A Former Entrepreneurship Professor Becomes A Startup Entrepreneur With A New Method To Help Worried People Conquer Their Anxiety

Worry often kept Gary Lim up at night—until the former entrepreneurship professor developed a method to stop nagging concerns from taking away his peace of mind.

Lim’s answer is Knock Out Worry! The online course, says Lim, is designed to show people who worry too much how to take control of their worry, so they can worry less and enjoy life more. The course, delivered through six video lessons on the platform Thinkific, is designed to teach people who are battling anxiety to recognize the sources of their worry, manage anxiety and build a routine that helps them to control their worries.

“After I did all of my reading and research, and developed a methodology that ultimately relieved me of my worry and anxiety without the use of medication, I realized that I had successfully taken personal control over one of my health outcomes,” says Lim. “That’s an incredibly rewarding feeling of accomplishment in self-care. I wanted to share it with others hoping to achieve the same, so I put it all together in a straightforward and no-nonsense online course.”

90% of Americans believe the nation is facing a mental health crisis, according to a recent CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll, with over 50 million Americans experiencing mental illness, such as anxiety and depression, according to an analysis of federal data by Mental Health America, a nonprofit. The CNN/KFF poll found that one-third of adults “often” or “always” felt anxious. At the same time, many people can’t afford treatment or find the services they need in their area, according to other research by KFF.

Worry is normal and is generally very common among the general population today, according to Torie Hairston, LCSW, CIMHP, Sr. Director of Integrated Health, Upstate Family Health Center, Inc. “I think the language and insight people have to label their experience as worrisome is more prevalent and mainstream that prior to the pandemic,” Hairston said in an email interview. “Health-related worry became a universal experience, [and] the general population can’t walk backward from that level of hypervigilance to none, even if they’re able to manage their emotions. “

Against this backdrop, more digital tools to help people manage their mental health are being introduced and adopted. “Everyone learns differently and that extends to how they choose to manage their own emotional experience (or not manage),” Hairston said. “Some people learn best in formal therapeutic settings, others from apps on a cell phone, etc. An online course designed to help someone understand and navigate their individual experience with worry has some potential to empower the individual because I’d assume they’d have some level of control over the pace of the course and how they navigate it to their benefit at their level of need.”

Lim, based in Syracuse, N.Y., served as Executive Director of the entrepreneurship program at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management for more than five years, teaching a course he created called “High Tech Entrepreneurship” at the MBA level. He was also the founding director of the school’s business plan competition for students.

After leaving Syracuse University, he served as Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry for 13 years. While there, he taught “Green Entrepreneurship,” another course he created, in which both undergraduates and graduate students could enroll. He also introduced a seminar, “Professional Communication Skills,” that was offered at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. “This was an initiative on my part to address what I believed then—and now—which was that students generally emerge from college poorly prepared to communicate effectively in the professional world,” he says.

He also worked with his wife, Judy Lim, for 20 years at her company, HealthcareBusinessOffice, which provided continuing education courses for certified coders in the healthcare field. They grew the company to a seven-figure business, running it until just before the pandemic, when they decided to close it.

Previously, Lim, a graduate of Princeton University who studied electrical engineering and computer science as an undergraduate, spent 20 years in Silicon Valley and acquired a small firm in the travel industry that he grew from less than $1 million in revenue to $4 million in four years. After selling that firm, he became an independent business consultant, starting a firm he still runs called Aurarius LLC, and also taught marketing and product development seminars for the American Management Association around the U.S. His client companies have included Fortune 500 firms, mid-market and emerging companies, small firms privately-held or family-owned, as well as not-for-profit agencies.

Lim doesn’t have a mental health background but he believes his success in finding a way to manage his own anxiety will allow him to help others. In answer to one of the FAQ questions on his website, “Why should I listen to you?” he wrote, “Though I’m mainly a senior-level business advisor and consultant to companies large and small, I’m just a regular guy. When I found worry affecting my quality of life years ago, I had to do something about it to find out why. Now I want to share it with you.” In addressing what he found to be a gap in the marketplace, he’s come full circle in putting into action the very approach he taught his entrepreneurship students for decades.