Mental Health Awareness Month 2024 | Mental Health And The Work Place | B2B Vault - The Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 247

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Nolan Ryan of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we wanted to touch on, uh, mental health awareness, seeing that it's Mental Health Awareness Month, it's wrapping up, um, tomorrow will be the 31st. Today is May 30th, 2024, approximately 12:24 PM, Thursday afternoon. How you doing, sir?

I'm doing pretty good. Very good. How you doing? I'm all right. Rocky's over here napping out.

That's good. Good for him. Everyone needs to rest.

He's getting old. He's been napping a lot more.

He knew we were going to be talking about mental health awareness, so he's going to be— Healing his mind and his body from all the traumas.

Hopefully.

No, he's not. He's gonna bite someone as soon as someone wakes up, Mom. Anyway, what else is new, man?

No, that's it. That's what's new. You know, plugging away and helping business owners.

Helping business owners. Yep.

That's what we do.

That's what you do.

Yeah. So you want to dive into this thing?

Sure. All right. So, yeah, man, it is Mental Health Awareness Month. So being someone who has been on a healing journey, one would say, over the past year and a half, I don't know. It's been— I feel like I've been healing my whole life, but I recently been going to therapy, specifically a— I can't remember the first word. It's got like extensive— I don't know. It's trauma therapy. I was recently discharged from that side of the therapy, so we're not so much talking about events that happened in my life now. We're just more talking about— well, I shouldn't say talking about events that happened. We're not talking about the events that traumatized me. As a youth and young man, more so now we're utilizing the tools that I've been taught to get through those tough times. But yeah, I wanted to talk about this. You know, the other day we were shooting a podcast and I didn't— I wasn't joking about suicide by any means., but I said, you know, most chefs that I know, um, are either, uh, you know, just super wrecked or on the verge of committing suicide, right? And, you know, I was— and I was laughing when I said it, and it's been on my head, my conscience, ever since that, you know, I was talking about it. So I wanted to you know, make sure that I touched on that again today because, uh, if you've had anyone or you know of anyone that, that you've lost, that they've lost someone to suicide, you know, that's, uh, it's terrible.

Um, you know, I was in that profession for 20 years. Yeah, and I know, and you know, it is a very stressful profession because, you know, if you're a chef and you're in a high-end restaurant— and I worked in places that were to the higher, you know, higher end— you know, if you burn somebody's steak, you know, it's not like here, like, oh, somebody didn't get a deposit. Yeah, we can get them an answer in an hour. You know, we're not rushing around. We say, hey, we'll call you back, we got to contact "Customer support, do some research, we'll get back to you." Right? And you don't have to do things in seconds and minutes. You know, when you're a chef, you're dealing with a lot of stress. You could have a restaurant with 200, 300 people in there. You got a bunch of cooks.

Yeah, I mean, it is a stressful job, but what I was saying is that, you know, we're getting at like, you know, I shouldn't be laughing about suicide when I'm, you know, talking about it.

No, I get it.

I have a— one of my, um, from going to therapy, I've learned that one of my, uh, I don't know if it's not nervous, but I laugh at shit, right? Like, it's hard to explain. Um, If I'm put into a tough situation, I'll start laughing. Like if you're, you know, if something like road rage or something and someone hops out of their car, like I get myself in a lot of trouble because I'll start laughing at you.

Right.

Like if you're seriously angry and it's like making me, I guess, a little uncomfortable, my natural reaction is just to start laughing.

I try not to get like crazy. Like somebody has a problem and they're yelling at me on the phone about, oh, my money's missing, blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, that's, you know, I'll let them just, you know, complain, just listen to them complain. And then I'll just say, hey man, just gimme a few minutes, I'll get this straightened out.

Right. But I'm just saying, I laugh at people.

But sometimes I'm laughing, they can't see me, But I'm laughing because they're not letting me get off the phone to go see what's going on. You know what I mean? I can't help them when I'm on the phone.

Right.

You know, especially like sometimes I had somebody catch me on the weekend. You know, I didn't have my— wasn't sitting in front of my laptop and the guy was flipping and flipping out on me and 3 people were texting me and I was like, man, I just took my phone and just like, put it down on the couch and it was going, "Bzzz." That's a good mental health tactic. And I went over to my laptop and got the laptop open, saw what the problem was, and then called the guy on the phone and I said, "Well, when you're done screaming, I'll tell you how to fix your problem." Exactly. I said, "Just let me know when you're ready." And then he just continued to scream at me and I was like, Okay, you ready now? And he was ready. I said, go do this, go and do this, do this and this, and your problem will be fixed. So he went and did it, problem was fixed, and that was the end of that. And I go, you guys didn't need to blow my phone up like that.

But right, yeah, man. Um, so, but if you know anybody who's struggling with, you know, suicide or just having a hard time, they have a whole number you can call, 988 or text it. You can call or text 988, you know, pass that along. Um, I guess that's their, uh, that was like their 911. It's something new. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that was cool. I didn't, I didn't even know that was available. Um, because Allen had asked if we wanted to shoot this pod last week because, you know, it's getting towards the end of the month and we didn't— I didn't want to miss it, but, um, I wasn't I didn't have this information that I have in front of me. Like the number. I didn't even know that it existed. Well, I did know that it existed. I just didn't know the number. 'Cause I remember when they were the big switch because of the majority of like when you see these, a lot of the, this is, it's hard for me to talk about 'cause I've lost people to police shooting someone. But when you talk about, you know, when you see a lot of this in the news and stuff like that, when, you know, the people are just struggling with mental health issues and they're not crazy, they're not deranged, they're not violent people. They literally are having a mental breakdown and don't know how to get through it. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So believe me, as this number is a great— it's the Crisis and Suicide Lifeline. So again, call or text it, 988-988, if you have anybody that's in crisis or feeling suicidal.

You know, and as an, you know, from, you know, when you look at things, you know, as an employer, right? And being a manager, you know, like when I was a chef and a food and beverage director and you're in charge of, you know, sometimes 10 people, or at one job, 300+ employees, you're dealing with a lot of personalities, a lot of things going wrong in people's lives. I was very young when I was in my first managerial position. But, you know, coming and working in the restaurant business, you see a lot of people struggling with alcohol, drugs. Mental health. And, you know, a lot of larger companies have, you know, like, the root is the mental health, right?

All the other stuff, the drugs, the alcohol, and yeah, that's a derivative and all that other shit. That shit is just them trying to—

yeah, it's a byproduct.

They're trying to escape what's really happening up here in their brains.

Yeah, like one time we had a— some— I had someone that worked for me and they got cheated on and the whole situation spiraled out of control to the, you know, we had to call the police and stop her from, you know, she was trying to kill herself. And it was horrible to watch because she was a nice person that worked for like a year. And, you know, and just, you just see those kind of things and you have to, you know, I'm sensitive as an employer There's more than one person that works in the office that goes to therapy. And they, you know, and I've been through therapy myself a couple of times in my life. And, you know, you got, you know, I've let people do what they need to do because it's good for them. They're going to be a better employee because I'm taking care of them. And you got to be flexible as an employer because you're not going to just You can't find everybody that's—

I mean, you know, not everyone. Literally everyone that I have ever came across, yeah, it wouldn't hurt them to go to therapy, right?

Exactly.

Like, you could say that you're not in therapy right now or you don't need therapy, but you've been through enough shit in your life to where, as even if you go and talk to somebody for— I mean, you go and speak to other people. So as long as you're talking about it, you know, you— lots of times you might not need therapy. But no, everyone could benefit from it.

Sometimes I talk to my rabbi.

I don't care what anybody says. Anyone— you could benefit. Anybody who's living and breathing could benefit from speaking to a therapist on a regular basis. No, I think it's a great thing.

Yeah, sometimes I talk to my rabbi about things bothering me in my life. And—

but he's going to keep it very religious.

And no, not really. Yeah, but he can empathize with things. And there's other people that I confide in when I'm having an issue. No, I went through—

I don't do that.

Yeah.

Because I find like this is something that, you know, it's just one of those things. Like, it's like getting parenting advice from someone who doesn't have kids.

Oh, I get it.

So like, how the hell can you tell me what I need to do to make me feel better if you've never been through this situation? Or if you haven't been trained on this situation. Like, I can't— I just don't listen to this. Like, I'm stubborn that way.

Yeah, but I might not—

gets so mad at me because I'm like, dude, you don't even—

yeah, but I might not be looking for advice. I'm just looking to unload and unload, then just unload what's on my mind. And then, you know, maybe they have a few words of wisdom that they can give me. You know, you just don't—

I'm going to take that with a grain of salt.

Well, you take it for what it is. I unloaded whatever was on my brain at the time. Listen, I have a friend of mine now, right? And he has stuff going on. And, you know, and I worry, like, when I don't hear from him for a couple of days.

Right.

You know, and I know that when I don't hear from him for 2 or 3 days, like he's not in good shape. And I hear you. And I, you know, tell him, I go, hey man, you know, if something's bothering you, let me know. You can always call and talk to me because not everybody wants to go to therapy. Some people go to church or they go to synagogue.

Yeah, I just, I don't think that's the right approach.

No, no.

I really don't. I think that, which is great that everyone has, you know, you can go speak to your imam, your, whatever your— what is the— rabbi, pastor, etc., etc., your, your teacher. But again, like, those people don't have the training on mental health, right? And they don't know how to, you know, well, this, this, and this can trigger this. They don't, you know, your pastor, he's not gonna put that together. He's gonna just try to, you know, he's gonna try to make you feel better.

Yeah, more or less.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So the purpose of therapy is getting to the root, the root of the problem.

No, I get it. Like when I was going to—

Like for me, I have so much, as the therapist described, just trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma. Even if your brain at nighttime when you're trying to sleep, that's when your body heals from these types of things. That's why I don't sleep well is because, well, that's a whole different podcast. But like for instance, if I am asleep, and I get woken up, I am extremely upset. And this is— the stem of that is I never got to really rest when I was a kid. So that now as an adult, I finally get that rest. And it's like someone breaks my sleep and I don't feel like I, for one, I'm not the type of person that can get woken up and I can go back to sleep. I just can't do that. Like, I'm up. So if you wake me up at 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm gonna be up until 2, from 2 AM until when I go to sleep that same day. It's just, I just can't. It's how my body is. So, like, yeah. Shout out to therapy, man, because I have made some leaps and bounds over the past year and a half mentally. I'm sure people who follow the podcast or, you know, watch specifically can see a difference in my, I guess, demeanor, I would say. Maybe attitude. I don't know. I'm a grumpy— I'm grumpy. It's— it doesn't— like, it's just, it's just one of those things. Like, uh, my wife was telling me, she was watching the podcast, she's like, man, you be looking pissed off all the time. And I'm like, I'm not though, right? Like, I— that's— I guess that's just how I grew up, right? It's just how I was what I was surrounded by. I wasn't surrounded by rainbows and tulips. I was surrounded by gunshots and funeral homes. So it's like, what the fuck? Sorry, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, like for me it's a little bit different. Like I wake up in the morning and I am happy. Like I'm sitting out in my backyard, I have my cup of tea and I'm sunbathing. I got my feet in the dirt. You know what I mean? I'm grounding. These are all things I learned in therapy, by the way. You know, like how in tune our bodies are with the universe and the earth. And it's important to, you know, know that. But—

No, it is. That's like, I go for my walk in the morning.

It'd be better if you're barefoot.

Well, that would be really rough on my feet. Hot sidewalk.

It's not what your ancestors were saying.

Yeah. No, but the things that I went through in my life were things where I was in kitchens getting yelled at before I was the boss, and then I was yelling at people.

I also want to say, when I'm talking about my childhood, not everything was just like I'm in the middle of a war, right? But I grew up in the a community of that was impoverished, just like every ghetto in America. And it's— it wasn't great. Like, it, you know, when I talk about my— I don't have those core memories.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, it's, it's, it's—

I'm laughing because everybody grows up differently.

Yeah, exactly. And that's why it was very important for me to seek out therapy because I don't want to say I was going through a midlife crisis, but I guess I was because I turned 40. That's how long I've been dealing with like these, you know, when I turned 40, my brain, something clicked and it was not good. And it was, I felt like it was all downhill from there, right? Like, I mean, uphill, whatever the saying is, I don't know. Yeah, it was like all uphill from there and it was very treacherous. I was destroying myself for no reason, like mentally. And therapy, I listened to my wife and my wife told me that I needed to go to therapy and I put it off for a while. Long time. Very long time.

No, no. So let me just tell you, like, you know, so I was in the environment and my parents used to yell at each other. Yeah, I thought that was normal. And I probably yelled a lot at my first wife. But, you know, then after I was married a second time, that relationship didn't go so well for many reasons. But, you know, then that's when I was in therapy after that, and I had learned that the way I had to learn how to deal, communicate with, communicate better, not yell, not get upset. And I try to listen.

You have to listen.

Yeah, you have to listen. But also, you know, you don't want to surround yourself with people who are toxic. Like, there's somebody toxic in my life. You know who that is. You won't mention their name. And they get very upset all the time and all that. And I had to figure out how to get rid of that toxicity with that person. And I pretty much have got that toxicity out of my day-to-day of things that I have to deal with. And I'm a much happier person. And it took me a while to figure out how to do that, but I did it. Right. And Also, with dealing with employees, you'd have to deal with— when you're dealing with employees, you have to deal with everybody as a group, but then you have to deal with everybody individually.

Absolutely.

So as a group, there's rules. And as individuals, you have to deal with everybody as an individual and do what you can do for their— helping people grow. Helping people with their whatever life situations and dealing with whatever is dealt. And when you're a business owner, that's a lot to deal with. If you own a business and you have 50, 100 employees, or maybe you're a head of a company and you have 1,000 employees, you have a lot to deal with. And that's why companies are worried about HR policies and all kinds of different things. And you just have to— Rocky is barking. And you have to deal with that. So as an employer and a manager, you have to deal with individuals that work for you and you have to mentally be able to have empathy.

Right. Right.

And deal with and help those people through whatever that they have as long as it's not affecting your day-to-day business, right? When things start to affect your day-to-day business, then you got to figure out like, okay, well, that's not going to work. And if you're arguing about something constantly, that thing needs to be removed out of the situation. And I successfully did that in a situation, removed something that was extremely toxic. And was actually preventing other things from happening. And you have to understand how that is. And it was helpful for me to go, you know, to when I went to therapy to learn how to deal with people, to learn that you have to be present in a relationship, to learn how to, you know, and that, believe me, relationships—

Listening is like the key. Like, I feel like communication, specifically when you're talking, right, is listening and not reacting. Because a lot of times when you're talking to somebody, especially when we're talking about mental health here, you know, if someone decides to even like, you know, talk to you about what's going on, 9 times out of 10, they don't really need an answer.

No, exactly.

You just need to shut the fuck up and listen.

Exactly.

And that will get you forward. That'll get that person to be, oh, okay, yeah, thanks for listening.

People need to do things for their mental health. Get out, walk, get out. Don't be, you know, COVID kind of like put people where they're sitting in their house and they were just sitting there doing stuff on the computer.

COVID was terrible for people.

Working remotely. And it caused a lot of people to completely shut down and become really antisocial. And even today, I'll be going out for a walk in my neighborhood. I see people sometimes, I just say hello to everybody. Rocky will walk up to people to get petted or whatever. He's pretty, most of the time, pretty friendly out on a leash. Versus somebody trying to enter his space. And especially if he's passed out, he don't like to get woken up out of a deep sleep.

He's a grumpy old man too.

Yeah, he's grumpy. No, but you got to do things like even I remember when I used to live near the beach, it used to be really healing for me to go to the beach, no shoes on, go for a walk on the beach, feel the sun come up in the morning. Now I love going on my walk, The sun comes up, I miss it. If it's a nasty cloudy day, I miss seeing that sunrise. Take pictures of it every day.

I mean, the seasonal depression is real. Like I didn't even think about how it was impacting me per se during the wintertime down in Florida because I mean, it's kind of sunny 365, right? Not even kind of like, yeah, the sun wasn't out this morning, but by noon the sun will be out, right? And so, but the flip side to that is that the sun still sets earlier every day, right? And so by the time we would get out of the office, it's dark outside.

Yeah, I hate it when we would leave the office and would be pitch black.

It's tough. That's crazy, you know. I didn't really think that, that seasonal depression was a thing. I thought it was like mainly for up north. Because where I'm from, we get all four seasons, right? So fall and winter is, to me, it kind of meshes all together up north, and you would just kind of go into this hibernation, stockpiling your calories, you know, gaining weight, you know, staying inside. But yeah, man, the mental health thing, for the number one cure for me was doing something physical. So I got into the gym. It's been going on 2 years now. I've lost over 130 pounds. I gained a couple back just recently.

I've been—

I was bulking up. So I'm up to a nice 181, something like that. So I'm, I'm going to cut that back down to 170 and see where I like. I went from 160 to 188 out of nowhere, like within a month and a half. I just was going crazy with the food. But yeah, I think the physical activity, journaling is my number 2 for your mental health. And then my number 3 would be getting outside. If you could do one, physically, like if you can go work out outside, you're kind of knocking out two birds with one stone.

Yeah, that's like my walk and I'm outside.

Yeah, it's a great— that's a great way to start your day.

And even like if I go away on a trip, right, I make sure like, okay, I'm going to get up in the morning, go for a walk, and I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to go for a walk. And even if it's great, even if it's just around the parking lot.

Yeah. I mean, if you're in a place that you don't know really well or something, I mean, it's a great way to explore. Yeah, but, uh, yeah, so physical fitness, journaling, and being outside are my number 3 things, uh, my, you know, top 3 for, you know, mental health and, uh, keeping your mind clear of all the noise.

Yeah, it's up there. The big thing for me is you gotta recognize if you're in a relationship or in a situation with somebody that's really toxic. Yeah. Like they're looking to start a fight with you.

Yeah.

Verbally. And you gotta figure out a way how to defuse that and defuse that situation.

Yeah, man, I mean—

It's really important.

Right when I started going to therapy, I remember how often I was just combative. I didn't want to fight, but I was like, I was just an asshole on purpose. Like, I would, you know, say things not to hurt your feelings, right, Allen? Like, I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings, but I was definitely saying things to get you roused up.

Me? For sure.

Like, I don't know why.

Um, well, you know, listen, that, you know, we had our situations where we were arguing about things. Listen, you know more about what you do and I know more about what I do.

So yeah, when you try to tell me how to do SEO or digital marketing or anything.

Yeah, but I want you to explain it to me. I don't want to hear— I don't want you to tell me, oh, well, that's just dumb.

And that's the type of shit I was like, the answers that I'd be like, I don't want to hear that.

Like when we talk about things like, oh, let's think up some better topics for the podcast or let's think up some better blog posts or let's figure out some content to put on the website. Hey, you know, I don't want to hear like, oh, we need to come up with something. I, you know, there's 3 people working in marketing. You guys need to sit down and, and, right, come brainstorm, have a brainstorming session and go, hey, like, what do we, you know, what's going to be good for that? And not just go, okay, throw your hands up, you know. I, I never work, you know, like, that's my main thing in business is all the time is You know, you got to think outside the box. Our world, our world is changing faster than it's ever changed before. Okay. Like, especially like this business, the business that we're in, Nationwide Payment Systems, used to be like I would look at things like, okay, like this year we should be doing this. I'm not even thinking like that.

You got to think—

I'm thinking about like next month. You know?

Yeah.

Oh, I got to look at this. I got to look at that.

Your monthly— your calendar should not be— your marketing calendar shouldn't be for 2024. It should be for every month. Or you break it down per week, like, all right, this week, blah, blah, blah. Next week is for this, this, this, and this. Yeah.

Like, we— I think we need to change some of the stuff that we're doing and become more focused in on certain things for, like, a whole month. Of something. I don't know. I don't know the answers anymore. Just things are moving fast. The changes on Google, the changes on Facebook, the changes here, the changes there, the changes in the business, the rules, the this, the that. There's like a million rule changes.

Government, and speaking of the gov, um, one website you can go to if you knew anybody who needs some assistance is findtreatment.gov. Um, specifically in Florida, the floridahealth.gov and myflfamilies.com. And if you are in Florida, um, Chrysalis Health is where I went to, uh, seek therapy. They're great people, find all kinds of funding if you don't have the money, grants, etc. But yeah, man, stay focused. Get outside, do some physical activities and journaling. And well, the number 4, I guess, would— I guess you could put it into physical activity. Get 8 hours of sleep. Try for 6, 7, and, you know, hopefully it'll work your way.

Sleep is definitely important for your mental well-being. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Well, that's the pod for today. Excuse me, please like the channel, subscribe to it, I mean. Thank you for watching, see you guys soon.

Peace out, parfaite diem.