Just Handle It: How to Stop Overthinking Your Business

I once started a cleaning company on a Wednesday.

I love ideas. I can make a very convincing case for just about any new offer or business idea to myself. I can get excited about the possibilities, imagine how it could work, and start making plans.

I also know what it feels like to spend so much time considering every possible direction that I never settle on what I’m actually going to do.

You end up with 14 tabs open, a few Google Docs, and a ChatGPT conversation full of ideas. By Friday, you have a different plan than the one you started with on Monday.

A question I saw online recently helped me look at that pattern differently.

What would you change if you had to make your current business work?

Imagine that starting over is off the table.

You have to keep your niche and your existing offers. You can change your role. You can get more help. You can change how you run the business. But you have to work with what you already have, and you have to make it fit the life you want.

What would have to change for you to actually want to keep running it?

For the sake of this exercise, you have to stay with the problems in front of you long enough to figure them out. The delivery problem still needs a solution. The offer still needs customers. The project you keep revisiting still needs to get finished.

I like this question because it takes away the option of escaping into a brand-new idea. It makes the work in front of you much harder to keep talking around.

The decision I spent two years circling

At Social Media Marketing World, my friend Tara Zuercher and I were sitting by the pool, planning our next 12 months. We were both speaking at the conference, and we were putting launches, offers, and ideas on the calendar.

I told her I was having a really hard time being on camera.

I had gained weight heading into the last years of my 30s, and it was affecting how willing I was to show up online. I knew I wanted to record more content. Then I would record something, hate how I looked, and feel embarrassed.

I had been counting macros, weighing my food, and working with a coach. I was thinking about keto, Whole30, going back to being vegan. I had a whole menu of possibilities.

I was basically verbal vomiting on her.

Then I mentioned that I had been considering a GLP-1 for two years. I had health anxiety, and I was scared of the side effects and long-term effects.

Tara put her notebook down on her lap, looked at me, and said, “Allie, just handle it.”

Those words have lived rent-free in my head ever since.

After that conversation, I went to the appointment I had already booked. I started taking a GLP-1 in May, and I’ve since lost almost 30 pounds. I’m sharing my own experience here, and this is what has been working for me.

What I keep coming back to is how much room the search for another possibility was taking up in my life. I was thinking about it constantly. I had spent two years considering paths, worrying, and trying to figure out which combination of options would finally work.

Now, when I catch myself circling something in my business, I hear Tara.

Okay, Allie. Just handle it. What does handling it actually look like?

The excuse I kept giving myself

I had a version of this pattern long before I owned a business.

In college, I was an art student. For one of my 3D sculpture classes, we had to build a creative chair. In true Allie form, I waited until the weekend before it was due.

I decided my chair was going to look like a giant piece of cake.

I was cutting wood and shoving yellow fiberglass insulation into it. I was itchy, I hadn’t researched the process, and I was trying to figure the whole thing out at the last possible second.

By Monday, the cake was beautiful. I loved that project. I wish I still had a picture of it.

I got a C.

A big part of our grade was class involvement, and I had spent the previous months socializing with my friends and hanging out on the patio of the art building. I was mad at my professor, even though I hadn’t done the work.

And I had a very convenient explanation ready: I only worked on it for a weekend. Of course I couldn’t expect the best grade.

That explanation let me avoid finding out what would happen if I fully committed.

If I started early, did the work, tried my best, and still got a C, I would have to look at my skills. I would have to see where I needed to improve. I would have to sit with the disappointment.

Procrastinating gave me an out.

I see the same thing happen in business. You launch something, skip the last five emails, and miss your sales goal. You can tell yourself you probably would have hit the goal if you had sent those emails.

Sending them means giving the launch a real chance. It also means being willing to look at the results and say, “Okay, something in this sales process needs work.”

Full sending it means getting something you can learn from

My son is a freestyle skier. I don’t love that for us, but he loves it.

He does flips and spins and all kinds of things I would prefer to not think about too much. He talks about “full sending” a backflip, because you can’t kind of commit halfway through it.

That conversation stuck with me.

In business, full sending something still leaves room for a disappointing result. You might do the work, finish the launch, and discover something needs to change.

At least then you have a completed attempt to look at. You can see where you bobbled. You have something to improve next time.

Keeping the project permanently unfinished leaves you guessing.

Look at your business like it belongs to somebody else

Imagine someone handed you a carbon copy of your company.

They have your offers, your audience, your budget, and your responsibilities outside of work. They ask you what they should do next.

What would you tell them?

This can be especially uncomfortable when you help other people with the exact thing you keep putting off in your own business. The copywriter without a sales page. The marketing consultant who isn’t marketing. The business coach who keeps creating new offers while their existing offer could use more attention.

When you’re looking at someone else’s business, you can usually stay focused on the problem they brought you.

An offer people have already bought gives you something to put in front of more people. A delivery problem gives you something specific to solve so customers can get support without you being available all day. A pile of unfinished projects gives you a choice about which one would remove the biggest constraint.

Inside your own business, those decisions come with history.

You remember the disappointing launch. You remember posting something and getting no views. You know what someone else in your industry is doing, and you start wondering whether their approach would work better.

Then you’re back to evaluating everything.

Looking at your business from the outside helps you get back to the problem you actually need to solve.

Make the next step small enough to finish

There are two things I feel like I say on practically every coaching call: minimum viable product and path of least resistance.

A minimum viable product asks you to get something done and into the world, even while you can still see ways to improve it.

The path of least resistance helps you find a way forward with what you have today.

Say your business needs sales. Start with the offer you can confidently deliver right now. Think about who you can put it in front of. Look at what needs to be completed for you to feel good about selling it.

Maybe the next step is emailing your list. Maybe it’s finishing something inside the offer. Maybe it’s getting help with the part you keep avoiding.

You can make an informed decision with the information you have today. You can decide what you’re going to finish this week, put a date on the calendar, and work toward that date.

The part I keep having to practice is staying with the decision when I hit a challenging point. That’s when another strategy, another offer, or another round of research starts looking very appealing.

Catch the moment you give yourself an out

I was supposed to record this podcast and go for a run.

Somehow, I ended up repotting my plants.

One of them looked droopy. I took a picture and asked ChatGPT about it. It told me the plant had root rot and needed to be repotted as soon as possible.

So I repotted my plants, lost track of time, and suddenly it was time to pick up my kids from school.

The podcast wasn’t recorded. The run hadn’t happened.

I had given myself an out.

Sometimes I do that with a plant. Sometimes it shows up as looking at new software, considering a rebrand, or having another strategy conversation about something I already have enough information to try.

Those are the moments I’m working on catching.

I care about what my calendar looks like. I want time with my family, and I want to enjoy running my business. I’m also working on the consistency required to follow through on the things I say matter to me.

What are you going to handle this week?

Come back to the question:

If you had to make your business work with what you have right now, what would you do?

Write down your answer. Then read it as though someone else handed you that question about their own company.

Give them the advice you would give a client or a friend. Look at what they can finish, what they can put in front of customers, and what they’ve been reconsidering for far too long.

That gives you somewhere to start.

For me, this means catching myself when I’m collecting options again and asking what I’m ready to decide. It means recording the podcast, staying with the plan, and doing some of the things that still make me uncomfortable.

And occasionally telling myself, “Allie, just freaking handle it.”

I talk through all of this, including the parts that may give me a vulnerability hangover, in the full episode of Start Tiny. Hit play at the top of this page, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This post is based on an episode of the Start Tiny Show. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and if it resonated, send me a DM and tell me what you’re going to handle this week.