Armen Arustamov 0:00

When I recognized that, hey, this is my way, this is my path, this is thing that I I like, I love to do. All of my inner structure became clear. And this is initial thing connection with yourself. And then for sure, you go to the experienced people, they say that, hey, it's a Mickey Mouse app or it's a Mickey Mouse idea, et cetera.

Angela Robertson 0:23

Welcome back, everyone, to the Stormy Stories show. I'm your host, Angela Robertson, CEO of Ace Tech. We are a membership society for technology founders and CEOs, and we exist to make sure that no tech CEO or founder has to grow their business alone, and that they and their business can thrive on the journey for them to bring their products, their solutions, their technology to life. Today's guest, I'm delighted to introduce to you, is Armin Arustomoff, founder and CEO of Got It Life, a Google-backed AI mental health startup, often described as the Duolingo for psychology. He's a former professional tennis player, psychologist, and mental performance coach, and is combining that background with AI, psycholinguistics, and behavioral science to help people build resilience, strengthen self-coaching skills, and improve mental performance. Welcome to the Stormy Stories show, Armin.

Armen Arustamov 1:26

Thank you, Ramash. Thanks.

Angela Robertson 1:28

You've gone from professional sports to psychology to entrepreneurship. How did those experiences come together to inspire your company, God It Life?

Armen Arustamov 1:38

Oh, it's uh yeah, it's a long story, but if I try to be short, it's almost the same. Sports and business, you know. There is some specific results, there is some um some understanding what should you do. Uh there is some part of unexpected and unpredictable things which you you need to pay attention on. And you have to be resilient so much in both areas. So, yeah, a lot of common things.

Angela Robertson 2:11

It's not an easy link, though, for many people to make going from, you know, especially a sport that feels so individualized as tennis, right? Into business, which you are also, as an entrepreneur, putting your results on your back. So, how how did you make that transition? And was there always a driving force for you for entrepreneurship?

Armen Arustamov 2:33

Yeah, kind of. So in my case, it's easy transition. It was the easy transition, so but it happened not right away. So after the sports, I graduated as a psychologist and I I was some um corporate. I worked in as a business trainer in the corporate world, you know, in different companies, like pharmaceutical companies and banks, several banks. I worked as uh in the talent development department. So and it helped a lot, by the way, right now, helped a lot of me right now to understand how decision makers make a decision to buy or consider the kind of tools like ours to use our mental performance coach in their contacts for their employees. According to tennis, tennis is a very individual and lonely sport. You are, you know, experience the totally loneliness all the time. You are talking to yourself all the time like a crazy. And the same as a founder, an entrepreneur, you're totally alone. Until you succeed something. This transition was pretty pretty smooth, pretty seamless.

Angela Robertson 3:39

That's amazing. I would say, or until you find other folks like you, other founders and CEOs who are also in this journey, and you start to realize that other people are out there also talking to themselves.

Armen Arustamov 3:52

Yeah, kind of. But if you if you, for example, go to some commute entrepreneurial communities or accelerators, when happens in in our case, where alumnies of or of founder institute Silicon Valley Accelerator. It's kind of a room of uh loneliness people, you know. And it's barely helpful to you because everybody are lonely and uh it kind of, you know, you you have to build some another skill of connection with yourself, which allows you to build the skill of connection to others. So, you know, your loneliness doesn't depend on the amount of people around you, it it depends on the quality of relationship with yourself. That's the point.

Angela Robertson 4:41

Yes, you have to be willing to do the work. That's so important. Uh, you described God at Life as the Duolingo for psychology. What problem in mental health and personal development are you trying to solve differently with this company?

Armen Arustamov 4:56

Uh build self-coaching skills rather than others trying to replace it. That's it. Because I I understand what why it happens, because people don't like to think, they like a magic peel. So uh I try to be you know understandable in terms of I love people, you know, but people trying to find the easy way in in you know every all all the time. From one side, it's good, laziness is it's good, you can use laziness for your for develop your creativity. But from another side, everything big, everything complicated, if you want to build something really significant, you have to be ready to for the for the long way.

Angela Robertson 5:44

They have to employ that resilience that you were talking about earlier, right? You have to be ready for it to take longer, to require more energy. I am curious because many AI companies focus on giving users answers, as you're saying, right? They give, they take you straight to that magic pill. Why did you choose to build a platform centered on improving self-talk and self-coaching instead?

Armen Arustamov 6:10

Yeah, it's a great question because it's related with uh my values and values of my great team. We want and we laugh, we're obsessed about the long-term result, you know, not magic pills. And we consciously are losing our retention right now if we see our analytics. But retention and analytics, it's not everything for us, you know. We are coming, we came to this market, mental health and performance apps market, not for the couple of months or a couple of years, you know, to build a company and s and sell it as soon as possible. No, we we want to build something significant, something that really can change not necessarily people's lives, but can change very significant part of people's life. That's important for us.

Angela Robertson 7:02

Yeah. I I hear you there. It's got to have impact. And it's that connection that you're saying, too, to your own values and making sure that that's resonating through the team and out through what you're putting into the market. Mental health is an incredibly personal space. How do you balance innovation and AI capabilities and this, you know, maybe pressure externally to continue to drive to newer versions of your product with trust, privacy, and human psychology or the intimacy of really getting people to trust in your platform and be vulnerable with you.

Armen Arustamov 7:42

Yeah. So your question consists several points, you know, in terms of trust and privacy, and in terms of innovations. So trust and privacy, it's a very, you know, very standard question. There is no hundred percent trustworthy service in the world. So all information is not trustworth worthy for 100%, unfortunately, or may or maybe not. I I don't know. But uh if you choose some service, depends on your needs, in our case, some mental performance app service, you have to pay attention on motivation of the founders of this service. Is it the big brother which wants to track your information or selling this information? Big brother, like an IT giants, and you have to ask to yourself two questions. Why they can use your data with particular ways, or are they available to do this? You know, so we don't have any motive, motivation to use this data because we are focusing to grow the product and attract more users, and we are not able to use this data to, you know, I mean, in particular ways to sell this or something. So we are not able this right now. And in terms of privacy, for sure, all the our information is unnamed. We cannot identify that you are recording your dialogue, self-talk, or dialogue with our AI. But definitely we are analyzing your data for sure. Trying to find the best way to improve your user experience. You know, the quickest way to find your right insight, to help you to find your right insights and steps. It's it's kind of research. We have to, we cannot be blind, you know, to working with our users. We have to uh work with this data. It's the first and the second question about the innovations. I think if you found your predestination, your calling, and if you understand what you are doing, and especially most importantly, why you are doing this, uh you don't care about competitors, at least at the beginning of what you are doing. You care about the user experience. And we our main we have a main two processes right now, which we are obsessed on. First, it's uh the constant feedback and conversation with our users and figure out what we can do more and better, etc. And the second, improving the product. We talk to users and going to improve the product and then back, you know, back and forth.

Angela Robertson 10:27

That's so important. And I think it's something that is it's very simple, but it's easy to overlook, right? It's easy to get distracted by competition and be worried about what's coming over your shoulder. But ultimately, if you have users and you have data, those are the people that you're designing for, right? So why not spend the time to talk to them, to learn from them, and to iterate forward?

Armen Arustamov 10:50

For me, it's like a lawyer or artist, you know. If you want to become lawyer or artist, you don't care. You you understand that there is a millions of lawyers around the world, or artists, or you know, athletes. And if this is a barrier to go to this profession, you don't have to do this, you know. Right. I think in in a lot of cases, people ask us, hey, what is your competitive advantage comparing with the Chat GPT? They even don't think about the they don't ask about the CBT chatbots because it's not so popular. And we explain them what our are our competitive advantages. It's very simple. Which is first of all, we don't give you some magic peel. If you ask Chat GPT, how can I overcome my challenges, depression or divorce, etc. It says to you, like, hey, do this, this, this, and this, like instruction, you know. And uh the regular people don't know about the prompts and they don't care about and don't think about how should I ask GPT, you know, give them role, you know, imagine that you are a therapist and and talk to me. They just ask and get the answers, and this answer is highly uncustomized for uh for people. Uh but if you ask our Chat GPT, uh our our uh chat, it starts to ask your questions. And if you in one moment you ask, hey, I don't want to answer your stupid questions, we start to convincing you why it's very important to find your own solutions and your own insights and et cetera, et cetera. It's the first. And the second, Chat GPT don't have any similar with the self-talk, like internal dialogue methodology, like like we do. It doesn't allow you to, you know, build some verbalize your self-talk, we change your voice, you know, and we distance you from yourself. So guided life kind of it's organized the conversation between your sub-personalities and move your self-talk, which is a usually negative and uncontrolled, into the productive way.

Angela Robertson 12:56

Hmm. Yeah, it's true, right? We we don't spend enough time, I think, reflecting on how often that internal voice is speaking to us a negative. And even just being able to reframe that or even have an awareness that that's happening, I'm sure must make some kind of shift for people to know, oh wow, I'm spending a lot of time with negative thoughts.

Armen Arustamov 13:20

Right, 100%. And the self-talk itself, it's very underrated uh technology and ability of people. They say usually, hey, I'm not crazy to talk to myself, or I'm not competent, etc. Bullshit, I think. All the answers are in your head, and nobody knows you better than you do. And if you stop, I mean, 10-15 minutes a day and start to asking your questions and start learning how to ask the powerful questions. What did you already try to overcome my feeling? You know, ask about not about the thoughts, but about emotions. How did I feel about this? So you can learn it. You you can learn it. It's it's just skill.

Angela Robertson 14:03

Mm-hmm. It's practicing too. Yeah. Building a startup in the mental health sector comes with unique challenges, like we've just discussed to some degree. What has been one of the stormiest moments in your founder journey so far?

Armen Arustamov 14:19

Yeah, a lot of storms in my journey, and yeah, even right now. But the first one I think which I met when I spent uh two years in Silicon Valley, and I was there totally alone, totally poor, and uh, you know, and I didn't have any connections there. My English was so bad. Right now it's not ideal, but that time it it was so bad, you know. And the challenge, it's so you know, loneliness, and again, the idea about the self-talk app came to me there, where I understood, I understood that hey, I'm not stupid. I I I feel that I have answers, but I need to get them out, I need to structure this information, you know, and I need to make a plan. These two three things allows me to trust to myself. And I found there our first investor, my co-founder, and start building the team and product there.

Angela Robertson 15:24

Wow. Even in the face of all of that concern and loneliness, you still found the people to drive your company forward. What gave you the confidence to continue to be there, even though you were feeling like you weren't in a community that accepted you?

Armen Arustamov 15:41

Yeah. The initial uh thing that gave me the confidence, it's a connection with myself. Uh and it's not about the trust or beliefs, it's about knowing, you know. If there's a people who who have uh uh stories like they uh watch the god, the people who who were, you know, between the god between the life and and death. And they don't need to believe this, they just know if if they watched something, if they saw something there. And I felt the similar feeling, you know, when I when I recognized that, hey, this is my way, this is my path, this is thing that I I like, I love to do, and this particular value which I want to share with people because it's my complexes or my challenges, which came from my childhood. So yeah, uh all of my inner structure became structured, you know, became clear, became clear. And this is the initial thing connection with yourself. And then for sure you go to the experienced people, they say that hey, it's a Mickey Mouse app or it's a Mickey Mouse idea, etc. And the second step, when you found your uh your first person, in my case, it was Jon Stewart, he's a first investor in Natera, it's a 29 billion valuation company, healthcare, very experienced healthcare, Silicon Valley VC. Uh, and he said, hey, it's something uh significant. And uh I believe in in this idea. And then if you're reminding, if you remember this thing, which some very experienced guy believes in this, in some part of my life, when I just disappointed in some ways, I just remember this. Like, hey, this, this, and this guy said me that they believe in me. And this allows me to be confident and focused.

Angela Robertson 17:42

But only because you've done the work on yourself first, right? I think that's something that's so important, like that you said before, right? The reason why you're able to accept that is because you've already made peace with that yourself. You know that it's a good idea and you're confident in where it's going, and then this external validation comes in as a support for what you've already grounded.

Armen Arustamov 18:03

Yeah, yeah, 100%. That's not like a validation of the product, but validation of your life challenge. You know, you have to define this. If you even don't have a product, but if you have some thing that you want to develop, you know, some challenge that people expect some problem which you you recognize and want to help people to overcome this kind of problem. Yeah, that's the initial thing.

Angela Robertson 18:33

We've talked a lot on uh just in this conversation about resilience and mental toughness. What role does mindset play when navigating startup uncertainty and rejection for you?

Armen Arustamov 18:46

Again, it's all about the your inner world and your inner conversation. I think there is a some last research that our inner conversation defined the physiological structure of our brain. It's the last research, I don't remember which university, you know. Can you imagine more morphology of your brain is changing depends on your self-conversation? It's crazy. So yeah, I think um I think resilience and everything and mental toughness, it's it's just second and third step that or benefit that you can get from this.

Angela Robertson 19:24

And as someone who's coached professional athletes, who I would say are maybe the most well-recognized examples of resilience, mental toughness, you know, needing to bounce back from losses, things like that. What lessons from elite performance do you think apply directly to founders and CEOs? Or that maybe that some of our folks listening to this conversation today can take away?

Armen Arustamov 19:55

Oh, it's a great question. It's a great question. From professional sports, I think athletes are experiencing more tough emotions and thoughts um for a different reason, because their path is very limited, you know, by age. Uh you can be entrepreneur the whole life, you know, but you can't do some sports uh the whole life. So that's why uh they have very limited um uh amount of years in their uh young ages, from for example, it depends on sports, but approximately from 14 to 21 years old. So actually, you know, six-seven years, and they uh they have to show results in these years. Yeah, results, results, results. And uh the the result orientation it's one of the main things that uh entrepreneurs can can get from from professional sports. The second for sure, resilience and uh and and humor. Feeling of humor, it's important. You you have to you have to be able to laugh on on yourself and on the situation. It's kind of uh surviving reaction, you know, but it's kind of compensation, but anyways, you can use it and it works. Many things. You have to build the right team. There is important thing that there is some kind of uh skills, but not popular skills. Uh everybody knows the skill like uh emotional control, focus development, etc. But almost no one said about informational and emotional hygiene when you're able to remove you know that distracted information and people and and bad people from your life. And you have to do this consciously and on a daily basis. You have to pay attention on self talk, it's also still not a popular thing, you know. And you have to recognize about this. So, yeah, st some. Kind of several non-popular skills. And the last one, you have to build some attitude to yourself, like to Superman, like to, you know, hero. You are not the regular person if you do some business, you know, and you have to and based on that, you have to make a decision about what you are eating, what people who are communicating with, what you are focusing on, etc. etc. Are you watching TV or or you read the books, et cetera?

Angela Robertson 22:29

Yeah, it's not just in the actions that you're doing in your time at work, but it's all the actions throughout your day, right? It's where you choose to spend your time noticing that.

Armen Arustamov 22:43

Yeah, that's that's an attitude. It's an attitude to yourself. You you define some role. You are special. You are not better than people, no, but you are special, like a special force top guys, you know.

Angela Robertson 22:55

Yeah, that's yeah. I think that's important. I think that's an important mindset for people to adjust and start noticing the way they're talking to themselves, the way that they're choosing to spend their time, what activities and hobbies, not just in how you're communicating at work. It's it's all through all the parts of yourself.

Armen Arustamov 23:15

Yeah, definitely. You have to be very careful about things that other people don't. You know, and they 100% they don't understand they don't understand yourself. Why are you doing this? Why not watching the World Cup every day? Why not not watching the, you know, another show or something? No.

Angela Robertson 23:38

Yeah.

Armen Arustamov 23:39

It's not for you.

Angela Robertson 23:40

What wires you? Yeah. Looking ahead, how do you see AI reshaping mentalness, mental wellness, performance coaching, and human development over the next decade?

Armen Arustamov 23:53

It's it's a global question. Yeah. So it's a tough question for me. Entrepreneurs don't have a choice. They have, they must see positively on all the changes which which which happens on in this world. I'm very I have a very positive view on AI. AI is a beautiful thing. And I'm sure every revolution, like every technical revolution, machine revolution, if you see in the history, brings some risks, you know, some damages, around 30% maybe, and some progress for 70%. But always, based on our history, the world's history, the US history, always people win, won about this. You know, I'm losing my job, blah, blah, blah. Okay, you're losing your job, but you have to redefine yourself, you have to get more knowledge, and more new jobs will appear. It's uh 100%. So don't be scared. And I think uh AI gives a lot of opportunities for people to understand themselves. By the way, that's why we customize our product for this. You know, we our AI helps you to develop yourself, not replace your resilience, but develop yourself. Because human beings and human skills it's initial for us. And AI can help you with this a lot.

Angela Robertson 25:17

That's wonderful. I love that mindset shift, uh, Armin. I'm already feeling a little bit lighter and a little bit more thoughtful about how I am talking to myself today. So I hope our listeners are too. And I want to thank you so much for sharing more about your story, and I'm excited to see where God at Life is going in the future.

Armen Arustamov 25:40

Thank you for your attention. Thank you for having me, Angela.

Angela Robertson 25:43

At Ace Tech, we believe one of the most valuable resources a leader can access is another leader's experience. That's why I created the Stormy Stories show to bring you honest conversations about the moments that test us, shape us, and ultimately make us better CEOs and founders. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.