Everybody has a special approach of dealing with work stress; some clear their minds with 5 a.m. runs or by unloading to their therapists, whereas others let retail remedy work its magic. Joanna Griffiths has experimented with government coaches for years to assist her work via challenges in main $400 million intimates firm Knix. However now, she’s discovering new wings by falling right into a trance-like, meditative state.
“I love hypnotherapy, which has been really helpful,” Griffiths tells Fortune. “[My hypnotherapist] works with quite a lot of high-profile entrepreneurs, athletes, and really senior creatives. [We’re] really working to rewire my brain and the way that I react in different situations.”
For the previous 5 years she has been working with U.S.-based hypnotherapist Grace Smith after being launched by a fellow profitable founder. Smith, the cofounder of Grace Hypnotherapy, has attracted 78,000 app customers and a slew of well-known purchasers—starting from Fortune 500 CEOs and A-list celebrities, to Olympic athletes and White Home officers.
Griffiths says they’ve been engaged on her concern of failure essentially the most, confronting massive enterprise selections like whether or not to take Knix public, and doubtlessly get shoved below a microscope as a feminine founder. By means of their hour-long biweekly classes, Griffiths has been studying the right way to make smarter selections “out of a place of optimism, instead of fear.”
“We put so much emphasis on the fear of failure,” she continues. “We often don’t allow ourselves to think it the whole way through and be like, ‘Okay, if this actually did fail, what’s the thing that’s going to happen? Do I still have my family? Do I still have my health? Do I still have my internal knowledge?’”
A peek inside hypnotherapy classes with profitable founders
The idea of hypnotherapy conjures many tropes from popular culture; a prepared participant falling below the trance of a swaying pendant and ticking metronome, unconsciously performing no matter is requested of them. However Griffiths’ classes with Smith are goal-oriented and meditative, serving to her to handle burnout and intense decision-making.
The Knix president says hypnotherapy removes the noise, and supplies readability on the right way to greatest method what’s urgent. Griffiths and Smith meet on Zoom, spending the primary 15 to twenty minutes speaking via present challenges, adopted by a 30- to 40-minute hypnotherapy session to particularly goal her pressing points. The matters can vary from a giant choice on the horizon, to the right way to deal with a difficult staff dynamic; and one to 3 occasions yearly, the pair meets in individual for full-day classes, delving into the Knix founder’s childhood, in addition to her future profession objectives.
Over the previous half decade, Griffiths says Smith has helped “address my fears and insecurities, and work through them instead of letting them hold me back.”
“I got a lot of clarity about things…Like how I didn’t [want to] run a public company, where I derived meaning, all those big things,” she explains. “I often leave with a very clear visual understanding and representation of what to do next. Like other meditative states, it’s also great for brain health and resetting your nervous system.”
Being identified with excessive burnout, and studying to recharge
With over a dozen years of expertise as a founder, 42-year-old Griffiths has first-hand expertise with the social complexities and emotional toll of entrepreneurism.
The Canadian first launched the menstrual model in Toronto again in 2012, proper off the heels of pursuing her MBA at INSEAD in France. To get Knix off the bottom, her mates, household, and ex-coworkers all got here onboard as angel buyers, chipping in investments starting from $15,000 to $100,000. She served as CEO for a decade earlier than pulling off a $320 million sale that valued Knix at $400 million, when Essity bought 80% of the enterprise. Griffiths remembers the issue within the years resulting in the acquisition in 2022.
Griffiths says she was witnessing plenty of criticism round feminine founders—and being positioned below a “different set of expectations” solely added to her psychological pressure. She even recollects one second when a high-profile San Francisco VC agency known as her “lazy” as a result of she hadn’t posted her outfit of the day that morning. Going public would have solely exacerbated the stress she was below, and Griffiths stated she didn’t need to “disappear” like different girls founders do after their IPOs.
When COVID-19 swept the world, Griffith’s life by no means appeared to cease altering. Each six months since 2020, there was some kind of pivotal shift that has thrown her off her axis. Griffiths endured the pandemic, had three children, raised a $50 billion sequence B spherical, and bought the corporate for $320 million—all throughout the span of simply two and a half years. After the sale, Griffiths stayed on as president however was nonetheless sporting too many hats, and the stress was constructing. It wasn’t till 2024 when the whole lot modified; Griffiths took seven red-eyes in 21 days, and says her “brain broke.”
“I got diagnosed with extreme burnout [in 2024] for the first time ever, and that was really eye opening for me. That you have to take care of yourself, and find the time to recharge,” the millennial founder recollects. “Hustle culture and wearing busyness as a badge of honor is something that has been put on us as a signal of success.”
Hypnotherapy helps her fight the deep-rooted American “grind-set.” In managing her continual burnout, she’s lastly accepting she will’t say sure to the whole lot. Having fun with a while for herself and setting limits have additionally grow to be greater priorities after greater than a decade within the recreation.
Whereas Griffiths now not leads as chief government, she’s nonetheless the face and thoughts behind the multimillion-dollar intimates enterprise. Serving as founder and president, she’s persevering with to drive the corporate to new heights—and simply final December, Knix reached a milestone of 1 billion Canadian {dollars} ($732 million) in web gross sales. However transferring forward, she’s discovered to interrupt away from the hustle tradition of entrepreneurship.
“I’ve been pretty good about saying no,” Griffiths says, including she wished she had discovered to “appreciate the quieter moments, downtime, and creating boundaries earlier on.”
