Five Minute Friday: You Can't Build a Business While Running on Empty

Boutique Chat

Ashley Alderson

Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing

5 • 853 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Burnout is one of the most common struggles for boutique owners, retailers, and small business owners—and it's rarely caused by laziness or lack of passion. More often, it comes from trying to do too much, growing too fast, and drifting away from the very reason you started your business in the first place.

In this episode, Sara Burks breaks down why burnout happens, how over expansion drains your energy, and why "more" isn't always better.

You'll learn:

The #1 reason small business owners experience burnout
A simple exercise to identify what energizes vs. drains you
Why burnout impacts not just your business—but your family too
How learning to say "no" can be one of your most powerful tools

Join The Boutique Hub

____________________________

Ashley Alderson: Instagram

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey guys, it's Sarah at the Boutique Hub, and I'm back today to talk to you about something that
0:04.0	happens an awful lot with small business owners. It's about burnout and how to avoid it.
0:10.4	Guys, the number one reason I feel like independence, independent retailers, small business
0:16.0	owners, entrepreneurs get burnt out is because we start focusing on too many things. Our focus to the main
0:23.2	thing that we were excited about doing has shifted when we start spreading ourselves way too wide and way
0:28.5	too thin. So I talked earlier in another session about taking on another store as a responsibility
0:35.8	and guys, I think growth is great however we have to
0:40.0	set ourselves up time-wise to be able to manage all of these things because the bigger we get the
0:44.4	bigger our problems so if you find that your bucket is empty right and you're just not motivated
0:50.4	not wanting to get out of bed not not excited about your business any longer.
1:00.9	Do this exercise. Go ahead and write down the things in your business that really excite you.
1:07.1	And now the things that didn't make that list, make another list for those, write a list for the things that don't excite you, the things that drag you down, the things that just drain your
1:10.7	energy. Those are the things we want to hire out. Maybe those are the things that just
1:16.2	aren't worth doing. If you're not passionate about it, your customers aren't passionate about it.
1:21.3	And if they're not passionate about it, they're certainly not paying you for it. So maybe this
1:25.7	is just an unneeded expense. Maybe it's an unneeded avenue of your
1:30.5	energy being wasted. Guys, it's not rocket science, but the thing is we always want bigger,
1:38.3	we want better, we feel like we need to do more as entrepreneurs. And that's not always the case.
1:43.7	You can think of a lot of businesses
1:45.3	that have hung their hat on one product and have made that one product amazing, build an empire on
1:51.1	one product because their focus was narrowed. There's a really good book out. It's called The One
1:56.6	Thing. And this is all about this idea of narrowing our focus, getting really deep dived into
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 28 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ashley Alderson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ashley Alderson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.