Michael Levitt nearly lost everything to burnout—a heart attack, job loss, foreclosure, and total collapse. But what brought him back wasn’t a digital detox retreat—it was Gen X wisdom: learning to reset without relying on tech. As the founder of the Breakfast Leadership Network and burnout consultant to global execs, Michael now teaches others how to rebuild. In this episode, he explains why recovery starts with sleep, why analog habits like ditching your smartphone alarm matter, and why burnout is a system failure—not a personal flaw. For Gen Xers who straddle both worlds, this is a call to reclaim the best of both—and redesign a life that actually works.The Burnout Spiral That Changed Everything“In one year, I lost my job, my home, my car—and nearly my life.”Michael shares the full collapse that led him from healthcare executive to burnout survivor. But the real story is how he rebuilt—on his own terms.Gen X Wisdom: Unplug to Repair“Buy an alarm clock. Get your phone out of your bedroom.”Raised in the analog world, Michael draws on old-school logic to fix new-world problems. The simplest habit—sleep—might be your strongest defense.Burnout Isn’t Personal—It’s Structural“If your workplace is broken, no amount of yoga will save you.”Michael breaks down how leaders need to stop treating burnout as an individual issue—and start fixing the systems that cause it.Why the C-Suite Stays Silent“Some of my clients are CEOs. You’ll never hear their names.”Michael shares why the stigma around burnout runs deepest at the top—and how privacy, trust, and discretion are part of real recovery.You Don’t Need a New Life—Just a New Setup“Most people don’t need reinvention. They just need smarter defaults.”With tools from CBT and NLP, Michael explains how changing your inner programming can help you regain control—without blowing everything up._________________________Connect with Us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Michael Levitt --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Michael Levitt and what is his background with burnout?
How did you come up with this title?
First, it came to me in the shower, as a lot of good ideas do. That's why it's always good to invest in those markers you can write on a wall in the shower, because a lot of times you're just thinking about different things while you're getting cleaned up. And that title came out to me because... I've been dealing with the burnout space since my own personal journey with burnout back in 2009.
But basically 2014 is when it started to bounce around in my head anyways. And the title of Chief Burnout Officer, as far as they know, I'm the only person that has it. I don't have a trademark. So just basically, if any organization wants to use it,
by all means, because if you're going to use that title, what that means is you are focused full center on preventing burnout in your organization and yourself, as well as if someone is burned out, to give them the space and the tools that they need to recover from it, and then eventually prevent it from ever happening again to them. That's where the title came from.
Chapter 2: What personal challenges did Michael face due to burnout?
It's something that I strongly believe in because I don't like burnout at all. And I hate what it robs from all of us when people and teams and organizations are burned out.
just mentioned in your life, in your career, you've experienced burnout badly. Share with us about your experience back then and how this pain got transformed into a positive force for change and eventually turned into a business today.
Of course, back in 2007, I was hired as a healthcare executive. I was working some absolute insane hours and building up this brand new clinic in a community that was under service that we just didn't have enough doctors in the community to meet the demand of the patients and people in that town. So.
I was working some long hours, recruiting physicians, hiring staff, understanding the health care system because I had never worked in health care before. I had a lot of startup experience, but I'd never worked in health care before. So it was a steep learning curve for me, but it was one that I took on.
I look back at it was a mistake is this is one of those things that happens to people when they burn out is it looks like a good idea to take everything on your shoulders and say, look, I'm going to treat this as if it's my own company and I'm going to build it. It wasn't my own company, but I acted like it was.
So as entrepreneurs know, and as when the multiple careers that you've had in your life, there are times where you just pick up the load and you go, you know, like, okay, we're just going to get this done. But I did that for a solid two plus years. And it caught up with me in the spring of 2009, where over a period of 369 days, so just over a year from May 2009 to May 2010, This happened to me.
I had a heart attack that should have killed me. 17 weeks later, I was laid off during the Great Recession. A few months later, because I was on heart medication that cost me $1,000 a month out of pocket, had to feed my family and all of that while still looking for a job and not having a lot of income coming in.
The bank decided to repossess our family vehicle because we didn't have enough money to pay our bills. And then after that happened, we moved to Toronto because they found a work opportunity in Toronto. And then a couple of weeks into it, or actually it was six weeks, after six weeks of working up here, moved the family up here, was getting ready to sell our house back where we had left.
And I went back there the following weekend after I moved to grab whatever else we forgot. And there was a note on the door and a huge padlock that said foreclosed. So in a year, I had a heart attack, job loss, car repossession, home foreclosure, all in a year. And all those things happened to me because I was burned out. I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't resting.
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Chapter 3: How did Michael transform his burnout experience into a consulting business?
And it's one of those things that even the World Health Organization recognized burnout as a workplace phenomenon back in 2018 or 2019, prior to all their work with the pandemic. And for them to recognize burnout is a huge issue globally brought to light, okay, this is not something that's just a thing that's in style right now. This is legitimately a problem for people and
We need to get to the bottom of it, figure out what it is, identify the signs, which we can easily do. But the thing with burnout recovery or even burnout prevention is the steps that I see work that I used on myself and I've seen others work through them and it's helped me.
are really easy to do but unfortunately they're also easy not to do and we as humans tend to lean more towards the comfort way of living instead of doing a little bit of challenging work on ourselves and that's that's one of the things that is so hard is when we need to work on us
For some reason, that's really difficult for some people to do, which is strange in a way, if you think about it, because we're never around anybody else longer than we are with ourselves. So it's an interesting dynamic to see people struggle with trying to do things to make themselves feel better, look better, and be better.
So before we talk more about burnout prevention, and how we can help ourselves recover faster and easier from burnout. There's a problem with this problem. Burnout as a problem carries a stigma. I believe this is cross-cultural, especially among leaders, high achieving professionals. You experienced burnout yourself more than 10 years ago before this topic has become mainstream.
Now in your business, in your practice, for the sake of helping people, helping organizations, I was wondering, how did you establish the importance of addressing burnout at the C-level as well as at the operational level? Perhaps at the beginning, when you pioneered this unique role in the corporate world, what challenges did you face? How did you overcome them?
Yeah, you hit it right on the head when it comes to C-suite executives and C-suite leaders having a difficult time because of the stigma of burnout. There's a mental health component to it. Actually, a lot of people do in talks and things like that. They'll ask burnout, especially with the science and all that. It sounds a lot like depression. There are a ton of similarities between the two.
As someone who has dealt with both, I've dealt with clinical depression myself, as well as burnout. I'll tell you, yeah, there are a lot of similarities, but the key difference is with burnout, you can still muster up the energy to go out and do it. You're fatigued, you're cloudy, you're wiped out, but you're still out there just grinding and just doing it.
You're tired, you want to go to sleep, your body aches, everything, but you're still doing it. When you're clinically depressed, even doing that is a big ask, and sometimes you can't. There are just days where you just like, I can't get out of bed, or I just want to go take a nap. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with taking a nap. I'm a big fan of them.
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Chapter 4: Why is burnout a universal problem across generations and industries?
But for 99% of the other people out there that are burned out or approaching burnout, you don't need to reinvite your life. Just make a couple adjustments here and there. You'll see humongous dividends when you do so.
You have dealt with a lot of individuals, leaders, and their companies. So share with us two examples. One is a success story where your intervention led to positive changes in the individual's life and career or might be in the firm's culture. Another story would be a situation where things did not go as well as planned with your intervention. What were the key lessons you learned from them?
How do these not-so-good experiences have helped you shape your approach to dealing with similar situations in the future?
Yeah, the first one, turning around an organization culture, they had a ton of turnover. In their early days, they were a startup organization, ton of turnover, no trust, no communication. People were stressed, people were leaving, and these weren't young people by any stretch. They were well-educated individuals that were leaving like they were quitting a fast food job as a teenager.
And I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And it boiled down to communication and trust was a big issue. Expectations, I think, were another. Miscommunication, going back to the communication thing, seems to be a common challenge. And then toss in some ego, and you have yourself a toxic environment. So for me, it was like, okay, let's get to the bottom of this. So
The nice thing about it was how I approached it was, look, I'm your friend here. I want to make this better for you. If you were in my seat, what would you change? What would you do? And once they trusted me and felt comfortable sharing, then they were an open book, and they would share all the things.
And I put them all together, and there was a lot of commonality on both sides, both parties, the one – the upper management and the staff. And once we got to those commonalities, I met with them individually. And then I met with them in small groups and we just shared the misconceptions that people had and misunderstandings.
It went from an organization that was having just tremendous turnover every year to a year later, they were averaging around 6% turnover and they were well in the double digits before. And all it was for me, I say all it was, I tend to simplify things, but I know the work was pretty instrumental.
It was a situation where it just turned things around and it became an organization instead of being or having a reputation of being a toxic workplace to an organization where people were applying to work there when there were no roles open. They wanted to be a part of it because they knew and heard that this was a great place to work. And it was the same people.
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Chapter 5: What is the stigma around burnout at the C-suite level?
They implement it, which is always nice when they do that. And they see the big changes. And then all of a sudden, a few years later, they're right back into the problem they did before. And I've seen that even with keynote talks. I've given keynote talks to organizations and was brought back several years later when they had new people there, new management.
And they're like, we're having the same problem again. Oh, okay. I'll take your money again. I'm saddened by this because for me, and I have to be careful about this. Sometimes you get to be self-judgmental and they go, maybe my talk isn't good. Maybe I'm not convincing people. Maybe they, and that's not it. It's the old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink.
It's the same thing. You can say, here are all of the solutions that will make you feel better. But it is up to them to implement them. And you cannot do that as a consultant. You can't do that as a coach. You can't do that as a manager. You can't get people to do something they are refusing to do. You can encourage them. You can show them all the benefits of it.
But unless they want to do it, they're not going to do it. And that includes stopping their burnout. Some people, unfortunately, love playing the victim. And I hate to be that person. blunt about it, but they do like I'm burned out or I'm a single parent or I've lost my job. Nobody wants to hire me. And it's okay. What are you going to do about it? I'm Gen X too.
We tend to be pretty straightforward on it. Maybe not as blunt as our predecessors, the boomers. They tend to be pretty blunt. You can take that for what it's worth. I appreciate it. I love a straight shooter. No. Yeah. Does it sting sometimes and how they present things? Of course. But Once your ego dusts itself off, everything's good again.
But again, all you can do is bring the information, share the insights of what we've learned, the research, how it's backed, and the benefits of adjusting a few things here and there. And it goes a long way in making things better for you. Those are the couple stories of many that I've encountered over my career and in recent years and in the works that I do.
This podcast is about change. And right now, a lot of people, other than dealing with burnout situations, are facing change. In particular, career change, career transitions. Some are not happy with their current work and life. They have a strong desire to refresh their futures.
Others are forced to change because of layoffs or in the name of corporate restructuring, cost efficiency, AI, whatever they name it. Burnout is part of this change process before, during, or even after the change. If I were one of those people in transition, with a burnout situation. I came to you. I asked for advice. So what advice would you give to me? What insights can you share with me?
Usually what I'll do, and this is again leveraging a lot of therapy work, is have you talk about your current career or the one you're leaving. One of the things we'll talk about is having you go back in time when you first applied for that role and what your feelings were when you were selected and hired and that first day. Go back in that and think about that.
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Chapter 6: How does Michael address burnout stigma and build trust with executives?
could be external maybe there was a new manager and that manager was not easy to work with or wasn't clearly communicating or who knows there could be all kinds of different things or could be internal you might have been going through something else during that time maybe
uh relationship challenges a loss of a loved one or a pet which is a loved one too so i i don't need to separate those but both are traumatic for people and there's all kinds of other things that could be going on it might be the economy it might be upset your team hasn't won in a while or they traded away your favorite player is i don't want to say simple or silly because it's not some people are very passionate about a lot of things in life
It's just getting to the bottom of, okay, where are some of the ingredients that are adding to this? It's okay. Then from there we can see, are there opportunities to maybe look at things differently or change your perspective on a particular matter to identify that jerk manager that left from the organization because people leave their managers. They don't necessarily leave their companies.
They leave their managers. Putting yourself kind of in their shoes. What do you think their motivation is? It'll go from, oh, they're just evil and mean. It's like, do you think they may have some self-confidence issues? Do you think they don't feel prepared as a manager? So they are defaulting to being this...
quote-unquote bossy person to do these things to try to cover up for their own self inadequacies if you thought about that what is if you if you dig back deep enough or peel back enough layers you can actually see that in people now it takes time it takes practice it also helps you study mental health and you get a better understanding of why people do what they do
which is great, but then also frustrating because then all of a sudden you start, and this is just me personally speaking, you get frustrated because you're like, I know what their motivation was in that, or I know why they're doing this. And you want to tell them that, but it could, it would come off completely wrong sometimes if you do. So it's
It's like knowing the end of the story of a movie and you're watching it with your good friend who hasn't seen the movie yet. And you want to say, oh, yeah, this person does. And you just have to keep your mouth shut. It's that kind of frustration sometimes. But it's one of those things where you got to meet people where they are. and work with them from there.
A lot of new therapists and consultants, they'll say, okay, page one of the consulting book. And no, you don't do that. You got to figure out where people are and then you go to that particular page. Get that low-lying crew, get them some confidence for themselves, and then you'll see how much more they want to work.
Because otherwise, if you start at page one, they might be at page 30, and you're going to lose them before you get to page 30 because they're going to be bored. So you got to meet people where they are when it comes to burnout, and then start from there.
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Chapter 7: What methods and tools does Michael use to help prevent and recover from burnout?
So that was a huge expense for me. What if people simply don't have access to a credible, qualified therapist or consultant like yourself? In that case, could you share some common signs or warning signals that we might be overlooking in our lives and careers? What should we work out for to recognize a potential burnout situation?
Identifying these signs early on, I think is very crucial that we can address them in a timely, in a proper and systematic manner.
Yep, I'll give you the signs that I see time and time again. One, you're fatigued. You're not sleeping well. Your body aches in places you didn't know you had, and you're just not feeling well. That's a big warning sign. Another one, which was a huge red flag for me, is... You lose interest in doing things in life. And I'm not talking about work. I'm talking about in your personal life.
You quit doing things with your friends that you normally love doing. You quit all your hobbies. You just don't want to do any of that anymore. You find that communication with people colleagues and loved ones is harder. Maybe you're a little bit more irritated than normal. And we see that a lot.
There's a lot of people that are angry right now because I think a lot of people are dealing with certain levels of burnout and stress and fatigue over finances, wars, you name it. The post pandemic, all of these things have been taking a toll on people.
And if you notice, too, that the intake of food and you're not taking time to eat or your food choices aren't what they used to be and you're starting to feel the aftermath of eating too many processed foods and not eating real food. And that will take a toll on you as well. So those are some of the signs to warn out or look out for if you think you're burning out. Now, how to fix it?
There's several ways to do it. Make sure you schedule time to be active, eat the right foods for you. And that means figuring out what foods are right for you. I had a food intolerance test done a few years ago. They tested me on over 250 types of foods, and I got a beautiful report, color-coded. that indicated, okay, these are the foods that are good for you.
Your body naturally likes these foods. And then the page that was in red, which had a lot of items on it, unfortunately, are the foods that I should probably stay away from because I have an intolerance to them in varying degrees, but it was still the red page. I do my best to avoid any of the foods that are on that page. And what happens is my digestive system works better.
The food that I eat is naturally good for me and my body breaks it down naturally without any issues. So I don't have to have Tums or acid reflux or anything like that. But if there was one magic pill bullet thing that I would tell people to focus on if they want to help prevent burnout or at least reduce the impact of it is really focus on your sleep. Get really good sleep.
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