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Surviving the Side Hustle
Welcome to "Surviving the Side Hustle," the ultimate podcast for balancing the demands of entrepreneurship with maintaining mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
Hosted by Coach Rob Tracz, an expert in helping driven professionals achieve 'personal development for professional success,' this show is more than just storytelling—it's a masterclass in thriving amidst the entrepreneurial grind. Each episode features candid conversations with leaders who are rewriting the rules of entrepreneurship, sharing their unique stories, the creative solutions they're offering, and the everyday challenges they’re overcoming.
Whether you’re a side hustler looking for your big break or an established entrepreneur seeking fresh perspectives, "Surviving the Side Hustle" provides valuable insights that resonate with the movers, the shakers, and everyone in between.
Feeling burnt out and sidelining your own health? This podcast empowers you to overcome stagnation, build resilience, and optimize your life and business. We dive deep into your goals, identify obstacles, and share strategies to boost your energy, improve your strength, and keep the entrepreneurial grind enjoyable.
Join us for inspiring stories, expert insights, and practical advice to help you look good, feel good, and do great things at every stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Let’s not just survive the side hustle—let's master it.
Surviving the Side Hustle
E112 - Lessons from Garret Wood: Awakening to Purpose
Ever found yourself wearing burnout as a badge of honor? That was me until a conversation with Garrett Wood changed everything.
Garrett is the founder of Gnosis Therapy, a clinical hypnotherapist and executive coach who helps high achievers transform burnout into sustainable performance. His journey resonates deeply—he wasn't a theorist but someone who lived through managing multiple departments, overseeing 100 staff across seven locations, and working 70+ hours weekly until his body started breaking down with knee pain, back pain, and sleepless nights.
What he discovered revolutionized my thinking: success isn't fueled by grinding harder but by recovery and nervous system regulation. This insight led him to explore non-sleep deep rest states and clinical hypnotherapy—which, contrary to popular belief, isn't some magic trick but focused awareness we all experience naturally when driving, visualizing, or getting absorbed in work.
The conversation revealed three crucial insights that could transform your approach to work and life. First, sustainable success comes through well-being, not at its expense. Second, hypnosis is everyday focus that you're already experiencing—the question is whether you're using it intentionally. Third, burnout has early warning signs, particularly the inability to quiet your mind at night.
Garrett compared stress to weight training—you can handle tension in short sets, but holding the heaviest weight at the hardest point indefinitely will break you. The key is creating sustainable rhythms so you can perform over time without collapsing.
Ready to protect yourself from burnout? Take Garrett's free five-minute burnout assessment on his LinkedIn page. Use it as a mirror now and check in again later this year. Remember, you don't earn more shots at success by emptying the tank—you earn them by taking care of it.
what if burnout isn't the cost of chasing success, but actually the barrier that keeps you from it? That was a big lesson from my conversation with Garrett Wood, the founder of Gnosis Therapy, a clinical hypnotherapist and executive coach who's helping high achievers turn burnout into sustainable performance. Now burnout is a topic that hits home for me, and probably for you too, if you're hustling to grow a business, trying to balance responsibilities or keep up with opportunities. See, garrett's story resonated because he didn't come into this work as a researcher or theorist. He came into it the same way most of us do as the one on the other side living it. He was running multiple departments, overseeing seven locations, a hundred staff and massive budgets, while working 70 plus hours a week, snapping at his partner and even his dog, and the harder he pushed, the more he saw his body breaking down. He was experiencing knee pain, back pain and sleepless nights. That's when he discovered something fascinating Success wasn't being fueled by grinding more. It was fueled by recovery, rest and nervous system regulation, particularly through non-sleep deep state rest, which eventually led him to clinical hypnotherapy.
Speaker 1:I had three main takeaways from the conversation I had with Garrett, and the first thing that I think you should remember is success is built through well-being, not at its expense. Garrett's final message in the episode was clear. We often think we have to sacrifice sleep, health and relationships in order to make it, but the truth is those things are what makes success sustainable in the first place. So take a second think into yourself. Take a second think into yourself. Where in your life are you telling yourself that you will rest later and what's the real cost of waiting? I know for myself. When I was in strength and conditioning and I kept pushing, pushing, pushing. I was trying to consistently work 10 to 13 hour days, training upwards of 14, 15 people, sometimes in a single day, and I was trying to do as many days in a row as I could. With that, I kind of kept pushing the milestone back financially and told myself that once I hit X, y and Z amount of money, then I'll finally chill out and rest. And I never did so. Where in your life are you telling yourself that you'll rest later and think about it? What's the real cost of waiting? The second thing that I really took away from my conversation was that hypnosis is everyday focus and, to be honest, you're already doing it.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite reframes from Garrett was that hypnosis isn't some magic trick, it's just focused awareness. You enter it when you drive home and forget about the details of the road, or when you visualize before a big game, or even when you get absorbed in at work. Question is are you using that state intentionally? So what routines? So think to yourself here. What routines or small rituals could you build into your day to help you drop in and block out noise like an athlete at the free throw line?
Speaker 1:I'll share for me when I'm traveling between different client meetings or grabbing coffee or different events and such. I don't really listen to the radio too often. Occasionally I'll turn on a podcast or something while I'm driving, but typically the distances that I'm driving are so short that it's starting and then I have to come back to the episode and I'd rather just sit in silence because it allows me to kind of drop into that state, that hypnosis, and really kind of process things in the back of my mind. I'm still breathing, still paying attention to the road, of course. So if you're doing something very similar, make sure that you are definitely still paying attention to the road and what's going on, but it allows me to kind of give my brain a little bit of a breather so that I can show up to the next event or meeting with the full focus and clarity that I really need to to make it as beneficial as possible.
Speaker 1:And the third takeaway that I had with Garrett was that burnout has early warning signs. Don't wait until you're at the cliff's edge. Garrett compared stress to weight training. You can handle tension in short, sharp sets, but if you hold the heaviest weight at the hardest point forever, you're definitely going to break the earliest sign of burnout. Lying down at night and being unable to shut your mind off that's the body's way of saying we're not recovering. So what you want to think to yourself is what's one simple system you can put in place this week to check in on your energy before it spirals? Is it a nightly shutdown ritual, a weekly reset or maybe even an accountability partner?
Speaker 1:I go deep into this stuff with a lot of my clients and I use my Jeep framework just so that we can kind of check in on a lot of different things. And for me, making sure that my energy is in check is like really gearing up in advance. I have the nightly routines and I've got my morning routines. But I think it's just keeping things in check and kind of proactively taking an approach and making sure that the system matches the season that I'm currently in.
Speaker 1:And you know, this conversation with Garrett really challenged me as well too. See, I've had these seasons where I wore burnout as a badge of honor. I kept saying, like I can keep these seasons where I wore burnout as a badge of honor. I kept saying, like I can keep grinding. I'm built for this. You know, as an athlete, my background strength and conditioning this is what we're taught to Use your grip, build the resilience and kind of push through and keep trucking for better performance, hopefully.
Speaker 1:But I realized, like Garrett did, that the bottleneck wasn't my ambition. It was my lack of recovery and awareness, for that matter, too, when I applied this lesson with my clients. It's not about telling them to do less. It's about teaching them how to create sustainable rhythms so that they can do more over time without collapsing rhythms. So that they can do more over time without collapsing.
Speaker 1:So if you feel like you're in the cycle of always pushing, here's the reminder you don't earn more shots at success by emptying the tank. You earn them by taking care of the tank. Garrett was generous enough to even offer the free five-minute burnout assessment, which you can find by going over to his LinkedIn page. Take it once now, take it again later this year and use it as a mirror, and if you know someone who's skating pretty close to that edge, send it to them too, because the real win isn't success at the expense of yourself. It's success that you can actually enjoy because you're not broken, bitter or burnt out by the time you get there. Until next time, guys, peace, peace, peace, peace.