m thinking of turning them into physical boxes once my audience grows. So far, I’ve come up with monthly subscriptions for:
Crafting
Cooking
Baking
Breadmaking
Homesteading
Hobbies
Gardening
Exercise
Yoga
Homeschooling
Business
Finance
Cleaning
Learn a Skill
SEO
Writing
Reading
Organization
It’s a lot, I know. I’m very ambitious. Like that song goes, blame it on my ADD, baby. I’m constantly getting great ideas, but there are too many to implement alone. Why be selfish and keep all this cool stuff to myself when I can share it with friends?
You’ll want to subscribe to my Stack to get valuable business tips for creatives who want to make a business doing what they love.
But you’ll get so much more out of a paid subscription. Every post will be packed with actionable tips for busy business moms. But that’s not enough to encourage anyone to pay for something. Not when there’s so much free advice out there; some are probably better than mine.
That’s why there’s more with your subscription. For the value-paced price of $8.99 a month, you’ll get:
one monthly freebie (sometimes business/sometimes personal),
10 credits to use in my online shop, Sarandipity’s,
a 20% coupon on any order or service,
discounts on any courses and subscriptions,
one blank grocery list printable
one blank to-do list printable
4 writing prompts for email list/social media campaigns (one a week)
1 sheet of printable planner stickers
1 daily challenge prompt (per challenge you sign up to join)
If you’re not ready to upgrade your membership to a paid plan yet, go ahead and write down these five tips to manage your business to avoid overwhelm. Paid members can keep scrolling to get all the juicy details.
Use a schedule to manage your time
Automate and schedule tasks
Create time blocks to bunch tasks
Repurpose your content for consistency
Get organized
Manage Your Time with Planners
My ADHD has my brain constantly on the go, with a thousand thoughts flittering around like elusive butterflies. They’re great to watch fly by but if you try to touch one, it dies.
In the case of my mind, out of the mess of thoughts comes some brilliant ideas. As I get one great idea, it spins into several more. If I don’t get the idea written down in a matter of moments, I usually end up forgetting all about it by the time I’m ready to use the idea.
I remember the days when I would laugh at someone who used planners. These days, I geek out over them. It makes things more efficient when you can see things all at once and side by side.
When you have a mind with a hundred browser tabs open on different topics and the bandwidth capacity of a ‘90s AOL dialup connection, you need to write things down. Who’s taken a trip to the grocery store without a list and made it home to realize you forgot everything you needed?
What kind of planners can you use and how can they benefit your life and career?
Meal planners - stop asking the dreaded question of “what’s for dinner?” by planning your meals out in weekly or monthly sessions
Daily schedules - track what you have to do by the hour to get tasks done on time and without procrastination
Cleaning schedules - one of the biggest scams of our lives is the 8-hour 5-day a week work/school schedule. There’s never enough hours in the day to get things done or remember what to do. Cleaning schedules can help keep your house clean without the stress of remembering what to do and when.
Monthly schedules - having a 30 day schedule allows you to keep track of your entire month to let you prepare for things in advance
Health tracker - A health tracker is a great resource to use to keep track of kids’ various appointments (doctor, dentist, eye doc), medications, illnesses, surgeries, cycles, and more
Kids trackers - Do you have a kid or several with busy activities that keep you on your toes and your butt in the driver’s seat? If you’ve ever gotten caught off guard by a game, snack schedule, concert, or party, this resource is meant for your child secretarial duties.
Finance trackers - As costs continue to make us cry for the basic essentials (what is the cost of eggs where you live?), keeping track of your finances is necessary. Know where you spend your money and when, and find ways to control your costs and make sure all of your bills are paid. You can even find ways to cut out some things.
I have all of these products and more in my online store. Want a sample? Grab this free two-page daily organizer to make your day easier to survive.
Automate and Schedule
While some of technology may leave us scratching our heads, we can’t ignore the benefits of being able to schedule things to happen later.
Think about your favorite content creators. Do you really think they spend all day posting videos and posts? Highly doubtful. It’s more likely that they use softwares to schedule their content to drip out at set times.
There are various softwares that can schedule and release your content, depending on the platform. Sites like WordPress make it easy to schedule your posts in advance and you don’t need to sign up for a subscription service.
Meta Suite does the same thing for Facebook and Instagram profiles. And TailWind is a great non-affiliated software to use for Pinterest. Their AI is pretty awesome.
Create Task Blocks
One of my biggest challenges is staying on task. I try to be a multi-tasker but it usually ends up with me spending hours on a task that has zero usability in my business or personal life.
It is what it is. We’ll call it self care or whatever.
When it comes to all the things to do in business and life, I’ve discovered the secret to making my brain perform properly is by bunching tasks together. I’ve seen a lot of professionals doing similiar things, so it must be a useful method.
And to make my time well spent, I make it fun for my brain by making it into a game. I set a timer and a goal and I see how close I can get to completing my task before I run out of time. Winning gets me a snack or a few minutes of random entertainment before I move onto the next job.
What tasks do you bunch? Content creation is a good one. Spend 15 minutes coming up with catchy headlines for the social medias and emails you plan to send out that week (or month if you’re ambitious).
Spend another 20 minutes on scheduling completed things to send automatically. You can alott another 60 minutes on researching new trends and products. A good portion of time should go to creating your products, which is why many people outsource to a content creator like myself for large projects.
But you can also bunch household tasks, like meal prepping, cleaning tasks, errands, emails, and crafts.
Repurpose content
Creating content is a core part of business ownership. Whether you sell digital items like planners, stickers, workbooks, or apps or you’re in the physical market with a niche business.
Coming up with unlimited ideas can drain the muse and make you burn out early in your business. I help femalepreneurs build a business they love, so it’s important to find ways to work easier.
Instead of trying to come up with random new things to add to each of your channels, repurpose your content into different pieces. When you have a similar message across all of your platforms, it makes you look cohesive and responsible.
Repurposing content is a great way to reduce the amount of work you do, since you’ve already got the knowledge. You just have to find ways to alter it for what appeals to the audience.
Blogs and websites use long-form content and sales copy. You’ll need to be able to do a lot of writing to pitch your products. You also have to add images for your content, do a lot of backend work, and some website design.
Social media uses more visual content, with videos, images, and music accompanied by short written captions, often influential and expressing an opinion. Emojis are a common addition.
Set Up Organizational Systems
Nothing is worse for a business than being disorganized. For me, it’s a source of paralysis. Clutter causes me to become overwhelmed, which then causes me to get overwhelmed. My overdramatic, negative-Nancy brain turns a small task into a bucket of fear that I hide away from like my life depends on it.
But I keep adding mess to it, telling myself that one day, I’ll feel like clearing it out. It goes as much for my physical life as for my digital one. I hate trying to decide what to create or write about or list because when I look in my folders, it’s a mess of disarray.
I’ll end up not finding what I’m looking for because it’s not where I thought I put it. So, I either end up wasting time creating something new instead or getting frustrated and abandoning the task altogether.
Not something you want to experience when you’re a busy business owner that’s not trying to waste time.
There’s plenty of ways to stay organized. Create detailed folders and subfolders on your computer or storage device for easy finding. Use tools like Trello or Notion to plan out your content calendar.
Set timers and reminders for important time-sensitive tasks. Use planners to achieve your daily goals. Get into a routine and set schedules for what do to and when to train your muse on when to get active.
Keep a notepad and pen in every room for quick notetaking. Set a reminder every night to collect these notes and enter them into a dump file on your computer or journal. Assign a score to each thought on the importance to help you focus on the crucial ones first. Add reminders and deadlines for these.
Google Sheets (Microsoft Excel) is a great way to organize your thoughts into useable items, whether you turn it into a topic to create content on or something to solve a need.
As thanks for reading these helpful tips for avoiding overwhelm as a business owner, check out these awesome events full of free resources to help you build your business. Overwhelmed by all the things involved in building a business?
Contact me to see how I can help. Whether you just need a sounding board, need help with promoting your business, or need help getting started, I want to help you out.
Awesome events for busy business owner parents.
Writing Romance Mastery Summit
How To Attract Powerful JV Partners Regardless of Your List Size
2025 Blogger Breakthrough Summit
Grow Your Audience And Income on Substack in 2025
Creative Business Success Summit
Turn Your Hobby Into a Money-Making Business
How to Build a Strong Visual Brand on a Lean Budget
Life and Business Growth Collection
Magnetize & Monetize 3-day event