The ROI of Vulnerability and Building Cultures of Wellbeing with Adam Nemer of Simple Mental Health

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello, this is Kim Allchurch Flick of the Mighty Measure Podcast. So delighted to have Adam Nemer here, and this podcast is a series that shows us that even seemingly small activities can have mighty impacts. Collectively, we can move change for good forward. I love sharing my optimism because of these people and their stories and driving contributions.

I’m so excited to have Adam as a guest today. Adam has created Simple Mental Health. He’s the founder and he is also an author, former executive at Kaiser Permanente and founder of Simple Mental Health. For nearly 20 years, he led Kaiser Permanente while silently struggling with severe yet undiagnosed depression and anxiety.

His life and leadership changed when a compassionate colleague encouraged him to seek help showing the profound impact leaders can have on their teams wellbeing. Today, Adam works with organizations across the Americas in Europe spreading mental health literacy and helping build cultures where. Both people and performances thrive.

Today we’re gonna talk about creating cultures of mental wellbeing. Adam, it’s great to have you. 

Adam Nemer: Oh, thanks so much, Kim. It’s great to be here. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: So what has been your journey and the inspirations that have brought you to what you’re doing today? 

Adam Nemer: Oh, my journey. I, the bottom line, I was a 20 year Kaiser Permanente leader in the Pacific Northwest CFO of our care system and COO of our insurance operations up there.

And, it was a wonderful career. I loved it. And on the one hand, I. I joke, I bleed blue. I just love the organization. They invested so heavily in, in training me to be a facilitative and psychologically safe leader. But on, on the other hand, it was a really hard 20 years, working in healthcare, like in any.

Entrepreneurial. Any business environment? No. No Environment’s harder than the other. We just say that ours is so hard, right? In this constant. Challenge to reduce costs, improve quality, improve service. It was, for the first 15 years I was doing everything I could to become a more psychological, safe, facilitative leader.

But it really, and our performance was improving on our teams, right? But it wasn’t until. For the love of the universe, Kim, I had a complete, I had a complacent, I had a complete emotional breakdown, right? Woo. Complete emotional breakdown, which helped, which, which accidentally set me on a leadership path.

That two years later, we had the highest employee engagement in Kaiser Permanente’s Health Plan nationwide. We had the highest on almost every KPI for health plan operations. We were number one. We were the highest performing Medicare rated health plan in the Northwest. We were only five star Medicare rated plan.

We were, we’re the top 6% rated Medicare plans nationwide. So I’m going my whole career learning all this stuff about psychological safe leadership. I’m doing everything I can. Not knowing that this whole time I’m also struggling with severe mental illness, then boom, I have this emotional crisis complete.

Gotta work for six months complete out of it. And then over the next two years, as part of my recovery process, it just tweaked a few things about my leadership that completely changed our performance. And so I, I did a lot of keynote talking and a lot of work within Kaiser for a few years sharing the story.

Then I just decided that’s what I wanna do for a living. I was a, I, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a ski bum, work with my, and work with my dad. The next thing you know, I’m like the CFO of a four and half billion dollar company, right? So I found my calling. I, so I love this. So that’s what I do now, help organizations create cultures and mental wellbeing, improve their performance.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That is beautiful. And also I think rare. I’ve been in, I’ve been in the corporate world as many people have, and there’s varying degrees of caring or not, and there’s varying degrees of pressure or not. There’s varying degrees of burnout and not, and I remember a lot of people, myself included, who sometimes.

Thought this is gonna burn me into the ground, but I dare not say anything. I dare not behave as though things aren’t just totally great. And I was wondering, was there help for you along the way when you had your crisis, were other people involved or,

Adam Nemer: so let me paint a little background. So you understand what happened at, I had an intervention. I, in a way, I kind of had an intervention, right? So one morning on a Monday, I showed up at work at seven 30 ish in the morning, and I got a. On my calendar, a meeting at eight 30 in the morning with one of our national leaders.

My boss for the health plan here in Portland, right at eight, at 8, 8 15 in the morning. I had no idea about this. And when I got to his office 20 minutes later I walked in the door and the first thing he said to me is, Hey man, how are you doing right now? I, let me go back for a second so I can paint the background to, to this.

I had, when I walked in that room that morning, I had no idea that I had spent the last 18 years struggling with.

Severe, but undiagnosed depression and anxiety. When I was a 29-year-old kid in Portland, Oregon and getting groomed to run my family business, I, my I found my dad after he died of suicide. He was my best friend, my business partner, the dude I always wanna be just like, and at that crossroads of my life where I needed it the most, and it would’ve prevented so much pain down the road. I only had a few therapy sessions going off in the world. I got an MBA got married. I had this amazing, remarkable Kaiser Permanente career. I led a national labor negotiation finance team.

I led our implementation of electronic medical records in the Northwest. I got to be the CFO of our hospitals in the northwest, our CFO of our health system. Then our run, our health plan up there. On the outside it looked like I had a dream life. On the inside, I was one fricking hot mess and I had no idea.

I couldn’t control my emotions. I had heart pain. I was really sick all the time. It was, I checked with hindsight, every box of severe mental illness for all those 18 years, but I had no idea. I was just moving along thinking life sucks. So then about three weeks before I showed up that Monday morning, and that guy has me join him in his office.

I found my mom after she passed away, she’d really struggled with substance use and a lot of serious mental I issues. She didn’t die of suicide, but she didn’t die from trying to live. And what happened is after all those 18 years of severe mental illness, after finding that suicide, finding my mom’s passing.

What happened is in those in the hours and days afterwards, it put me into a complete state of emotional collapse. By then, I’d been promoted. I was running the operations of our health plan in the northwest and I started, I started wearing Levi’s to work t-shirts. Pretty sure I wore Birkenstock sandals a few days.

If I shaved, I’d miss half my face. I just looked like hell hell, it looked like I was gonna, the beach. Not going to work. So that’s what had, that was me. So I show, that was my 18 years, and then I had this triggering event, and I was in a complete state of emotional collapse. And I show up on a Monday morning and I had no id, I knew I, I just didn’t know that I was sick, right.

I had no idea what was going on. So I walk into David’s office and he’s like, and when I walk in, I look like shit. Excuse my language, man. I’m wearing my hair. When I had hair, it was like I just looked, I looked bad walking in, right? So I walk in just looking like hell, first thing Monday morning and he’s like, Hey man, how you doing?

I’m like, I’m doing great. He says, so, yeah. I know about you finding your dad’s suicide now, and I know about you. You just found your mom’s passing. Are you seeing a therapist? Is that why you’re doing so well? And I’m like, I don’t need to see a therapist. I’m doing great. He says yeah, I get that Adam, but 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 like pulls out of his pocket and slides across the desk, our EAP business card, and he is like, give folks that e why don’t you give the folks at EAPA call? It can’t hurt. You’ve had these. Traumatic life experiences, and you should at least know the signs and symptoms to look for in yourself in case you might need to get some help down the road.

Next day, I left his office saying thank you. I was so out of it. I had no idea what he was doing, as obvious as it was saw the EAP counselor. A few days later. And I really crashed there. ’cause that’s where I realized in his office, going through the checklist that I had, I was really sick.

And that was the beginning of my last eight year recovery journey. And, to land the story though land the plane of the story, I guess should say is this National Kaiser leader, he said, did somebody have an impact to make this happen for you? So David, he didn’t just show up on a Monday morning and call me into his office and ask me how I was feeling.

Here’s what happened, right? The day before on Sunday, he went to church and in church on Sunday morning they went to, he had a mental health first aid class.

Sit there. Oh yes. I can’t believe the universe works like this. He’s sitting there and there, this mental health first aid class at his church, and they’re going through the signs and symptoms and he’s like, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam. Oh my god, M’s in a lot of trouble. Next part of the class, they teach you how to approach somebody in a safe, thoughtful, caring, nonjudgmental manner is when he came up with that idea of handing me the EEP business card the next day.

So a senior leader in a. $90 billion business. I joke, I’m like, David went to church one day. He put mental health literacy in his professional toolbox. We all have physical health literacy in our professional toolboxes. If someone was choking in a board meeting, we’d know how to save their life.

So he just went to church one day, put a little mental health literacy in his toolbox. Next day in a five minute conversation, helped change my life. So, you talk about, you’re mentioning the small activities and the small actions that leaders can take that make a really big difference to these five minute conversations.

And I left Kaiser after a, I really love the organization. It’s my friends and family. I joke, I still, I, I bleed blue. I just, that’s such a lovely place. But I left there to start an organization, to teach leaders how to have five minute conversations like David had with me and to teach ’em.

How to normalize the topic of mental health on their team so that they create cultures of mental wellbeing so that it actually not only improves the lives of their teammates, but improves performance and that’s really, the. The last piece of my background is this performance piece, and this is so accidental, Kim.

Oh I gotta tell you, sometimes my kids are like, dad, you’re just some doofy old guy. How. No I, some things are just accidental sometimes. So what happened is after I saw that EEP counselor, I took about six weeks off of work, right? Starting antidepressants, therapy, all of that. And when I ca and when I came back to work, I,

I started to think about leadership differently. To help break the stigma to get me into therapy, the psychiatrist and therapist had to teach me some basic facts, and these are gonna blow all of you and all your listeners away. They still blow me away. Every year, more than a quarter of a Americans experience a clinically diagnosable mental illness, but less than half get help, and the average time period from the onset of symptoms to getting help is 11 years.

So when I came back to work, I just started thinking about leadership differently, right? I had maybe 400 ish people on our teams in the northwest, in the health planet back then. And so that meant I had a hundred of my colleagues, my, my friends, really my brothers and sisters who were gonna be in just as much discomfort and pain as I’m in.

And so few of us were gonna get help and I’m like. Holy smokes. What if I what? What if we’re gonna have a hundred people with heart disease, cancer, diabetes? Now you do something. And so I volunteered to pilot for Kaiser nationwide to. Mental health First aid at work-like program, we trained all 400. We took all 400 people outta work.

In half day sessions, we trained everybody in the core tenets of mental health. First aid by these are classes with executives, managers, staff all intermixed together. And over the course of two weeks, we taught everybody the core tenets of mental health for state, how to recognize the signs that someone might be struggling.

How to approach them in a safe, thoughtful, caring, nonjudgmental manner while providing hope that recovery is possible, and knowing how to guide ’em to services in the community and offered by your organization where they can get help. Basically, we all just learn how to have five minute conversations like David had with me and what happened, and this is what gets back to over the next two years, right?

So over the next two years as a business. Running our health plan, the Northwest, the only thing that we did different over those two years than the years before is the following, right? We just kept training everybody on mental health first aid on a regular bay. We were talking about it all the time, and I didn’t do it on purpose, Kim, this was so accidental.

I don’t think I’m the smart. I was so accidental. But you know, what happened is. So I’d be in a meeting and I’d be like, guys, I’m having an anxiety attack. I need to step out for a bit. I’m gonna go for a walk. Or guys, I’m having a really sad day, go easy on me. Or guys, I gotta leave the meeting early today.

I don’t wanna be late for therapy appointment now. I wasn’t being authentic and vulnerable with what was going on in my life to try to be a good leader. At all. I was trying to be a good patient. I was really sick. I was so sick back then. Kim, I can’t begin to tell you. And the beginning of my therapy, I asked my therapist, what do I do if I’m having an anxiety attack at work?

She goes, well, just tell the people that you’re around. I’m like, I can’t do that. Are you kidding me? She goes, Adam. You have not talked about this for 18 years. If you want to get better, you’re gonna have to start recognizing that it’s okay. And we just kept talking. I’m like, okay. So that’s what I did. Now, I didn’t know what was going on at the time, but with retrospect, what happened and what I learned is.

When the senior leader of the team is open and honest about what’s going on in their mental health on a daily basis, that creates the opens up the space for everyone else to be open and honest about theirs. So what happened over those next two years? Those you think about, we have 400 employees, right?

We’re talking about self, first those hundred, because we’re training everybody and talking about this all the time, those hundred people that would naturally have needed help, they, a lot of them naturally went and got help, right? And then all of us, because for the love of the universe, we’re talking about mental health and self-care all day long.

Why so it was the only thing that I was talking about all day long. You get what you may, you get leaders get what you talk about. So I, we were doing performance stuff. It’s just, if it was anything else that I was talking about, it was mental health and that just meant that everybody else was talking about it, right?

Two years later, Kim, two years later, we had the highest employee engagement stats. Talk about feedback loops with employees and wanting to create employee engagement. Our team’s had some of the highest employee engagement stands for Cross Kaiser Permanente Health Plan nationwide. We had the most engaged feeling empowered, promoted staff and it was because of this.

We also, two years later, on almost every single key performance indicator that Kaiser Permanente tracked for health plan operations, right from time to market, to product quality, to claims processing. Our teams in the northwest were number one. Wow, we’re number one in the company. We also, two years later, we’re the highest rated Medicare health plan in the Pacific Northwest.

We’re the only five star rated health plan in the Northwest for Medicare, and we’re top 6% nationwide. All I wanna do is get people not to hurt. But just by training everybody on some basic mental health literacy information, like David littered his church that day, and then modeling and encouraging everybody to be open and honest, just, we just changed our culture.

You know what we do. It’s this is what I do at Simple Mental Health now. And again, I. I I don’t know that I’m actually, I know that I’m not smart enough to have created this on purpose, but what we accidentally found, and this is the work that I do with simple mental health, is help companies think through the actions that they might take if they were to add wellbeing and psychological safety to their list of corporate core values.

Because core values drives, it’s vision. Why are we in the business mission, how we accomplish our vision, core values? How do we want to behave to accomplish our mission and vision, right? The core values are those behaviors that leaders are supposed to express, model, reinforce, and become our culture, right?

When you add wellbeing and psychological safety to your values as an organization, everything changes. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I really love this. It’s, and I’m thinking back on my own career in corporate life and how some of the companies I worked for were better at training than others, but we were trained in things like compassionate leadership, coaching, someone.

Talking about calling somebody in, not calling them out in front of people, giving the bad news first, ending on a good note all these kind of things and encourage people along. But never, ever, ever along the way did anything like this come up in the training. And some of the companies I worked for were grew to be very large through mergers and others were.

Pretty boutique and small, but it seems like what you’re talking about could work in a small company, huge corporations. And it’s been missing. And I also just remember one time I was working and I’d worked myself into the ground. I’m the kind of person, but a colleague said, I’m gonna take a mental health day.

And I was like, what? We can’t do that. That’s like, you call it a vacation day. And it struck me that. That person actually did, but there wasn’t a policy for it or anything like that. They just did it and it always stuck with me. Like, that’s probably a really, really good idea and to have everybody involved.

The, but the other thing that didn’t happen very much when I was at work, or you just 

Adam Nemer: have your PTO your illness days, they’re just wellbeing days. You don’t have to mention if they’re physical or mental. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Exactly, and we had e EAPs, but the thing is most people would never tell anybody else if they called an EAP line.

So what you’re talking about seems so super important. So what have you seen in the community and in your worldview, and what have been some challenges as you create this solution of simple mental health? 

Adam Nemer: Oh, what have been some of the challenges?

I think that

many of us, and I’m not gonna say older generations, right? Gen Xers and then the Baby boomers, right? W we were trained that, there’s no room in business for feelings, and you leave your emotions at the door and we’re this executive look

and

millennials, gen Zers, they bring their emotions. It’s my grandpa and dad would say, why should you do, why should I do what your boss asks you to do? ’cause they pay it. Your check Millennials and Gen Zs, it’s change management 1 0 1. If they don’t think it’s the right thing to do what their boss asks, they’re not gonna do it.

And so it’s because we gotta start bringing our feel. If you wanna be an effective leader with the next generation of people who are our colleagues, right? We need to break through some of those basic assumptions. And those basic assumptions are those two. Now then you, that breaks into the stigma, so you might ask early, one of the questions like, how’s it possible that a quarter of us have a clinically recoverable mental illness, but we don’t get help? It’s because of stigma. 80% of people who don’t get help for the wellbeing, for mental, health conditions say they’re worried about what other people, but number one reason is stigma.

It’s like the myths around mental illness that we taught ourselves in society, like depression isn’t real. They drive the stigmas like. People with depression aren’t just weak, and those stigmas, dry feelings of shame, like, oh my God, I’m a depressed person or I feel depressed, so I must be a weak person.

So what I do is stay silent. So it’s this cycle of myst stigma, shame, and silence. And what we’re, we’ve been taught as a society that we’re not supposed to talk about mental health, right? It’s just what, it’s a taboo topic. And so what’s. What’s hard about the work that I do is we’re asking leaders to say, you may have been taught one way and reinforce your entire life, but to be successful going forward, it’s, do you really want to be a successful leader in the future?

It’s about showing your emotions. It’s about being vulnerable. When you talk about psychological, safe, facilitative, courageous leadership, that’s all about being authentic, vulnerable leaders and saying, I know that I don’t have the answers. My team does. I’m gonna facilitate them to create the answer. My job is not to, my job is to create a high performing team.

My job is not to do the work of my team.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. That it makes such a difference, doesn’t it? 

Adam Nemer: It makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. And so it’s hard. So that’s been, so what I found is that it’s like, what’s been hard about this is there’s take all the leaders out there. There’s a third of ’em a certain set. They’re just not open to the idea.

Some that are super open and some that aren’t sure. And so what’s hard is there’s perhaps more of these guys and gals than I then it’s, I have a lot of of convincing to do with a lot of folk. But what gives me so much optimism is so many folk I meet throughout the course of the day, I get a heck of a lot more.

Yeah, I get what you’re saying as opposed to 

Kim Allchurch Flick: indeed. Oh, and you and I met fairly recently through an introduction, and I’ve been thinking about this topic ever since. I think it’s critically important what you’re doing. So 

Adam Nemer: who would think it’s like improving physical, if someone was showing up with a bad back at work every day, they were, their productive wouldn’t be, their productivity wouldn’t be good.

Same thing with mental, I mean, it’s like, this is like, it’s. S for the love of the universe, Kim. I it’s like you can help people improve their lives and performance all the same. I’ve spent so many years like beating my head against the wall, trying all of the psychological safe tactics and all of that stuff, and doing a good job, but still not getting there.

It wasn’t until this. We just actually, and you know what? I think it is, you mentioned the companies that you used to work for did some nice facilitative psychological safe coaching and training like we did at Kaiser. So here’s my theory, and this is what I, or I shouldn’t say my theory.

This is how I experienced this, right? So for 18 years as a leader at Kaiser. I went, I started by getting trained in servant leadership, then facilitative leadership, the psychological saving. It’s all the same sort of stuff with different phrases and it evolves over time. And basically I, I think about those leadership approaches or are just approaches to are tactics.

Leaders and managers might deploy on a regular basis so that they create a space amongst their colleagues and team where everyone feels the safest to perform at their best, to be who they are and share their points of view. And so you go through all these trainings and the, and when I, then we went, then we became mental health literate by taking the first aid class for a half day.

And it answered the change management 1 0 1 question. Why? So we all know change management 1 0 1. You gotta explain to P if you want people to change their behaviors, you gotta explain why it’s so important, right? And so we were learning all these psych, I was learning for 20 years, all these psychological, safe, facilitative leadership proposals approaches, right?

And I was having to memorize them. I didn’t feel ’em so much, but just memorize them and I’d get ’em. I didn’t, I, they were just, they weren’t in who I was. They weren’t part of my foundation. I was just learning the tactics and then I learned the why by learning what mental illness is and what mental health and wellbeing is by learning what the signs and symptoms are, by learning what it feels like by learning how to help people and get help.

I learned. Our teams learned in all the leadership teams. We learned why psychological safe leadership is important. So once I, so what we work with organizations, it’s once you have mental, basic mental health literacy and you create a culture, mental health literacy, having a culture of psychological safety is just a hop, skip, and a jump down the road.

’cause it’s just, it’s so much easier to do. It’s so much easier to create a culture of psychological safety when it’s based on a foundation of simple mental health literacy. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And that is beautifully simple. I appreciate that so much. What do you think about because we were talking a bit about B Corps and I.

Mission driven companies, and yet some probably hadn’t thought about mental health literacy the way we’re discussing it. What do you think are the possibilities as part of being values driven, as you mentioned before, what do you see as the possibilities for adding this and how does that make a B Corps or non B Corps even stronger?

Adam Nemer: The B Lab community and the is new to me, and so I’m really learning about this and what’s I get so excited that I’m connected with the, this movement now. And the reason is that, I left an overpaid underworked mid-level executive job at a wonderful company. ‘Cause I wanna change the world, right?

And for me, and they trained me to be what I think is a kind human leader who cares about people. I was trained to do that at Kaiser Permanente by my coaches and mentors and I think and I, when I started this organization four years ago. I thought that people would care about the human case for change.

Why should organizations invest a couple hundred dollars per person for a half day of training and and then roll then just have some reinforcement stuff. ’cause it’s gonna save lives and it’s the right damn thing to do. Oh my God. Why would you be a leader if you wouldn’t want to do that?

That’s how I was, that’s how I was trained to think. And but as I go out into the. Real world. What I found is a couple things. One, not everybody, very few organizations you’re lucky. I was lucky at me where your organization, you worked at me with Kaiser because they trained us in psychological, safe, facilitative fleet.

That is not the norm out there. It is not the norm in corporate America. It’s not mid-size small business that no one even know. What I’m finding is I thought everybody understood it. People don’t it. It’s. It’s not out there. And what, but, and almost, I mentioned earlier though, there was kinda like three different folks who are interested in this work.

Some that are really interested and some that are not sure those that are really interested. They’re mostly they feel the human case, but they are driven. By the business case, depression drops, productivity 35%. So if I improve 20% of my employees outta depression, I’m gonna improve two days of work out of a week.

People who struggle with their wellbeing have five times more unplanned absences through the course of the year. So if I can help someone get healthy, actually show up for work, that it’s a, there’s this huge business case, right? And so as a business person, you look at the book that I wrote.

There’s a lot of the human case, but I go through a lot of the business case for how this will improve your core business metrics and relate it to what, how it helped improve our core business metrics. And so it’s been, I love what I do and I’m just so lucky that I get to do this, but there’s just been this, I don’t know.

I know I’m a recovering CFO, but I’m not a money guy. I’m not motivated by money. I just motivated by do the right thing, the money will follow. And so it’s I don’t know, inked, inked on me. I’ll create a world, it’s just a word. It’s ined on me that i’ve had to talk more about the business case than the human case.

And so your question that started this entire answer was, what? What about the connection with B Lab is what’s so neat about, every single conversation that I’ve had with a member of this community, I’ve talked with people in companies that are certified. I’ve talked with consultants, I’ve talked with a handful of people since over the last handful of weeks.

And every one of them a hundred percent, it’s all about the human case. I have to say. I tell about where you think, oh my God, that’s amazing. I love to help our people, blah. And then I have to say at the end. You know, it’s also will help improve your core business metrics. What do you mean really? So that’s what I’m just, I am Y’all been coming to Milwaukee for the champions retreat in a couple weeks.

Just ’cause it’s like I found a community of business leaders who are gonna in be inspired by the human case. And when I can show ’em the business case, how it’s gonna help their business performance, I’m just so excited. It’s great. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I agree with you. I also think that there’s possibility for people like me who have gone from corporate or some never been in better solopreneurs or maybe have a couple of contractors they work with, but there’s also the client piece.

And sometimes with clients, especially working with clients for months, even years at a time, we have an opportunity to recognize things in each other and. This idea about simple mental health and noticing something in someone to be able to ask them heartfelt questions can help along a, across a variety of lines, like with partnerships and suppliers, and.

As we work with each other and friendships form, that can be a window of opportunity to maybe recognize something in someone else they’re not seeing. And I think there’s, for the, for more small businesses, there’s that opportunity as well. You are really onto something that I think is super important.

Adam Nemer: I think it helps build the community outside of your business. So, I’ll let you in on my secret plan. I genuinely believe that. I’m one of those Margaret Mead folk. Never doubt that a small group of people could change the world, ’cause only a few can. I was just raised to believe that stuff by my parents.

And, I believe if business leaders across America put mental literacy in their professional toolbox and cascade this knowledge to their organizations across America, average annual training is $1,400 per person. We’re talking $200. This is like a reallocation of existing training dollars.

This is not an expensive or complicated thing, right? But 95% of Americans work. So if we were to have leaders train this what happens is when. You become mental health literate just like you. And when you take a, and when your company teaches you how to take a employee health and safety class around how to dispose of batteries in a safe way, which is good, each and s h and s program, you take that knowledge home, right?

And you try to dispose of batteries in a safe way at home there too, right? So you, when you learn CPR, you don’t say, I’m only gonna use this knowledge at work, right? I’m only gonna use this knowledge at home. I’m gonna let people choke at work. When you give someone mental health literacy in the workplace.

It goes straight into their home life. It because it impact, it impacts ’cause when you walk around, once you’re trained on how to recognize the signs and symptoms, what you learn is we’re walking around all day long recognizing this in the people that we, strangers, our friends, our family, our loved ones, acquaintances, and there’s really small little words and phrases we can use that can help encourage somebody to, that they might get some help.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That makes me optimistic. What about you? What makes you optimistic? Again,

Adam Nemer: honestly, for the love of the universe I was raised to be optimistic by my parents, my parents and watch modeled by my grandparents. They. They the values they taught me as a young kid

I learned that you can do anything in this world that I was taught. I was just raised from a young age to think I. I don’t know. I think I was special. I can do anything right and we can make a difference. And then and that just, I think, so I was raised and then I was blessed with some remarkable mentors along the way.

I get most of my, it’s funny, I’m an MBA and a CFO and all that, but I really, I’m a liberal arts college student from Claremont McKen College. I’m just a history student, I get my leadership inspiration from the classics and that’s who made me, an o like okay.

On my desk over here, like le the books that I have on my desk, I have, okay. My book that I wrote. Then I got the Odyssey, I got VLA Hovel disturbing the piece, and I got yeah. Ek Vek, the good Soldier Vek, right? So for me it’s it’s funny, you ask about optimism. This mother, this dude got home, this guy kicked out a bunch of Commies.

He started a revolution, right? This is ti I, so I was just raised to by parents to think that I could do anything, and then I got educated in stuff that inspired me just to think that way. And so I just I’m an optimistic guy. See it’s funny. Okay I was, I have a friend I used to work with Catherine Vany.

She’s now a nurse leader at a, some hospital system up in in the Seattle area. And her dad’s a leadership consultant and she told me this phrase he uses that I love. It’s is the glass half emptier glass half full? Doesn’t matter. Glass r it’s always refillable. So that’s just always refillable, always refillable.

So I just I was just, I am blessed that I was raised by parents and grandparents who maybe arrogantly taught me I could do anything. And then I was blessed by these, wonderful mentors, professors at College Gaines post these wonderful leaders at Kaiser Permanente who modeled that you could be a.

Human and also a good leader and that you could man working in healthcare wires you to be optimistic. It’s one crisis after another. Oh my God. If you’re not optimistic when you are working in healthcare, you’re in the wrong business.

Kim Allchurch Flick: You’re saying that because also I came out of healthcare as you know, and people who’ve listened to the podcast know and it is inspiring. Recovery is inspiring. Innovations are inspiring things of that nature. And it’s a joy to have you here. And I think you are taking a snowball down a hill that’s gonna gain momentum and be really important for the future of people who.

We spend a whole lot of our waking lives working and why not let it be joy and a place to be recovering and a place to be real and authentic? What else would you like to share and how can people reach you? And please tell them the name of your book. 

Adam Nemer: Oh yeah, sure. The name of my book is Simple Mental Health the ROI of vulnerability.

And you can get a hold of me you get our, my website connect with me there at@simplementalhealth.com. You can shoot me an email at Adam n. Simple mental health.com. We’re on LinkedIn at Adam er, we have a YouTube channel, simple Mental Health. You can also gimme a ring if you’re in if we would like to chat anytime.

5 0 3 9 7 0 2 0 5 0. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. And all of that will be in the show notes for those who are listening. The final question is. If you could have dinner with up to three people to join you at a table of four who are living, were deceased, who would they be and why? 

Adam Nemer: Up to three people. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: So there’s four of you.

Adam Nemer: Oh that, that is, there, there’s three faces that come to my mind and and it’s a no brainer for me. My my idols are the people that are like my idols. Muhammad Ali, bill Russell, bill Walton. I want to have dinner with Muhammad Ali. Bill Russell and Bill Walton.

Bill Russell. A fighter for rights. A fighter for what he believed in man as a African American leader in the Boston community through all those years. He was a Bill. Russell was a

inspirational. Ethical, moral human being who, who just fought for he thought was right. Muhammad Ali, come on. This just the greatest. He went to prison instead of fi he went to prison. He gave up. He could have been he gave up the prime of his career and went to prison. ‘Cause of what he believed in.

Then you got Bill Walton. He’s my, I, it’s funny you say, I got Portland, bill Trailblazers. Bill Walton I just happened to have her right here, star of the early seventies, UCLA, Bruins, Walton was a funny guy. Grew up in Portland and it, so I grew up as a kid, like being a Trailblazer fan, right?

Of course I think Bill Walton’s the greatest. But the thing is I. Over the last decade or so before he passed, I started listening in to a lot of what he wrote and a lot of his podcast, a lot of information about him. And he was just one of the most inspirational good conscious driven human beings.

And he taught me my own personal mantra. The thing that I think about. I try to think about regularly every day throughout the course of the day and when I’m having a hard day. ’cause I still struggle with my mental wellbeing on any given day. And what I think about is this one Walton is, I heard him say once, which was learn from the past.

I’ll say it like you would say it, learn from the past, dream of the future, but live in the moment. I love that. I think it’s great and he is just a happy guy. So those would be my theme. If I could have dinner with those two, that would be amazing. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I think that would be a raucous, fun, incredible dinner.

Thank you so much, Adam Nemer, you are a joy to have on this podcast. I have learned so much and I think. The possibilities are so terrific that we can all move forward. Keeping our finger on the pulse, so to speak, of our own mental health, and also on the lookout for others and the world will be a better place.

That’s right. Thank you all. This is Kim Allchurch Flick with the Mighty Measure Podcast with the message that can continue onward indefinitely. Thank you all. Have a wonderful day.