Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like burning down your business and escaping to an island to live a simple life. If there is anything guaranteed in business, it’s that overwhelm and burnout are sure to show up at some point. And this is confirmed for me every few months when inevitably someone in my audience shares their struggle.
That came up recently for a Lounge member. She asked… does anyone have any experience with pausing their business? She posted on the weekend, so by the time I got to her post to respond there were already a bunch of responses – I love to see the community supporting each other.
To no one’s surprise everyone posting confirmed they’d been there before and acknowledged how normal that feeling is. Most of know this intellectually, but it’s nice to be reminded, ya know. All of that to say, if you’re feeling that way right now – it’s completely normal.
PREFER TO LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE? CLICK HERE
Should You Pause Your Business When You Feel Overwhelmed?
The first thing I want to talk about is whether or not pausing your business is a good idea. Short answer, no. Unless you intend to give up the business entirely (no shame in that) pausing your business only leads to lost momentum, customers finding alternatives, and that much more difficulty in ramping things back up.
This is true with everything, not just business. It happened to me with ballet and the flute. I started young, took a break to do other things, and when I tried to get back into it later on – I was too far behind my peers.
I was just recently listening to a podcast from an actress who talked about a similar struggle. After she wrapped multiple seasons on a hit show she took a 2 year hiatus to explore other things. When she was ready to get back into the game, her peers, who had been progressing in the industry all that time, were booking all the jobs.
That’s not to say picking something up in the future is impossible, it’s just that much more difficult and almost starting again at ground zero.
If you’ve gotten to the point that you’re thinking you want to pause things, that’s a sign that something’s got to give.
Burnout in a Business Problem
Before you can figure out how to alleviate the overwhelm, you have to figure out what is causing it in the first place. It sounds obvious, I know – but sometimes it’s not quite as cut and dry as we think.
While the exact issue is going to be unique to every business, most of the time it falls into one of these categories.
- You’re depleted: no rest, running on fumes, no separation between life and business
- Your business model isn’t working: too reactive, no predictability, outgrown your systems
- You’re doing work you shouldn’t be doing: you need to hire or let things that don’t work go
- You’ve lost the why: the thing that made it fun is gone
- You might just be over it, and not ready to say that out loud yet
I’ve definitely experienced all of these at one point or another.
Once you figure that out. You can start to develop the solution.
How to Overcome Overwhelm in Your Business
Once you diagnose the problem, then you can start developing the solution.
For this particular student, she runs a graphic tee business that she prints on demand in house. While I didn’t know all the details, my hunch was that at least some of that stress was coming from the reactive nature of the business. Making anything to order, no matter how streamlined your systems are, just feels more chaotic than simply picking pre-made products off a shelf and putting it in a box.
Some of the recommendations I gave to deal with that were
- instead of producing/fulfilling orders everyday, you do it 2-3x per week. Find a schedule that works for you. Ex. maybe you produce Monday/Wed and ship Tue/Thurs – or whatever makes sense for your schedule.
- instead of offering all graphics all the time, you focus on specific collections at specific times so your production is more streamlined. Or you could work on pre-order cycles to make your production more predictable.
- slim down your blank offerings, whether it’s per design or overall, so there are fewer possible combinations, streamlining production.
She also mentioned that her assistant was out on maternity leave and that could be contributing a lot to the stress she is feeling at the moment. In that case, I recommended she not make any decisions until the person is back since that could change it all.
I had another student who has a similar issue in his made to order business. One of his strategies to deal with this was to use email – both automations he built in Email Badassery and his regular campaigns – was to steer more of his customers toward the things he wanted to sell so he could streamline his production and make more things in advance.
And sometimes that stress isn’t the business model at all, but more of the operations. I’ve had two Lounge members in the last month or so come to grips with the fact that they had to hire someone to help with fulfillment. It was just taking up too much of their time and holding them back from making progress.
For others, it has come down to doing things that don’t contribute to the bottom line like posting everyday on social media, trying to fix things that aren’t actually broken but take up a lot of mental space and need to just be let go, and even just taking a day off to completely disconnect.
You might also need to reevaluate what success looks like in your business. I’ve worked with and talked to a number of product based business owners who were chasing scale for the longest time. Constantly stressed, overworked, feeling like a hamster on a wheel. Once they were able to step back and realize they’d be just as happy with a moderate, steady flow of business – a lot of the pressure was relieved and they had a lot more stamina to keep going. A lot of them ended up with more money in their pockets too.
Your Next Steps
There’s no way to cover every possible reason you might be feeling overwhelmed in your business on this podcast. But the one thing I can be sure of is that the first step should always be to take a step back, look at the big picture and do your best to identify what it is that’s affecting you right now.
And it requires being really honest with yourself, even if it’s uncomfortable. And if at the end of that you still feel like burning it all down – make sure it’s not just a season. It might just be a funk you’re in at the moment that will pass.
I think back to all my years working in retail stores. It didn’t matter what company I worked for, the job was basically the same. But there were times I would get completely burnt out on a specific company only to feel refreshed and rejuvenated when I went to the next one. It wasn’t long before all the same issues starting creeping in, but the beginning always felt fresh, new and like there were endless opportunities.
While it’s much harder to create that experience in your own business, you can get pretty close to the same feeling with a few tweaks, a good vacation, or even just being more intentional with how you spend your time outside of your business.
At the end of the day, overwhelm and burnout are almost impossible to prevent completely, but let it be a sign that most of the time that just means something needs to shift.
Additional Resources:
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you deal with business burnout?
The first step is figuring out what’s actually causing it — because burnout usually has a specific root, whether that’s depletion, a broken business model, doing work you shouldn’t be doing, or losing your why. Once you identify the real problem, you can make targeted changes instead of blowing everything up. Most of the time something needs to shift, not end.
Why do I feel so overwhelmed running a small business?
Overwhelm usually comes from two directions at once — outside pressures like slow seasons and rising costs, and internal ones like an unsustainable workload or a business model that keeps you in reactive mode. When both hit at the same time, the weight compounds fast. Identifying which one is driving the feeling is the starting point for fixing it.
Should I take a break from my business if I’m burned out?
A full pause is rarely the right move unless you’re planning to close for good. Stepping away leads to lost momentum, customers finding alternatives, and a much harder ramp back up when you return. A better approach is to identify what’s broken, make changes, and if something major is in flux — like a key team member being out — wait until that stabilizes before making any big decisions.
How do I make my eCommerce business less chaotic?
A lot of the chaos in eCommerce comes from operating in constant reactive mode with no structure or predictability. Building in scheduled production days, batching fulfillment, and using email marketing to steer customers toward what you actually want to sell can go a long way toward creating order. Sometimes it also comes down to hiring help for fulfillment so you can focus on the work that actually moves the business forward.
How do you streamline a made to order business?
A few things make a big difference: batching production and fulfillment on set days instead of filling orders daily, focusing on specific collections at specific times instead of offering everything all at once, and slimming down your blank or material options to reduce the number of possible combinations. Pre-order cycles are another way to make production more predictable and less reactive.
