One-Bite At a Time, Said the Elephant in the Room

Overwhelm sucks, but it is just information.

Rebecca Gunter,

Brandthroplogist and Chief Handwringer at Stoned Fruit

‘Entrepreneurs are the only ones who will work 80 hours a week for themselves just to avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else,’ the old adage goes, and everyone who has ever hung out a shingle and made a go of running a business chuckles, because of course we do.

Why? Freedom, baby.

Sometime after a particularly prickly exit from my butts-in-seats office job, way before Work-From-Home was ever a thing, I put my right hand on The Joy of Cooking and solemnly swore to myself that I would only ever work for myself, always and forever, amen. And despite an 18-month side quest as a paycheck person learning Brand Strategy and becoming the founder whose words you read today, I have done it. I have kept that promise to myself.

But as Guy Fieri reminded me just the other day on a particularly moving episode of Guy’s Grocery Games, the only show my 18 year old daughter will let us watch together, “Freedom isn’t free.” 🫡

Yes! I do not have to file a Leave Request in triplicate to the goblins of Gringotts Wizarding Bank in Diagon Alley. Also, yes, I have to haul ass morning-noon-night the week(s) before and after to spend Easter with my mom.

Yes! I don’t have some well-intended middle manager breathing down my neck. Oh wait, yes I diddly do. It me. I am that.

Yes, my career can grow as wide, as deep, and as far as I want it to; I just have to know how to do All. Of. The. Things… So your journey of self-directed learning, DIY, and getting it wrong more often than not starts in <checks Guy Fieri’s watch> 3-2-1 GO! Find your own mentors. Your own board of directors and support staff. Your own customers, colleagues, and comrades. Eat what you kill, what a thrill! It’s all you.

You got this! Right? Right?!?! 😬 👉👈

Of my own customers, colleagues, and comrades, and you, dear reader, we all have this in common: we are juggling l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y everything and the stakes have never been higher.

Overwhelm has entered the chat.

If your nervous system just took a loop-de-loop like the Thunderbolt at Kennywood Park, welcome in, <pats seat next to me> I am glad you’re here. Let’s take a cleansing breath.

Overwhelm –– that massively dysregulating feeling that it’s all going to hell in a handbasket unless you drive yourself into a fine pulp of a person –– we’re no stranger. Let’s cut to my inner dialogue right this very moment, friends.

My business only works if I work it, and with total abandon. I need to send ten emails a day, minimum. I gotta figure out a year’s worth of receipts still sitting in a box on a shelf. I must manage every touchpoint of the client deliverables or what are we even doing here? Which is more important, meetings or marketing? Can the answer be both? Yup. In fact, when it comes to the copious living contradictions that we have to hold every moment of every day, this IS how it is. <shakes locked door handle of this blog post anxiously>

And scene.

We all know where this is going. Overwhelm leads to more than just burnout, the precursor to hours of dissociative scrolling –– it makes us less present, less capable, less ambitious, less creative, less interested, and, frankly, less interesting. So let’s try to keep in check, m’kay?

May is “Build a Sustainable Business” month here at Favorite Daughter and mitigating overwhelm in a battle of attrition is not sustainable. Period.

After ‘pert near’ 22-years tenaciously toiling at it in labors of love and a lifelong commitment to the spirit of Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves, here is how I make it work with my constant shadow, Ms. Overwhelmed, Mistress of the Fright:

PROTIP 1: Release perfectionism and reframe that ‘ish.

A major player in Overwhelm’s street game is the subtle mindf*ckery of perfectionism. <gits teeth> Must. Not. Fail. Must. Not. Flail. For it’s not just the relentlessly replenishing nature of your to-do list, it’s that every single thing on there must be executed with A+ work. Release your attachment to gold stars, egomaxxing, and ‘atta girls 👏 ’ and watch the whole lift get lighter.

PROTIP 2: One bite at a time. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.

It works if you work it. And by “it” I mean the constant invention and reinvention that comes part and parcel with building a sustainable business. When overwhelm starts slowly snaking up my skort, I hyperfocus on the next right thing to do. 'How does one eat an elephant?', you ask. Forkful- by-forkful, so chew your food; there are starving entrepreneurs in <fill in the place your mamma always said>.

PROTIP 3: Use it! Rigor and craft are the counterbalance to anxiety and uncertainty.

Lean in, baby. Like anything else worth doing for the health and wealth of themselves, their business, and the people who love them, it takes discipline. Think of yourself as an entrepreneurial athlete, artist, or master craftsman who is simply training with a clear and focused mindset on getting a little better each day until they are The G.O.A.T. <tosses Mardi Gras beads in your general direction>

PROTIP 4: Reclaim your love affair with doing it your way and have way more fun.

Deliverables are a drag, so don’t think of finished work like that. Instead of spinning out on The Hamsterwheel of Overmelia producing "deliverables", I redirect my happy 🍑 to what I actually like to do. And what I really, really like to do, is to do it my way. Experimentation, reinvention, innovation, oh my! I love to ride the cutting edge –– where the Entrepreneurial Arena and the Zeitgeist meet to form my future, solving problems for bold baddies who are also playing to win. 🫵🫶

PROTIP 5: Rinse. Repeat. Use. Reuse. Recycle.

You know what Overwhelm frickin’ loves, you guys? More, more, more! Don’t feed it. What can you repackage, repurpose, or reclaim? Build a container or a system for the things that drain your brain. For example, you don’t have to get up at 6am to squeeze a blog post in before the calls start <wink!> and then spin out wondering what to write. You could, just for example, stop creating more content and create the system that makes the content inevitable. Just sayin.

In other words, when you feel like you’re swimming upstream, just go with the flow. This ain’t your pre-Pandemic “Hustle Culture” thinspiration, y’all; this is me saying that out here, in this bot-eat-bot world, you’ve got to make peace with overwhelm or it will shred you to pieces.

This is how I do it.

With love from your partner-in-the-grind,

Rebecca

P.S. Sometimes, overwhelm is a symptom of not feeling like your insides match your outsides. If you’ve been narrowly averting an identity crisis, if your brand voice feels more like a goofy costume than a second skin, if you keep hearing “I just don’t know what to refer you for 🤷‍♀️” … we should talk. Favorite Daughter friends & family can get 10% off of a 1:1 Deep Dive Brand Therapy Session with the code FAVORITEDAUGHTER at brandventure.live.

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Author Blurb

Rebecca Gunter is the founder of Stoned Fruit, a brand strategy and messaging studio for founder-led businesses whose message has stopped keeping up with the work. A self-described Brandthropologist, Rebecca uses an anthropological lens to study the culture, language, proof, patterns, and founder truth inside a business, then turns what is true into language people can actually use.

Her work pushes against the false choice that founders must choose between sounding credible and sounding like themselves. Rebecca believes the strongest brands are both strategically sharp and unmistakably human. They explain themselves, repeat themselves, prove themselves, and carry themselves — without making the founder do all the translating.

StonedFruit.com

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Article Synopsis

Rebecca Gunter explores the very real overwhelm of entrepreneurship — the freedom, the pressure, the self-management, and the endless reinvention. With humor, honesty, and hard-won experience, she reframes overwhelm as information rather than failure, offering practical ways to release perfectionism, take the next right step, and build a more sustainable business one bite at a time.