Meet Bill Brassow, founder and producer of PodWorks Studios in Mesa, AZ, where Physician, Heal Thyself The Podcast is recorded. We talk about the rise of mental health issues on the rise that we are both noticing. I appreciate the perspective of people outside the medical field, who are perceiving these social changes in our world. We discuss social issues, how COVID lockdowns impacted mental health and how children and young people are experiencing depression, anxiety and suicidality.
Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance or mental health assistance.
Podcast Transcript Episode 45
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal th Self, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and today I have a special guest. His name is Bill Brasso. He is the owner of Pod Works Studio here in Mesa, Arizona, and he’s actually the producer who helps me with this podcast. So help me welcome Bill.
Hi. Thank you.
I invited you on the podcast because we always have such great conversations.
We do.
Obviously away from the mic, away from the camera.
Before and after I started recording and from the beginning, I’m like, I should have you on the podcast. And the last time we were recording, you mentioned some ideas about what we should talk about, mental health, and how there’s a rise in mental health issues over the past years. I thought, yeah, that’s so true. Why don’t I have you come on board and let’s continue that conversation we were having off-camera now in front of a camera. But before we do that, Bill, tell us a little bit about you because you impressed me a lot, knowing that you’ve done it. So, tell us a little bit about your background.
Okay, well, God graced the earth with me on February 12th, 1975.
Your Birthday is February 12th.
Yeah, it is.
Mine is on the 13th.
I grew up in church, so you and I share a faith and have learned a lot. I grew up as a Lutheran and I have a funny story about that later on. I was a terrible high school student. Absolutely terrible. I did not like it. I didn’t like the structure of the learning and it just wasn’t me. So 17 days after graduating high school, I found myself in Navy Boot Camp in Camp Orlando. We called it nothing camp about it. It was extremely hot in Orlando in the middle of June.
Served in the military for 10 years. Learned a lot, learned a lot of responsibility, gained a lot of lifelong friends. Some I still stay in good touch with over Facebook and whatnot. And then I got out of the Navy after I married my high school sweetheart, I went on to one deployment and she really couldn’t handle me being gone too well. The Navy had kind of run its course for me. So we decided that I was going to get out and I got out. Then I held five jobs in four years trying to figure out what on earth it is I wanted to do. Worked at the University of Phoenix, which is where I ended up getting a business degree that has done me absolutely nothing.
Then I got into a company called Eaton, which is a large electrical manufacturer. I did pretty well there and had a good time, but I was finding myself not doing so well with the corporate world. So I ventured out on my own. Backtrack. While I was at Eaton, I started a weekend warrior business video production called Second Star Productions. My wife and I are, well, she’s a Disney fanatic and she kind of pulls me along with it. So second Star to the right from Peter Pan is where we came up with that name. We thought it was pretty cool. The reason we did it is because I have two girls, one of them, Madison, who has my grandbaby now, so she’s all excited about that. When she was born, she was not the most graceful child, so she was a little clumsy. She was pretty tall for her age.
So she was a little uneven at times. A little off balance. We were like, okay, we need to teach this kid some grace. Well, I’m not going to teach her grace. My wife is very graceful, but I don’t think she knows how to teach a kid grace. We decided to put her in dance classes and it worked. She’s one of the most graceful human beings I know today. But while she was in dance, like most involved parents were buying all the pictures and the recital videos, and every time we’d get a recital video back, it’s like a little Sony handycam sitting at the back of the auditorium just as wide as that lens could go. I’d send the video to my parents in Florida and I’d have to say, yeah, the fifth dance and the fourth blip from the left, that’s your granddaughter. She’s doing great. I know you can’t. So I was like, okay, we can do this better. We got a nice camera and a tripod, and I jumped on YouTube University and started figuring it out.
Oh wow.
And then here I am today.
So you self-taught yourself?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. Yeah. Me and YouTube. That’s right.
You can learn a lot online.
Yeah, you sure can. Yeah.
How long have you had this studio here for?
I’ve been in this location for over four years, but I just went a little over 18 years in video production.
So if anyone is watching, listening and they want to start a podcast, you can come started at Pod work Studios.
That’s Right.
You come talk to Bill.
That’s right. Come talk to me.
There are many options. You have some, not just in studio, but now you can help people who want to set up their own studio at home. Tell us a little bit about that, how you can help people with that.
So at Pod Work studios, we have three different studio options. We have a mobile studio where we come to you. If you’re local to Phoenix, we will bring our equipment out to you and find a nice spot in your office or house or whatever it may be, and set up a multi-camera podcast production and record and leave, and then go on our day. Then we have our in studio, which we’re in the studio right now. We’re in Studio Two. We have two studios here. Then we have a mobile studio. Our mobile studio is basically an online platform. So, if you have a recording area at home or at your office or whatever it may be, and you have some equipment or we can sell you equipment if you need it, you can just log in virtually and record. And you can do it one of two ways.
We can either log in with you as a virtual producer, where we sit there and kind of walk you through the steps of recording your show. Make sure your sound and your video, and your lighting is good. Same thing for an online guest. If you bring ’em in or you can record on your own. If you’re dialed in with the tech and you don’t really need our help, you can record on your own. Just send us a message, say, I just recorded episode 22 and we’ll jump in there and edit it and upload it. But the big thing is that when we created the studio, I created it with business owners in mind. Being a business owner myself, I realized how valuable our time is. I wanted to create a system that was cost-effective and high-quality and that took as little time out of your day as possible. So at our studio, we do bulk recording. You can come by twice a month for 90 minutes and record two episodes each. Or you can come by once a month for three hours and record all four episodes. That’s not that easy. You leave here and your brain’s a little bit like oatmeal, right? It’s very effective. We do all the editing and we upload all of your main content and we create social media clips for you. We do transcripts, and we do the custom YouTube thumbnails for every single episode.
Yeah, this has been very helpful. I wanted to start a podcast four or five years ago, but I didn’t have the time to figure out all of the technical stuff and uploading. I just knew I would drop the ball. I remember when I was a colleague of mine who said, Hey, I met this guy who does this, and I was in contact with you, and from there got started. But I love the system that you have in place for busy people because I don’t have time to edit. A lot of people ask me, How do you do it all? You’re running a clinic, you’re seeing patients. You do a podcast, you have a family, you’re working out. You do. How do you do it? I’m like, well, if you have a nice system in place, it helps. You have a really good system here where we’re consistently recording and you’re doing everything else. I don’t have to worry. It gets posted, uploaded and keep going. So this is episode 45.
Yeah.
That’s a huge achievement for me.
You’re almost at a full year of 52 weeks.
Absolutely. Almost there.
Did you know that 90% of podcasts don’t make it past episode 10?
Wow.
90%. They say there are 4.4 million podcasts,
4.4 million podcasts,
Of which 90% of them don’t have more than 10 episodes.
Wow. It’s hard work
It is hard work. It is not just the content, but also trying to get it out to a larger audience. It takes time. It does. I’m grateful to you. I’m grateful for the many conversations that we’ve had. So let’s jump into the topic that we wanted to talk about. You mentioned that you see on your side, and I always like to get the perspective of someone who’s not in healthcare, who’s not in the mental health field, and they see this perspective from the outside, because then it’s not just me as a doctor seeing this trend. Other people see it. You mentioned that there’s a rise in mental health issues. Why did you say that? What is it that you’re perceiving right now in our world?
I think it’s the reaction to it that I’m seeing, that’s making me know that there’s a rise in mental health issues. Obviously, as a business owner, I’ve done a lot of networking and I’ve connected with a lot of people and friends with them on Facebook. All the time, I am seeing posts about not losing focus. Be the best you can be. You’re the only competition that you have and things like this. And while it is great messaging, it’s good for the mindset, but then it veers into this whole, there’s a concern out there. Everybody knows somebody with a mental health condition. Everybody. I know several people with mental health conditions. I didn’t know that many people. I thought maybe it wasn’t so prevalent, but I don’t think so. People seemed to be pretty emotionally stable, I would say 10 to 12 years ago. But in the past decade, maybe 15 years, things seem to be off. To me, that’s my completely nonclinical evaluation.
And it’s hard to tell. Is it because more people understand the human experience and the human psyche, and they’re giving permission? They’re giving themselves permission and others permission to talk about their feelings, to talk about the mental health aspect? Or are we bordering on becoming victims of this? Is that too much?
So there’s this theory, and I can’t remember. There’s a doctor who talks about the theory. I can’t remember who it was, but they said, Are you more aware of a mental condition that you may have? Because there’s more awareness around it. If there wasn’t all this awareness that people have now around mental health, would you even know if you had a mental health condition? Are we creating a society based on what it is when mitochondria, right?
Yeah.
A bunch of mitochondria in the mental health world. You hear all these different conditions with mental health. Now, do we think we have a mental health problem simply because there’s more awareness of it? Then is that a good or a bad thing?
It’s hard to tell which one is what’s really happening. What I can say is that there might be a combination of both. As you’re speaking, I’m thinking of my maternal grandmother and how, I mean, their generation, she’s passed away, but she was like 96 when she died, and this is almost 10 years ago. So, in her generation, talking about feelings, expressing feelings, and showing emotions just wasn’t the case in that culture at that time. It just wasn’t something that was acceptable. It was looked at as a sign of weakness. But I can tell you, looking back at the few times, the interactions that I had with her, I can see that she did have mental health issues and probably because the home environment that she grew up in, experiencing a father who was very abusive, verbally, physically, that there is probably some health concerns. But Mexican moms would never be depressed, get to work. What do you mean by depression? They don’t understand the word depression or anxiety. It’s just in your head, get moving and you move on.
Yeah. Oh no, I grew up in South Chandler, which, for those who don’t know, South Chandler has a heavy Hispanic population. I went to Chandler High School, so I’m very aware of the culture. Well over 50% of my friends were Mexican and or Mexican American. Yeah, I was very, very well aware that the men were the same way. Very stoic, very stoic.
Very seldom showed information other than maybe anger.
Anger, yeah.
But the white culture isn’t far off.
That’s what I’m saying. It really, I have learned to look past. There might be some cultural differences, but everyone is the same. There’s a lot of white culture that I’ve heard, like Scandinavians and just other, they’re just very cold and rigid and they don’t show emotional expressions. I’m like, yeah, this is true. African Americans, native Americans, it’s not a race issue.
It’s everyone.
We might experience different challenges, but there are still challenges at the end of the day. I will say that from my end of the table, what I have seen clinically is definitely a huge rise in mental health. And people aren’t even saying, I’m depressed or I have anxiety. And it’s young people.
And after Covid, that really, I remember Bill, so Covid Lockdowns here were sometime in March, right around this time of the year in 2020. By the time the lockdowns lifted, I was seeing, so it was around summertime, I was seeing a lot of 10, 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old girls in my office. It was just like I was busy with them. That’s crazy. I felt like I was a counselor, and I’m trained to do mind, body, mental health, some of the stuff, but I’m not a licensed therapist. I think, naturally, I just like to guide people. But I had these young girls and not able to verbally express themselves and say, sometimes people can’t say I have anxiety or I have depression. And so they’ll explain. I just feel down, or I feel like my heart is racing all the time, and I am not calm. It’s anxiety. They were describing the anxiety, they’re describing the depression. But what was most concerning was that almost all of them were suicidal.
Wow.
Yeah. And so I also worked at that age.
Yeah. So what’s interesting is that same year, that same summer, I started seeing a lot of nurses, a lot of registered nurses that worked at the big hospitals here, children’s hospitals. One of them was a psychiatrist or psychologist there. She would evaluate all the children who would come in. Well, she started to share with me, there’s such a rise in mental health in these young children, not teenagers, children. She says, I had never seen anything like this, a 6-year-old who tried to commit suicide. I know there are a lot of factors. It wasn’t just that it could have been. These kids were home. Some of the kids were safer at school than they were at home.
That’s true.
Because let’s face it, we live in a world that’s broken, where parents are hurt and they have so many wounds that they need to heal themselves and they’re passing their own trauma to their children. You have these lockdown parents. I mean, I remember I was stressed. What am I going to do with my kid? I’m going to bring her to the office and sit her there. Hopefully, she does the work. I don’t have time to do both. It was just stressful.
And schools were figuring things out. So I can imagine someone, a parent who is not in the right state of mind, how violent that person can be with the child at home.
We could have a whole other podcast about our reaction as a society to covid. Right. Part of what we’re seeing right now is the repercussions of poor decisions around that.
Absolutely.
Alright, so there are a couple of things that I think are going on. One thing that makes me think that mental health truly is a problem. It’s not just, what was the term we used? Hypochondriac.
Hypochondriac, yeah.
There are more people in the mental health professions than we’ve ever seen before. Every time you turn around, somebody’s a counselor, somebody’s a psychiatrist, somebody’s this, somebody’s that. But also we have never seen worse mental health, especially in our youth, in the country’s history. I think Covid had a lot to do with it, but I also think it’s the social media.
Absolutely.
If I can give a shout-out to another show that records here really quick.
Absolutely.
So there’s a show here that is called the Dope Dad Podcast. Shout out to my boy oj.
Okay.
It is a fantastic show. And he talks about being a dad in today’s society, brings on other dads, and one of the things that they bring up quite often is the role of social media in our children’s lives and how can’t even imagine what it’s like growing up, constantly being evaluated and judged and this and that. These kids think that one little comment or one little mistake in a post that they put on Instagram is going to ruin their life. But that’s the perception they have. So we’ve created this world while trying to connect the world together. I’m looking at it like, we shouldn’t have done this. Some of them, he says, I love the technology, it’s cool,
But I have to agree with you, even as an adult, it has such an impact on us. Earlier this year, from January to the end of February, I was off social media just because I needed a break from it. It was such a great benefit for my brain or for my mental health that I’m like, it’s too much. Having created this podcast, we do a lot of work to put a lot of great content here for people, but people will still listen to the stupid shit online.
Yes, they will.
It amazes me.
Yeah. It’s unbelievable.
It amazes me that people are drawn to the nonsense, and young people and adults do the same thing. There’s so much information that there’s an abundance of information coming at us, and we’re taking all of this in. The thing with children and young people is that their subconscious mind is receiving billions of pieces of information, whereas the conscious mind is not. All of this information is fed into the subconscious mind, which contributes to their emotions and behaviors. That’s what they act out is it’s all that subconscious information that they’re receiving from social media, tv, whatever technology they’re exposed to. Technology has a big role in most of the mental health issues. There are many different things that factor into an increase in mental health. You said something about counselors. What’s interesting is that there’s such a great number of people going into the field of counseling, but there’s even more who are leaving.
Really?
Yeah. Brenda Cochrane, who is a Christian counselor and she now has her own practice, but prior to that, she managed a huge practice of counseling and she had a hard time hiring people. I remember she would tell me, man, there’s such a turnaround. Counselors are quitting. They’re going into different fields, they’re just burned out. They don’t want to do this anymore. It’s hard to hire new counselors. So there’s a shortage in that aspect as well, as there are not enough people to help with some of these practices. There’s a one or two or three-month wait list, depending on the practice, but there’s two three month wait list to get seen.
Yeah. Oh yeah. There’s a 10 or a 12 to one patient to doctor ratio in a lot of them, too, right? Or more than that, probably. Right? Yeah. You go and see a counselor for 30 minutes and then now they’re seeing 16 patients a day, five days a week. I don’t remember when it started, but there was this trend that started and it seems to keep going on that everybody should see a counselor. That’s not true.
There are people who should seek out professional help. Absolutely. There are. But all the people who do it just because they think they need to or something, I don’t agree with that. There are a lot of people who are very mentally stable.
If I tell people, be part of a church, that’s a community. Oftentimes, churches, especially big churches, have counseling groups. Sometimes, there are counselors there, but there are different groups for different types of grief and addiction.
Whatever issues.
Marriage.
And those support groups, that community, that’s a real community.
That’s real community.
When you’re in person.
That’s right.
That’s real community. There’s a lot going on online and all these things are being online and there’s a time and place for that. But I think we really need to get offline and get in person in your community.
Find a local community church in your area, where you are doing life with these individuals and where you can talk about your issues and you’re not going to start off talking about your issues, but you get to know people and you build trust. Through doing life together, that’s when you’re sharing life and have relationships with people who are older and wiser than you.
Yes, absolutely.
Because you’re going to learn from their experiences and people outside of your circle, outside of your comfort zone.
Yeah. You want to get real. You brought up church. Right. Okay. So, another trend I’m noticing is that the more we push God out of this country, the more problems we have.
Absolutely.
I don’t see how people can just look past that. It’s clear and evident that the more we push God out of this country, the more problems we have. I think mental health is one of those
Problems. Absolutely. During Covid, I am not going to say it didn’t have an impact on me, but I wasn’t losing my mind. I was still living life. I was still doing things. And actually, you know, one of my goals was, Bill, I was pissed off for a whole year.
You’re pissed off.
I was pissed off here and there because I’m like, how can people not see this? That’s a whole different episode, different topic. But I was upset, but I didn’t lose my marbles.
The other thing is I didn’t want to push the fears that everyone was telling us, you need to mask up, you need to do this. You need a social. I wasn’t projecting that to my kids. I was like a shield. I remember going to Target, and my daughter was four or five years old, four around that time, three or four years old. She didn’t have a mask on. I never made my daughters wear a mask out in public, whatever. God gave us an innate immune system. You’ve got to figure it out. I’m not going to do that to my child. So we went to Target, and we were at the self-checkout, and there was another little girl the same age as my daughter. Oh, mind you, my daughter’s twirling around dancing at the store on the floor, turns all over my head, and the other little girl’s like, mom, look, she’s on the floor. She’s getting dirty.My daughter doesn’t care. She’s just swaying around dancing and why doesn’t she have a mask?
Another little girl her age whom this agenda was pushed onto her, the fear that you are not safe to be without a mask to dance and twirl around and be on the floor. Now, my daughter is a whole different beast. No matter how many times I would tell her, don’t be on the floor. She was on the floor doing her little dance.
And I’m like, I’m just not going to fight her on this. I’m just going to let her be. But you know what? She was happy. She was a happy little girl
Living in her little world. They didn’t care who was wearing a mask.
Absolutely.
So I look at them now and I’m like, yeah, I don’t see that they were impacted as much as other children were because I didn’t make it a big deal at home. So, as parents, it is a responsibility to be informed and to be able to guide our children in a safe way and for parents to have an ongoing conversation with their children. Because if they’re not having a conversation with these topics that they experience that we experience in life, someone else is.
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s the entering kids into their classes that are projecting all of this agenda onto them.
But I agree. I had a lot of friends who would ask me, Why are you so happy? How are you getting through this? And I’m like, man, let me tell you why. Because I have God in my life, and I cannot live my life without turning to his word, turning to him for guidance. I don’t know how else to do it. Because even with that, I find myself in moments of struggling. So imagine not having, not being rooted in his word, not having a relationship with God, not making God the center of your life. It makes life very, very difficult.
It makes mental health issues even more difficult. Now, it doesn’t mean that people who believe in God don’t have mental health issues. They do. Usually, there’s a much deeper rooted reason for that. There’s trauma that was never healed through, but there’s a solution for that. I always believe this. I believe that healing can happen in many different ways. It might be through a counselor, it might be through church, someone praying for you, having deliverance. Am I just you be seeking God out on your own? There are many different ways that you can find healing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, right?
Yeah.
So you just got to find what’s your jam? What works for you.
I believe that there is a time and place for drugs. There are certain mental health conditions and pharmaceutical drugs, right?
Pharmaceutical drugs, not illegal substances, suggest that there’s a chemical imbalance in somebody’s brain that’s causing whatever. I don’t know the science, but I think we are a way overdrugged society. Ritalin. Let’s talk about Ritalin for a second, right? Gosh. I mean, growing up, we boys were just rowdy all the time. We were allowed to go outside and just wreak havoc during recess because the teachers knew we got to go out and get all that energy out and this and that. Now it just seems that, well, let’s just drug them up so that the energy doesn’t exist in them. That’s creating problems. The whole ADHD/ADD thing, I have a hard time really buying into so many kids being diagnosed with that.
That’s just strange to me. I think it goes back, I think it goes back even farther back to my time when kids were being diagnosed with this. The pharmaceuticals are there to rescue everybody. Pharmaceutical companies should work to put themselves out of business. If you want to give people drugs, you should be working to, okay, you give ’em a drug and guess what? They’re going to get better and they’re done with it. Not beyond it for the rest of their lives or create other problems. I don’t know.
I am going down a rabbit hole, but it doesn’t heal people. The pharmaceutical is not going to heal them. It just keeps them in this vicious cycle. So I’ll tell you, I do get a lot of parents who bring in, almost all of them are boys. I have never had a parent bring their daughter because they think she has ADHD. It’s always boys. I look at them, I interact with them, I assess them from the moment they enter my clinic, I’m interacting with the child and I’m like, no, they’re fine. They’re boys. I have to explain the biology. Biology, they may have more energy. They have more muscle mass. They’re going to make more testosterone. They’re wired,
They’re more aggressive. Yeah, exactly.
They’re just meant to move more than a girl will.
Even some girls are active too. So I do a neurotransmitter test on these children, and the insurance doesn’t cover it, but I tell parents, if you really want to see if there’s a chemical imbalance, a neurotransmitter imbalance in them, let’s do this neurotransmitter test. It’s a urine collection. You collect four collections throughout the day. You send it into the lab. It’s like $250 test to 70. They do the test, they send it to the lab, I get the results. And that lets me know all the neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, epinephrine, like your adrenaline cortisol numbers in there. So then that gives me an idea, are they really hyper? Are there neurotransmitters that are super excitatory that are elevated? Or are the inhibitory neurotransmitters too low? Those two are supposed to balance each other. So most of the time they’re normal. I’m like, they’re just normal kid. There’s nothing wrong with them. Sometimes it is a matter of correcting and just guiding them. Not so much correcting but guiding them. There’s a time and place. But I think the problem is schools also, it’s too much sitting down. I mean, I find myself at my age going to conferences that are 6, 7, 8 hours a day, three, four days back to back. And I am overwhelmed. I’m like, how did I get through medical school? That’s a lot of sitting down.
But I’m older and I can force myself to get through that class to sit through that. I know I have the permission to get up. I can get up and go to the bathroom, move around, do whatever I want at these conferences. And in schools, children don’t have that autonomy to get up and move around. So I think the part of the problem is the way the schools are structured; it’s too long. That’s why other countries delay children starting school until they’re about seven years old. They start later in the day. Our brains are not really on until about nine or 10.
Yeah. And these kids are starting at 7:00 AM and stuff, it’s too early for them.
They should still be asleep between two and four o’clock or cortisol drops, it doesn’t matter who you are, what age, or when cortisol starts to drop, because it’s getting ready for us to go to bed. That’s the other thing, that they’re in school longer during a time when they’re not very productive. I once said they study. I just thought of that. I once read a study where they looked at what were the peak times of performance. They looked at all these companies and the best time that people performed the best was between 10 and 11:00 AM. And production would fall at three o’clock. So I say we should work between 10 and three, man.
Yeah, absolutely.
That should be our work day.
Yeah.
Can you imagine everyone working that though? I mean, it’d be great.
Yeah. How much would get done? You’re
Super productive.
Probably more than an eight-hour day.
Absolutely.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. So I think that’s so many things that contribute to mental health. A lot of it though, from being in practice and interacting with people, it’s unresolved, unhealed, child trauma and big trauma. Not like my parents didn’t buy me the shoes that I wanted. No big traumas that they’ve experienced, whether it’s physical abuse, mental abuse, or sexual abuse, those traumas have really impacted them. I can see that that is truly impacting people’s mental health as they get older. The big stressor that I hear from adults is their work, their work, their work situation creates a lot of stress for them, which is sad. It was sad
Because you’re there 8 to 10 hours a day,
A third of your life at work.
Therefore, the environments in these companies are not healthy.
Sometimes they’re very toxic. Management always seems to be the problem.
There’s those that work hard and those that hardly work.
The ones that hardly work get away with stuff.
This is what’s cool. So in the industry I’m in, I’ve noticed this growth in the coaching industry, there are a lot of business coaches out there and all of them are talking about company culture.
They know there’s a problem. It’s inspiring to see all these people out there trying to do something about it. They’re studied, they’re certified, they’re whatever it may be, they know what the answer is. They just have to get into these organizations and help them change. Because I think the organizations, one, when you’re looking at your own place, your own company, it’s hard to see the issue, right? Because you’re right there. You’re not at a 20,000-foot view. Somebody who’d be a coach or a consultant or somebody comes in to evaluate your company culture. They come in and they’re not emotionally attached to it either, right? So they’re going to give you the raw deal, man, this is what’s going on in your company. This is why your employees keep leaving. This is why they leave bad reviews on LinkedIn or whatever is for you as an employer because of this, this, and this. And I know you don’t want to hear that, but you got to change this. You got to change it. So I do appreciate that. I like that reaction that we’re seeing because organizations, they’re not in, they don’t think they’re interested in fixing it themselves, or they just don’t know how.
It’s hard for them. I think you’re right. If you bring someone from the outside who has neutral eyes, a neutral approach to it, they’re observing the behavior and it makes more sense to do that. Early. When I was in my mid-twenties, I was working for a financial institution and they brought someone in and evaluate the company. We had, they called them affinity groups. They took people from every department, every branch, to create these groups. We would brain dump, brainstorm, give input, feedback, and then the person who was evaluating, I dunno what they would call them, but it was an outside company that would come in, gather this information, report it to the upper management, and then from there kind of look at what’s working, what’s not working, what can we change on all different areas?
What was really interesting about this company is that this financial institution has been one of the best places that I worked for and that I experienced top exceptional leadership. The CO, It’s Arizona Financial Credit Union. It used to be Arizona Federal Financial Credit or Arizona Federal Credit Union, but it’s now Arizona Financial Credit Union.
I think the CEO is still the same CEO. I was very impressed with this man. I remember when I started, I went through training. He asked me something and I shared it. Months later, six months later, I was part of this affinity group. And I remember he asked me, Hey, how was that class that you were in? I was in college. I was doing my degree in finance. He asked me specifically about the class that I mentioned to him like six months ago. The fact that he remembered my name from one conversation that I had with him was like, you’re senior heard that you’re valued and appreciated. They continue to have these affinity groups. Every month we would meet together and bring change, bring cultural change, bring changes to processes, and also the members, because not customers, they’re members of the institution. So we would interview and survey the members of the institution, what was their feedback or opinions on different things. We would implement the changes. If they said, The deposit slips, the lines are too small, we want this on there, we want that on there, we would change it. I always say that as a company, the best place you can get information is from your customer. Ask them what works,
Ask them what doesn’t work and don’t take it personally. Just evaluate and see what changes can. Because sometimes you don’t want to change what does work. You want to keep that the same, but you want to change what doesn’t work. And employers should do the same because as a business owner, as business owners and even a big corporation, their number one customer is their employees.
Their employees have to be happy, their employees are not happy. They’re not going to be happy to serve the customer.
That’s right. You can tell when you walk into a company and there is a good company culture there, and the mental health of those employees are good or is good because I’m trying to think. Costco, every time I go into Costco, everybody in there is so helpful. I actually worked there. I worked there for four or five months. That was the first job I had of the Navy. They’re a phenomenal employer. They’re really good. I still walk into the Costco I used to work at, and I see guys in there that worked in there 12 years ago now almost maybe 15 years ago when I worked there. They’re still there. You find that you also find yourself being more loyal to the company that you work for.
Yes, absolutely. My accounts, all my accounts, are with Arizona Financial. I refer people to that institution. I speak good things about it. I learned so much through that company. So what they invested into me, it’s really, believe it or not, but the fruits of that labor show up in my practice with my patients because of what they invested in me, the education, the training, they invested in me. So I think that’s what good culture does, and that’s applied across the board to any institution, whether it’s a church, and I know some people don’t like to see a church as a business, but it does kind of have the same nuts and bolts to it.
It doesn’t have to feel like a business, but there are a lot of leadership components that get passed down. If the leaders, I always, one of the big things, once again because of that, CEO was CEO was that leaders lead from the front. And whatever happens in leadership at the top is going to trickle down to the bottom
For sure.
If you want the people who are following to be the employees or whoever it is that you’re delegating work, you want them to be happy, then you have to make the change. Then you’ll see the change on the bottom trickling down.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Just a lot. But that’s one of the things that I see is a lot of my patients are work Stress is up there. And it shouldn’t be that way.
No.
Company culture is very important for mental health. Like I said, you spend a third of your life at work, you should enjoy it.
You should enjoy what you do. And some jobs suck. Let’s just face it. Some jobs suck, but the job can suck. But the culture at the company can be great. And it can be a culture of, Hey, we know this job sucks, but this is how we’re going to make it better for you to come to work and show effort in that. And it’s kind of crazy these days. It’s a wild world we live in right now. Right?
It is. I guess the takeaway from this, what would you say the takeaway you would want our audience to know about mental health being on the rise?
Oh man, that’s a good question. I think the biggest takeaway is mental health; it’s important, but focus on God. You know what I mean? You’ve got to find something that’s bigger and better than yourself and let that be your compass. And for Christians, that’s God. When God is your compass, your life is better.
Yeah. He’ll guide you.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it’s good that we’re aware of mental health. I think it’s important. I have a hard time trusting some of the medical acuity right now about things. And so that
Me too,
I’m a doctor.
No, me too.
You’re my doctor. Yeah, that’s right.
There’s a balance. There’s a balance in this. And discernment is very important.
And that balance is hard to find right now.
Balance is hard to find. That’s why I will say not as a doctor, as a person, is that when I put my faith in trust in God and I pray and I meditate on his word, he does give me guidance on what is the next step is. That’s sometimes as far as you need to go with patients. I tell him, don’t worry about the next five years, 10 years, or the past. Just think about what is the very next step I need to do. God will reveal what that next step is. He is the compass.
One foot in front of the other.
One foot. Exactly. If God is the center of your world, he’s going to navigate you and tell you, guide you where you need to go and what you need to do. And there’s just so much in his word, and I understand that a lot of people don’t want religion. Well, don’t get religion. I’m talking about have a relationship with God because he’s a great physician, he’s a great surgeon, he’s a great counselor, he’s a great healer, and God will provide the direction of where you need to go. He’s not going to do it for you, but he’s going to guide you what that next step is. And he might tell you, get a counselor.
Yeah.
At this point you do need a counselor. Suicidal, absolutely.
At this point, you do need some medication because you’re suicidal.
If you have any suicidal thoughts or you’re thinking about hurting somebody else, go see a doctor and go get help.
Professional help right now, right now. And there are so many avenues. Even if you’re dirt poor, there are services out there for you.
I’ll make sure to provide some of those places here, at least here in Arizona, or some of the hotlines that people can get access to. So if they are at the bottom of the pit and they can’t find the way out, they can have a resource to turn to.
Yeah.
Well, Bill, thank you so much. My pleasure. For joining me in this episode. We’ll have to do some other ones in the future, some hot topic ones.
Yeah, we’ve talked about a lot. Yeah,
A lot. Lot Covid ones. We’ll do that. Alright, everyone, well, thank you for joining us on this episode of Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. Make sure you share and subscribe to the channel. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.