Developing a High-Performance Mindset With Anna Wojtowicz

Published
High performance mindset for entrepreneurs with Anna Wojtowicz

Anna Wojtowicz helps high-achieving entrepreneurs develop their mindsets, and in this interview, she shares practical tips and insights that any entrepreneur can implement. Anna’s personal journey led to incredible corporate success but ultimately left her unfulfilled and burned out.

If you want to develop a high-performance mindset and achieve new levels of success and fulfillment, you’ll love Anna’s insight.

👇 Key Takeaways

  • Anna achieved everything she set out to but never felt fulfilled
  • How to uncover the root cause of your burnout and why it matters
  • Why the sustainability of yourself is critical for success as an entrepreneur
  • Leading solely with profit will rarely lead to purpose and peace

Overview

Business Name: The AW Creative
Website URL: https://theawcreative.com/
Founder: Anna Wojtowicz
Business Location: Online run company started in NYC but now living and working in The South of France
Year Started: 2021
Number of Employees/Contractors/Freelancers: Solo Entrepreneur

Can you walk us through your personal journey from corporate burnout to founding The AW Creative?

I’ve spent over a decade in NYC working in the ad sales and digital marketing departments of publications like Martha Stewart & The Smithsonian.

When 2020 happened, I got laid off and started to look for another job, but every time I had a phone interview, my heart sank. It was like my intuition was screaming, “Don’t do it!” I was physically, mentally, and spiritually drained from burnout in corporate.

So I started thinking, with all of my knowledge, why couldn’t I try going out on my own and consulting? So that’s what I did. I moved home to Florida for one year because I couldn’t afford NYC rent with no income, with the goal of starting my own consulting agency targeted at helping female entrepreneurs start and scale their brands.

Within 11 months I had doubled my yearly corporate salary and was back in NYC in my dream apartment. 

However, in 2023, I hit burnout again, which is so common for high achievers and entrepreneurs. Not only did business burn me out, but I suffered a loss, and grief completely took over my life. I had always prided myself on being able to bulldoze through any problem, but in grief, I realized that I accomplished every milestone by 30, and yet no amount of success ever filled the “it’s enough” void because ambition without inner peace feels empty. There was nothing driving the success other than wanting to feel success and self-worth. 

I made the hard choice to take a sabbatical from my business for one year. After a year of a year-long journey to heal my addiction to success and the need to achieve, I realized that adding in inner work didn’t take away my ambitious identity or strategy; it simply removed the pressure and expectations that were sabotaging my authentic core beliefs and desires from amplifying my success and lifestyle. 

The experience had such a profound impact on me that it’s become my mission in life. I now work to help ambitious women redefine success by stepping into their purpose and peace without sacrificing profits. I infuse strategy with a practical mindset and spiritual tools for holistic success. 

How has your shift from prioritizing external success metrics to focusing on inner peace and balance impacted your perspective on achievement and fulfillment?

When I look at ROI and KPIs now, my values are a part of the equation, where before it was just “Are we hitting financial growth goals?” What I’ve come to realize is that leading with solely profit will rarely lead to purpose and peace but leading with purpose will always lead to profit and a whole lot more inner peace and fulfillment.

When you’re an overachiever and are raised and then work in an environment like corporate America where output and productivity are numbers driven, and that dictates your self-worth and value, you create a need for dopamine hits of success to feel good (aka you chase the next goal). Because at the end of the day, you’re not actually chasing a goal; you’re chasing the feeling it will give you: self-worth, feeling enough, safety, confidence, etc. 

So when you start your own business, that belief follows you, and pretty soon you get to a place where you’re financially successful but don’t feel the success. Instead it’s just anxiety, pressure, burnout, self doubt. Nothing ever feels or is good enough, even when you achieve a goal. 

So now, when I create goals there’s a lot more intention behind him and they’re led by my values, which are purpose, peace, and profit. This ensures I get to have all three, not just profit. 

For the first time, I feel like I’m in control of my business vs. my business having control of me. I feel fulfilled as much on days where I don’t make a sale but I have an amazing call with a client vs. days when I make a lot of sales, and that’s the balance of ambition and inner peace. 

With your unique blend of logical, strategic thinking and inner work, how do you approach the balance between taking action and practicing self-care to maintain a healthy mindset?

Sustainability in entrepreneurship is 50% operations and 50% you. I used to have a core belief that a successful business was all strategy, operations, and tactics because that’s what my corporate experience taught me. So when I burned out, I didn’t understand why my 100% was not enough. Well, it was because I was just focusing on 50% of the equation and missing the other 50%, which was the sustainability of self (enter burnout). 

Your operations and profits can be operating smoothly, but if you feel the pressure is only increasing, the middle of the night anxiety, feeling comparison and self-doubt, and having thoughts spirals on a weekly basis – that’s not sustainable for you and the business. No one ever talks about that side of entrepreneurship and sustainability. 

A question I always ask my clients who want to scale their businesses is, does the business have the capacity to grow, and do you personally have the capacity to hold the growth? This is where the balance of action and inner work comes into play. Sometimes, scaling your business will require growth on your part first, not another marketing strategy. 

What advice would you offer to entrepreneurs who are experiencing burnout or feeling disconnected from their authentic selves?

Ultimately, the way to find a balance between success and your authentic self is going to be by focusing on three main areas. This is what my action & alignment framework focuses on:

  1. Finding your inner baseline so you can have a regulated nervous system
  2. Mastering intuitive decision-making vs. ego and fear-based to feel safe, secure, and confident
  3. Breaking up with pressure and self-sabotage cycles

Once we have a handle on those three areas then we can start infusing strategies that will amplify profits.

The first step however is admitting that you are disconnected from yourself. When you’re really ambitious and driven, the more success you experience, the more you feel like you’re on a pedestal and you’re supposed to have everything figured out and know all the answers, so admitting you need help or you no longer feel fulfilled inside your business feels like a failure when it’s simply just your ego. 

Then, we move into examining your values. What I often see is that you aren’t clear on what your values actually are, or you’ve outgrown them. For example, you say you value sustainability, yet every launch feels like it’s make it or break it. You say you value freedom, yet you’re always maxing out your to-do list because comparing what others are doing makes you think, “I need to do that too.” 

By slowly implementing these practical inner work tools we start uncovering the root cause of burnout. 

What are some common patterns of self-sabotage you’ve observed among high-performing entrepreneurs, and how do you guide them in overcoming these obstacles?

Here are the top four I often see in high-performing entrepreneurs:

1. You’ve checked off all the online business milestone boxes, the Instagram followers, the launch goals, the income goals and didn’t feel it at all because you thought hitting the next goal would finally feel different, until you realized nothing was different and just left you exhausted. Nothing is ever enough

Linked to: Your self-worth is addicted to dopamine hits of success, and you’re chasing goals just to experience a feeling with no intention of the WHY behind the goal. We focus on detaching your self-worth from your business and getting to the root of what your WHY truly is. 

2. “I know it’s just the perfectionist in me” or “Yeah, it’s just a mindset problem, I’ll get over it.” Yet, despite being self-aware, you can’t overcome self-sabotage and resistance, so you try to bulldoze your way through it. 

Linked to: Your ego doesn’t feel safe implementing mindset work because you need to feel powerful, and subconsciously you believe mindset work is weak. When in reality, what needs to happen is finding a balance between mindset and strategy to grow. 

3. You feel bitter that business seems “easier” for other people, and when this whole time, you’ve equally “done all the things.” You’ve made the big investments, hustled, worked really hard, implemented all the strategies and yet you’re not hitting the same level of success. 

Linked to: Your belief that success has to be hard work based on output and productivity, all logical. When in reality, you’re missing the other 50% of success, and that’s doing the inner work on you. 

4. When you experience an income dip you instantly start panicking because your self-worth is tied to your income, which leaves you feeling guilt, shame, and failure like it’s all about to crash. 

Linked to: Your self-worth is tied to your income. Your belief is that you’re only valuable as a person when your bank account has a current number in it, and if you’re not making more money, then your value decreases. 

Can you share some practical tips or exercises that entrepreneurs can incorporate into their daily routines to foster a positive and growth-oriented mindset?

As a recovering perfectionist who works with other recovering perfectionists, I tend to avoid “routines” because we’ll take it to a whole new level and create a narrative inside our heads that says something like “If I don’t follow this 10-step routine, my morning has failed.”

Instead, I like to say, let’s create small daily habits that feel good to you. It lowers the pressure of hitting a goal. I like to think of routines as the DOING vs. habits are the BEING. In order to see real change that breaks you out of self-sabotaging cycles, you need to not just do you need to start being that person you desire to become. That’s ultimately where the growth will happen.  

Practical Example

The Struggle: You’re starting to realize you’ve entered decision-making paralysis mode because you feel so disconnected from yourself, and everyone around you is throwing solutions at you, which feels more overwhelming than helpful. 

The Solution: Create SPACE in your brain to let your intuition in and be able to sort and put away all the other noise. Most people try to solve this problem by consuming more info, thinking that’s where the answer will be found when, in reality, all it’s going to do is just leave you more confused. 

The Action: Find your spiritual/self-care practice in order to let your intuition in so you can actually hear your own true thoughts for once. For me, this looks like taking a silent walk, as I can’t sit still for an hour and meditate. Some of my best ideas and breakthroughs have come from silent walks where all I’m doing is talking out loud to myself. For some of my other clients, it’s journaling, EFT Tapping, and breathwork. My goal is to help you find the right habit for you that feels good, not forced. 

Tell us about your process of working with a client on their mindset. What are the steps and specific actions?

Let’s break down my Action & Alignment Framework 

1. NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION – Finding Your Inner Baseline

Helping you identify your version of balance, aka your internal baseline, and equipping you with tools to swiftly return to it when you’re starting to spiral. This will help you shed the pressure and urgency in business, ultimately boosting results, reducing resistance, and reviving your inner peace.

2. NEVER FAIL APPROACH TO DECISION-MAKING

Learn how to master self-trust and intuition to make decision-making feel safe, secure, and confident no matter the season of your business. Learning how to integrate intuition and strategy to maximize results while maintaining a sense of security. This is where we lead with purpose decisions vs. “I should” decisions. 

3. OVERCOME  SELF SABOTAGE & RELEASING PRESSURE

Overcoming self-sabotage in your business by identifying its root causes and implementing practical tools to break free from destructive cycles of behavior and thought patterns, paving the way for tangible growth and success.

Can you share a success story from your coaching practice that highlights the transformative power of mindset in entrepreneurship?

The power of mastering mindset affects every part of your business and life. As entrepreneurs, we’ve signed up to take an idea from our mind and create it in reality, most likely an idea that’s never been thought of before. That’s wild if you think about it. Therefore, if we want delusional once-in-a-lifetime results, a marketing and sales strategy is not how we’re going to get there. We’re going to get there by knowing what action to take and how to get out of our own way and anchor in unshakable belief. 

I had a client who was such a talented brand designer but didn’t know how to lead with her intuition, so her decisions were led with fear and ego, which continued a cycle of self-doubt and comparison. This meant she was too scared to raise her prices and market herself as a premium brand. After going through my framework, she went from charging $5K to $15K over time, and not only did she book out, but her confidence became unshakable, and she fully believes in her value now. 

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are just beginning to recognize the importance of mindset in achieving their goals?

When I first started, my biggest challenge was I didn’t feel confident asking for help because there was no one like me – a high performance strategy focused entrepreneur – talking about mindset in a way that felt comfortable and safe to me. My biggest fear was that they would tell me I needed to slow down and lower my drive and ambition. 

That’s why I started The Balanced Entrepreneur Membership: to create a community of like-minded people navigating entrepreneurship and inner work. So my best advice is to find a person or community that you feel seen by. It’s going to make a huge difference in your growth. 

What are some of your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels?


Founder Reports is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.