The Hidden Energy Leaks Holding Entrepreneurs Back and How to Fix Them
- Aug 20, 2025
- 6 min read
Written by Tiffany Julie, High Performance Coach
Tiffany Julie is a Performance Coach, 7-figure entrepreneur, and Founder of the Success On Purpose Podcast. Through her transformative coaching programs, she helps clients unlock their potential and achieve extraordinary success. She's been featured in Forbes, Yahoo, and The London Times as a Top Business and Performance Coach to follow.
Scaling a business takes more than strategy. It demands stamina, mental, emotional, and energetic. But most founders are unknowingly draining their most valuable asset. And no, it’s not time. It’s energy.
In my work as a high-performance coach helping business owners sustainably scale, I’ve seen the same invisible issue keep ambitious leaders stuck: unaddressed energy leaks. No matter how optimized their schedule is or how many performance tools they try, if their energy foundation is unstable, the results are inconsistent or costly.
This is the part that mindset coaching and traditional productivity advice often miss. Founders don’t need another hack. They need to plug the energetic holes that are silently sabotaging their growth.
Let’s talk about how.
Why energy is the currency of sustainable success
Productivity hacks are great, until your body is dysregulated, your emotions are unprocessed, and your mind is cluttered with self-doubt. You can’t override a drained nervous system with a checklist.
Energy fuels everything:
Clear decision-making
Creativity and innovation
Influence and leadership
Emotional regulation under pressure
When energy is depleted or scattered, even the best strategy falls flat. This is where high-performance coaching has to evolve. We can’t keep treating energy as a “nice to have.” It’s the foundation.
The top 5 invisible energy leaks founders experience
Here are the most common energetic drains I see among high-achieving entrepreneurs, along with what they really cost you.
1. Over-functioning & boundary leaks
Your calendar’s full, Slack is buzzing, and your team leans on you for every decision. You say “yes” because you’re capable. But by the end of the day, you’re depleted and scattered, unsure if what you did even moved the needle. This is over-functioning. When founders habitually step in as the fixer, the rescuer, or the one who holds it all together, they unconsciously leak leadership power and decision-making clarity.
Fix: Create non-negotiable CEO boundaries. Start with “focus hours” where nothing and no one interrupts your thinking time. Set decision ownership guidelines with your team so they can make calls without needing your constant input. Create a Slack auto-responder that sets expectations. Energy leaks stop when you stop being everyone’s safety net.
2. Nervous system dysregulation
Ever find yourself feeling wired but tired, jumping between tasks, and emotionally on edge from a simple email? That’s not hustle, it’s your nervous system stuck in survival mode. Chronic fight-or-flight is often praised in startup culture, but it blocks access to creativity, patience, and strategic thinking.
Fix: Add 3-5 minute regulation practices into your transitions between calls, tasks, or before bed. Deep vagus nerve breathing, shaking, or cold face immersion are all powerful tools. Try cold exposure after intense meetings or schedule a breathwork session before team planning. According to polyvagal theory, a regulated nervous system unlocks executive function, essential for high performance.
3. Decision fatigue
You start the day clear, but by 3 PM, even choosing what to eat feels hard. The quality of your choices drops, you react instead of leading, and you either micromanage or check out. That’s not failure, it’s decision fatigue, and founders are drowning in it.
Fix: Reduce decision volume. Automate meals, calendar structures, and email sorting. Create SOPs for repeatable processes and use a default weekly template to remove recurring guesswork. Delegate micro-decisions to your team. Remember: Steve Jobs wore the same shirt daily, not for fashion, but to preserve cognitive energy for what mattered.
4. Unprocessed emotional residue
You’re still carrying that pitch rejection from last week. Or you’re quietly resenting a client who overstepped boundaries. These emotions don’t go away, they bury themselves in the body and show up later as avoidance, irritability, or self-sabotage.
Fix: Use somatic tracking to locate tension or discomfort. Practice emotional release tools like shaking, breathwork, or guided processing. Build in weekly space to process unspoken stress, especially after big wins or setbacks. Studies show this kind of regulation reduces cortisol and increases HRV (heart rate variability), a proven biomarker of resilience.
5. Misaligned actions
You’re putting in the hours, but nothing’s clicking. That’s not a work ethic problem, it’s an identity mismatch. When your approach is borrowed or forced, the subconscious doesn’t buy in. You start procrastinating, second-guessing, or overworking just to compensate. One founder I worked with followed a viral morning routine she thought would make her more productive, but it left her drained and resentful before 10 AM. Studies show that when tasks don’t align with intrinsic motivation, performance and engagement drop significantly.
Fix: Realign your strategy with your values, vision, and voice. Use your energy to amplify what’s uniquely yours, not to perform someone else’s plan. When your business model fits your identity, the grind turns into growth. Start by identifying one recurring task that drains you and ask: “Is this aligned with how I truly want to lead?” If not, delegate it, redesign it, or drop it.
Why traditional performance advice falls short
“Wake up at 5 AM.” “Use the Pomodoro Technique.” “Work harder than everyone else.”
We’ve heard it all. But here’s the truth: These productivity systems can only take you so far if you’re battling a subconscious identity that’s still rooted in fear, scarcity, or unworthiness.
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, up to 95% of our behavior is driven by subconscious programming. Willpower doesn’t rewire that. Neither does hustle.
And even when strategy works in the short term, it often comes at the cost of burnout, adrenal fatigue, or fractured relationships. High performance must be sustainable. That’s where energy-based, identity-led coaching makes the difference.
What makes high performance sustainable (and what doesn’t)
The goal isn’t to peak perform once. It’s to sustain high performance without burnout, resentment, or self-betrayal.
What doesn’t work
White-knuckling through your to-do list
Ignoring your body’s signals
Acting from fear, pressure, or guilt
What does work
Tapping into flow states, which increase productivity by up to 500% (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
Strengthening HRV through coherence practices, which predict recovery and longevity
Making aligned decisions based on clarity, not chaos
What makes my performance coaching different
My Results Mastery Process: I teach clients in my high-performance coaching programs, goes beyond time-blocking and affirmations. It's designed to help founders embody their next level of success from the inside out by focusing on:
Subconscious rewiring
We shift your identity and beliefs at the root using neuroscience-backed modalities so your behaviors align naturally, not through force.
Energetic alignment
We strengthen your inner stability and nervous system capacity to hold success with ease, not tension.
Self-leadership integration
We embed emotional resilience, boundary-setting, and intuitive decision-making into your operating system. This creates lasting change, not just hype.
This is why clients not only 4x their revenue, but also feel more grounded, clear, and personally powerful in every area of their lives.
Signs you’re ready to shift from hustle to alignment
If any of these resonate, you’re likely ready for a new path forward:
You’re exhausted from doing all the “right” things, but still feeling stuck
Your business is growing, but your energy is shrinking
You crave ease, but your default is overworking or overthinking
You know there’s another level in you, but you can’t seem to stay there consistently
You’ve outgrown hustle culture and want your success to feel fulfilling, not draining
High performance doesn’t have to mean more pressure. It can feel like peace.
Action steps: How to start plugging the leaks today
1. Audit your energy, not just your time
For the next week, journal when you feel drained vs. when you feel energized. Look at:
Conversations
Tasks
Environments
Thoughts
Ask: What am I tolerating that’s leaking energy?
2. Build a morning regulation ritual
Before you reach for your phone or your calendar, connect with your body.
Try:
3 minutes of heart-brain coherence breathing (HeartMath technique)
Somatic shaking or stretching
A quick emotional check-in: “How am I feeling and what do I need?”
3. Upgrade one limiting identity loop
Pick a recurring thought that’s holding you back (e.g., “I’m bad at marketing”).
Replace it with an identity-aligned version: “I’m becoming a confident, magnetic communicator.”
Repeat it with emotion and embodiment daily for 30 days. This is how we rewire.
Final thoughts: Energy first, strategy second
Founders don’t struggle because they lack knowledge or strategy. They struggle because they are trying to outrun their nervous systems and outdated beliefs.
True performance coaching optimizes more than time, it optimizes who you are as you move through time.
If you want to build a business that’s energizing, not exhausting… If you want success that feels aligned, not forceful... It starts with energy. It begins with identity. And it starts now.
Performance Prompt: Where am I spending energy upholding an identity I’ve already outgrown?
Ready to see what performance looks like when alignment leads? Book a high-performance coaching consultation call today, and let’s help you achieve sustainable, joy-filled success.
Read more from Tiffany Julie
Tiffany Julie, High Performance Coach
Tiffany Julie is a leader in high performance and entrepreneurial success, and her expertise has been featured in Forbes and Yahoo magazines. While overcoming blindness, she discovered the tools that unlock human potential. Tiffany helps clients achieve extraordinary results through her holistic coaching programs using mindset reprogramming, energy mastery, and advanced business strategies. Her mission is to empower individuals to reach their highest potential and live a fulfilled life full of remarkable achievements.
