Early Stage Business and Burnout with Ari Gootnick | POP 1371

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What if burnout isn’t caused by too little effort, but too little capacity management? Can slowing down actually be the fastest way to grow your business? Are you building success at the cost of the very energy that sustains it?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses early-stage business and burnout with Ari Gootnick. 

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Meet Ari Gootnick

Ari Gootnick is an entrepreneur, executive coach, and founder of Lume, a performance and wellness platform focused on helping leaders and founders manage their energy and avoid burnout. With a background in the tech industry, he shifted his focus after experiencing burnout himself, going on to study breathwork, coaching, and sustainable performance practices. Today, he works with executives and high performers to build systems that support long-term success, combining business strategy with mental and physical well-being.

Visit Ari’s website and connect on Instagram and LinkedIn. See also Lume. 

How Ari recovered from burnout

Ari spent a lot of time working in the tech industry, and while it taught him a great deal about business, it eventually burned him out. 

I was professionally burned out. I was lost, I was confused about what I wanted to do as a next step in my career, in my personal life, and I really got depressed. I hit rock bottom, and one of the ways that I was able to pick myself back up was … I got an executive coach. (Ari Gootnick)

In explaining how he got through burnout and changed his personal and professional lives, Ari shares his steps: 

• Hiring an executive coach 
• Worked with a health coach 
• Started implementing daily breathwork practices 

While Ari would only launch his current company, Lume, 10 years later, these changes paved the way for it. 

Like I said, what got me out of [burnout] was building a support system, building a team, and finding ways to get passionate about new things, and one of the things I got passionate about was not only health and wellness, but breathwork. (Ari Gootnick)

Health and wellness create success

The union of Ari’s health and wellness is what brought him to a place where he could be creative again, feel passion and excitement, which led him to launch a business that’s aligned with his financial goals as well as his overall well-being. 

Burnout and depressive states essentially sever your connection with your inner self, and that inner core of you is the source from which you can pull your creative energy. 

In reconnecting with his inner self, here again, Ari credits yoga and particularly breathwork. 

I felt … unable to tap into my emotions, and when I did a 30-minute breathwork session with a practitioner … I actually was able to tap into my emotional self, and it allowed me to open up, start to feel again, feel alive again … When you pair that with working with an executive career coach, and a health coach, and doing something you’re passionate about … It eventually made me feel like I was moving toward better progress. (Ari Gootnick)

Common mindsets that burn founders out the fastest

The most common trap Ari sees founders and executives fall into is failing to manage their capacity. Essentially, they take too much on in one go. 

I think founders and executives rarely lack motivation; they lack managing their own personal and professional capacity. (Ari Gootnick)

The need to build something that gives back the money that investors gave to you can create an immense amount of pressure within your day-to-day experience of building that business. 

These founders will: 

• Work on their business for long hours 
• Sacrifice sleep 
• Make worse decisions as their unchecked stress builds

There’s a belief that if you work harder, if you put in more time, if you don’t take breaks or care about your health and well-being, you’re giving your business a higher chance of success. But, given that I work with a large group of coaches and executive leadership … on a day-to-day basis, a big through-line that they talk about is that that is not the case. You can’t out-motivate a depleted nervous system. (Ari Gootnick)

Therefore, what the genuinely successful founders, executives, and business leaders do is manage their capacity. 

They are building a sustainable performance system for themselves so that they can be clear-minded, make better decisions, and follow through on what needs to be done without burning themselves out. 

Why slowing down gets you to the next level

There’s a saying: “Go slow to go fast.” This is the perfect antidote and inverse solution to burnout and hustle culture. 

The best way to understand what your root challenge is is to slow down and create some higher-level awareness of what’s working and what’s not working as a founder. (Ari Gootnick)

For example, you could go on a two-day retreat, by yourself, to calm down and figure out what’s really working and what’s not. 

You don’t need to have all the solutions from one weekend, but it puts a break on running full tilt through week after week, without knowing where you are truly going with your efforts. 

The goal isn’t to work less, right? It’s not to … put in less effort and work less; it’s about creating a sustainable system for you to operate at your peak and to feel joyful and happy doing so. (Ari Gootnick)

So, here’s what you can do: 

• Look at your day 
• Carve out a short period of time at the start and end of each day to connect with your inner self 
• Participate in fewer calls and meetings, and trust in your team 
• Delegate the things that drain your energy and take up more time, and give you energy 
• Stop trying to do everything and be selective about your tasks 
• Create more deep work opportunities so that you give yourself the chance to focus uninterrupted 
• Bring in some of your passion projects or hobbies to add a creative flow to your work 

Ari’s advice to private practitioners

Customize and personalize the support that you give to your clients in a way that best serves your clients. One size fits all doesn’t work well, especially in therapy. 

Find the right help that you need as a clinician and business owner to give the best help that your clients need. 

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• How to Craft and Land TEDx Talks with Adam Lewis Walker | POP 1370
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Meet Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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