When you feel drained — mentally, emotionally, and physically — what do you usually tell yourself? A lot of the business owners that I talk to say things like, “I just need to push through. I’ll rest later. It’s just a busy season.” But here’s what I want to offer you today: feeling drained shouldn’t be your default. It’s not something that you have to just deal with, but it is data. Your energy is giving you information about how your business is running, and when your battery is empty, it’s not just a bad week or a busy season — it’s a signal that something inside the business is demanding more from you than it should.

This whole episode was inspired by something that I said to a client recently. She’d been pushing, overthinking, and feeling exhausted, and here’s what I told her: You can’t help others, and you can’t make the best business decisions when your battery is drained. Her nervous system was overloaded, her body was in stress mode, and she kept trying to make strategic decisions from a completely depleted place. But you can’t lead from an empty battery. You can’t problem-solve from overwhelm. And you can’t create clarity when your system is overloaded.

So what we’re going to talk about is what your drained energy is actually telling you and what needs to shift so you can operate from a more grounded, powerful place again. A lot of business owners feel like it’s a personal issue when they feel drained. They think, If I just manage my time better… if I were just more disciplined… if I just had a better mindset… But it’s not a time-management issue — it’s an energy-management issue. And that’s very different.

Your energy affects so many things: your decision quality, your emotional capacity, how you lead your team, how you respond to problems. It impacts your ability to think long term and to see things more clearly. So a drained founder doesn’t just feel bad — a drained founder actually becomes a reactive, scattered, foggy, and easily overwhelmed CEO. And a business that relies on a drained founder becomes unpredictable, more expensive, more chaotic, and harder to run.

So when your energy is off, it’s a sign you need to pay attention to — and that sign is that your business’s operating system is off. You don’t just fix feeling drained. You need to fix the structure — the way the business is operating — because that is what’s draining you. And you have to start by restoring and recharging. That’s exactly what I told my client. Before we talk about goals, before we talk about strategy, before we talk about next steps, we have to regulate your nervous system. We have to restore and recharge.

Because when your system is overloaded, everything feels harder than it really is. Here are some signs that your battery is drained: everything starts to feel urgent. Small decisions begin to feel really big. Your creativity drops. You feel pulled in every direction. You start losing your patience really quickly. Things that used to feel easy feel really heavy. Your mind jumps to the worst-case scenarios, and either you freeze or you over-function.

And this matters because you cannot think, plan, or lead when your nervous system is in survival mode. So the first step always is regulation. A question you can consider is: What would help my body feel safe, calm, and at ease? Not what feels productive, not what would look impressive, not what makes sense on paper, not What do I need to do right now? — just what would make me feel safe, calm, and at ease. What would actually calm your nervous system?

And that might look very different for you than for someone else. It could look like taking a day off, letting your brain fully exhale, having a slower week, intentionally lowering the pace, postponing decisions and giving your mind room to settle, canceling nonessential meetings and buying more space, asking for help and removing the pressure so it’s not all on your shoulders.

It could be some movement — walking, stretching, anything that gets you into your body. Some grounding activities like journaling, breathing, sitting in silence, observing what’s around you, being fully present. It could be getting outside to get sunlight or fresh air so you can reset. Doing something soothing like a shower, a bath, listening to music, being near water.

It could be reducing stimulation — less screen time, fewer tabs open, fewer inputs, just stepping away. And I want you to know that this isn’t indulgent. It’s not a luxury. These are required — required maintenance for you as a leader. Required maintenance to run your business well. You wouldn’t expect an exhausted athlete to perform at their peak, and you wouldn’t tell a child just to push through. So why are you telling yourself that? You need to recharge first, and then you can lead.

When you’ve taken the time to recharge and you’re ready to take your next step, there’s an exercise you can do. It’s really simple. You’ve probably heard of Start/Stop/Continue before, but I want to expand on it — because you might have thought about what to start, stop, and continue through the lens of tasks, but that’s not what this is about. This is about energetic output.

When your battery is low, it usually isn’t just because of how much you’re doing — it’s because of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

So ask yourself: What do I need to start to support my energy, not drain it?
Things like focusing on something specific instead of bouncing between ten things. Blocking space to think — not just to execute. If all of your time is dedicated to implementation and execution and you feel like that’s the only value you bring, you’re missing a huge part of the value your business needs. Your creative thinking, your strategic thinking, your new ideas and your vision — that all comes from your space to think.

You need to build buffer time into your week, not pack every minute. You need to build in time daily to do things that ground you.

Then ask: What do I need to stop?
What instantly drains you? Things like when your team faces a problem and you jump in and rescue them. Carrying other people’s decisions. Saying yes out of guilt. Customizing everything for clients. Operating from urgency.

And then ask: What do I need to continue?
What’s protecting your energy? Things like working in your zone of genius, holding your boundaries, using systems that lighten your load, honoring your unplugged time — not just taking time off, but honoring it. Simplifying before adding more.

This exercise is not about tasks or efficiency — it's about alignment with how you’re feeling. Because if you want to feel better in your business, your energy has to be a filter. It can’t be an afterthought. It can’t just be the effect of what you choose to do. You need to intentionally design what you want your business to feel like based on your energy. You’ve got to proactively manage your energy.

If we go deeper and look at what feeling drained actually reveals about your business, I want you to see that it’s never just about your personal habits. It’s usually something bigger. It’s usually pointing to something structural — issues inside your business with how it’s operating.

It reveals things like how your role isn’t defined clearly enough. You’re doing too many different kinds of work. You’re carrying responsibilities that don’t belong to you. Your brain is stretched across too many lanes.

Maybe the business is relying on you too heavily. If everyone depends on you for answers, approvals, decisions, or fixes, your battery is going to drain no matter how much you try to rest. Feeling drained might reveal that you’re operating reactively instead of proactively — constant fires, last-minute requests, constant shifting. That drains your energy faster than anything.

It reveals that boundaries have gotten blurry. Work bleeds into everything. Even when you’re off, you’re not really off — your brain is always running. So there’s no margin. And if you can’t step away without consequences, you’re never going to be able to recharge.

It reveals that you’re carrying weight that isn’t yours — often emotional weight. Your team’s stress, your clients’ emotions, the pressure of holding everything together. Emotional labor is still labor.

When you’re drained, it’s not random. It’s your business telling you exactly what needs to shift. It’s telling you where the leaks are. And that means you better look at those areas and dig into the root cause — not just treat symptoms.

Once you’ve restored your energy, regulated your nervous system, and uncovered where the leaks are happening, you can solve the real issues. You can ask questions like:

What needs to change in my role?
What decisions do I need to stop making?
What responsibilities need to be handed off?
What boundaries need to be rebuilt?
What operational patterns are draining capacity?
What expectations need to be reset?
What pace is actually sustainable?

You can’t answer these questions from burnout. But once you’ve recharged, the answers become more obvious. And when you fix the root cause, you don’t just feel better — your business runs better. You get clearer decisions, cleaner operations, more predictable results, more predictable weeks, a calmer rhythm, more effective leadership, higher quality work, a team that isn’t dependent on you, more consistent growth.

Your energy is not separate from your business. It’s a metric you can evaluate your business by. And when you protect your energy, everything else improves.

So remember: feeling drained isn’t failure — it’s feedback. It’s your energy telling you something about how your business is running isn’t working. And your job is to listen. Start by restoring and recharging. Then look at what needs to shift inside the business. Fix the root causes, rebuild your role, your boundaries, your operations.

Because that’s what creates a business that doesn’t drain you — a business that supports you, energizes you, and gives you space to lead.

And that begins by paying attention to the very first signal: how you feel.