Revolutionizing Workplace Well-Being with Stephen Sokoler

Let me bring on Steven Sokolar. Steven joins us from the New York area. Steven is, I think you'll discover, a lovely human. He gives good vibe right away. He's the founder of a company called Journey that helps high performing organizations get the turnover down and deal with the burnout and help elevate the mental and emotional health of the team that includes you in your seat and whatever leadership role you've got. And he's been featured in all kinds of media things. He got his start in a whole different realm in the financial services industry. Had a midlife epiphany or whatever, a shift. He'll tell us that story and then got into this work and it's transformed him and it's transforming all kinds of companies. Welcome to the show, Stephen.

Thank you, thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, so glad to get you here. So tell us about this book you're working on. You're working on a book right now?

I'm working on a book. So I'm working on a book basically to help set the standard for how HR should think about supporting the mental health and well being of their employees. You know, rather than another LinkedIn post, hey, five ways to support mental health, I thought let's go deep into a lot of the things on mental health. So that's everything from why proactive preventive mental health is so important, right? Not simply reactive, waiting until something's wrong, to the importance of personalization. So in the form of making sure that people feel really seen from a gender, race, age, life stage perspective to the difference internationally between, you know, culture in the US versus Japan versus Latam and how companies should think about that. Helping HR leaders make the business case for why investing in mental health is really important. You know, a lot of HR leaders have to go to their CFOs and they may be speaking different languages about why this investment's really important. And then how do you measure success? So all of that and more in, you know, I don't know, 300 action packed pages.

You know, it's so funny. Like I think we all stress out at different times of things and then when we think about our business, we think, God, it's like so much of this business is easy except for the people. People are really the hardest part. And then we forget that we're people. Our worldview makes perfect sense to us, but to nobody else. Right? Like, there we are.

Yes. My wife and I went on a couple's retreat last weekend and that was like the central theme, right. Is, is everything makes Sense to the person who's saying it. It just doesn't make sense to us. And you know, I think there's a great quote around communication that's something to the effect of, you know, the problem with communication is the, is the perception that it took place or something like that. Right. The idea that just because I'm saying something, you're hearing it and taking it in and vice versa. So yes, the people part is often the challenge.

Saying things isn't really communicating.

Right.

Conveying something, making a point, listening to make a point isn't particularly helpful most of the time. You know, we've talked a lot about a book in the past related that I think is really helpful on this topic. You're probably really familiar with it, Mark Gulston's work, Just listen. That makes such a difference in the world of communication, actually. Set aside your personal concerns for a minute. Try to get over in their world, where are they coming from? What's it like for them? What are they speaking to? What's the fear and the aspiration that's underneath all that over there with the other person?

Right. Like, yeah, I think especially in the corporate world, which is a very interesting, strange place in a lot of ways. You know, we talk about, at Journey, we talk about listening for the heart and meaning. Right. It's something that's not necessarily specific to Journey. Right. You should do the same thing in your, in your relationships, whether romantic or otherwise. Right. It's like, what are they trying to communicate to me versus I'm just listening to the words and oftentimes not even listening to your point. I'm already thinking about the, you know, very insightful, humorous thing that I'm going to say in response once they stop talking versus really soaking in what it is that they're saying.

Yeah. It's a totally different way to communicate where we're actually getting in sync with each other. Communicating, connecting, listening to the other person versus jockeying to make a point or establish a position or even accomplish something. Right. And we have things we want to accomplish, but then we're not actually in relationship with people and we're not actually communicating. And then we. It's very hard to get things done.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a very important balance. Especially nowadays when many of us. I mean, I'm sure this is true by you. It's certainly true here in New York. Everyone's over scheduled. There's not a minute to spare and you're just doing, doing Doing, doing, not taking much time to be. And then it ends up impacting things in ways that have kind of negative outcomes, things that you didn't, you didn't expect because you were trying to be so efficient with everything. And I think, I know you got a lot of books back there. You know, I'm sure you've, you've read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And they talk about being efficient with things, but effective with people. Right. So actually taking that time to slow down to make sure that you're communicating well, that you're listening, that you're on the same page, versus just trying to move through things, which I often see is one of the challenges.

Well, you're starting to use words that we don't normally associate with New York, like take time to just be. Think about that where I am. We think about that in some other countries, but not so much do we associate that with Manhattan. So where does this talk about your background and your prior life and then how you moved into this realm? I think it's a good story.

Sure. Absolutely. So I grew up in Queens, very middle class, Mom's a school teacher, dad was always in and out of jobs. But I had a lot of aspirations. I was surrounded by a lot of people who were hustling and trying to do things. And so I very much bought into that ethos in both good and bad ways. Started a bunch of businesses growing up. And then in high school and in college, I was producing hip hop concerts. I owned and operated a bar. But my main business was I joined a company at a school. I went to nyu, joined a company called the Award Group, which was helping organizations celebrate and inspire their employees. So I was like, oh, that's interesting. There's not one big company in that space. It aligns with my mission of wanting to give back and do something that matters. And I joined to run their nonprofit division. So that was helping nonprofits and associations to celebrate and recognize their members and then be able to raise more money for their causes. So I was like, okay, I can get down with this. However, very quickly I started to get requests from all the friends that I had gone to undergraduate business school with for these really random things called deal toys or tombstones. And unless you've been an investment banker, you probably don't know what these are. But they're basically these customized awards that investment banks give to their clients to, to honor them and to recognize a deal. So Coca Cola, you know, raises $1 billion, and Goldman Sachs helped them. And so Goldman Sachs will Make one of these and give it to the Coca Cola folks and their internals, like.

A letter for the. They put like a letter, a document, a certificate inside, like a plastic cube or a frame or whatever and that like.

Right, well that's where it started, right? It started with that. And then people were like, we don't want another one of those, we want something interesting. So instead of it being that, then it's a Coca Cola can where the deal is on one side of the can and the other is on something else. And then once they have that, then we need a Coke bottle, then we want a vending machine, then we want something interactive. And so especially when investment banks were really rolling in the dough, they wanted to celebrate more. And you can think about the ego in the industry, right? If Goldman Sachs gave them a soda can this big, I want to give them a 2 liter can. Right? And so. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

You're saying there's some ego in the finance industry?

Yeah, I told you I was going to be breaking some news, some big news in this, in this session. So anywho, so I started to get these requests from my friends and this was 2002, 3, 4, 5. And that was a very good time for the stock market. So lots and lots of M and A deals were happening and this part of the business started to grow really rapidly, much faster than the, the non profit and association business that I was also running. So I was running these two different departments. And fast forward five years later, this deal, toy business, this financial services part had had really taken off. So I ended up acquiring that business. Basically. The two gentlemen who ran the company were both in their 70s. They had a different risk profile than I did. I was in my 20s and I was like, I want to push, I want to grow. And they were saying, you know, I want to pull back, I want to take money out. Makes sense. I would have done the same thing if I were them.

So I ended up pro tip everybody if they haven't sold their company by 70, wants to. So if you want to find and make a deal, they're far more motivated as 70 approaches.

For sure, for sure. So I ended up purchasing my division in a management buyout. And this was October of 2007 or 8, 2007. It was the peak of the stock market and October 2007. So we had a bunch of good months and then the market gave out. However, we read the market different than our competitors, we ended up cutting costs really quickly because we saw that this was fundamentally different than other Things, whereas they thought this was just another blip. And so it ended up positioning us well. We ended up consolidating the industry. So we rolled up the second, third, and fourth largest companies in the space, along with a few independents. And then when the market came back, we opened offices in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, Montreal, and Taiwan. When I sold the business in 2014, we're doing about 20 million in annual revenue, had 80 employees, and about a 40% market share globally. That long story ties into what I'm doing now, which is when we were opening all these different offices, we had a person to go to Hong Kong, we had a person to go to all the different places except Australia. And as we were thinking about it, coincidentally, it was the winter here and the summer there. Who knew? And so I said, you know what? I'll go. And so what was supposed to be a month or two months to just set things up ended up being six months. And it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. I had never really lived outside of the city for that period of time, aside from in college when I studied abroad. And I just had so much space physically, emotionally, spiritually. And I ended up finding a book on Buddhism, and it really spoke to me, and I started meditating and it changed my life. And so moved back to New York, continued to run the business. I, a few years later, sold the business, had no idea what I wanted to do. But then pretty quickly, I realized, similar to what I had shared before, I wanted to do something that mattered, something that made a difference in this world. And when I looked at meditation and mental health, I thought it was pretty misunderstood. Big stigma, a lot of people saying, this isn't for me. And I thought there was a way to really help people and, oh, by the way, also build a big business. So both, you know, the business challenges the head part, and then also the. The meaning, the heart part of building something that matters.

That's really interesting. Yeah. How. And so how long ago was that?

That was 10 years ago. When did. Yeah, yeah, 20. February, 2015.

It's enough time to start to get.

Good at it, just barely.

So I get what you're interested in there. Let's. Let's kind of bring it to life. Let's talk about that. So you also shared about the impact on yourself and your personal transformation. Why don't you talk about that a little bit?

Sure. So I'll tell you a little side story and then come back to this. So I was very heavy for the early part of my life. You could say obese. And when I was 22, long before I moved to Australia, long before I found meditation, I went on a diet And I lost 85 pounds. And it was really transformational for me. Yeah, it's a lot of weight. Yeah, yeah. And my mom, yeah, small, but still a person. I put my mom on the same diet, or my mom went on the same diet, however you wanted to say it. And she lost over £100. And both of us have kept that weight off for now almost 20 years. I could talk about that, that, that part of the story. But the reason I mentioned that is because the transformation for me from being obese to being thin or fit was not as significant as before. I meditated to once I started meditating. So imagine, you know, losing 85 pounds. You think that that was pretty transformational, which it was. And incorporating meditation into my life was even more profound. And the reason was it allowed me to see things much more clearly. So people often think meditation's about having less stress and it can do that for sure. But my favorite definition of meditation is the Tibetan word gom G O m which means to become familiar with. And so meditation is a practice of becoming more familiar with your breath, your thoughts, your actions, your values. And so for me, when I took that time, you know, going back to the early part of the conversation where we talked about people being really over scheduled and busy and all that, like I was that to a T. Yeah. Being able to have a second to pause, to breathe, to think about what were the actions that I was taking that were totally out of alignment with who I wanted to be personally and professionally. And so having that clarity for me just was able to fill me with so much more self love. I could express my love for others, friends, family, etc more fluidly. It just, it really unlocked a lot for me. And that's part of the reason why I thought, hey, this practice has really been helping people for thousands of years. Right. Meditation is not the newest, you know, get rich quick scheme. It's been around for 5,000 plus years. If we bring it to people in a simple, approachable way, it could really be helpful.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I. So many people have been really transformed by some regular meditation practice. And I, my parents took me to learn one form of meditation when I was six and then I learned many others along the way. And I just feel like, you know, I don't know, I know a dozen maybe so different variations on it and I like more than others and do more often and then a certain amount of it I just sort of do unconsciously with a general sort of mindfulness practices that are, have just kind of become natural, less intentional, less rigorous. And I, I fail to appreciate sometimes how important it is just to get people, everybody, to stop and feel their body and notice their breathing and take stock of around them and notice the chatter in their head and locate a feeling in their body. And like, that's the, like that's revolutionary for people a lot of times. And I, I don't, I think, give it enough credit. I, I have a friend who, he like, had a whole change. He started dressing differently, a little ponytail, and he's now teaching people all this stuff. And it's super. Like he has a kind of a Persona now. And I'm like, yeah, you're just meditating, like, what's the big deal? And people are just like, oh my God, I met him. And like, it's great. And you know, it's really, can be profoundly life changing, right?

It really can. I mean, that's pretty cool that your parents exposed you to that so young. I have a, I have a 9 month old son and I've started showing him different things. I mean, he, you know, I, I don't know what they can absorb at that age, but I feel like just little, little drops here and there of goodness, of compassion, of some of the wisdom. I think hopefully he'll avoid a lot of the really stupid things that I did over the years when I just was just thoughtless, just not, not aware, not awake, just doing things because, you know, eating because I wanted to eat or doing this or that and not realizing that there was a better way of, of living life. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been helpful for me. Never grew a ponytail. Did have a very big beard at one point. But yeah, people do treat you different if you have a ponytail or a big beard. They really believe it much more.

It changes. Yeah, like, look, there's some of those things. Another guy that we've had on past guests of the show, Don DePonte, spent his time as a monk and now he teaches mindfulness. And he actually lives in New York also. And you know, he has a very. He'll dress in his old monkly kit, you know, like, he doesn't necessarily dress in that every moment, but it helps people to get in the whole set of it. You know, I look much more like a mainstream manager of an American business. And I have a name like Bill Gallagher. And nobody thinks a whole lot anything. They don't think about a hippie background, kid who lived places and speaks lots of different languages. And I think we don't necessarily notice things in other people. We don't also notice them necessarily in ourself. And a lot of these practices, like, I had sometimes I went through a program in a period of stress in my family at one point and know one of the practices they gave us is like, okay, everybody take a raisin. And like, so you get one raisin. Like, okay, eat this raisin as slowly and deliberately as you can. Take all the sensations in with the raisin. You know, like, bringing that level of awareness and deliberate intentionality. Like, is not a normal thing, right? Eat one raisin. Like, we shove things in our mouth. How much ice cream can I shove down? How fast can I eat that pizza?

Yeah, I think that the raisin one is interesting. You may have done this also, but oftentimes those exercises will start by, like, just feel the raisin. Like you feel it. You're like, ah, it's kind of weird. Like, yeah, yeah, it's kind of wrinkly. And then you look at it and it's kind of like metallicy. Like you're like, oh, I never really noticed this thing. And then you listen to it, you squish it. And then. So the whole process of bringing awareness to things to your point, you know, there's like the formal practice of, like, I'm sitting and I'm doing this for five minutes or 25 minutes a day. And then there's the everyday mindfulness of, like, I'm walking down the street and I'm not. My mind's not just drifting, which is fine. It's great for that sometimes, right? You shower, you make. Get great big ideas like that. But you're being intentional. You're feeling your feet or you're feeling the air, or you're just noticing what's going on. It can be really. Yeah, it could be really beautiful. It could be really beautiful.

Breath awareness is pretty useful. I regularly help people work on their strategy and their vision for their company. But before we can get there, they need to chill the hell out for a minute. They need to settle in it, not rush it between two different meetings and whatever. So I'll often lead them for about a half an hour of breathing and body scan and until they're kind of ready to now imagine the future. And that's like a whole, like, you know, nobody. They're not necessarily prepared for that in the day. And then at the end of it, I'm like, oh, that felt really good.

Yeah. And I think also, I mean, I'm assuming you work with executives of all shapes and sizes, but I know, I know for men, we're often operating up here and we're so disconnected. We're disembodied. Right. And so being able to say, okay, let's slow down, let's drop into the body. What are you feeling? Not, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? It's very foreign thing. And then once you start feeling that, then you can get more clarity about your life's purpose or your strategy for this quarter or anything else. So once that noise starts to die down, you know, for me, oftentimes my best ideas, my best business ideas come in my morning meditation. I'm not thinking about that. It's just, you know, mind quiets down a little bit, something arises.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's what I told you as we're getting ready to start the recording that I was going wing surfing. And it's one of my favorite activities. But anything like that, running, cycling, surfing, sailing, like, anything where you're, like, really fully involved in something, gets you out of some of the head space of trash because you're just too busy in. Ideally, you kind of get to some kind of flow state, but then in the middle of that will come little ideas, right? There's a little bit of room for something that is a little more precious. And it. Like, I could be on foil, cruising along there, like, kind of really riding it. And then I could have a thought like, I have a really great life, or, oh, maybe I'm being too rigid with that account, or like, you know, something like that. Like, I frequently have a sense of deep gratitude and. And I particularly think about my dad, who taught me to surf and sail and things like. So there are moments of things like that that come through, but then also those insights. And then even if nothing comes through, then I finish out and I'm having a beer at the end of it, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what to do with that.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And that's. That's actually a good segue into the reason we expanded. So when we started the company, the company was Journey Meditation, and we dropped Meditation from the name, although it's still my daily practice and something that is deeply embedded into the experience because we found that some people like meditation. Some people prefer guided journaling, some prefer positive psychology, some prefer breath work or neuroscience. And then that was, you know, four or five years of doing that. And then we added clinical support. So not just the practices you're, the self guided practices you're doing on your own. But also, hey, you want to speak with a therapist? Hey, your teenager is struggling. Hey, you have older parents you're taking care of and you need to speak to somebody. So being able to have that full spectrum from the meditation, journaling, et cetera, work, life support, things around child care, elder care, finance, legal, all the way through to, hey, I'm thinking of harming myself and I really need to speak to somebody.

Yeah, it's interesting. You bring, you expand from the base of that to a whole range of things. How does your work compare to a program that I'm really familiar with, MBSR that we've recommended? It sounds like there's some overlap with what is done there.

Yeah, MBSR is exceptional. I mean, the truth is, where we are now is very far from where we started when it came to meditation. So the program that we have now that we have in place at big companies like A lorico, which has 100,000 employees and Beck and Dickinson with 25,000 employees, is called Journey Proactive EAP. So everything we do is focused on proactive mental health, right? Preventive early intervention, building good habits, incorporating this stuff the same way we know it for physical health, the mental health equivalent. Right. And so we have this program called Journey Proactive EAP because most companies have EAPs, which stands for employee assistance programs. It's a product that came out in the 1940s to help companies with alcoholism and things like that and didn't really evolve for a while. And basically we said, let's turn this model on its head rather than being reactive and it sits on a shelf until somebody really reaches that burnout state and then they need it. Let's engage every employee every day. Let's help them build good habits. Let's have really diverse content and resources for them. And then, oh, by the way, if they need therapy, great. So what we do now compared to where we were is, is very different. So MBSR is a program that I've taken. When I did it, it was, I want to say like an eight week course. Each session was around two to three hours. And you're really, you know, you're doing. Yeah, yeah, you're doing like 45 minute body scan. You're learning a lot. So John Kabat Zinn, who, you know, I think he founded the program but is certainly known for, for teaching it, is an amazing meditation teacher. And that, that program is, is excellent if you want to go really deep into that one modality, it's excellent. We don't compete with them because ours is much more like a corporate benefit versus that which is probably more a thing that an individual would do on their own.

Yeah, we, we have recommended to CEOs to do when they go through in particular like when it, when, when it was recommended me some years ago, I was going through a family drama and, and I'm like, okay, I like I need something and my wife's like, oh, I found this thing. You should, I'm going to do it. You should do it. And it was extraordinary. And yet all of the pieces of it weren't particularly new. There were a couple things like I'd never done a walking meditation where you deliberately take each step rolling like heel to toe and through each thing like you lose your balance. Very hard to do like that. Like. And some of, so some of the things in with it were, were all really good. But I've recommended a bunch. So yours is proactive and in the company and beyond just that. Also including things like therapy.

Yeah. Correct. Like you wouldn't send an executive to us because we don't have a consumer offering. If a company said we want to transform the culture, we want to provide better benefits because to your point earlier, we want to reduce our health care costs. We don't want people to wait and then they end up hitting the health plan because especially if you're a big company where you're self insured, that's very expensive. And oh by the way, it's the right thing to do to provide excellent care and we care about our employees and we can recruit different people if we have great benefits and we can keep them here, we keep them happy, they'll make better decisions, yada, yada, yada. So point being, ours is much less like hey, let's send an executive here and more, let's transform the whole company. And by the way, we also have specific programs for executives, for managers, for new managers. And then we go a lot of places that companies, other companies shy away from, from a diversity lens so that any person, no matter their walk of life, can feel really seen in the product, in the experience and get the support that they need.

So we're going to talk about some of your work and some of the companies. I'll let you share about that in a minute. But I just want to encourage our listeners, viewers that our clients who they get to 500, they get to a thousand, they get to thousands of employees, they start doing this very formally. But you could and should maybe think about doing some of these things when you're at a dozen people starting early on and a lot of times some smart wise CEOs will have some of these practices for themselves, but they won't necessarily recommend it to their people. And they will be like, well, I do these things like everybody should just do their thing and take care of themselves. And yet there is like founders, CEOs, you might be higher functioning, you might have more resource, more exposure to things than all your team and it might really benefit from bringing it in. It might make your journey easier. So I just encourage you to listen from that place. So why don't you talk about Walgreens or whatever you want start tell us some of these stories.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you one. One, one other point on what you just said. The, the current working title of the, of the book is the Mental Health Advantage and then trying to figure out what the next part of it is. But it's something to the effect of how the best companies in the world leverage proactive mental health to drive performance and employee well being. And I say that because to your point about CEOs, maybe they're doing this for themselves and they don't. Maybe there's, oh, I, I meditate, but I don't want to tell anyone. I do or I have a therapist, but I don't want to share that because there's a stigma. But the more you can incorporate this stuff into the culture, the more you can help people. They'll feel seen and cared for, they'll perform better, they'll stay at the company longer. And I think a lot of CEOs are hip to that nowadays, right? That's not new, but I think companies are. You're seeing it more. And one interesting thing, and we'll talk about Walgreens, is you're starting to see it at places that you wouldn't have previously. So to your point earlier about you being on the west coast, right, it's one thing if the Facebooks and Googles and whomever else linkedins of the world are doing progressive things in terms of benefits is another thing If Walgreens, right, they've been around for, I want to say, 100 plus years, they're a traditional retailer. Narrow margins. If they're saying, hey, mental health is really important, why is it important? Even though most of their employees are not sitting and working in a corporate headquarters, they're working in a store, most of their employees are not PhDs or, you know, MDs, right? They're retail workers. Maybe they graduated from high school, maybe they didn't. Maybe they graduated from college, maybe they didn't. But those are the people on the front lines. And if we have a proactive mental health offering, we can keep them healthy, we can keep them happy, we can keep them engaged. So with Walgreens, we've driven really high engagement, not just with the employees, but also with their families. That was something that was really important to their former global Chro was not just taking care of the employees, but also their families. And so we did a lot of really interesting things to drive engagement, because one of the big challenges with most big companies is they have a whole smorgasbord of benefits. And the employees are like, we're starving, right? Like, we have so many different things, but the employees don't even know it because the employees are busy, right? And they're living their life, and they're worried about things that they're just not paying attention. And so we take on the responsibility of driving engagement. So for Walgreens, we trained HR, and then we manufactured these bracelets, and we distributed 200,000 of these bracelets that say, be well connected. And they say, register at Journey Live Walgreens. And we. We ship these around so that there was a physical representation of the program we integrated into their payroll. So unlike most corporate jobs, if you're working in a Walgreens, you're punching in and you're punching out, right? Because you're working in retail. And so we have a reminder there about your mental health. So you're punching in. Here's a little reminder. Take a breath, take a pause. You're punching out with your family, your friends. Again, same thing. So how do we incorporate it into the fabric of the company? So it's not simply a benefit that sits on the Internet, or maybe the people in headquarters know about it, or you saw it in welcome Guide, but never saw it again. But how do we make it part of the fabric? And then the last little story I'll tell you about Walgreens is we wanted to do something innovative. So we worked with Walgreens and Guinness to. To set the Guinness Book of Records record for most views for an online guided meditation. So that got a lot of publicity inside the company. People got really excited about it outside of the company. So the idea of Walgreens being a leader in mental health and really helping people was something that. That we were very proud to work with them on that and support them with that.

That's interesting. That's really cool.

And.

And, like, Engaging something to take it up to the next level. People like doing that. I think the other thing that's really cool there is adding the touches. So add the clocking system for the payroll, having a physical bracelet. People have all sorts of good intentions and you and I are people and we have ideas and then we just forget. Like we get busy with whatever. If you don't make time and create reminders and build rituals around them, then you don't have anything. If you think about like cultures, like ethnic and other kinds of cultures that endure for thousands of years.

Right.

We have holidays and, and special foods and words and symbols and think that's where we create rich cultures and we post things in our house and, and that, like we teach our kids these things and we build them and whether or not they follow religion or whatever, like they have these rich cultural traditions and they bring certain values to life over time which give us something to lean on in, in stressful times. Right. Like that's. I think that's really great.

Yeah. I think it's very instinctual to have these habits and these rites of passage to say I've now stepped from childhood into adulthood or I've graduated from college and it's recognized not just by me, but by the community and the society. And so having those habits is something that definitely makes life easier. Right. Versus having to rely on willpower or memory or things like that. The more you can incorporate it, the easier it becomes.

Yeah. And those rituals and traditions help people to connect with each other, which elevates mental health. When, when you're not alone in your own world, in your own head, suffering with your fears, life gets better.

Yeah. We had, we had, especially during the pandemic, part of our offering. In addition to the self guided stuff, or are we have these live group workshops that take place all day, every day. You can interact. There's a teacher, there's a supportive community and you don't have to say anything. There's no cameras on. Nobody even has to know you're there. But oftentimes what people say is the most powerful is hearing somebody else say something and then feel like, oh, wow, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one going through that. I'm scared right now. I'm feeling this sort of way. Right. I'm worried about the election or this or that. Oh, yeah, okay. I'm not the only one. And that's a very powerful experience for people. Yeah.

I think we walk through life thinking, well, we're the only one who has that Fear that insecurity, who had that traumatic event, who had that thing, who didn't have, like everything that everybody else seems to have. And then every now and then you scratch the surface. You realize, oh, no, we're all just kind of faking it, put a smile on and posting a better picture on Instagram than. And we really feel like we're all just kind of getting through and doing stuff. And we share many more things in common than you really realize. Right. There are profound differences also, but there's a lot of that knowing that you're not alone. I had a woman actually in New York in one of my workshops. I was doing just non stop coaching and workshops online in the beginning of the pandemic, and she had a marketing agency and, and she just broke down in the middle of it and she's like, I'm just trying to keep it together. But I'm all alone in my studio apartment in New York and somehow trying to keep this whole thing together and feeling the stress of my team and my personal success and like, survival all tied together. And here I am and like, just getting on a call with a bunch of other people and talking about our strategy for the day and how we're coping. The personal aspect of it was as important as anything else. I had another company scaled to many, many people, and the CEO was talking to me about the difficulty with corralling his team through that time, and he's like, well, I don't know, it's really stressful for me. And I'm trying to figure out how, like, for them not to see my kids and my stress. I'm like, stop. Tell them like, oh, this has really been hard. And my kids keep running into my meetings and I'm awake at night and like, because they have the same things and you'll give them permission to have their experience, right? Like, it's we, we act like, I don't know, crazy.

Well, I think, I think, I think in terms of, in terms of leadership, you know, we are, we are pretty well attuned to bullshit and to people who, you know, are acting in a way that's inauthentic. Like, even if we don't know it in our head why our gut, something's off, right? And so if you want people to follow you, if you want people to trust you, if you want people to stay with you, the more authentic you can show up, the better. Now, that wasn't always the case, right? Like when I went to school, when I went to Stern, right? Everything that was not what leaders were taught, that's not how you were taught to show up. And certainly our parents generation, it was a totally different thing. But now it's like people resonate with people when they can really see you fully for who you are. Right. And then hopefully vice versa. Hopefully they can show up fully and then you're building something. Right.

I think, you know, a few years ago this whole area of, of authenticity and vulnerability came up with Bernie Brown and she really brought attention to something and brought it to the foreground and it became a common conversation. But, but I think some people didn't get the message or go deeper and they, they're like, oh, I just want to be authentic. And, and what showed up for many people as authentic is just like, what's the word I want, like mouthing off or just like being a loudmouth about stuff. Like nobody wants your data dump. And you're like, your truth isn't like blasting your opinions on everyone. What's powerful in authenticity is getting real about the vulnerable things, about your fears about. That's where the power is not being opinionated and loudmouth.

Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we run a, a mental health certification program and it covers a number of things. It basically teaches people how to, what to look for and how to support others. Right. Like if somebody is in need, what. What are the signs to look for? How do you become more attuned to that? How do you approach them skillfully and thoughtfully and compassionately and then how do you direct them to the right resources? But it starts with self care. Right? Put your oxygen mask on first because oftentimes we're ready to do the next thing before we are taking care of ourselves. So to your point, it's oh, I'm ready to be authentic. And I'm going to tell you what I think about this. It's like, wait a minute, does anyone want that? That's actually not right. Having some level of self awareness to actually recognize that it's important.

Yeah, yeah. Just mouthing off all your thoughts and delusions and whatever isn't that helpful? So we have maybe time for another story and we'll talk about your website and all that kind of thing before we finish. But I don't share something else with us about maybe Becca Dickinson or Georgetown, whatever you think is would be good. Sure.

I could talk about Beck and Dickinson. So they launched with us in January of this past year. They're a manufacturing population a little bit older, mostly male.

What?

What's that?

They're a what? A manufacturing population.

A manufacturing company. So their employees are manufacturers. Yeah. And they tend to skew more male and slightly older. And if you think about it. Right. It's not surprising that when we have populations that are younger or more female, they're more inclined to get the mental health support that they need. Whereas for men in general and for older men, there's more of a stigma. Right. We don't talk about our problems. And so we wanted to really make sure that we were being able to meet.

Emotional guy.

Right? Right, Exactly. Exactly. We wanted to be able to meet people where they are. And so we did a whole host of things. So Beckon. Dickinson has a number of employee resource groups or associate resource groups for. For women or for managers. There's a. For employees of color or for. Et cetera. These are not specific to Beck and Dickinson, but there are. There are a number that. That they have. Right. AAPI, etc. And so we said we want to show up there to have resources that are specific for those types of employees or. Because that's a very good way to relate personally. Because if you're a parent, you have different needs than if you're, you know, for example. Exactly. When it came to the manufacturing population, we wanted to show images and tell stories of. Of people like them. So they're not hearing it from hr and it's this faceless, nameless thing. But. Oh, Tom went and got therapy, and it helped him with his wife. Oh, Dan went and did this practice, and it helped him with his back pain or it helped him in his relationship with his son or daughter. Right. And telling those stories, bringing it to life. We were able to quadruple their engagement really quickly because of the fact that people felt they could see themselves in this experience versus, oh, this is for someone else. This isn't for someone like me. Right.

Yeah. The relatability and contextualizing it or personalizing it in that thing, it's. It's not just for some other kind of person. It's for people just like me dealing with things like I'm dealing with.

Right, Exactly.

It's so easy to look at another group and go, they're nothing like my tribe, you know, like, they don't have the same kind of things. And yet, like, we're all doing the same kinds of things. Let me. Slightly different flavors between regions and cultures and countries and things like that. But there's different emphasis. But we're like, there's so much more that unites us as human beings.

Yeah. I mean, we are. We are so much more similar than we are different. But if you're going to go to, you know, a political rally or you're going to go on social media, all you're going to be fed is the things that divide us. Right. Versus what's the comment like when I mentioned my wife and I went on this, this couple's retreat, not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, all different couples, older, younger, gay, straight people get there and they tell a story and you get paired up in little groups here and there and you're people from all over the country, they're just like us. They're just like their own. They're doing their own thing in their own way, but they have the same challenges. Right. And oftentimes, you know, you think about how divisive the country, how divided the country is now when elections come around. But whenever you get people together to have a thoughtful conversation, not shouting on social media, on Twitter, on, you know, whatever, people can actually find common ground even when their viewpoints are different. But there's unfortunately a lot less of that than there should be.

There's definitely north, south, east, west, country, city, blue, red, my tribe, your tribe. There's a lot of that going around. And we forget behind it all, we all have moms and dads and kids and spouses and partners and co workers and bosses and we're all just human beings trying to be and get our way through life and sometimes forgetting how to like be happy, how to be engaged, how to be satisfied with the things that we have.

Yeah, completely.

Well, there's a lot of work to do there. I think you probably have some practices already you're doing and there's probably a lot more you could bring and share with your company. If you want to know more, more about Stevenson Kohler's business, go to Journey Live and we'll put that on the screen there as well. Journey Live, it's also in the show notes if you want to go find this and go look and find about his program. So thank you for joining us, for sharing some of your stories and that kind of thing with us. Thanks to my friend and mentor, Vern Harnish, who created the whole scaling up framework that's at the core of our work. And a shout out if you want a reminder if you want to come to one of our workshops or do one every month. If you want some of these free tools. If you want one of the 570+ episodes that we've got, go to scalingcoach.com where got a newsletter there. We'll keep you up to date. Or you can like and subscribe wherever you are right now. Apple, Podcast, Spotify, whatever it is that you're getting. We love to have you and and bring something to you every week to help you keep going and keep enjoying the whole journey of growing your company. So Journey live and scaling coach.com we'll talk to you again next time. Until then. Oh, and thanks to the folks at Storion who get our show done and out the door every week. I almost forgot. We'll talk to you again next time. Until then, keep scal.