SIMPLE MENTAL HEALTH w/Adam Nemer

From leading major health insurance companies to launching Simple Mental Health, Adam Nemer has never been afraid to ask bold questions—and seek better answers. As someone who’s wrestled with his own mental health, he’s putting his personal and professional experience to work for the benefit of others. Adam is empowering leaders by providing a new lens to look through when it comes to mental health.

ALLIÉ: You've worked at the highest levels of the healthcare industry, Adam. So first question for you today, what was the moment, whether a story or a statistic, that pushed you from managing a system to wanting to change things up, to reinvent it a bit? 

ADAM: You know, I worked at an amazing organization, Kaiser Permanente, and the ethos of this organization, what they teach you is always trying to innovate in how we're delivering healthcare. So I was trained as an executive to think about growth, the future, and what's next. And then I layered on, we know it oftentimes with folks, with entrepreneurs, it’s some sort of lived personal experience. So for me, it was my own lived experience with mental illness combined with my – well, I was kind of trained as an executive to try to think a couple chess moves down the game. Once I had this lived experience and some personal aha’s of what we as leaders could do differently, I was just off on the races. 

ALLIÉ: So let's talk more about these races that you were off to in creating Simple Mental Health. You intentionally stripped away the red tape and built something rooted, dare I say, in trust. What's the first barrier that you had to dismantle, not for any of your clients or people that you work with, but within yourself to make this vision real? 

ADAM: The thing that holds us all back in the space of mental health, mental well-being and why the less than a half of us who need help get help, it's all about stigma; just these long term societal historical stigmas that we've just embedded in our organization. And there's things that we can do to normalize the topic of conversation in the workplace and there's some very remarkably simple things that you can do. And it's all about what I learned, it didn't happen for me on purpose. I didn't want this to happen and I didn't go about trying to do this, but what my lived experience taught me was that when a senior executive at a company is open and honest about what's going on with their mental health on a daily basis, like everyone in my organization knew I was struggling and I would be in a budget meeting for a multi-billion dollar health plan and say, “Guys, I got to walk out. I'm having an anxiety attack.” I got to go for a walk. That level of transparency.

And again, I wasn't doing it on purpose. I was just trying to get healthy. But what I learned was that when senior leaders normalize the topic of mental health in their organizations, when they make it as okay to talk about mental health as physical health and as normal to talk about it, then not just that lives change and people start getting the help, but it creates that when the leader says, hey, me too, then it creates a space for everyone else to get help. And then for the love of the universe, people get help. It's like we're investing in all these wellness programs, but they don't use them because we're not encouraging people to use them. So what happens is people get better and then your performance improves. And it all just comes from leaders having the, I don't want to say courage, but it's kind of the courage to share their own experiences with mental well-being. And we all have our stories, right? My mother, sister, ourselves.

ALLIÉ: For sure. I feel like there is such a huge value in vulnerability and us being brave enough to show up with the real version of ourselves.

ADAM: It's a leader's job. It's a leader's job to create an environment where everyone can show up as their full selves every day and do that job. If we're not creating this psychologically safe environment where we're attuned to the emotions and emotional needs and wellbeing needs of our colleagues, we're not doing our job. ​

ALLIÉ: Well, I like how you mentioned just a moment ago to normalize talking about mental health. To talk about mental health with just as much ease as our physical health, because we can talk about all the other organs in our body, but this organ (the brain) for some reason, oh, can't talk about that, not really. 

ADAM: You want to know a funny story? 

ALLIÉ: I do.
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ADAM: I can't believe I'm going to tell you this, but I just realized I'm going to tell a lot of people. When I came back to work, the first thing I think about was, am I going to tell everybody or not? So I had a complete emotional collapse while I was running the operations of Kaiser's health plan in the Pacific Northwest; complete emotional collapse. Out of work for about a month and a half, I came back to work and I had to decide if I was going to tell everybody.  I mean, I'd worked at this company for 20 years. I know everybody. And I'm like, man, if I tell everyone, there's no way they let people run $4 billion operations if you check all these boxes. So I tell everyone I'm going to get fired but if I don't tell everybody, then the stuff that I'm going to have to do to get better is not conducive to being a successful executive, I have to be gone a lot and take care of myself more. And then I started thinking, so what do I do? Here's the funny thing. I have Crohn's disease. I've had Crohn's disease since I was 16. 

Man, I'm always sick. I've had four open belly surgeries, I've had 12 hospitalizations and I've been sick ever since I was 16. Oddly though, since I got better with my mental health, my Crohn's has gotten so much better. You know, Crohn's disease, it hurts like hell and you're always running to the bathroom. I do this math. Even when I'm having a normal day, I think I spend 11% of my time in the bathroom. I get my meditation out there. So what I realized was this. I've been the CFO of our care system here, I've run this health plan and I'm always talking about my Crohn's disease. And it never dawned on me that when I say, “Guys, I'm having a Crohn's problem. I got to get out of here,” everyone's going, “Man, he's running to the bathroom, he has diarrhea.” Oh my God, it never dawned on me – the image. I've been spending all my life saying “I got Crohn's, I got to go,” or “I can't eat that, it'll make me sick.” So I've been talking about my bowels with all of these people for 20 years. What the hell? I'll tell them I'm crazy. 

ALLIÉ: If you talk about one, you should be comfortable talking about the other. 

ADAM: That was the thought in my head. I can't believe I just told you. 

ALLIÉ: You know what, this is you being real and being raw, which is the way we need to be, which is what a leader is and how, I think, to bravely step into your truth. It inspires people just to do the same. 

ADAM: You know what, one of my biggest aha’s as a leader is there ain't nothing special about leaders. I mean, there is, but what I mean by that is remember there's a plinko game of life, you know, we all kind of just have life's experiences and there's nothing special about that person who became the CFO versus that person who's an analyst. We're all just people and it's just one person just got luckier. I just became really aware of that. And so on that point of vulnerability and authenticity, it's like a lot of leaders interpret that as, you know, that imposter syndrome. So I got to pretend like I know what I'm doing. Then I pretend like I know what I'm doing, it's lonely at the top, but then I got the lonely at the top imposter syndrome thing. What people want is, like you said, they just want to be around authentic people. Just be yourself, man. You can’t be like me, just be you. That is what people want. How can you fake authenticity? 

ALLIÉ: Yeah, you can't. You can’t fake authenticity. So you said a word there – special. And I agree that leaders aren't necessarily ‘special', but I do think while the person perhaps isn't special, it’s that they make people feel special and that's the everything of a leader. That's when the special comes in. Not about the leader themselves, but that they have the ability to make people feel special.

ADAM: It's the position, it's the opportunity versus the hubris and the ego of wanting to be there. So I have a good friend who ran the facilities in our organization and he has this great line. He says to a group of folks, “What's the definition of a leader?” And they're like the president of the company, the CEO. And he's like, “No, a leader is not the person with the best title or the highest pay; it's just the person who has people walking side by side with them.” That's it. It's not a title. It's a function, and we can all lead where we stand. And it's not about you, it's about the “we”.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, it's not about the “me”. It's about the “we”. And I love it, because in my grammar geek thing, I'm thinking it's not the noun of it, it's the verb of it. It's the action. 

ADAM: That's right. Yes. That was very English lit geeky. That was beautiful.

ALLIÉ: I love words. I'm a word nerd. So let's talk about your words though. You've said mental health care shouldn't be complicated. However, the fact of the matter is, life is complicated. So how do you reconcile the messiness of the human experience with a clean, clear model, like the one that you've created? 

ADAM: Well, just to be really clear, I'm not a clinician. We're not providing mental health care. This is not a therapist organization, it’s Simple Mental Health. And helping people get help, there's lots of different tools in the toolbox from psychiatrists, therapists, meditation, yoga, self-care activities, all that sort of stuff. What Simple Mental Health believes, and what we're here to do is we believe that helping people get help around in our lives can be simple. Getting better is hard work. Man, I spent 20 years in severe depression and anxiety from these traumatic experiences I had, and I had no idea, and it's still worked for me. Getting better is work. But getting me into the lane to get help took a five minute conversation of one authentic leader and it changed my life. And so mental health care… It's a journey. I woke up today feeling a little anxious but I know what to do. I went for a walk, I breathed a little, I stretched a little and I felt better.

What we teach is, in effect, mental health first aid. We all know CPR. We all know what to do if someone's choking. We all know what to do if someone has a bruise on their arm. We know how to dial 911. So what do you do if someone's having an anxiety attack at your office, a panic attack, they're in a depressive episode? Well, what we believe is that all of us should know the basic tenets of mental health first aid. Mental health first aid, my definition of it, now there is an organization called Mental Health First Aid. Go check out their website. It's an internationally recognized program from Australia, in the United States, it's credentialed by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. They have training classes on it. I will oversimplify it in my definition and I'll kind of walk you through it. You take mental first aid, these programs that we teach, you learn one, how to recognize the signs and symptoms that someone around you, like a colleague at work, may be struggling with their mental wellbeing.

So what are the signs and symptoms? Number one. Then, number two, how do you approach them in a safe, thoughtful, caring and nonjudgmental manner? We can notice them and when we do notice them, we usually throw it in the gutter when we're trying to help them because we haven't been taught the right thing to say. So it's, how do you notice, how do you engage, and then how do you guide to services in the community? There's this perception that you just can't get a therapist appointment. Access to care can be hard, but it's not impossible and there's lots of things that we as leaders can do in our businesses to help guide folks to get the care. And so in a three hour workshop, we bring CEOs, the C-suite, boards of directors, leadership teams, through a three hour training where they leave that class knowing how to recognize the signs of someone struggling, how to engage them properly, how to guide them to services, they know how to normalize the topic of mental health on their teams, and they understand from a business case, why it's so important that they do it. And that's what we think is simple. 

ALLIÉ: Helping people get help is simple. I love that. 

ADAM: Want to know another funny story? 

ALLIÉ: I do want to know another funny story. 

ADAM: So this is the entire thing. I'm going to get sad then not sad. So my story very quick, young guy, find my dad's suicide, don't get enough help that I need, get an MBA, I grow a career and I'm really sick. 17 years of PTSD, horrible illness as an exec. Find my mom after she passes away, I have a complete emotional breakdown where I'm running the operations of Kaiser's health plan in the Northwest. I wear Levi's, t-shirts, and flip-flops to work. Man, it looks like I'm going to the beach, not running a health plan and I'm a son of a b*tch running and yelling at everybody. 

Three weeks later, this national Kaiser leader walks into my office and he says, “Hey man, how are you doing?” And I'm like, “I'm doing great”. You know, wearing that mask of happiness. I hadn’t shaved, I looked so bad, and he goes, “Well, you know, you look great.” His ability to say that knowing how bad I looked is amazing. He goes, “You know, you look great, Adam. Are you seeing a therapist? I know about you finding your dad's suicide, now you just found your mom after she passed. Are you seeing a therapist? Is that why you're doing so well?” And I'm like, “I didn’t see a therapist. I'm doing great.” He says, “Well, do you know the signs to look for in yourself in case you might need to get some help down the road?” As I say, no, he pulls out of his suit pocket the business card of Kaiser's employee assistance program in the Northwest, he slides it across the desk to me and he goes, “Dude, give Dave Poppleton a phone call. Dave was our EAP senior leader at Kaiser at the time up in Portland. He said, “You know, you've had these traumatic experiences in your life, you should at least know the signs to look for in yourself in case you need to get some help down the road.” And, Allié, I had no idea what he was doing. It was the next day that I went and saw the EAP counselor. Sitting in his office, they walked through the signs and symptoms and I checked every box other than hallucinations. That's where after 20 years, you know, they all exploded into my head. And so a senior leader at a $90 billion company had a five minute conversation and changed my life. 

But here's the magic part. Here's the thing why I go through this whole story. This guy comes to see me on Monday. The day before, he was in a mental health first aid class at his church on Sunday. So he's just a national Kaiser leader at his church on a Sunday and they're talking about mental health first aid, and as they're talking about the signs and symptoms that someone could be struggling with their mental health, he was like, “Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam. Oh my God, Nemer is in a lot of trouble.” Next part of the class, well, they taught him how to approach somebody in a safe, thoughtful, caring, nonjudgmental manner. You know how sometimes like you're in a workshop and someone will ask a hard question and the facilitator will say like, “Well, what do you all think?” I got workshopped by his church. So my buddy David, he raised his hand. He's like, “You know, I'm worried about my buddy, Adam. I don't know, he'll be so defensive if I talk to him. What do you guys think I should do?” And the facilitator said, “Well, what do you all think?” And so one day on a Sunday, a senior leader at a $90 billion company workshopped me with his church. The next day in a five minute conversation, he changed my life. And that's what we teach leaders to do is how to have those five minute conversations. He's around me all the time and he did recognize the behaviors, but if you don't take the class, if you don't say these signs and symptoms, hey, maybe I'm going to go see EAP. That's all he did. Saved my life.

ALLIÉ: So it's just such a huge, amazing, crazy, ridiculous example of how just by connecting those dots, we don't have to serve up the magic, we just have to recognize how to find the magic. 

ADAM: And make it okay to see, right? So if I had been in an organization where leaders would not have supported sending someone, you know, a lot of places will go, oh, they’re an EAP. They’re okay. It's this negative connotation. It's not supported. So the last part of our story, the next thing that happened is, after I saw that EAP counselor, I was out of work for about a month and a half, starting antidepressants, going to therapy and all that sort of stuff. And when I came back to work, I started thinking about leadership differently. There's this phrase, y'all have heard it. It’s “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”. What that's always kind of meant to me is like leadership is an evolving avocation. You're always learning new things and incorporating it into your style. It's not like math. You learned it once and you're always applying it. You're always having to learn it. So you learn something new in the world and then you adjust your approach.

So my big ‘aha’ was in therapy. I learned that absurd statistic that every year, more than one out of five Americans experience what a behavioral health clinician would diagnose in a medical record as a mental illness. One out of five of us. Now it's worse. Now it's one out of four of us, 24% last year, but back then one out of five, and less than a half of us get help. And the median time period from the onset of symptoms to getting help is 11 years. So thinking about it, I had been trained at Kaiser Permanente, it’s a population health company, they teach you to think as an executive through the lens of what's good for the healthcare of a population. And I'm like, man, I got like a small team here at Kaiser, you know, this big company, I got like 400-500 people here, that's all. But that means I got like 80 to 100 people that are going to be in just as much damn pain as I'm in. And now that I could connect the dots between all the pain I was in and the diagnosis and the fact that recovery was possible, if I chose to get help and kept going at it, I realized, oh my God, what would I do if I was going to have a hundred people with cancer this year, a heart disease or diabetes, right? 

Do something right? You get people with scans and you do something. And so what we ended up doing is, that mental health first aid program, we piloted it for Kaiser on our teams. We ended up training company wide, almost 20,000 health plan employees on this skill set, but it took all 400-500 people out of work in these full day increments over the course of a couple of weeks, executives, staff, everybody together, and what happened is, over the next couple of years, as we trained everybody and I was open and honest every day about what was going on in my life, they created the space for everybody else to. Two years later, we had some of the highest employee engagement stats in the company and check this out, on every single key customer performance indicator, Kaiser Northwest was number one in the country. 

ALLIÉ: That is amazing.

ADAM: All I wanted to do was get people to not hurt, because it fricking hurts. You know, the only thing that we did differently in those two years is I, the leader, came out of the closet and said, “Wow, I'm really struggling, and it's okay. Let's all struggle and get help. That was the only thing that happened differently and two years later, we were number one on every metric. 

ALLIÉ: That is incredible.

ADAM: Yeah. They say there's a stat that for people with depression, it impacts your productivity like 20%. It makes sense, right? You're saying it's about a day in a week of work. Oxford university MBA program last year did a study, could have been 18 months ago. They found that people who are happy are 13% more productive. So let’s just do this math at a macro level, right? When you help somebody go from being unhappy, being really depressed to happy, you have 33%, that's like a third of a work week, of improved productivity. Now you read that, what we experienced on our teams, we just cashed that in. Because what happened is for our two years, we weren't running like wellness programs, we were encouraging people to actually go get help, and people were going to get help. And as people got help, their productivity improved. Attendance at work went way up. We had way less absenteeism. We had a better team dynamic. So if one out of five of us every day is struggling on any given day, think about how many team conversations are really driven by someone in fight or flight, right? It's massive happening in all of our teams every day. You have a much better team dynamic. So what happened on our teams? And again, we didn't do any of this on purpose. I just want people not to feel bad. And we ended up, you know, I think about it as unleashing all of this organizational performance that was being held in by just our poor mental well-being and damn it, there's something simple leaders can do about it. 

ALLIÉ: Yes, take care of your people. Take care of them. 

ADAM: I mean, hell man, that's not rocket science. If a recovering CFO can do this, anybody can do it. 

ALLIÉ: There's no excuse now. Now that we know, there's no excuse. Look, I'm going to switch gears a little bit here and get really personal. If you could sit down with your younger self before the C-suite titles, before the courage to step away from that, what truth about mental health would you whisper in his ear that he wasn't ready to hear back then? 

ADAM: You know, I remember the moment that I wish the universe had taught me this. So what I wish that I knew was that, going to therapy after I found my dad when I had a traumatic event and being open to going on antidepressants at that time, I can't imagine what my life could have been, what could have happened. I remember the moment that I said I didn't want was this, I think I remember the day I found him on a Wednesday, he hadn't shown up for work and he was always the first one at the office, and it was really weird. You know, he didn't show up for work. He'd be reading the New York Times with his coffee, with his feet on the desk, I loved it. And he wasn't there, the lights weren't on, it was just kind of eerie in the office, and I called him at his condo, and he didn't answer the phone and that was really weird. So I drove down there, I checked on him, and I found him. He had shot himself in the kitchen, and that's where I had found him. 

I remember like a few moments after that, I went and sat on his bed, wait, I think the ambulance came and a rabbi came somehow. But the next thing I remember is a day later, I'm sitting in a psychiatrist's office, this guy named Dr. Boverman. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was sitting there, it was like 9 or 10am-ish. It was a day after I had found my dad's suicide. Now, I have no idea how we got there, but somebody made an appointment and I'm sitting in the psychiatrist's office with my older sister, Tiffany, who's nine months pregnant, and my younger sister, Robin, who's a resident in developmental pediatrics in Salt Lake City, and me and this psychiatrist, right? So for an hour, we talked with him. And yeah, this is 24 hours after I find him (my dad). So he goes to my sister, Tiffany, “You're nine months pregnant. I mean, I really encourage you, you're so focused on your baby, stay focused, have a healthy baby. You know, in a couple months down the road, you might seek some help. I'm not sure I'd be the right therapist for you, but if you'd like help to find the right one, I'm happy to help you.” 

Then he turned to my sister, Robin, and he says, “Robin, you're in a new relationship with a man, you're in your residency program out in Salt Lake. That's a pretty rigorous program, but maybe a month or so, a couple of weeks, check out a therapy appointment, but just kind of get back into it and then a couple of weeks ago, get an appointment.” 

He goes to me, “You. I want to see you here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.” I came there the next day at eight o'clock in the morning, the first thing out of his mouth, he said - I remember his blue little cardigan sweater. This was damn near so long ago, 25 years ago. He says, “So Adam, what do you want to get out of your time with me?” And I said, “There ain't nothing wrong with me. That's because my dad's crazy and I know my mom's sick as there can be, I'm not f*cking crazy. I'm not taking any medicine. I'm not going to be that guy that's got to see a shrink for the next week for the rest of his life. All I want is, I want to see you no more than four or five times and I want you to give me the skills so that I don't go do what he did when I'm his age.”

And he said, okay. And basically what I learned from Dr. Boverman was to talk about my dad. You know, if he's ever on your mind, talk about him. Whoever you're with, if he comes up, tell them that you need to talk.  I practiced that. I always did that and it wasn't enough. And it was his beautiful gift to me that in my obstinance, he found a way to give me one thing that really was a beautiful tool. But if I could go back to any moment in my life and change any moment, I mean, it would have to be that. You know, because I wasn't open to that conversation, I had 18 years of undiagnosed, severe, daily - I mean, it was like I had a 18 year anxiety attack layered on top of severe depression. I had three open belly surgeries for my Crohn's disease. I had 11 or 12 week-long hospitalizations because of my Crohn's all exacerbated from the stress of mental illness, which I didn't know was going on. I got divorced. I mean, divorce is a two-way street, but it's sure not helpful when your husband is an a**hole all the time and can't hold it in. I can't imagine how much, and I've had a rich and wonderful life, and I'll tell you, I'm the luckiest guy I know, but the only way I could have gotten luckier is if I had, at that one moment on that Dr. Boverman's couch on Lovejoy in 20th in Portland, Oregon, he was right next to Dr. Kingery's office. I mean, I remember this like it was yesterday and it was March of 99. That's the moment, if I could go back and change anything. 

ALLIÉ: Thank you, first and foremost. I mean, here you are sharing the story. So personally, walking the walk, not just talking it, right? It is through these stories and through these moments when we share them, when we're not scared to be real, to be raw with things that we can actually connect and in that way help other people who maybe don't even know what they need. 

ADAM: Stories beget stories. Everyone who's listening to this is going to be thinking about someone in their life. Interestingly, one of the things that I wasn't expecting when I started this work was that it would be emotionally hard on me to hold space for other people. I didn't know that. And I'm a recovering CFO, I wouldn't even have thought about that. But it's like all day, if you tell your story all day long, I promise, people tell you theirs, then you tell each other your stories and you hold them there and then we hold each other's weight.  It's how it works. We share each other's stories. It's a beautiful thing because one of the gifts I get from sharing my stories is people share their stories with me. 

ALLIÉ: And how beautiful is that? 

ADAM: It's amazing. 

ALLIÉ: What a beautiful gift. 

ADAM: Stories beget stories. You know, the myths, there's this isolation cycle I think of. We teach ourselves about mental illness, like depression isn't real. Those myths drive these stigmas, like people with depression are just weak. Those stigmas drive feelings of shame, like, oh my God, I got depression. I must be a weak person. So that drives silence. I'm not going to tell anybody. So this myths, stigma, shame, silence, isolation circle, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. It eats us up. But when people share their stories, it breaks the myths because the myths are that it's not real, that mental illness isn't real, that it doesn't hurt. What's wrong with you? Well, when leaders and other people, when we share our stories, it breaks all that isolation. When we share our stories, people get better. It breaks the myths, it breaks the stigmas, it breaks the shame. 80% of people who don't get help share that stigma is one of the key drivers that they don't get help. 

ALLIÉ: Yeah, I hear you a hundred percent. I mean, Jack and I started AwareNow five years ago, we've told over 1400 stories. I personally have touched each one. So I hear you a hundred percent. I feel like I've lived 1400 lives, if for nothing but like a day or a snapshot, a story at a time. And I hear you, there's this shared space. When you share your story, Adam, I feel you. There's an energy exchange there and there's a connection and the value of that, I mean, you can't touch that. 

ADAM: It's like being on a team. When you're on a team, when you win, the victory is sweeter and when you lose, the loss is easier. You know, you get to share wins and share losses. I'm a CFO, I'm a recovery finance guy, not a clinician, but the thing that just really is just fascinating for me as a lay person here is how it, you know, they call it talk therapy for a reason. I mean, it's like, for my Crohn's disease, I get infusions, I do colonoscopies every once in a while. For me to get better with my mental health, I take antidepressants every day. That's fine, whatever.  But I just felt the prescription is actually talking. Talking is what makes us feel better. Sometimes it's so hard for me to wrap my mind intellectually around how words that I'm saying and talking with somebody makes the energy in my body different, which makes me feel better. I can't wrap my mind around it. It's so bizarre, but talking, it's my favorite line. They call it talk therapy for a reason. 

ALLIÉ: And let's talk about it.

ADAM: Exactly. Let's talk about our talk. 

ALLIÉ: Let's talk about the talk and not just walk it. Talk it and walk it. So you're building something that sort of redefines this relationship between people and their care and how they access it and the leaders that serve as conduits for it. This will be my last question for you today. What does the future look like if we can get this right, not just for therapy, but how we see ourselves and each other? What if we get it right, Adam, what does that look like? 

ADAM: For me, I'll give you a micro example, and then I'll give you a macro example, what getting it right looks like. I'm going to come off as a real old man now, but the movie, the analogy that's coming to mind is Chariots of Fire. Have you seen it?

ALLIÉ: I have. 

ADAM: Remember there's the discus scene. We could either describe the shot put scene or the discus scene. So the Americans, they were practicing in America for what was the 1912 Olympics, maybe something like that in London. And apparently in America, they were practicing with shot puts the size of basketballs. And they were practicing with discuses, like the size of, you know, these big old platters. And they get to the Olympics in London and all of a sudden they get a shot put that's the size of a softball instead of a basketball.  And they are launching these things and they're winning all these medals. It's really easy to throw a shot put the size of a softball if you've been training on one, the size of a basketball. That's how every single aspect of life for me is now. So what does getting it right look like on an individual basis is moving through life, feeling like you just went from shucking basketball size shot puts to a normal size shot put. Every single thing in life is easier. I've learned skills that have made me stronger, more self-confident. I'd say for the first time in my life, I have self-trust, self-respect and true self-confidence. I've been forged. I know that if I got out of that, I can do anything. I was a CFO of that place while I was going through all that pain, all the physical and mental stuff, and I overcame it, sweet mother of God, I can do anything. 

So the ‘getting it right’ at the individual level is we can get better. You don't have to go around suffering. Sometimes our backs will still hurt. I still have my struggles, not always. It’s getting better. Getting it right means you feel better and you can be happy, have joy in life. And getting it right on the macro level, oh, Allié, I don't know, my parents taught me that Margaret Mead thing long ago when I was a little boy, you know, never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. When in doubt, nothing ever happens. My parents just raised me on that sort of stuff. And so I believe that business leaders should incorporate mental health literacy training into their corporate training. And it doesn't cost new money across the country in the United States. On average, organizations spend between $1,100 and $1,300 a year on employee training. This stuff might be $200-$300 more. So it's not even new money. Just reallocate your existing training budget for this. 

We can change the world because the fact of the matter is, unemployment may not be great, but we're always talking about unemployment. What about employment? Now, 95% of Americans go to work every day. Think of it when Americans went to work, their leaders educated them on just a little bit on mental health first aid. How many managers in America would not know what to do? If an employee was having a heart attack, they would call 911. Every manager knows how to do that. It's a job requirement. So what getting it right means is when corporate America, which is very safety focused, incorporates mental health training into all of the safety training we do across corporate America for the love of the universe Allié, we change the world here because think about how many five minute conversations can happen in a team. I left an overpaid underworked executive job at the greatest company in the world because I really believe we can change the world here. I think we can take a massive bite out of the mental health crisis in America when leaders become mental health literate, and normalize the topic. We give everybody the benefits. We give them the benefit of therapy. We give them the benefits for EAP. Let's encourage people to use it. Let's encourage people to use what we already give them to change the world.

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