JOHNNY CROWDER: Mental Health in Music, Why Therapy Unlocks Creativity, and Entrepreneurship

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levi urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:57):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now let's get on with it. Welcome to the URM podcast. My guest today is someone that I've known since he was a we young lad. I recorded his band in 2012, and don't listen to it because it's really not my finest hour. However, I took a note of this guy. I thought that I was going to be bumping into him in the future.

(00:01:49):

First of all, his voice was awesome. The second of all, there's something about his brain that just stuck out to me and I was right. Several years later, the dude is giving Ted Talks among other things. So my guest today is Johnny Crowder, who's a business owner, front man, musician and influencer, and a supreme vocalist of a band called Dark Sermon and the current vocalist for a band called Prison. He's toured everywhere, met all kinds of people through these travels and through his music and just through living life, he began addressing his own demons, which we will talk about, and realized that there was a large gap between the mental health help that people need versus what they can get right away. And he created a wellness app called COPE Notes to deal with that. It's actually doing quite well, and this is kind of a different kind of episode for the URM podcast, but I felt like it was an important one to do for the following reasons.

(00:02:56):

And first, let me just say that obviously I'm not a mental healthcare professional or doctor, and neither is Johnny, but I personally am confronted with people's mental illnesses all the time. It's something that runs rampant in the music community. And having this platform, which brings me in touch with so many tens of thousands of people, I'm always getting hit up by people asking for help when they clearly have diagnosable mental illnesses. And I know that many times they're uncomfortable about getting help, don't know where to go, don't know what to do, and that's something that we're trying to address here. And this is good, whether you're that person or that person. I guarantee you that if you're not that person, you know that person. Something about the arts is a magnet for mental illness, and we discussed that too, but I know that this affects all of you. So I'm going to stop my intro. I give you Johnny Crowder. Johnny Crowder, welcome to the URM podcast. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:04:05):

Absolutely. I'm pumped.

Speaker 1 (00:04:07):

How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:04:08):

If that's a genuine question. I'm feeling brave.

Speaker 1 (00:04:12):

It's a genuine question why

Speaker 2 (00:04:14):

I just shaved my face with a razor for the first time in seven years.

Speaker 1 (00:04:19):

I

Speaker 2 (00:04:19):

Know, I know. And I did a pretty bad job. So listeners can't see, and I'm holding the mic in front of my face, but I have all of those little red things on my

Speaker 1 (00:04:27):

Neck. I went a little shorter with the beard for the URM summit last year, and I did not like it at all. At all. I felt very uncomfortable for about three months. I'm starting to feel comfortable again, but I did not like it.

Speaker 2 (00:04:45):

Does it grow fast for you?

Speaker 1 (00:04:47):

I don't know. I don't know what to judge it against because I don't really judge.

Speaker 2 (00:04:53):

We need a leaderboard with everybody's.

Speaker 1 (00:04:56):

Here's the thing. I don't know if you know, but I used to have a beard oil company.

Speaker 2 (00:05:01):

I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (00:05:02):

It didn't really go anywhere. So close the door on it. It was called Metal Beard Club, and we were always asked about how to grow your beard faster. And a lot of the beard oil companies put out beard growth products. They're all

Speaker 2 (00:05:19):

Bullshit. Yeah. It's like how to grow your beard faster, be someone else whose beard

Speaker 1 (00:05:24):

Grows faster. That is exactly right. So I've never really worried about it. It's going to grow as slow or as fast as it wants to. No amount of weird capsules are going to change that. But dude, you've come a really long way since we worked together and I'm not surprised. Let me just say that. I think when did we work together? 2012.

Speaker 2 (00:05:49):

Yep. 2012. It came out early 2013. That record.

Speaker 1 (00:05:52):

Yeah. Not my best mix. My favorite of doing that was getting to meet you. Actually, I felt like you had something different to share with the world than just metal vocals. Somehow I could just tell from the way that you approached your lyrics, the seriousness that you took it with, that it was coming from a different place than what I was used to. Now I've worked with really great vocalists, so I'm not talking shit about any of the great vocalists I've worked with, but I am used to certain motivations being artistic only. And I felt like yours was a much deeper exploration of your own demons in a very, very honest way that I wasn't used to seeing. And it was so well thought out, even if it was in a black metalish kind of way, it was so well thought out and cut so deep that something about it just set off a flag in my mind was like, watch this kid. So I think it's really, really interesting that years have gone by and of course you've had that band, you've had other bands, but to now see that you're doing COPE notes and the Ted Talk and those sorts of things, I'm not in the least bit surprised. I'm proud of you, but I'm not surprised at all. It seems like the most natural thing for you to be doing after just working with you for two weeks in 2012.

Speaker 2 (00:07:27):

I appreciate it. I remember that experience being especially challenging because most of the time I was just tracking with friends. So I was pretty accustomed to being vulnerable with friends about what I was working on and then having to meet you and then three days later being like, yeah, this song is about a hallucination that I dealt with for nine years in a row. And it's like we don't even know each other that well. It was a really cool stretch in vulnerability that now I applied to advocacy. Now I'm on stage in front of people that I have no idea who they are and I'm not working with them at all, and I have to share those same things with them. So that was a cool, one of my first steps into being honest and a hundred percent myself with someone who might be like, wow, this kid's crazy, or I can't believe he's staying in my house right now.

Speaker 1 (00:08:15):

Well, so I didn't know exactly that. That's what you were talking about. I didn't know that the imagery was something from your own head. But I have a little radar and my radar is because someone that I started, a project I'm known for is diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but his doesn't come with being a nice person. His comes with being a fucking dick, which sucks. So not everybody with mental illnesses is going to kill you or be a dick or anything like that. They're just like you or me. But in your case, something about the lyrics and the intensity with which you approach them, it was like an alarm for this is real. I don't know how it's real. I don't know this kid long enough to ask how this is real, but this seems real. But we're talking about it's religious imagery and it's extreme metal, so I don't understand how this is real, but it feels completely real. So now to find out you're talking about something that you were dealing with, I totally see that and I understand how weird that must have been then to just launch right into that after only knowing me for three days.

Speaker 2 (00:09:34):

So when I was growing up, I listened to all of the Big Death Corps bands and death metal bands and all their songs are about chopping people up and killing people. And it's like, but they're just kidding. But at the same time, I would go to a hardcore or a punk show and I would see these guys spill their hearts out and it was such passion and I was like, well, no wonder metal vocalists aren't passionate because they're singing about something they never did about something that has nothing to do with anything that they're no one's. Like yeah, I really collect fingers from my victims and I'm like, I have a big thinker collection. A lot of that stuff is just, it's like

Speaker 1 (00:10:12):

Fantasy dude.

Speaker 2 (00:10:13):

And I'm not discounting it, but I'm saying that there's a level of honesty and vulnerability and passion that comes from speaking about what? So if I had to play a character in a movie who was a tennis player, I would be like, man, I'm going to do my absolute best to be passionate about this role, but it doesn't feel personal to me. But if I had to play a character in a movie that was bullied in school and then started a band and then tried to play basketball and and then tried to be a guitarist and it didn't work out and tried to be a drummer and didn't work out, if I played someone who had an experience closer to mine, I would feel more passionate. So I always wanted to combine the honesty and genuine aspect of hardcore and punk with the intensity of metal because I think metal has a level of intensity that's like unmatched.

Speaker 1 (00:11:04):

I agree with you there. What was the process of allowing yourself to get vulnerable in the studio? I'm curious because something that comes up a lot in the conversations I have with people are earning the trust of the people you're working with as a producers and engineer because you need them to accept your ideas. B, you want them to be able to feel comfortable enough to open up artistically, which is not always easy. So I've never actually had an artist on here talking about that process, and so I think it would be interesting for people to know what it took for you to get comfortable. Was it just like, fuck it, I'm going to do it, or did you have to do mental gymnastics or was this something I did or,

Speaker 2 (00:11:51):

So I think that people really overthink this. So a lot of people ask me when I speak at advocacy events or something or conferences and they're like, how did you get to a point where you can talk to people about suicide attempts and about mental illness? Or they say, how did you get to a point where you can speak on a stage in front of all these people? And it's like if you think that day one I got on a stage and spoke to people about it, you're totally wrong. For me, a lot of it was logic and really small steps. So let's say I have two weeks in a studio with you. If I spend three days diluting my ideas, now we only have 11 days to actually do work.

Speaker 1 (00:12:28):

I do remember that you were very time focused. You kept saying stuff like that, we only have nine days to do all this left. Let's fucking hit it that actually, I do remember very clearly that you were watching the time like a hawk, but not in a way that is annoying because sometimes if someone is breathing down your neck and you're just trying to get stuff done, it can get annoying. You weren't doing that at all. You were just keenly aware of how much time was left versus what you had to get out of yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:13:03):

It's a matter of respect. If I didn't respect you or the project or what we were working on or my time with you, then I would've been like, yeah, we'll finish whatever we finish. But it's like, here's how I'd put it. Imagine if you had three hours to sit with someone you've always wanted to meet and ask them anything. Would you waste an hour talking about the weather and sports and things that you didn't really want to talk about?

Speaker 1 (00:13:29):

Depends on if they're a famous meteorologist.

Speaker 2 (00:13:34):

I think that if you really value the time of the person you're with and you respect their talent and their opinion, you want to be as straightforward out the gate as possible because the sooner you can both agree that an idea will work or won't work, I just think you need to make the most of your time with people because two weeks to work on something that is basically we won't have another chance to work on another record for an album cycle is two years normally. So we have two weeks to work on something that is going to live longer than I will. I don't want to tiptoe around an idea. I want to tell you exactly what I thought, and if you think it's dumb, I remember in one song you straight up cut out a whole a minute and a half of it, and I can't remember, I think it was the Scales of Justice or something. It was like one of the songs and we cut out a whole verse in chorus and you were like, trust me. And I was like, okay. I think if you respect somebody and you trust their opinion, then you're not going to water down what you feel.

Speaker 1 (00:14:29):

I think it's just because it was like a wall of lyrics.

Speaker 2 (00:14:32):

Oh, that sounds like 2012. Me for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:14:35):

Yeah. I think if I'm remembering correctly, the reason that I cut out that much was just because there was no let up whatsoever, which I guess is cool in some ways, but I felt like it was, it's interesting that I remember this, man, this was a little ago.

Speaker 2 (00:14:51):

I know. I can't believe I do either.

Speaker 1 (00:14:53):

I mean, I don't remember the song, but I remember the sentiment of thinking it's going to actually work against your intention to have that much stuff because there was more than I think a listener could take in. I

Speaker 3 (00:15:08):

Think it

Speaker 1 (00:15:09):

Was just going to mow them down and then not let them get back up and then not let them. So getting waterboarded basically.

Speaker 2 (00:15:16):

Yeah, prison is the opposite. I think Dark Sermon was very sort of focused on me getting my point across by any means necessary. And I think prison is a little more inclusive in our approach. What do you mean? So it's sort of like you can choose to either speak in your language at somebody who doesn't understand it, or you can consider that the person who you're speaking to might not understand the language you normally speak in and you might need to tweak a couple things. So I don't mean literal language, but I mean in your approach. I think that too many artists say stuff like, oh, I'm making this record for me, and whoever likes it, likes it, and whoever doesn't, well F you and you can go listen to somebody else. And it's like there's no sense of community in that. And the sense of community is actually what drew me to heavy music in the first place. So I think you're doing yourself a disservice as an artist. I'm not saying pander, but I am saying the idea that you make a record for yourself and then you expect kids to listen to it and show up at shows that doesn't make sense. You have to understand that your band can't exist without the ecosystem that it's a part of.

Speaker 1 (00:16:19):

How do you balance that with the level of narcissism required to create authentic art? There is some level that is required.

Speaker 2 (00:16:30):

Yeah, it's a difference between saying, I want these kids to think I'm a vocal God and I want these kids to feel something. So you focus less on how the audience perceives you and more on how the audience will feel regardless of whether or not you're in the picture.

Speaker 1 (00:16:46):

That's a good answer. That makes perfect sense to me. Do you think that the arts are a magnet for people with mental illness?

Speaker 2 (00:16:54):

Yes, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (00:16:57):

I think so too. So this is something that you might find interesting. So as a person who's had lifelong depression, I've studied mental illness a lot because I've been working with musicians my whole life. I've had to overcome my own shit, still do. And so it's been a topic that has been interesting to me and personal to me. And when I grew up in the nineties, that's when I was a teenager, mental illness was made cool in a way that rock stars were putting out this message that it was cool to be bipolar, it was cool to be depressed, it was cool to be suicidal, it was cool to be on drugs like heroin and very, very fucked up stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that those things shouldn't be understood and dealt with and people shouldn't be judged for them. Of course, people shouldn't be judged for them. But the way that it was being put out in the nineties was that it was a desirable thing to have, and that's really fucked up. At the time I was living under the influence of this, so I didn't realize how fucked up that message was, but now I look back and I think about how fucked up people were encouraged to be in the nineties. And did you know that about the nineties, first of all?

Speaker 2 (00:18:20):

So just for the record, there is a song on our new album called Mental Illness, and there's a line in it that is literally, depression is not a fashion statement. Well, it was. No, but that's exactly where it came from is specifically in music. So I know that we see a lot of it. It's glorified in TV and movies and unfortunately a lot of crime is associated with mental illness, even though if you look at the stats, it's not associated with that. But I think that song specifically is a response to artists in the music industry who purposely leverage things that play the cards in your hand to the best of your ability. So I have diagnoses and I do my best to turn them into something beautiful through art, but I never tell kids what you should do is hallucinate more or you should really look into self-harm.

(00:19:19):

I think people who just give it a shot, people who live with these diagnoses, I think have an opportunity, I consider it an opportunity and an obligation, but primarily an opportunity to shed light on them in such a way that can provide comfort to people who are experiencing them without condoning the negative behaviors and patterns associated with the diagnoses. But you're right, if you look at early rock and metal, it is like a lot about depravity and just absolute debauchery, and it's like, oh man. There were probably kids in that era who were like, oh man, this sucks. I'm not diagnosed with clinical depression. It's like, that doesn't suck.

Speaker 1 (00:20:00):

It was that way actually, and I wouldn't call it early rock. I can understand how you would think of it as early rock, at least I know the nineties, I call that mid rock.

Speaker 2 (00:20:09):

Okay. So

Speaker 1 (00:20:10):

Yeah, early Rock was when I was not invented yet,

Speaker 2 (00:20:14):

Negative 13 years old.

Speaker 1 (00:20:16):

Yeah, no, you hadn't even been thought of yet. It was a way to where if you didn't have one of these mental illnesses, it was uncool, which is really messed up. People who were around in the nineties who listened to any sort of heavy music will remember this though, just think back to how fucked up that was. If you didn't have some sort of disorder, you just didn't have as much clout. This was something that when there would be articles written about some lead singer that would always be part of such and such diagnosed with this and that lead singer for this band, it was always in their title. It was a thing that was put out there. And so you did get a lot of people who did start self-harming and did start taking on those behaviors associated with mental illnesses even without having a diagnosis just because it was cool.

Speaker 2 (00:21:15):

Dude, I have to bring this up real quick. So Slipknot is one of my favorite bands of all time. I was born in 1992, so I think that's inevitable. And I remember I've always wanted to meet Cory Taylor my whole life just to ask him questions just about his process. And one of the things that I saw on a, I can't remember if it was a documentary or podcast interview or whatever, but it was something about him like naked in the vocal booth, harming himself and throwing up on himself and screaming. And when I was a kid, I was like, yeah, and now that I'm 27, I'm like, oh no. That sounds like the worst possible scenario. I think there's a misconception that in order to create heavy visceral music, you need to be experiencing deep pain and that the pain is somehow serving you as an artist. But as I've gotten healthier, I've realized that a lot of categories of pain actually separate you and convolute the message that you're trying to portray.

Speaker 1 (00:22:17):

Yeah, I think you're correct about this misconception that people think that the pain enables the art. I actually think that these artists create despite not because of

Speaker 2 (00:22:26):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:22:27):

And the thing is that there's this correlation versus causation thing that happens because oftentimes when artists get clean and sober, their music starts to suck when they get into treatment. But my thoughts on that is not that their music is starting to suck because they're clean and sober, but the damage done from all those years of destruction is now what you're hearing. So if they've spent 15 years completely destroying their brains to where the only way that they could access a certain state of creativity was to get Zed up, you take that away and what's left? They're going to have to go through years and years of therapy and basically brain regrowth in order to get to a point where they can create the same level sober. But it's not because of the drugs that they were performing well, in my opinion, or the mental illness, they were doing that despite,

Speaker 2 (00:23:26):

So I was telling a buddy this the other day, I get a lot of questions about medication. I was taking medication for 10 years, so I took some anti-psychotic medications, some antidepressant medication, a whole mix. At one time I was taking max dose of five different medications. So before I started seeing a therapist or going to treatment or anything like that, I was so afraid that it would hurt my creative process. I was like, man, right now I am so intentional and exact with what I create, and it takes me three months to write a song and it's masterpiece every single time. And it was a level of Stockholm syndrome. I think I was so used to hurting and leaning on hurt for fuel. I mean, it's like what we're seeing, not to get too broad here, but it's like what we're seeing with people saying like, oh, well coal, we've always used coal and coal.

(00:24:17):

Coal is the best, and there's a resistance to using an alternative fuel source. And I had that. So when I started going to treatment, I was like, oh no, this is going to ruin my creative process. I won't be able to play guitar anymore. I won't be able to write lyrics. And actually over the course of my treatment, my creative process got healthier and healthier and more streamlined. And then all my songs weren't about the same thing anymore, and I actually had a broader perspective, and then now I was afraid to get off medication. I was like, well then when I stop using medication, what's going to happen? And truly the way I see someone, the way I write music is I picture most people picture writing a song like building a building or something. They're like adding levels and stories and mapping it out.

(00:25:04):

They're adding things. But the way I've always viewed music is this is going to sound super hippy dippy, but I feel like the song already exists in its complete form and it's our job as musicians to uncover the song. So I picture it like a fossil, like our job isn't to put bones in the ground, it's to brush away the dirt and sand above the bones until the entire skeleton is visible. So I think that when I was unhealthy, I pictured myself having to add all of these things and create something when really I think that it's our job as creatives to uncover the art that is, this is going to sound so hippie, but the art that is within us that we were supposed to create, that all people are supposed to create. And I think the more that you're dealing with, the more pain and heartache and hardship that is holding you back, it's only preventing you from seeing the full picture, but the more clear mind you have, the easier it is to comprehend what you're uncovering. So now a song feels like it writes itself. When I work on a song, I'll write a song on accident, I write riffs accidentally and before it would take months to put something together.

Speaker 1 (00:26:17):

I think you touched on something that's very, very true. I have met lots of people who felt like getting better would take away their edge. I actually kind of felt that way too. It's very natural. It is very much like a weird Stockholm syndrome that you feel like you derive some sort of a strength or power out of this pain. I think it's a coping mechanism and helps you not feel so bad about being up, but you are completely right that clearer mind equals clearer results. How did you realize that? Was it just something that came about as you were getting treatment, like I'm getting treatment and whoa, my creative process is getting better hell, or did someone have to convince you or you just say, I'm going to risk it, but I have to get better?

Speaker 2 (00:27:08):

So I actually didn't attend treatment by choice. I started on a mandatory plan. So a lot of people with behavioral issues will actually have to attend mandatory counseling in order to stay in school or to stay out of legal trouble or to bypass the legal ramifications of a behavioral issue. We won't put you in juvie, for example, if you attend mandatory counseling and community service or something like that. So not to get too in the weeds about what my life was like back then, I didn't have a lot of control over my behavior, so I actually had to start treatment. It wasn't like, all right, it's time. I guess I'll go. It was not up to me. Looking back, I'm very glad that there are measures like that in place. What I figured was, all right, well now everyone's going to see what happens to my art now that I have to go to treatment and I'm not going to be able to write anymore.

(00:27:56):

And for my first few years in treatment, I couldn't do anything. So it wasn't just that I couldn't write music, it was that I couldn't brush my teeth and I couldn't ride my bike. And it wasn't just this gradual uphill trend where I was getting better, but I did notice that as I started improving in my mental health, it was shocking to me because I would start having ideas just walking around. So I would be at the grocery store shopping and I would have a riff idea and record it in a voice note. And then that started happening all the time, and I realized like, wow, I've probably had ideas like that my whole life. But thoughts of inadequacy or self-harm or anxiety or depression were actually so loud in my head that I couldn't hear the rifts that have always been playing in my brain.

Speaker 1 (00:28:41):

Absolutely. Why do you think that the arts are a magnet for people with mental illness? Not to distract off of what you were just saying, I want to get back to it, but I just want to close this loop real quick. Why do you think that the arts are a magnet for people with mental illness?

Speaker 2 (00:28:58):

I think it's an opportunity for expression. I really like all things artistic. So I love music. I love design. I love fashion. I love architecture. I love nature and photography. And the reason why I'm not that crazy about accounting is because there's an opportunity through art to say basically I think that I was so pained because I couldn't figure out how to communicate what I feel. So if you just read an article that I wrote, you would get some of it. If you heard me speak it, you would get a little more of it. But if you heard a melody and a chord progression with it, it's like one step closer to communicating exactly what's in my head. I don't that anyone will ever communicate exactly what's in their head, but I do think that the more that you're dealing with mentally, the more complex the concept is that you're trying to express. So the more factors you need visual or auditory or whatever, the more components you need to actually portray it accurately.

Speaker 1 (00:29:58):

So you think it just comes down to this innate need that we have to communicate and be understood by other people. And since a lot of people with mental illness can't do that through the normal methods such as your normal socialization, your normal interaction with other people, that they have to resort to these extra methods such as creating songs.

Speaker 2 (00:30:24):

I would also say that this is true for people without any diagnoses. So I would argue that if you're listening to this podcast and you listen to metal, even once in a while, there's something in you that isn't satisfied with other genres or other forms of art. So it's like instead of, I'm picturing someone listening to this podcast and being like, well, yeah, for Johnny, because he's got schizophrenia and bipolar and it's like he needs metal. I don't need metal. And it's like if you didn't need it, you wouldn't listen to it. I think people who are into heavier, more aggressive music, there's something in you that isn't creatively satiated that doesn't completely comprehend or understand other forms of art, because if you didn't need metal in that mix, it wouldn't be there.

Speaker 1 (00:31:07):

I agree with that. I've always had a thought that it's not necessarily that everyone who listens to metal has a mental illness, but there is something psychological, that level of energy and that type of expression satisfies. And if you're open to it, it says something about who you are and not in a judgy sort of way, like, oh, you're a loser or something, but it says something about what it is that you feel is missing or that you need in order to feel whole in the way that art makes people feel. So typically, I do think that if you respond to heavy music, something about fucked up, I mean, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It is coming from somewhere. This is not a wallpaper style of music. Most people can't handle this level of energy and expression. It's not for everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:32:06):

I think just embrace it. There are certain people who, there are people who skydive and I'm like, oh Lord, what on earth is going through your brain that you need that level of stimulus? But then to them they're like, well, skydiving does something for me that skiing doesn't or that playing football and we're the same way. So I think we draw dividing lines, but really it's like you wouldn't be a part of the metal community. I always say this on stage on tour, I'm like, we're not all here because our parents are happily married and we are safely in the upper middle class and we're happy with our job. There's nothing wrong with our car and all of our interpersonal relationships are healthy. We're here because somewhere along the way, something happened and we needed somewhere to turn, and heavy music was there for us. I think we like to say like, oh, someone's from a different community, or someone has a different gender identity or a different skin color, or they listen to that kind of hardcore, I listen to this kind of hardcore and it's like, dude, shut up. Everyone in this room is on the exact same page. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here. It's a Tuesday night, it's 9:30 PM on a Tuesday night and you're at a metal show. What does that say about you? It means that you're one of us.

Speaker 1 (00:33:18):

It's true. Have you noticed that there's a lot of undiagnosed mental illness going on in the mental community?

Speaker 2 (00:33:26):

Even just if you look at the stats, it's like almost half of, oh, it's actually more than half of mental illness goes untreated. And a massive percent of that is due to misdiagnosis and complete lack of diagnosis because people justify their own behaviors.

Speaker 1 (00:33:42):

I was about to say, I think it's number two a lot because at least I know anecdotal data is not really data, but man, I know quite a few people who I have encouraged to go get help because everything that they're saying to me, people open up to me.

Speaker 2 (00:34:00):

If you're in a creative position, people just will dump it on you, bro.

Speaker 1 (00:34:03):

Yeah, man. Especially being a producer and someone who talks for a living, I get it from people all the time, which I'm okay with, but this is just something that happens. So people will open up to me in ways that they don't open up to other people. And a lot of the times I've been sitting there listening and being like, wow, you could go down the checklist, but you have clinical depression. I can't diagnose you, but you do have that. You need to go get help. This is not going to just go away. You're not going to just suddenly feel better. This is a condition and it's okay. It's like if you broke your arm, you would go get that treated. You should really, really go get this treated. And typically the answer will be like, well, I think everybody's fucked up to some degree.

(00:34:49):

It's like, yeah, that's not what I'm saying. Most people who I have had this conversation with will do anything to avoid facing that, which is very unfortunate because I keep seeing it pop up in their lives over and over and over and really, really get in their way. And I think that they don't understand why things keep on going wrong for them. And even though I do think that it's not your fault if you have this, it is your fault if you don't seek treatment because especially if you know that there's treatment out there, you really should go get treated in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:35:30):

Yeah, there's actually an old COPE notes text. This was one of the first texts I ever wrote for COPE notes. And it says something like There's a difference between fault and responsibility. It might not be your fault, and this is kind of a ridiculous example, but it might not be your fault that your neighbor ran over your dog or something terrible,

Speaker 1 (00:35:50):

But it is your responsibility to shoot them in the head for it. Just kidding, don't do that.

Speaker 2 (00:35:54):

No, it's your responsibility to take your dog to the vet. That's your dog. So I think when you use an example like that, it resonates with people. Like what happens when something happens to your dog? You're like, I'll do anything. I'll take this dog to the vet right now. I don't care what time it is or how much it costs, but then when we look at our daily lives, we're like, well, it's not my fault to deal with my PTSD. It was because my parents were abusive. It wasn't my fault. And it's like, no, it's not your fault. It's not at all. But unfortunately, it is your responsibility to do something about it now because it's your life, your parents, there's a slim, slim, slim chance that they're going to say, you know what? We were really awful to him. We're going to take him to therapy and we're going to work through this together. That might not happen in a lot of cases. It is up to you.

Speaker 1 (00:36:37):

I remember this scene in this movie, zero Dark 30. It was a movie about the CIA's hunt for Bin Laden, and there's this one point in the movie where things aren't going well, and this boss comes into the room with the team and he's like, we're fucking up. We've had X amount of years with no progress. You guys seem to think that there's somebody else out there working on this and there is nobody else. There's nobody coming to save us. We are it. We have to do this or nobody does it. I kind of feel the same way about problems like these in your lives. It would be nice to think that someone is going to come along and recognize that you need help and then help you, but if you don't do it, it's probably not going to happen.

Speaker 2 (00:37:25):

Dude, even when I was in treatment, I was like, all, well, I showed up. I did my part. You're the therapist. You're supposed to fix me. And it's like, no, dude, your job is all of it. I thought when I started taking medication, I'm like, well, goodbye bipolar disorder. And it's like, no, sir. Just like that. All this stuff does all these resources in treatment. What they do, if they're good resources, they're arming you to handle it. It's not like you show up and you dump out all your baggage in front of your therapist and you're like, Hey, make sense of this. No, they help you make sense of it because if that therapist does the work for you, you're going to need them for you will never be healthier. You will be dependent the idea that, okay, I sought treatment and then my work is done. No, your work has just begun and you'll work for the rest of your life, but there is nothing more worth your time and effort and energy than you. It's your only asset.

Speaker 1 (00:38:20):

It's true. How do you get people to see that? Man, I find it really, really frustrating when I try to encourage people to take this on. People who I care about, who I feel really, really need it, and they're just shot down to it. And it would be easy if people didn't open up to me, but they do. So I'm always hearing this stuff and it's in my nature to want to help people, but this is something I can't help with. I'm sure that you encounter this all the time.

Speaker 2 (00:38:51):

Unfortunately, you can't just make somebody do anything. I know, because at that point you'd just pick them up like a puppy dog by the skin on the back of their neck and plop them into treatment and be like, Hey, just listen. But a lot of times it's questions. What I've found is when I am my most emotional, I make very irrational decisions. So if someone combats that with logical questions, it forces me to reassess what I'm looking at. I'm going to try to cook up an example right now. So let's say I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to treatment because that doctor won't understand me or I don't have the money or whatever. I'll put out any excuse I have. And then if a friend said, Hmm, we don't want to go to treatment, do you feel healthy right now? And I'd be like, well, no, obviously not. I don't feel super healthy. And then it's like, okay, so if you didn't spend money and time on treatment, what could you spend money on that would be a better investment and your time, that would be a better investment that would lead to a higher quality of life for you? And I'd be like,

Speaker 1 (00:39:52):

Wow. So those are great questions. By the way, I've gotten responses. I've asked some of those too. That's always my go-to is to try to appeal to people's logic when they're not seeing things clearly appeal to their logic so that they can put two and two together and come to the answer for themselves. But oftentimes their resistance almost feels rehearsed and very, very heavy. I can't afford it. It's too hard to line something up. I don't have insurance. I hate doctors. I went, but I didn't like the person I spoke to and it's going to be three months before I can get another appointment. These are actually real things. That's the thing. These are real issues that people encounter when they're trying to seek help and they use those as reasons to just quit.

Speaker 2 (00:40:47):

I think the term treatment is so scary and people think that seeking treatment is going and living in a hospital or being arrested, but the first steps of treatment for somebody could be literally going to sleep earlier or talking to their girlfriend about something they're frustrated about or taking fish oil like a $14 supplement or even all of that aside, like reading a book that might help them, like a chapter a day or a couple pages a day. People don't realize that all that matters is that you start the process. It could be the smallest step ever, but momentum builds with consistency. So you don't need to start by calling up a therapist and showing up. You can start wherever you need to. Just the important part is that you do something.

Speaker 1 (00:41:32):

I think it's key to remember something that you said about 15 minutes ago that the therapist's job isn't to do it all for you. So at the end of the day, therapist is a supplement to the work that you're doing, just like the medication is a supplement to the work that you're doing. The medication, especially with antidepressants, won't just work on its own. You don't take it and poof, the depression is gone. All it does is if it works, if you have the right medication for you, all it does is take whatever symptoms or some of the symptoms, not even all of them, but some of the symptoms and it turns down the volume on them. It obviously there's side effects that every medication has side effects, but the medication isn't supposed to fix you. It's just supposed to alleviate the symptoms enough to where you can take the actions necessary to heal. And so you can take those actions without medication, without therapy, it's going to be a lot harder. But if the big thing blocking you is that you hate doctors or you can't afford a doctor, well, what you just said is right. You can go take a walk, you can get your omega threes. You can read

Speaker 2 (00:42:49):

Or even start journaling. I keep a Word document. People are like, I don't want to buy a journal or I don't like writing with my pen. Whatever. There is a solution for whatever qualms that you have. I keep a Word document where I type in every single day before I go to bed. I have 10 things from the day that we're good that I'm thankful for a numbered one through 10. And then underneath that I type what I need help with, what I hope will happen in the next week or month or year stuff that I'm working on, stuff that's in my head. And each entry is maybe a half a page typed, it takes me eight minutes. People think that they have to start taking five medications or start seeing a counselor literally every day. And it's like, no, you can start wherever you are. And there's a part in the TED Talk that I did actually where I say that any personal growth resource is like a cast on a broken leg. The cast doesn't heal your leg. Your leg heals itself. Your body, your anatomy is designed to heal those things, but the cast keeps everything in place so that your leg can heal itself correctly. And I think when you look at, it's exactly what you said about medication or therapy, those things only exist to make the process of you doing the work a little more guided.

Speaker 1 (00:44:07):

And with that, there's the very important point that if you did go to a therapist and you tried and you hated that person for whatever reason or they were wrong for you, you don't have to stay with them. They are just a guide to help you. So if they're not helpful, there's more of them. And I'll just say that for me, it's very hard to find a therapist because I'm always smarter than them. And this is not like a humble brag. I'm just being honest. I end up out lapping them mentally very quickly. And it's very frustrating for me that they don't get me. So I have to find someone who can handle people like me, which is tough to find. Actually. The way that I've found mine is by watching TED Talks and looking for psychiatrists or therapists who are published and highly motivated people figuring that if they're that about their shit, kind of like I am about mine, we'll have more of an understanding. Not that I'm looking for a therapist to be my friend or anything, but I do think that a therapist needs to somewhat understand who it is that they're talking to. I go out of my way to find people who might work for me, and I encourage everyone to do the same. So again, even if you're not in as fortunate of a financial situation as me, which I understand not everyone is, you can always decide that someone is not right for you and look for somebody else and you should. If that's the case.

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

I did that with medication too. I started taking medication and it flat out the first medication I started taking flat out made no difference. I felt exactly the same. Obviously it doesn't happen overnight. I think there's a two month, six to eight week period where they wean you onto the medication and then they check in with you after two or three months or this is what they did with me. And three months in I was like, Hey, I feel no different. I'm just sleepier and I don't like that. So then we weaned off of that and tried something else. And the same, the first three or four therapists I went to, I left without paying. I was so mad just because they were asking those fluffy Bs questions like, well, how does that make you feel? And this is all totally normal. And I just left. I knew that

Speaker 1 (00:46:27):

You are valuable.

Speaker 2 (00:46:29):

If I was going to go through the trouble of treatment, it sure as heck wasn't going to be with someone or something that didn't help. And the same is true with church. The first hundred churches I to, I wanted to scream and leave halfway through because I was like, this is total trash. And it took me literally years to find a church that I was willing to go back to a second time. And it's like, I think a lot of us think, I'll use this as an example. The first heavy show I ever went to was a full-blown chaos in the Warriors. This was in the mid two thousands. The show was terrible, not in that there wasn't a lot of people there or not in that the sound was bad or anything, but I had a terrible experience. There were a bunch of fights and the drummer was throwing drumsticks at people.

(00:47:14):

The show got shut down, the police came, people flipped merch tables, one of those. I'm like a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid. And I'm like, that was an absolute nightmare. And imagine if I left and said, I don't like metal shows. I don't like hardcore shows. I don't like this type of music. And I never went back. That's what people don't understand. If a medication doesn't work for you, try something else. If a therapist doesn't work for you, try something else. If a church doesn't work for you, if a friend group doesn't work for you, if an online course doesn't work for you, there's no rule in the book that says, I guess this is my lot in life forever. If something isn't helping you cut it out of your life yesterday,

Speaker 1 (00:47:51):

How long did it take for you to realize that that's how you should approach these things?

Speaker 2 (00:47:55):

I think it was a few medications in. So when I started taking that medication, I told my first medication. I told them like, Hey, this isn't helping. And they were like, well, we should leave it on for a little while longer. And I was like, okay, I don't know anything. I'm just a kid. And it's like, no false. Looking back, I should have been like, I know how I feel and I know that better than you do. So I think it was after a few times of my psychiatrist saying, no, I really think this drug will work. And then I was like, what? Are you getting kickbacks from this place or something? I told you maybe, yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:48:30):

Actually maybe

Speaker 2 (00:48:31):

I told you it's not helping me, and you keep prescribing the exact same dose. You're not even trying to wean me off. It actually left my psychiatrist over it. And I think the real eye opener when it came to therapy was I was sitting down with this therapist. It was my first, this was before I found a therapist that I actually stuck with. This was not the first therapist I met. This is maybe the third, because the other ones I'm like, I don't really know how I feel. So this one, I sit down in his office and I'm like, Hey, I don't know how to explain to you how I feel. So I brought a poem that I wrote and it was called The Wedding, and it was a poem about me marrying my own death. Suicide was personified as this beautiful woman. And the poem was about me marrying her, basically about me dying.

(00:49:15):

And then it was like this beautiful poem about totally glorifying my own death. And I was like, there, that's how I feel. I don't know why it's driving me up a wall. I'm really unhappy. And he goes, I'll never forget this. I hope I do, but I don't think I'll ever forget this. He goes, yeah, this is very normal for kids your age. No, it's not all teenagers feel this way. And I'm like, all teenagers write love poems about their own death. And I got up and I couldn't even drive at the time. I was 14, so my mom dropped me off at this place. So I literally got up, I ripped the sheet of paper. I was so mad. And this was eight minutes into our session and I didn't have a fricking cell phone either. So I just got up and left and waited for my mom to pick me up.

(00:50:02):

I walked across the street and sat in a Publix parking lot until my mom picked me up. I was so furious. And that was when I realized it's insulting, right? No one is going to feed me Bs psycho Bible. If I came to you for help and you don't help, I am leaving flat out. And it was the first little breath of autonomy that I felt like no one's going to force me to sit somebody who isn't helping me. And then I was like, you know what? I'm on the hunt because think about significant others. I've dated, I don't know, a handful of girls and I'm single right now because I didn't want to be with any of them. And there's nothing wrong with that. No one expects you to marry the girl you kissed on the cheek when you were 11. So I don't know why we treat treatment like that.

Speaker 1 (00:50:49):

I think it's because oftentimes people are not experienced enough to know that there's other options out there. I think it's one of the symptoms actually of the illness, especially with depression. With depression, you feel like there's no hope. And so if you end up with a therapist that sucks for you, your illness will say, there's no hope. There's no hope of finding I'm stuck with this shit. This is it. So I actually think that one of the reasons that people with depression especially have such a hard time finding a good therapist or speaking up for themselves is the depression itself speaking. It is one of the symptoms that hopelessness feeling. And when you don't feel hope, that affects your behavior a hundred percent. So I think that you're unique. I'm unique also in that whether or not we have that illness or some of those symptoms, we just do our thing anyways. That's not normal.

Speaker 2 (00:51:50):

I don't like the phrase rock bottom. I hear a lot of people say like, well, once they hit rock bottom, they'll figure it out or they'll seek help or whatever. And I don't personally believe in that construct, but I do look back at my own life and see that at a certain point, I got so upset with how I felt. I was so frustrated with feeling the same way every day that it was sort of like it lit a fire under me that's like, okay, it's literally my OCD makes it so that I can't touch people and it takes me an hour and 45 minutes to make a sandwich or I do something about this. And it was like I had to give myself an ultimatum because it was more excruciating to be alive than the idea of not feeling anything. And I was like, this is a dangerous dichotomy where I would rather not feel anything than feel the pain and frustration that I feel. And I'm like, dude, if I don't do something now, I'm done for I'm toast.

Speaker 1 (00:52:44):

One of the most powerful things that I learned from Tony Robbins was the idea that people are motivated by one big idea, get out of pain and into pleasure. And if you want to be motivated to go do something and you're not at that time, he teaches you how to associate enough pain with it that you'll do anything to avoid it. He often says that just associating pleasure with something is not enough. There has to be enough pain associated with staying the way you are, that you'll do anything to change it. And actually, when I decided to lose weight, get healthy, beat depression, all that, there was so much pain that I associated with staying the same way. I mean, being alive was pain 24 7 that I had to do something about it. There was no, I mean, what's the other option to keep feeling this way?

(00:53:49):

Fuck that. It is like the worst thing I can ever imagine. And I will say, I know that people have experienced worse, but all we have is our own experience. So that's another thing. I'm sure that you've encountered this, that people will downplay their own illness or issues or hardships because other people, unquote, have it harder. It's a way to say, I'll be fine. I don't need to get help. There's people in the world who have a far more screwed up upbringing or they went to war and got a leg blown off. I don't have a leg blown off. I don't need help. Do you encounter that?

Speaker 2 (00:54:30):

Yeah. And it's actually a defense mechanism that I used to use that I tie into the whole toxic masculinity thing a lot of times. Or you hear a lot of times big girls don't cry or men don't cry or toughen up and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (00:54:46):

I've had girls give me these excuses too.

Speaker 2 (00:54:49):

Oh yeah. The mentality is if you were really mentally strong, you would figure it out your own. But in my experience, the truth is, and this is going to sound really convicting to a lot of people. I'm not trying to convict anybody, so I'll say it about myself. Me not doing something about my mental and emotional health was a display of my weakness. It was not a display of strength for me to tough it out and just force my way through it, it took way more strength and courage and bravery and initiative to do something about it to fight. Here's the way I look at it. You don't think you're strong when you're going with a current, like if you're canoeing, the water is carrying you. There's nothing strong about that. If you turn around and try to paddle your way up the river upstream, that's what takes strength and people think, oh, if I just keep on going the same way and I'm handling it on my own, that's what makes me strong. No, what makes you strong is turning around and trying to paddle up a river. That is beast.

Speaker 1 (00:55:52):

Yeah, but what if they decide, this river doesn't even matter for me because other people have it way harder.

Speaker 2 (00:55:57):

They're not in your boat.

Speaker 1 (00:55:58):

Yeah, fair enough. That's something I wish people would understand is that our own experience is all we've got. You aren't anybody else and everything that you feel is relative to you, so it really doesn't matter how much harder or how much easier anybody else has it. All that really matters is what you need in order to be set. Right. I guess,

Speaker 2 (00:56:21):

Dude, I actually wrote a guest post. I want to read one paragraph of it to you. So I wrote this paragraph about the misconceptions about comparing our pains to other people's pains, so it's a list of different misperceptions and number three is it didn't take this person in parentheses this long to get over it when they went through this and what I wrote is, no it didn't, at least not judging by what we can see from the outside and of course operating under the assumption that they went through the exact same situation we are experiencing right now with the exact same people and they're dealing with the exact same feelings and frustrations and hopes and worries and childhood experiences and family dynamics and friend groups and financial situations and employment arrangements and geographical locations and triggers and stressors and habits and traumas and disappointments and trust issues and motivations as we are.

(00:57:14):

That seems pretty likely, right? And I think we fall into this trap where we're like, oh, this person went through so much more and they're so much stronger than me and it's like, dude, the idea that any of us are on the same plane, unfortunately I see it with, I have to bring up Chester from Lincoln Park and so many people say, whoa, he was in such a big band and he had so much money and he looked so happy with his family. And it's like if something like that isn't a wake up call that other people's experiences might be different than you think from the outside, then I don't know what will be.

Speaker 1 (00:57:49):

If you were able to actually understand what another person's experience was, then you wouldn't be surprised when millionaires throw themselves off of buildings. I think that that's a great paragraph, by the way. Something that audio people listening can relate to. Just if that was hard for you to understand, think about it like this. The same way that we say that you can't ever copy somebody else's mix or production because you can't recreate the 10,000 different variables that went into that particular mix. You can't from the time and place in which it was created to the feelings of everyone involved to the particular chains to every little detail,

Speaker 2 (00:58:32):

The humidity in the room.

Speaker 1 (00:58:34):

Yeah. Did they start working on it at noon or 1:00 PM and where was their brain at noon versus where was it at 1:00 PM All those things. If the guitar player wrote the riff 15 minutes later, would it have been on the same strings? Would it have the same low end? So many infinite little details into why every mix is unique. You can look at it the same way. Every situation, every human situation is completely unique and so you can't pretend to really understand anybody else's situation. And also it's got nothing to do with your own. We are alone in that way.

Speaker 2 (00:59:10):

Yeah, that's what I mean. No one else is in your boat. It's like even if you think you're in the same river, no one else is in your boat. It doesn't make any difference. And that's hard for me, all things considered, I'm in a pretty small band. I'm not playing amphitheaters. So when I see other young bands blow up, I think like, oh man, must be so nice to start a band and two years later you're on tour with corn or whatever and it's like, Hey, guess what? All of these guys, maybe their uncle is in corn, or maybe the right person heard the right music video because it came across their newsfeed, or a band dropped off that tour at the last minute and they needed a local California base band to do the tour or there's infinity other variables and all say like, oh man, why didn't we get that opportunity?

(00:59:56):

It's like, because you didn't, sometimes there isn't this overarching, why did this band blow up? My guitarist has to remind me of this all the time. He'll say, because they did the internet chose that the internet will choose a video of a cat eating yogurt over a video of a fireman saving someone from a burning building because that's what the internet shows. There's no logic or reason behind it. Just like I've had disappointments that are huge that haven't felt huge to me in terms of my life path. But then I've had really, really tiny disappointments, literally hoping that I would qualify for this discount on breakfast or something. It's like, Hey, I have a coupon code. And they're like, oh, that doesn't apply after 11:00 AM and I'm like, it feels devastating. And it's not the stimulus, it's the way we interpret it that makes it devastating or not.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):

How do you stop yourself when you go down one of those, I'll call 'em bad interpretation spirals or pathways where it just starts to feed itself because then we all do it and I think we don't even realize that we're doing it. We will have a thought or something will affect us that isn't the way that we wanted it to or something good will happen, but it'll trigger something bad and the hamster wheel will start and the associated nature of the brain will go from one thought to the next to the before it. You're a hundred thoughts downstream and each one is worse than the one before it. Have you figured out a way to stop that before it goes too far?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):

So it's funny you would say hamster, because I do this thing, I've never talked about this in an interview.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):

Like I said, people open up to me.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):

Yeah, I've done a fair amount of interviews and I've never talked about this, but I do it a lot. I call it, this is going to sound so weird, but I call it Where's the rat? So I ask myself, is this really the thing? So let's use the breakfast coupon code for example. It's like, man, I thought my whole meal altogether was going to be seven bucks and now it's like eight 50 before tax. And then it's like, so now we're talking like nine, 12, and then I probably have to tip a couple dollars and now it's over $10 and I only want to spend seven 50 and I really get hyper stressed out, like panic attack level over it. And what I have to do is ask myself, I literally ask myself, where's the rat? Which translates to, is this the thing? Is this the thing that you're this upset about?

(01:02:28):

Is this the thing that is going to break you right now and spiral you? And most of the time it's not. And then I say, well, where is it? And it's like, am I actually embarrassed? Am I actually frustrated about something that happened this morning? Actually I wasn't really happy with my food and I don't think I should pay that much. If I can more closely identify where the anxiety or frustration or negativity is coming from, I can actually put my feelings in their place. So I'll ask myself, this actually happened recently. I tried to pull into a parking spot in downtown Tampa and there was a fricking, those smart cars that are like three inches long and it was in the space and I couldn't see it, and it was the only spot available and parking really stresses me out and I have to go to downtown Tampa a lot for work.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):

I guess it wasn't really an available spot then if it was

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):

Exactly. So I thought it was the only available spot. And I go to Poland, I saw it and I was like, I am going to explode. And I almost, I mean I have a calm down playlist on Spotify that I play whenever I think I'm going to lose my temper, and it really helps me. A lot of times I'll play my calm down playlist and then I'll ask myself, is it really the parking spot that I'm stressed about? And it's like, well, no, it's actually that I left the house late and now if I have to look for another parking spot, I'm going to be late for a meeting and that's my fault. And I'm frustrated with myself for leaving my house late because I should have sent that email after the meeting. There was not a time constraint. And the more you can closely identify what it is that made you frustrated in the first place, if you can trace it back, where's the rat? If you can actually find the rat, you realize that the thing that you're freaking out about right now is small potatoes, and most likely the rat, wherever you find it is also small potatoes. It just snowballed.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):

Interestingly enough also you mentioned it's that email and you're frustrated with yourself. You misprioritized something that had a time crunch factor versus something that didn't. There is an element of taking ownership over your own dumb decisions as well, which I think is very hard, very hard to do. I don't think that people want to constantly think about dumb decisions they make and then they end up getting frustrated and it comes out in weird ways that they're not aware of and they respond kind of on autopilot like you were doing. This sounds to me like a way to break that autopilot by asking yourself where the rat is. You're forcing yourself to face, I call 'em dumb blonde moments, but that add up over time. And no one wants to think of everything as their own fault when lots of things are, and if you just learned to prioritize your time better, you wouldn't be in this stressful scenario.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):

I mean, even when it comes to the where's the rat thing? Sometimes it will be someone else's rat. You'll be like, no, it really is because of the parking space. I did it quick inventory in my life. Everything is fine. I did everything I could and it is somebody else's fault. That is just as freeing. Whether you identify, wow, it was something preventable that I can fix moving forward so that I don't make this mistake in the future, or wow, I did everything in my power and it still failed. Well, I guess it was on somebody else's hands. Both of those processes provide you with the same amount of peace. But if you never go through that process, you basically allow something to build momentum. But where's the rat, which is what I call it? You can call it whatever you want. I like that name.

(01:06:08):

It's an opportunity to check that momentum and keep it from plaguing you literally nine hours later and your wife gets home and you snap at her and she's like, what's wrong with you? And you're like, you know what? I don't feel like dealing with this right now. And you're like, wow, my wife isn't the rat. She didn't do anything. And then it's like, well, my drive home was fine. And you keep tracing it back until you find that stimulus and then you just deal with it. You can't let something like that reign for too long.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):

I do something similar. I haven't named it anything, but when I find myself getting frustrated with somebody who doesn't deserve that level of reaction from me, I've started to pay attention to when I'm giving something, a disproportionate amount of anger or just disproportionately feeling hateful towards this person. They really didn't do anything that bad. Why the hell am I feeling this way? Why do I want to end knowing them? Why do I want it all to go away? Why do I feel such hate for them in this moment when they really didn't do anything? And so then I start to think about what am I actually angry about? And it tends to be something that I just didn't address from earlier that's just popping up. And I started doing that a couple years ago. Actually. Wish I had started doing it a lot earlier. People have said that I've become a lot nicer recently.

(01:07:36):

They say, you don't get as angry as you used to. You're a lot nicer to deal with. And I think that it's in large part because I've been identifying what it is that sets me off and gets me feeling hateful. And nine out of 10 times, it's that I didn't address something one out of 10 times though, it'll actually be what the person did. And in that case, I'll deal with it. I'll deal with it how I need to, but those nine out of 10 times I get rid of something that could have caused conflict, which is my behavior. As a result, my relationships are way, way better and things are going way way better with other people. At no point in time are we saying that you should be a pushover or that some things don't happen to you or that everything in your life is your own fault.

(01:08:24):

That's not the case. We live in a world filled with people and they take actions too, and those actions affect us. And sometimes shit happens that's just not our fault. Or other people mess up and screw things up and you got to deal with it and that's fine. You have to deal with it. But it's important to realize when it is that you're reacting to an actual thing that somebody else caused versus something that you caused. And you're right, that does give you freedom because you're aware of what's going on, at least as aware as you can be.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):

The acknowledgement is something that's important. Like you said, if you just look at it. And something that I always think of is my mom would tell me that when I was a kid, I think all kids do this. I hope all kids do this and that. I wasn't just somehow the most annoying kid on the planet, but I would go, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. For ever until she would just look at me and then she would look at me and she'd go, what? Scream at me? And then I'd be like, I love you, or hi, or something totally inconsequential. That did not deserve her attention at all. And I've found that a lot of my mental and emotional health issues, like my nagging thoughts or my unwanted thoughts or unhealthy thoughts, they will repeat themselves until I look right at them and I go, what?

(01:09:46):

And then it's like, oh, all I wanted you to do was just look at me. I think we think that we have to wrestle these thoughts to the ground and pin them down and stab them in the heart with a stake. They're a vampire or something. And it's like, no. Literally the moment you look at them, they're like, oh, okay. I just wanted you to know that. I think if you can separate yourself from those thoughts mentally instead of thinking that the thoughts are inside of you, you turn to a thought metaphorically and you're like, what the heck do you want? And it's like, oh, I just wanted you to know that I think your hair looks bad today. And you're like, fine. Okay. Are you happy? Thank you. And it's like, yeah, thanks. So I think a lot of people think they have to ignore thoughts like that. I think in my experience, what's helped me the most is looking directly at the thought and just being like, what the heck do you want? And listening for one second. And then the thought is, okay, as long as you know and you're like, yeah, thanks a lot for that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):

Back to what you said about journaling. You said you journal every single night. Does it help with that? It has to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):

Journaling is the single, I don't want to say single most helpful thing, there's been a lot, but I will say that there's nothing more revealing than saying how you feel without any repercussions. So if I tell you something and then you respond a certain way, I'll actually subconsciously change what I'm sharing so that I get a favorable response from you. So the magic of journaling is that you don't have to cushion anything. You can say something terrible in your journal, something awful, and then you look at it and go, yikes, I didn't even know. I felt like, and the reason you didn't know is because you've been pretending you didn't feel like that for the sake of everybody around you. So journaling is the most revealing way to get to know yourself, and it takes no time. You don't need anybody else. It's free. I'll talk aloud in my car to myself, and that's journaling. No one's judging me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):

It does that thing that you were just talking about of separating you from your thoughts. I find that even on a business level that it's very, very important to do. Those of you who are listening who are like,

(01:11:46):

I was listening to this podcast for entrepreneurial stuff, even if you're not journaling your feelings about things, just getting a thought that you have out of your head and onto paper or onto the screen, whether you're thinking of a new product idea. Just when I'm thinking of things that I want to do, I get so many thoughts and everybody does, but I get so many of them and not all of them are good. Some of them downright suck, and I need to be able to know which ones are worth bringing to other people. And it all starts with writing them down. Man, if I just blurted out every single idea I had to my partners, they would get crazy with me. And I used to do that. Sometimes I've stopped doing that because you get an idea in the shower and be like, yeah, and then you play it out. It sounds like a great idea. Then you write it down and you start playing it out and it's like not so good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):

And so there's more to it than just figuring out what your triggers are and preventing yourself from being an asshole to other people or from getting too frustrated or going down a pathway that leads to panic attacks and anxiety. It also is very helpful for career purposes and productivity. It can keep you from pursuing bad ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):

Oh yeah. So I used to work at an ad agency and I was a copywriter, so I had to write video scripts for commercials and I had to write headlines for billboards and ad campaigns and stuff. And literally what I do is I have a dictionary open, I say have currently, but this is what I used to do at that job. I had a dictionary, a thesaurus, I had a bunch of magazines open, so all this source material, and I'd have a blank word document and say I would have to name a company, which is one of the hardest things. I don't know if any of you guys listening have ever had to name a band or a company. It's like the most I have. Yeah, it's the biggest decision you could make. I have a blank word document with a list, and I type out every single idea that I have, and it's like 30, 50, 70 ideas, 90 ideas, and almost all of them, if not all of them are terrible, but writing them out and every single copywriter I know does this, you write out everything, every single tiny little idea, and then you go through and pare down, pare down, pa down, pare down.

(01:14:16):

And sometimes none of your ideas are good, but the act of separating the idea from yourself physically, you're putting it on your computer now. It's not you anymore. If it's your idea, you defend it even if it's bad. But if it's on a computer screen and you're separated, you're allowed to identify separately from it and then say, you know what? We got to delete this idea and it doesn't hurt me because that idea isn't me. But if the idea lives in you, you defend the idea because you think it's you, it's not so separate yourself from it so you can view it as a third party.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):

Absolutely. When I came up with the nail, the mix name, I came up with it in my head and I made fun of myself. I was like, that name's stupid.

(01:14:59):

But I wrote it down and I also wrote down about 40 other possibilities, and I was trying so hard to get something that's serious and catchy and all these criteria that were so important to me, and I just thought that nail the mix sounded so, I don't know, unprofessional or gimmicky or whatever. And through the act of writing down all those names, I realized actually it's the perfect name. Perfect because it's exactly what the product is and who's going to not remember that it's perfect and it's not taken. And everybody else in that space was thinking of very proper kind of names, something mentors or I know that we're called URM Academy, but something to the effect of Great Mix Academy or shit like that. That's what people were putting out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):

It's not memorable.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):

No. And so even though my initial feeling was this name is stupid, after putting it up against all those other names that were trying to be serious, I realized it was by far superior. That's only because I wrote everything down. I realized that I can't trust my initial thought. Then I started to analyze why did I feel embarrassed about that name at first? Why was I uncomfortable with it? And then when I started to play that, where's the Rack Game? I started to realize that that name is actually so catchy that people are going to remember it. And if this sucks, I'm going to be associated with this. So really it was just my fear of it failing talking to me. I recognize this is the one. And yeah, if it sucks, it's memorable enough that people will remember it and will remember that it sucks and associate it with me.

(01:16:52):

So I think that no matter what you're doing, it helps to get your thoughts out. Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock Loose Opeth Ma Shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(01:17:48):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to I Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multitracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(01:18:42):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. So let's talk about COPE notes. I don't want to ask you the questions that you get asked all the time about COPE Notes because there's plenty of information out there about it and other interviews where you talk about it. And I'm going to talk about the basic idea of it in the introduction to this. So I don't want to talk about the typical thing. Something I'm curious about is we share something in that we both come from the music world, and as far as I know, you don't have a legit business background.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):

No.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):

Right? I don't either. I dropped out of Music College and then started a studio and my band got signed and Studio thing kept going, and then one day I started a business and I didn't know anything about business and taught myself and have been figuring it out as I go. Thankfully, it's worked out, but I'm imagining that it's a similar sort of situation for you. Am I right wrong?

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):

Yeah. I think anyone who is creative enough to start a band and design album artwork and write music and connect with agents and managers and labels and tour, and you have to take so much initiative as an artist that if you're listening to this and you are either someone who runs their own studio or is producing or mixing bands right now or you're a musician, you already have half the skills you would need to run a business anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):

I agree with that. You just need to know how to repurpose them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):

Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):

And you have to understand what's important when it comes to a business versus what's important in a band to completely different worlds. But I do agree with you that you do have a lot of the skills already. If you've run a studio or a band, you do have some of them, but what about the ones that you were missing? Where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):

So this might not be the greatest advice, but in my experience, if I've ever wanted to learn something bad enough, I could learn it. And I think if you're really driven, there are infinity resources. It's not like you have to take, I don't know. For me it was like YouTube and then I watched some online courses and then I listened to some podcasts, and then I did online tutorials and I learned some development stuff and some business plan stuff. And it's like right now, I mean it's 2020, you could Google the launch codes and probably find 'em. Everything is at our fingertips right now, and if you don't know something right now, you could know it like the back of your hand within a couple months if you really set aside time to learn it. So for me, it's been for coding. Luckily we have a CTO now who takes care of that, but at first it was me doing online things where on the left you type in the code and on the right is what it looks like and you just keep messing around until it works.

(01:21:56):

It's like lots, you're not going to have a CTO at first. Yeah, and you also, in my opinion, I think you have to be willing to suck. So my buddy Joe who runs a company, he said, if you launch and everything's perfect, you launched too late. I agree. You have to just be willing for your minimum viable product. The first version of COPE Notes was literally me repurposing SMS marketing software to send a mass text to everybody on our list. And I was writing a new text every day. It was like the Sloppiest most last minute thing, but it was like I needed to put something out. I'm like a perfectionist. I think a lot of people who work in production can be like that too. So just if you don't ship something now and build on it while it's already out, you'll edit it to death and it'll be seven years from now and you will never have shared your idea with the world.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):

I completely agree with that, man. The first version of Nail the Mix was Woo. It was just a weird shadow of what it is now, and that's okay. It wasn't supposed to be perfect when it came out. It was just supposed to come out. I think that the more you do this too, the more you realize that there's no way to know what perfect is. If you think that you're waiting because something has to be better or perfect, you are kind of assuming that you could predict the future in a way, and you're kind of assuming that you have more powers, more mental powers than a human really does because in reality, you have no idea how the public is going to react to this. You are not the public and you have no idea what their actual problems are going to be. I mean, you can guess, and sometimes you'll be right.

(01:23:46):

Oftentimes you'll be wrong, but nothing is better than actual data when it comes to tweaking a product. And you're not going to get actual data unless you put it out there. So you're just guessing unless you put it out there. And what have you spent those seven years? You just talked about guessing wrong? Hell no. Yeah, you have to get MVP stands for minimum viable product. That means that kind of like with medication, minimum effective dose, what is the most stripped down version of this idea that is still put together enough to make progress out in the world that you can charge money for and whatever that is, go with that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):

Dude, it's so funny. We think that well bands write demos and authors turn in drafts and people who write movies have to turn in scripts that are then read around a table forever. And it's like the thing that you see by the time it's popular is 800 times more honed in and perfected than the first version. But we like to think that the other day someone, I was at a baby shower and I was talking to somebody and they said something about Beyonce. We were talking about vocal coaches, and I'm like, yeah, I bet Beyonce has a vocal coach. And she was like, no, Beyonce is so good. And it's like saying, I don't think Dwayne the Rock Johnson works out so strong. And it's like, what the heck are you talking about? Everybody who is amazing at whatever it is, they do whatever you think like, oh, this guy is the best guitarist or whatever. Do you know how many awful, awful riffs he wrote and how many things that he tried to do tried to pull off certain licks that he couldn't get down or the phrasing wasn't right? And it's like, of course you don't see that stuff, but when you're building you see all of it and you get in your head about it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):

Yeah, I think that it's something that's really funny about really famous musicians is them for what they're great at,

(01:25:51):

Especially when they build a legacy BB King playing blues or something. I bet you he couldn't play Neoclassical just going to bet no value judgment, but just saying you know him for what you know him for. You don't know him for anything else. Only he knows himself for whatever else he could do or felt he sucked at. You never get to see that stuff except for actually in comedy, which is kind of fun because comedians do all those warmup shows, crowdwork shows, which is really interesting. So you get to watch the art develop in public, which is really crazy to me. But standup comedy aside, you're right, you don't get to see that stuff when you have a great sports player. You don't get to see all the sports that they suck at.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):

Even what you just said earlier about your beard company, everyone listening right now knows you from production and URM, they don't know you from the beard stuff. And it's like, that's okay. I am a really bad skateboarder and I sprained my ankle or I sprained my wrist when I started skateboarding and I just stopped. I just absolutely quit. I think that it's important what my buddy Joe was saying about shipping something soon. And even if it's sloppy, you got to ship it. The sooner you find out that an idea won't work, you can start pursuing one that will. And the sooner that you realize that your idea will work, the sooner you can actually start pursuing it full force. So the idea that waiting another year or two to perfect it is going to save you anything is false, because like you said, you won't know whether to drop it or double down until it's in people's hands.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):

So how long was it from the point that you had the COPE notes idea to the MVP?

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):

It's kind of complicated because I ran versions that were kind of like this before. So I ran something called Better People, which didn't exist. You probably can't even look it up. It was like eight months. And it was basically an in-person mental health support group for the metal and hardcore community. It was supposed to be scalable, turns out it wasn't. So it completely folded. There's probably nothing about it online anymore. And then I ran something called not a Therapist, which was peer counseling through Skype and text and email and FaceTime and whatever people wanted to choose. And that existed for six to eight months, no closer to a year actually. But I closed that as well because it wasn't scalable. So by the time I had the idea for COPE notes, it was originally going to be a part of not a therapist, like a component of it.

(01:28:28):

And I had a mentor who said, out of everything you're telling me you want to do, I wanted to do a podcast and vlog and make merchandise and write a book and do all of these stuff. And he was like, what's the one thing that you think will help the most people? And I said, well, the text thing, of course. And he's like, literally drop everything and focus on only doing that. So from the time he said that to me until the time I bought the domain name, until the time I actually sent our first text, it was literally less than two months. I was like F this. I have to get it out there.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):

Once you know what to do, it's funny how quickly things can move.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):

I actually launched it earlier than I wanted to because there were a series of crises in the news, there were some shootings happening and then there were some celebrity deaths all by suicide and overdose. And I was like, if I wait another six months to launch this, am I going to miss people who need it now? Even the bad version, if the bad version can help someone now and it makes me look a little stupid, or the better version that I launch in six months makes me look better, but I miss three people who might not be alive, then it might be too little too late, then I need to start it today.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):

Makes perfect sense. So you started just as an SMS thing, and that makes sense too because it's something that you could wrap your head around given your skillset at the time. That's what you could make work. If you could have made something far more complex work, you would've done it, but you were working within your abilities and you still made it work, which is impressive.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):

Dude, I think people try to overcomplicate stuff like

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):

They do.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):

I just spoke at a panel for data and population health and they were talking about how we need all of these insights and we need to know what strand of DNA is associated with the smell under their armpit. And we can use that data to verify what the shape of their front tooth is so we can assign the right dental cream. And it's like, dude, you guys are so up to your eyeballs and data that you're not going to launch a product until 2029. Just start something now and then collect feedback, COPE notes. We've texted 13,000 people or something and probably a good thousand of them have filled out our feedback form. And that information is so valuable. We've made massive changes to our system improvements. People said like, you know what? I don't like that you're texting me this late or I don't like the wording of this specific text. And people are afraid of criticism, but criticism is what's going to allow your product to become way better. And if you are too busy perfecting it behind the scenes, people won't tell you how they feel. And then your product is going to be, even if it's a great product, people are going to be pretty salty about it because you didn't take their feedback into account, you only took your own.

Speaker 1 (01:31:18):

Absolutely. And it takes that guesswork out. We just did a massive survey about six months ago. We wanted to know where could we be better? Where are we good if you leave, why do you leave if you stay, why do you stay? We just wanted to know. And we figured out all kinds of things. We figured out a very, very big one that people wanted more variety in our content, but then they also didn't know about all the variety we already had. So they were complaining that we didn't have enough variety, but we realized through this that it's because they were unaware of 90% of what was on our site. So we fixed and we're still fixing the way that people discover things. We're getting less complaints about the variety. If you don't know it's there, it may as well not be there. That and all kinds of other things that we wouldn't have necessarily figured out unless we got this kind of feedback. And you don't get feedback unless you are out in the world risking things.

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):

When you started COPE notes, I guess you were saying you wanted it to be scalable, so it sounds to me like you already had a vision for what it could turn into. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):

I had a vision that was still pretty small, so my goal was to create a resource for the metal and hardcore and punk community. I would talk to kids at shows and they'd say, what helps you? And I'm like, well, I journal and I take my medication at the same time every night and I attend therapy and I also see a psychiatrist and I go to church and I listen to podcasts and I read all of these articles and I watch TED Talks and they're like, I'm not doing any of that bs. I'm like, man, if only I wanted to create something that would resonate with our original website was very, very metal. I've had to tone it down quite a bit since then. But my goal was when I leave someone's city, I want them to have something that can help them when I'm not there.

(01:33:18):

Because some days I have bad days, sometimes I'm really bad at answering my phone. I might not come back to Philly for nine months. So I want this kid to have something that will help them when I'm not available, when I'm not there. So I think my approach was how do I create a resource that will be more useful and accessible than me? So it is grown quite a bit since then and we serve a wider population, but originally the goal was if something is directly tied to my accessibility or my effectiveness or my mood, I'm a person. Sometimes I blow it, sometimes I'm not in the mood to talk or I read someone's message and forget to reply to them and it's like, no, I need to build a system that is way more reliable and consistent and helpful than I could ever be.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):

And plus, like you said, or you titled it, you are not a therapist.

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):

Oh, yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):

Right.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):

That was a big part too. A lot of people are scared to see quote professionals and it's like, all right, how about a peer, someone who just gets it? I'm not wearing a lab coat, I don't have a doctorate, just someone who gets it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):

Well, there's that, but then also I think that probably through the one-on-one interaction at times you're getting presented with cases that a professional should be dealing with.

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):

That mentality serves two needs. One is people who are afraid to go to a therapist who just need to get the ball rolling and they look up to you and they trust you. And so there it goes, talk to you. But then also you identify people who shouldn't be talking to you, they should be talking to a doctor. I think that having that differentiation, a way to differentiate that or a way to not have people who need actual medical intervention think that it's going to come from you is a good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):

That was the most important separation I thought. Not a therapist was the degree of separation that I needed, but I realized that these kids, I say kids, but I've been going to shows for so long, so I say kids like people. So I don't know when that started, but I say kids,

Speaker 1 (01:35:24):

I do that too. I realized if you're under 55, I say kids,

Speaker 2 (01:35:30):

So I thought that not a therapist would be separated enough, but I realized that these people were still relying on me and I'm like, no, I need to build something that allows them to rely on themselves. So COPE notes. You're not texting me. You have a private, confidential, anonymous text thread that I'm not reading through. I don't know who you are, I don't know where you live. It's not with me. And I think that the idea of people relying on me to make them healthier is just as dangerous as someone relying on a therapist or a medication to make them healthier. No one can do that for you. So creating COPE notes allowed me to say, I'm Johnny Crowder and I'm going to help, but I'm not going to do it for you. In fact, you are going to do a hundred percent of the work because I know from experience that that's the quickest and most effective, most long-term way to get healthier. And I'm not going to impede that because I want to get credit for it. You need the credit. That's the only way you're going to keep doing the work.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):

Yeah, I think also if you were posing as the solution, I think that would be very hurtful to you. I think that people would take you down eventually.

Speaker 2 (01:36:44):

Dude, I would take myself down.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):

Yeah, because playing with people's lives. So I think the way that you've done this is correct. I don't know. I was going to say admirable. It is, but it's correct. You're doing it right. Both I think professionally and morally, you are dealing with life and death here. Maybe not in every single case, but definitely in enough of these cases. What mechanism do you have in place to identify if somebody actually does need to get hospitalized or get into the care of a doctor or something like that where it's dangerous?

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):

So we have partnerships. So originally I was like, well, why don't I just do everything? Why don't I be everything to everybody? And I realized we started partnering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the crisis center and the crisis text line and we're like, oh no, these people can do it way better than we could. So we started realizing the best thing we could do in a moment like that is to establish these strong trusted partnerships with community care providers who are already way more equipped to handle that type of thing than us. We're not 9 1 1 and we try to make that as clear as possible, but if we tried to fill those shoes when there are other players in the community who can do a better job with it, we'd be doing a disservice to our users. So

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):

You might potentially help them die.

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):

Yeah. So we've exchanged 300 and something thousand texts, like 330,000 text messages and maybe two of those, or three of those have been the crisis response text. We will manually review, actually not me, we have a staff member manually review all inbound texts that are anonymized, I think is the word, but we can't tell who's sending what. We don't have your name or information on there anyway, but we can trigger a crisis response text to the user individually that says, Hey, if you're just trying to vent, keep venting and let it out. If you'd rather talk to somebody right now, you're more than welcome to connect with someone at the crisis center. We can put you in touch with them. And that's all made clear from the very first moment you start using it. And we have a help keyword. So if you text help, you automatically get that crisis response text. But like I said, I mean even if only two out of 13,000 people text us something like, I wish I could talk to somebody right now, that's reason enough to have a system in place for it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):

Absolutely. Here's something that I encounter a lot. I don't know how much you know about URM, but it's more than just education. It's a community. It's a worldwide community, thousands of members, chapters that meet in real life all over the world. We've got like 75 chapters, or last time I checked everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:39:27):

That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):

From Moscow to Mobile, Alabama. And some of them meet a lot. Part of the reason that I think that we're doing well is because it's more than just education. We always used to say that our competitors product ends. When you press stop, ours just starts. And so we get to know the people in the community and we really encourage them to be honest, we have a no shit talking policy, no trolls. And because of that, when you enforce that over the period of years, you end up with a really, really positive place. And it encourages people to self-disclose a lot. And one thing that comes up, I'm not going to say all the time, but it comes up enough, is that someone will make a post that's like things we're going well up to a certain point, but lately I just don't feel like getting up.

(01:40:29):

I keep thinking that everything's going to fall apart. I've gained 30 pounds and they'll go on and on and on, and it's clearly depression. And I'd say that this happens once a month or something that we'll get one of these posts some more alarming than others. Some are just kind of like, I don't want to say garden variety, but a psychiatrist I saw once called it Garden Variety depression, just to say that it's the common type. Some are a lot more serious though, where it's like you could see this person hurting themselves. And so the community typically jumps in and will encourage them to get help. And I'll do that too. Every once in a while we'll get people who are like, have you considered cannabis? Or some really stupid, stupid ideas. But most people will be like, Hey, we've got your back, but you need actual professional help.

(01:41:27):

Two things. Number one, I got to say that recently someone who I urged that they go get help hit me up six months later. And they told me that because of that they actually did go and get help, got on medication and everything turned around everything. They're making twice as much money at work now their relationship with the girl is great. They lost 30 pounds, they're exercising all the time. It changed their lives. And then in other cases I see people who man, they post and they post and it just gets worse and worse and you try to get them to see it and it's not working. But due to the public nature of what I do and the insight I have into these people's problems, is there anything more that I can do or anything that you would suggest that we suggest to people who are disclosing these problems to the group?

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):

This is very tricky because we talked about earlier, you can't ever make anybody. You can present somebody with all the options in the world and they're not going to use them if they're not going to. It's really challenging to incentivize someone to seek treatment. But I will say that, I'll say two things. Number one, if you tell someone to seek treatment and don't, you didn't fail because for me, it took 99 people over the course of years saying it to where I finally started lowering some of my resistance. So for a lot of people it will take, yes, you said something and it didn't work, and then you said something three months later and it didn't work. And then you said something two months after that and it didn't work. It feels like you're failing, but in truth, you're adding one more brick. I mean, it's a tapestry of people encouraging that person and maybe three of those bricks are yours and two of those bricks are someone else's.

(01:43:26):

Nine of those bricks are someone else's, but eventually it builds something high enough for them to climb over. And I don't know if that's the perfect metaphor, in fact, I know it's not. But I think that every time you encourage somebody, there's no way that that can be seen as a failure. So number one, even if it hasn't worked the 99 times before, say it the hundredth time because it always makes an impact even if it's a small one. And the second thing is, if possible, engage with a friend or family member or whoever who's going through this, engage with them purposely. Not all of your conversations have to be about mental or emotional health. I remember I was teaching this family to family class and it's for caregivers for people with mental illness. And I was talking to a mom and she was like, I don't know what to do.

(01:44:14):

Every time I try to talk to my son about it, he closes off and then he's getting worse and worse. And I was like, what does he like to do? And she said, well, he really likes basketball. And I said, have you ever taken him to see a basketball game? And she was like, no, he's just been so unhealthy and I dunno what to do with him. And I'm like, take him to a basketball game and don't talk about mental or emotional health at all. Show him that you love spending time with him. And literally she told me they went to the basketball game, they didn't talk at all. The whole basketball game was totally silent, but he was having a blast, so he didn't open up or anything. And I was like, yeah, lady. The point wasn't that he opened up. The point was that you spent time together.

(01:44:50):

Because for me, when I was really, really low, I had it set in my head that nobody really wanted to spend time with me. And I was isolating. So if someone, the best thing someone could have done for me outside of encouraging me to seek treatment and listening to the actual conversation, if I wasn't willing to have the conversation, the next best thing somebody could do is say, Hey, I'm having some friends over on Wednesday and we're ordering pizza and we're just going to watch Family Feud, and you got to come and let's say I don't come that week. If that friend invites me for nine weeks in a row, I'm coming the ninth week and that friend might've saved my life. So just keep trying.

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):

Yeah, something pretty dark. But kind of going back to what we said before about you're your own best advocate, you have to do the work. This is on you. One of the unfortunate byproducts of depression and the behavior that it causes is that sometimes people won't want to hang out with you. Sitting there saying that, and I was thinking about some of the people who have posted about this and I'm thinking, well, I think one of the problems here is that they've gotten so toxic that probably there's nobody around them that's going to take them out or seek to hang out with them or whatever. Because one thing that tends to happen is if people go on too long, they tend to drive people away. Man is for so many reasons, people will start to feel overwhelmed or they just won't understand why the person is so down all the time, all these different reasons. But the end result ends up being that it starts with self isolating and then it turns to true isolation. And so I think that sometimes there isn't even the opportunity for that to happen, which goes back to what we said before, which is that at the end of the day, you do kind of have to take it upon yourself to fix this.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):

Yeah. I am reminded of this time, a friend that I went to high school with, I've known for a long time, his mom actually reached out to me and was like, Hey, I know you guys haven't spoken in a while. I'm very concerned that he might take his own life. And she was like, can you please reach out to him? And I just texted him and we just started talking about music and I was asking him what he's been jamming lately. And then he mentioned that he'd dropped out of school. And I was like, oh, well what were you planning on doing instead? And he is like, I don't really know what I want to do. And we started talking about stuff in the future. And I think when it comes to specifically trying to prevent someone taking their own life, also another disclaimer, I'm not a clinician, so in my experience what has helped is talking about something that's in the future.

(01:47:32):

So next month. So like, oh dude, aren't you guys going camping and giving them something to look forward to? And reminding them, for me, it's like, I don't know that I had a moment where I'm like, that's it. I'm never going to take my own life. It was like, well, I can't take my own life before the Kyira tour. I have to do that tour. And then after Kymera it's like, oh wait, we got, I mean, that cattle Dcap tour is going to be pretty cool. So I don't want, and I always needed the next thing.

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):

So moving back the calendar date,

Speaker 2 (01:48:01):

If you can help someone identify, I felt like I didn't have anything to look forward to. So if a friend was like, yo, me and my friends are coming to Tampa in January, and I'm like, oh, January is so far from now. And it's like, alright, well then after that, and it's really for a few years, it was like just seeing if I could keep myself alive for long enough to get out of the season. And sometimes a way to help a friend do that is just ask them something simple. Do you have any summer plans or this record, this Shuga album is coming out in three months and I can't wait to it. Have you heard any of the singles or whatever giving someone a point to look at that's not right now, that's a little bit in the future to keep them in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:48:43):

It can be something as simple as a movie

(01:48:45):

Coming out. I guess. Anything that helps you paint a positive future, even if it is something trivial like a movie or an album release or something. I guess it's not trivial. If it helps you look forward in a way that's positive because what you're fighting is having zero hope for the future. Interesting idea. I guess at what point, man, you got to feel at some point like it's too much. You're out of your depth. There's got to be those cases. I know. I feel those cases because look, I'm talking to thousands of people and they open up to me and one of the things that URM does is we help people improve their lives. So we help them go from having a day job to doing audio for real, which is a big deal. We're talking about people's dreams and along with people's dreams, you get to encounter their disappointments and everything that comes with it.

(01:49:45):

So I hear all this stuff and there are definitely times where it's just overwhelming to where I feel like I'm completely out of my depth, but this person is looking to me to be the answer. They don't want to talk to anybody else. They want it for me, and I am positive that you get that too, that people see you because you put yourself in this position, which I think is incredible of you to do. But I think one of the byproducts of being in this position, a public position that encourages people to self-disclose, I'm sure that there are times where people will focus in on you and think that you're going to provide the solution and leave you feeling out of your depth and overwhelmed and under equipped to really deal with it. It's just way too much. Am I accurate that this happens sometimes?

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):

Oh yeah. That's why I refer people to people who can help. One of the reasons that COPE notes partners with the Crisis Center is for exactly this, and I use it in my personal life too. I'm like, I got a DM the other day and I get a lot of wildly personal dms with life stories and I have no hesitation in saying, I am so sorry to hear that all this stuff happening. I mean, that sounds wild. I can't even believe that you survived that. That's amazing that you made it through that. And now if you need someone like I flat out cannot help you with this specific thing, but I know that I've actually used the Crisis Center before and they helped me. The Crisis Center can even direct you to a different resource if you need the sexual assault hotline or something like that. I purposely try to encourage people to use the resources that exist. If you think that Johnny Crowder is going to help you more than a team of trained crisis intervention specialists, if you think that a 27-year-old is going to do more for you than a hundred people who went through years of training to handle exactly what you're going through,

Speaker 1 (01:51:54):

Well, this shit ain't rational, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:51:56):

You got it Ed up. I always try to just connect people with a resource and I don't make them, I'm not going to make somebody dial the number, but in the example the other day that I got the message and I said, I really think you should consider calling the sexual assault hotline. I provided it. And he's like, yeah, I don't really want to call and I don't want to get this person in trouble for what they did. And I was like, I totally understand that. Here's the number again, just in case you change your mind and you decide to call because I guarantee that they could do more for you than I can, and I'm adamant about that because you have to be honest, people think that I can solve problems that I can't, and then I do that to other people. I come to friends and I'm like, what do I do about this? And they're like, bro, that's out of my league and I don't take offense to it. I'm like, okay, do you know someone who could help?

Speaker 1 (01:52:42):

Yeah. So for people who feel like they don't know where to begin, but they want to get treatment but they don't have insurance or finding a psychiatrist is just too crazy. They keep getting the runaround and appointments are three months away, all that bullshit, which is real. It does happen. What are some resources that are available that at least people in the US can access no matter what their scenario is, financial or otherwise? I think we should cover that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:16):

So also, I am not an encyclopedia for stuff like this, so if I mention stuff,

Speaker 1 (01:53:21):

You're going to know a few basics though.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):

Oh yeah. But I'm saying to listeners, don't think that if I don't mention something that it's not legit.

Speaker 1 (01:53:28):

Okay, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:53:29):

Please get online and Google stuff specifically maybe about where you live or the community or maybe the thing that you're dealing with. Just Google it. You will probably find something near you. I'll tell you where I got started. Something that really helped me was connecting with the National Alliance on Mental Illness or nami. There are chapters all over the country, so there's literally several counties in central Florida who have their own chapter. So I could literally go to one that's a half hour away. I could go to one that's two hours away. I could not even go. I could just call or email them and say, Hey, this is what I'm going through. Who do I talk to? What's a good starting point? And NAMI is an amazing place for that because NAMI does not charge for any of their services, and NAMI is like the king of referrals.

(01:54:19):

So if you email them and say, here's what I'm going through, do you know a great next step? If it's a good NAMI chapter, which I hope it is, they should respond with a list of different avenues that you can take. So I would say that really if you are stuck and you don't know what the next step is, of course I want to recommend COPE notes. Of course, I want to recommend online therapy and counseling resources, but even if you don't want to do those things, contacting your local NAMI chapter just via email or call and explaining what's going on and asking them, they will be able to provide you. They're like a resource hub

Speaker 1 (01:54:57):

And I love that you mentioned that they don't charge for anything because one of the big objections that people have is the price, which I get it. I totally do get it. But what I want people to understand is that there are avenues out there that are either free or inexpensive.

Speaker 2 (01:55:16):

Oh yeah. I took all of the NAMI courses that I've taken and given are free.

Speaker 1 (01:55:21):

You've given courses there.

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):

Oh yeah, I'll do guest lectures or I'll help be one of the facilitators. And they have family to family classes, which are like for caregivers. They have classes for people who are actually going through something and want to talk to peers. They even have peer counseling that you can connect with through nami. They're So just try talking to NAMI because I genuinely think that if they can't help you with what you're going through, if they are a competent chapter, they can connect you with someone who can help.

Speaker 1 (01:55:51):

That's a great resource. Honestly, I hadn't even heard of them before.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):

That's a big problem. A lot of people haven't, which is, I'm trying to change it for sure. I'm trying to put 'em on.

Speaker 1 (01:55:59):

Is it a nonprofit? Is it government run? What is it?

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):

Yeah, it's a nonprofit and they get, well, you know what? I shouldn't talk about exactly where their funding comes from. I don't work there.

(01:56:09):

I imagine that they get grants and then they provide resources through grants, but they also do fundraisers like they do. I speak at the 5K, the NAMI 5K in Orlando every year. So I know they do fundraisers and stuff like that too. But the goal is to be able to provide cheap or free resources to people, and I can safely say that if you emailed NAMI and said, listen, I don't even have 10 bucks. I got nothing, but I need to know what to do. I'm confident that someone at NAMI will be able to say, you know what? I have a good starting place for you.

Speaker 1 (01:56:43):

So getting mentally healthy is a lifelong pursuit, I guess for some of us, for all of us, for all of us. There's I think a myth out there that you ever really completely get past certain things, and it's more, in my opinion, it's more about constantly dealing with them in positive ways, and it's a whole menu of actions you can take, like we've said, from journaling to fish oil to therapy, psychiatry, medication, exercise, et cetera. Where in that menu, we'll call it, does COPE notes fit in your opinion?

Speaker 2 (01:57:27):

I think we have two main people groups who use COPE notes. So on one hand you have people who say, I've never experienced any sort of mental health condition. I've never somehow never felt anxiety. I've never felt depression or anything like that, and I really want to stay healthy. I'm jealous. I haven't met one yet. But those people I think are the, but they're out there. They exist. Well, I think unicorns exist too.

Speaker 1 (01:57:55):

Yeah, wow. Who is this magical person?

Speaker 2 (01:57:58):

Those people are the top 0% of a spectrum, but everyone below that, people who do have rough days, people who do get frustrated, people who do lose their temper or feel anxious or feel super critical of themselves, those people in the middle. So we're not the super people who have never experienced anything terrible, but we're not necessarily people who live with diagnoses. Those people make up about half of our user base, and the other half are people who are either seeking treatment or in existing treatment and want a supplement or a healthy starting place. So I would say that COPE knows is pretty malleable because it's good if you're not seeking treatment and you just want help building healthier thought patterns and becoming mentally and emotionally healthier. But then it's also good for people who maybe want to try treatment and don't know where to start or are actually in treatment and want something to walk with them day to day in between the times they engage with that treatment.

Speaker 1 (01:59:02):

Like a supplement?

Speaker 2 (01:59:02):

Oh, yeah. I would say that COPE notes. Here's the perfect example. So like I said, we partner with the crisis center and if the crisis center is getting a root canal, then COPE Notes is brushing your teeth and flossing.

Speaker 1 (01:59:15):

Good way to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:16):

So if you have really healthy teeth, you should be brushing your teeth and flossing. If your teeth are kind of falling apart, you should be brushing your teeth and flossing. So it is much more a supplement. It is a preventative measure, and when it comes to actual crisis and treatment, I would have to have a pretty big head to think that I could do it better than the systems that actually saved my life.

Speaker 1 (01:59:39):

One thing to keep in mind when you're going to a therapist or a psychiatrist is they're going to be helping you make sense of it all, but there's also once you have a breakthrough or things start to come to light, then you're going to have the work of actually implementing this change in your life because there's behavior that's got to change, and if you've conditioned yourself to react a certain way to a certain stimulus and you want to change that, that's work. Just because you realize what's happening doesn't mean that the work is done, and so it can help to have some sort of reminder or just guide along the way when you're not in the hour of therapy, you can't have your psychiatrist there with you at all times.

Speaker 2 (02:00:31):

No, I think that when I was in therapy, I would have a great session and then for six days and 23 hours, I would backslide and cope. Notes is just that brain training tool that can help you stay in shape. Imagine if there was something that could get you to burn calories on days that you didn't feel like working out. It doesn't mean that you're not working out. It means that you don't have to be the one to take the first step, say that you're too depressed to open your journal, or you're too depressed to listen to this lecture that you meant to listen to about healthier thought patterns. We'll reach out to you every single day no matter what, and I think people downplay the consistency aspect. There will be days where you don't want to get better, but we will still be there with you on those days, lighting a fire under you, helping you reframe thoughts in your brain so we're not just relying on you to take that first step. We're going to meet you even when you're in the muck for three weeks and you never text us back, we don't care. We're there.

Speaker 1 (02:01:30):

This is hugely valuable in my opinion, because one of the things that I think people need to get rid of is the idea that motivation and inspiration are going to get them through to the next level. Whether they're talking about getting healthy or accomplishing a goal, what actually gets you there is consistency and habit. You might be motivated to start, but if all you're relying on is motivation, let's say you're trying to build an exercise habit and that's to go running five times a week and you're doing great while the weather's great, but then the weather changes and suddenly you don't feel like going anymore, your motivation's gone and you just don't do it. However, if you got it to the point where it was an ingrained habit, most likely you would just do it anyways.

Speaker 2 (02:02:22):

Oh, yeah,

Speaker 1 (02:02:23):

Habit, consistency. I think that's everything, and it's also the hardest thing to establish when you're trying to improve yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:02:33):

People are the most unreliable, inconsistent night and day flip-flopping, sentient beings around. I'll be like, I'm going to go to the kitchen and I'm going to get a banana, and then I see peanut butter crackers and I'm like, well, I'll do that. And it's like, what the heck? Literally the most benign stimulus just completely threw me off track. People are innately unreliable, so if we have systems put in place to help us stay consistent and build the right habits, then we don't have to rely on, like you said, our feelings or our emotions to drive us because feelings and emotions are probably some of the least reliable indicators around

Speaker 1 (02:03:20):

They're what got us in this mess in the first place. They got us in this mess. I don't think they're going to get us out of this mess.

Speaker 2 (02:03:29):

Think about emotion. I've wanted to quit music a hundred times, a thousand times. I've called you and talked to you about how I don't even know if I should do this anymore, and all that is emotion. It was a lack of motivation to continue making music. I was frustrated with the industry. If we all listened to emotion all the time, we would all be married to someone who was terrible for us.

Speaker 1 (02:03:49):

It's true. One of the things that I think I love most about the modern era that we live in for all its downfalls is that so many things are created to address human folly and to help us live our lives better, from reminders to calendars, to all those things that we now take for granted that we used to just have to remember to think about, put a lot more effort into. I love that about the modern world because I feel like when you have those little inconsistencies addressed or somehow handled, it frees your brain to think about bigger things or more important things.

Speaker 2 (02:04:37):

I was looking at some cars recently like test driving some, and a lot of the salespeople kept saying, yeah, this one has lane assist or whatever helps you. It alerts you when you're kind of swerving into another lane or when you're going over the lines, and I was like, holy crap. How unreal is it that one of the main selling points of this car is that it tells you that you're sucking and it's like, wow, it's wonderful. We need that so bad. We need that in every area of our life. I wish I had a little sensor in my mouth that says, Hey, you brush for two minutes, but you didn't really do a great job. You were phoning it in. Get back in there and brush for another minute, but do it right because there's plaque back here. I wish I knew that stuff, but we don't. We're insulated. So the more systems that we have in place to help us recognize that, the more we can prevent that spiral that you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (02:05:29):

Yeah, I think that we don't realize how much of our lives we spend on autopilot and that autopilot can be set to phoning things in. We won't even realize that we're phoning things in because we're on autopilot, and anything that snaps us out of that or that sets the autopilot better is good, in my opinion. I think ultimately setting your autopilot better is the ultimate. I liken it to this. I think that oftentimes people's minds are like an autopilot set to fly the plane straight into the mountain. Yeah, they're not trying to do that to themselves. It's not like they want to fly into the mountain,

(02:06:14):

But somehow the way that they react to situations, the way that they react to people, the way that they spin thoughts in their heads, the actions that they decide to take, some of it is so automatic and I guess not thought through and reactive and programmed wrong, that it just leads them further and further down a bad path where I think that that whole element of being an autopilot is not really something that we can stop doing necessarily entirely. There's a part of it that I think we evolved in this way in order for us to be able to handle more complex lives, and it's a good thing, but you got to set it right. You got to set it to get you to that next destination safely or else what's the point of it in the first place? So I'm not thinking that people should bypass their nature entirely. I think that they should use their nature and their gifts as people like the ability to be on autopilot is actually a huge, huge gift. I think as a human, the fact that you can do all these complex things without having conscious thought about it at all times, that's what allows us to do these things. However, if your wires are crossed a little, like some of us are, autopilot can do some dangerous things, and it's our responsibility, going back to one of the first things we spoke about, our responsibility to set that autopilot properly.

Speaker 2 (02:07:52):

I got to steal that metaphor. I love it. It's a good

Speaker 1 (02:07:55):

One. I've been using that one for years.

Speaker 2 (02:07:58):

I'll credit you when I use it. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (02:08:00):

I started to realize it when, like I told you, I've been around mentally ill people and all kinds of interesting types just through music my whole life, and I've been an observer of human behavior, and one of the things that I've realized is that a lot of people don't realize what they're doing. They just act that react, act, react, react, react, stimulus reaction, stimulus reaction, and they don't think things through. And then when they get a result that they're not happy with, the girl broke up with them or they failed this test or got kicked out of the band or nobody showed up to the show or whatever it is, they don't tend to think about what are the events that led up to this? What part did I play in it? They just tend to react, feel bad and react to that feeling, and I think that it's important to try to dissect how you got there and change it at the source. I think you agree.

Speaker 2 (02:09:08):

I hope the listeners aren't like, what the heck? We didn't talk about production at all. I mean, I kind of did

Speaker 1 (02:09:14):

Production. One of the things about this podcast is that if people want me to keep doing it, they need to understand that I'm not always going to talk about production. If I was, I'd get so bored that I'd quit, and I've wanted to quit it a few times. I don't think people know this, but I have wanted to quit this podcast a few times. I was getting bored, and the way that I've kept it going over 250 episodes now five years, is by changing the format up every now and again, and then also bringing on guests that I want to talk to that we might not talk about production. We're going to talk about stuff that I think is important. Plus, I think that, like we said earlier, music is a magnet for people with a mental illness, and there are a lot of people listening who suffer from it who may realize it or may not realize it.

(02:10:08):

So that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. Number one, I'm very proud of you for everything you're doing, but number two, I'm seeing it all the time, man. Like I said, I talk to people all the time, and I know that there's a lot of mental illness in my community, and I know that a lot of people are not addressing it. They might not even be aware that they've got it. Some of them are aware and just don't know how to even start. So I wanted to do this episode for them so that maybe like we said before, if only two people get something out of it, then it was worth doing. So with that man, I want to thank you for coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:10:50):

Yeah, thank you for having me. And I just have one last little note for anyone listening before we hop off. I used to hear interviews like this when I was younger, and I would think, well, this guy's different than me or these people are, and I know we just talked about how everyone's different and no two people have the exact same set of circumstances, but I want to completely contradict myself from an angle and say that I am no different than you. I'm not a superhuman. I'm not the boy who made it. I didn't cure schizophrenia. I am just, I'm covered in tattoos, probably just like you are. I grew up getting bullied, maybe just like you did. My parents didn't have money, and they're divorced. Maybe just like yours are. I feel like when I used to listen to people talk about how they got healthier, I would think, well, yeah, easy for you to say, and I just want to encourage anyone listening to at least give themselves as much credit as they give me or you when we talk about this stuff. No one has it completely figured out, and we don't have superpowers. We are flesh and blood, and Al and I make mistakes every single day. Our friends and family members make mistakes, and you're going to make mistakes too, but you have to try.

Speaker 1 (02:12:03):

I want to agree with you. One thing that I do see very often in this community is they kind of DFI, the people that I have on,

(02:12:12):

And they do this guru worship thing, which makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but there's certain producers, for instance, that they love that no matter what that person says, if they said it suddenly, it's like an edict from God or something. That's how they treat it, man, it makes me really uncomfortable and I wish that people would stop, but I'm aware that there's an element of human nature to that, and so I appreciate what you just said. I know that some people might look at us that way, which they shouldn't. We're just trying to get through this just as much as anybody else, as much of a mystery to us as it is to you. So with that said, man, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (02:13:00):

Absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:13:01):

Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at ai Levi URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.