People & Leadership

Business owner burnout: 5 tips to manage your wellbeing when running a business

Business owner burnout is more common than most founders admit. Discover the signs to watch for and five practical, expert-backed tips to protect your wellbeing while building a profitable business.

Published 4 August, 202610 min read Share

Business owner burnout is more common than most founders admit, with 63% of entrepreneurs having experienced it and 59% dealing with anxiety regularly. Building a successful business often means juggling long hours, financial pressure, and constant decision-making, making it easy for your own wellbeing to slip down the priority list. 

But looking after your health isn’t at odds with growing a profitable business. In fact, it’s one of the foundations of sustainable success. By following five practical, expert-backed tips, you can protect your physical and mental wellbeing while continuing to grow your business.

Key takeaways

• Business owner burnout is far more common than founders tend to admit — 63% of entrepreneurs have experienced it and 59% deal with anxiety regularly, yet two in three don’t feel able to talk to friends or family about the pressure.
• The signs show up in three places: physical, emotional, and behavioural — disrupted sleep, appetite changes, and fatigue that rest doesn’t fix; persistent anxiety and detachment from work you used to enjoy; snapping at people, losing focus, or withdrawing.
• Burnout is a business risk, not just a personal one — it tends to hit decision-making first, which matters disproportionately when the business runs on the owner’s judgement.
• Boundaries matter as much as tools when managing your time — automating admin frees up hours, but disconnecting regularly and building interests outside the business is what stops work pressure becoming the only thing weighing on you.
• Treat wellbeing like any other business strategy — give it buy-in, clear goals, and a way to measure progress, whether that’s monthly welfare check-ins, annual leave booked after peak periods, or downtime you actually defend.

Here’s what we cover:

Why is running a business so stressful?

Running a business creates near-constant pressure, with financial risk, decision fatigue, and a lack of built-in support all contributing to business owner burnout. 

Launching and growing something of your own is exciting and rewarding, but it’s also often tiring and emotionally draining, especially when you’re carrying the weight of it alone. 

That isolation is part of the problem. Two in three small business owners don’t feel they can talk to friends or family about stress because they don’t want to worry them, and nearly half (48%) say they struggle to know who they can talk to about their challenges. 

What are the signs of business owner burnout?

Business owner burnout tends to show up in three areas: physical, emotional, and behavioural. Recognising these signs early makes it easier to act before things get worse. 

Category	Common signs
Physical	Trouble sleeping, appetite changes (loss of appetite or bingeing), fatigue that doesn’t improve with rest
Emotional	Persistent anxiety with no clear cause, feeling detached from work you used to enjoy, low motivation
Behavioural	Snapping at colleagues, family, or friends; difficulty focusing; withdrawing from people or tasks

The good news is that there are simple, practical steps you can take to protect your physical and emotional wellbeing (and your team’s, if you have employees) while still building a successful business. 

What can you do to protect your wellbeing?

1. Prioritise your physical health 

Regular physical activity protects your long-term health and helps you feel sharper and more resilient day to day, both of which matter when thinking about how to avoid burnout as an entrepreneur. The NHS recommends that adults aged 19–64: 

• Do strengthening activities that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms) at least two days a week 

• Get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity 

• Spread activity across four to five days a week 

• Reduce time spent sitting, and break up long inactive periods with movement 

You can also hit your weekly target through several short bursts of very vigorous activity or a mix of moderate, vigorous, and very vigorous exercise. 

If motivation is the barrier rather than time, investing in a personal trainer can help, adding accountability while ensuring you’re exercising safely.

2. Don’t forget your mental health

If you’re noticing any of the emotional signs above, it’s worth acting on them rather than pushing through.  

You’re far from alone. Research from Mental Health UK found that four in five small business owners experience symptoms of poor mental health, with anxiety (64%), disrupted sleep (63%), and difficulty concentrating (66%) among the most common issues.   found that four in five small business owners experience symptoms of poor mental health, with anxiety (64%), disrupted sleep (63%), and difficulty concentrating (66%) among the most common issues.   

A few practical mental health tips for entrepreneurs, beyond exercise, can make a real difference: 

Talk to someone, deliberately

Business owners are often the least likely to open up about stress, which only makes it harder to carry. Build support into your routine rather than waiting for it to come up naturally. Options such as a founder network, mastermind group, or even a mentor can work well. 

Protect your sleep

It’s usually the first thing to slip under pressure, but poor sleep measurably worsens decision-making, patience, and focus, making the very tasks you stayed up for harder to do well. Avoid late-night screens, caffeine, and alcohol, as all three quietly disrupt sleep quality.

Consider a coach or therapist

Treating therapy as normal business infrastructure, like an accountant or mentor, removes much of the hesitation around seeking help early, and a neutral outside perspective often pays for itself.

Try mindfulness

Apps like Calm and Headspace support a daily routine. Two starting points: stay present rather than replaying conversations or worrying ahead, and notice your thoughts before reacting to them.

3. Get on top of your time management

Poor time management is one of the biggest drivers of business owner burnout, which is why time management for entrepreneurs is worth taking seriously long before it becomes a problem.  

An overwhelming to-do list and long hours spent clearing small tasks take a real toll on your mental health as well as eat into the time you’d otherwise spend on family, hobbies, or exercise. 

Technology can genuinely help here. Bookkeeping and accounting software frees up hours you’d spend on admin, giving you more time for strategy or, perhaps more importantly, to simply step away. Tools that once made sense only for large companies are now affordable for even the smallest teams. 

Establish boundaries, both at work and beyond 

Good time management for entrepreneurs is also about boundaries, not just tools and schedules. Ben Marks, founder of the #WorkAnywhere Campaign, sees boundaries as central to avoiding burnout. 

“Establishing life-work boundaries is crucial,” he says. “Overworking ourselves into the ground is symptomatic of our modern culture, but ensuring that we’re able to disconnect regularly is key to performing at our physical and mental best.” 

He also recommends building a life beyond the business: “Think of this as a diversification strategy for self-esteem. The more developed our relationships and personal interests are, the less work-related pressure and anxiety we experience.”

4. Make a change if you’re feeling stale or stuck in rut

 Feeling stale is not just a phase to push through. It is often a sign that something needs to change, and making that change is one of the more overlooked ways of managing stress as a business owner. A few ways to break out of it are: 

• Review your professional goals to check they still reflect what you actually want from the business. 
• Change how you work, whether that’s your routine, your tools, or how you structure your day. 
• Invite your team to contribute fresh ideas, since new perspectives can reveal opportunities you hadn’t considered. 

Alan Mahon, founder of craft beer delivery service Brewgooder, sees this as fundamentally about energy. 

“For me, entrepreneurship is always about energy—you need to be surrounded by people or projects that give you that energy,” he told Sage’s Sound Advice podcast. “When you’re constantly needing to recharge and you’re not getting that energy, you need to bring in something fresh—that could be a new look and feel, a new product, but often it’s new people. If you feel as if you’re hitting a wall, the best thing you can do is try and talk to somebody about it. … There’s never too early a time to ask for that help.” 

Technology can help you spot exactly where change is needed in your business. Sales figures and e-commerce data can reveal: 

• Which products or services are underperforming or less profitable and may need replacing or updating. 
• Which products are seeing increased customer demand. 
• How individual customers behave: how much they spend, how quickly they pay, and what they’re likely to need next. 

5. Develop a health and wellness strategy

A health and wellness strategy works the same way any other business strategy does. Applied to your own and your team’s wellbeing, it needs: 

• Buy-in from everyone involved, not just leadership. 

• Clear goals, so wellbeing isn’t just a vague intention. 

• A way to measure progress, the same way you’d track any other business metric. 

Jordan Price, co-founder of Small City Marketing, puts this into practice with a monthly ritual.  

“Where most organisations will have regular forecast meetings or progress meetings, we have mandatory welfare meetings each month,” she says. These cover: 

• How the team is feeling about workload volume. 

• Whether anyone is experiencing fatigue, burnout, or low motivation. 

• What changes would help everyone feel more capable and motivated. 

“We also have an open-door policy, so if anyone wants to discuss more personal matters which may be affecting work, they can do so in a supportive environment,” she adds. 

Jessica Flinn-Allen, CEO of Jessica Flinn Fine Jewellery, treats stress management for business owners as something the whole team benefits from, not just leadership. 

“Encourage and support your employees to take mental health days when needed. By acknowledging the significance of mental health and allowing dedicated time off, you demonstrate that their wellbeing matters to the company,” she says. She also recommends building in shared wellbeing challenges like step challenges, mindfulness, and gratitude practices. These can help to promote healthy habits and foster camaraderie among employees. 

A few other self-care tips for business owners, from Flinn-Allen and other founders who’ve built their own routines around wellness, include: 

• Schedule annual leave after key stressful periods, rather than whenever there’s a gap in the calendar. 

• Get comfortable saying no. 

• Protect real downtime. 

Suzy Glaskie, founder of Peppermint Wellness and a former PR boss who retrained as a health coach after her own experience of burnout, echoes this advice.  

On saying no: “Respect the limits of your energy, and be choosy about what you commit yourself to. Recognise that if you take energy out of your energy bank, you then need to put some energy back in.”  

On downtime: “Schedule me-time into your diary, and be strict about it—whether it’s going for a walk in nature or having a long soak in the bath, honour your body’s need for regular downtime.”

Make wellbeing part of your business strategy

Just as you develop a strategy for your business and invest time and money to deliver on it, your health and wellbeing deserve the same treatment. Building in healthy habits isn’t a distraction from growing your business but what makes sustainable growth possible in the first place. 

Start small: rather than trying to overhaul everything at once, pick one tip from this list and put it into practice this week. The return on that investment won’t just be a healthier you but a stronger, more sustainable business for years to come. 

One of the simplest places to start is reclaiming hours lost to admin. Sage Accounting automates the repetitive work of invoicing, reconciliation, and expense tracking, so there’s more time left for everything else. 

Frequently asked questions

Browse more topics from this article

• Bookkeeping
• Business support
• How to grow your business
• Work-life balance