EP72: How Two Baseball Dads United for Men's Mental Health

Interview with Shawn Lesser and Brent Herd / Men's Mental Health Advocates

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Shawn and Brent are fathers who have had professional success and family success. But like many men, they’ve also had mental health struggles. Brent’s came first. Shawn, who was bringing together investors in some of the nicest places in America, had his crisis last year. When it happened, Shawn's wife reach out to Brent. They'd been youth baseball buddies but that light friendship was enough for Brent to help Shawn through a dark period. From that experience of openness and caring came the creation of The Real, a mental health advocacy group aimed at fathers who are suffering. Listen to how they plan to remove the stigma around getting treatment and help Dads get the help they need.

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Transcript

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;27;08
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men who are the go to parents aren't always accepted at work among their friends, but in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week at the Company of Dads.

00;00;27;10 - 00;00;52;18
Paul Sullivan
We have various features, including the lead dad of the week. We have our community both online and in person. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, The dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. That's the company of dads.com backslash the dad. Today my guests are Shawn Lasser and Brent Herd, two fathers, entrepreneurs and friends.

00;00;52;20 - 00;01;12;18
Paul Sullivan
They've had professional success. They've had family success. But like many men, they've had personal struggles. Brent came first. Shawn who was bringing together investors in some of the nicest places in America at his crisis last year when it happened, Brent was there. It started with a call from Sean's wife. After Brant helped Sean through a mental health crisis.

00;01;12;19 - 00;01;35;10
Paul Sullivan
The two kept talking, and that talk led to the creation of “The Real”, a mental health advocacy group aimed at men and fathers, with the group with the goal of helping people who are suffering. They want to remove the stigma around getting treatment for mental health if you're a man. We're talking to them right at the very start of this venture to hear how they can help dads be their best.

00;01;35;12 - 00;01;39;20
Paul Sullivan
Shawn and Brent welcome to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;39;22 - 00;01;41;03
Shawn Lesser
Thanks, Paul.

00;01;41;05 - 00;01;44;05
Paul Sullivan
How did you guys meet?

00;01;44;08 - 00;01;59;19
Shawn Lesser
I'll go first. So our kids played little league baseball together. So I have a girl now that's 14. Excuse me? A girl that's 15 and that's 14. And. And Brent his son. We all played on the same little league team together.

00;01;59;22 - 00;02;05;26
Paul Sullivan
Brant was, with Sean, that guy on the sidelines yelling and screaming and, like, throwing his hat at the ump or. No.

00;02;05;29 - 00;02;15;11
Brent Herd
He was mostly working on his comedy routine on the sidelines. You know, every time I see him throw me a joke here, there, you know, some I'd laugh at, some I would not.

00;02;15;13 - 00;02;18;28
Paul Sullivan
I love it. You love the guy. You always want that friend. The friend who has. Yeah.

00;02;18;28 - 00;02;19;25
Shawn Lesser
Yeah, yeah.

00;02;19;27 - 00;02;23;12
Brent Herd
Yeah. It was great to see him every time he'd have a new joke for me. Each time I'd say, oh.

00;02;23;15 - 00;02;23;19
Shawn Lesser
We.

00;02;23;22 - 00;02;35;21
Paul Sullivan
So will you guys, you know, would you consider yourselves at that point? I mean, it's different now, but I don't want you close friends are more just sort of, you know, baseball game friends, you know, friends whose kids were friends.

00;02;35;23 - 00;02;52;09
Brent Herd
You know, we were the kind of friends where, you know, we'd see each other at the games. Kids would know each other. But he was the kind of guy that, you know, when you'd see him, you'd have a little bit of a longer conversation, you know? Not not not just the. Hey, how are you doing? Has the has work?

00;02;52;12 - 00;03;00;26
Brent Herd
It would go a little bit longer. So it was sort of, it just just, just kind of on the edge of becoming pretty good friends.

00;03;00;29 - 00;03;06;06
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Sean, you know, we're spending this whole episode talking about mental health.

00;03;06;08 - 00;03;07;08
Shawn Lesser
Right.

00;03;07;10 - 00;03;21;10
Paul Sullivan
You had a crisis last year. You're very public about it. Which, is it important and amazing. But your wife reached out to to Brant. She sent him a text. Yes. Why? Why, of all the people in the world. Why do you think she texted Brant?

00;03;21;12 - 00;03;44;21
Shawn Lesser
Yeah. It was strange to me, honestly, because we known each of baseball. And then my wife and Brant have been working, discussing a business idea, but that was years back. But she just had a feeling he's like, you got to call Brant. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? Like, no, I got to contact Brant. So with just the success that he had.

00;03;44;23 - 00;03;48;25
Paul Sullivan
And what was your feeling, Brant, when you got that text?

00;03;48;27 - 00;04;14;23
Brent Herd
You know, I was, I was, I was in the mountains skiing with my kids, and I hadn't heard from Sean's wife, Blanca, in probably two years. And, and I got the text and I knew from the, the, the wording of the text that that there was some, some serious sort of issues happening.

00;04;14;25 - 00;04;27;10
Paul Sullivan
And. But why do you think she, she picked you because you had had your own, you know, mental health, crisis many years before. But did she know that were you public about that? How why you.

00;04;27;12 - 00;04;48;14
Brent Herd
Yeah, it's a good it's a great question. You know, it's one of those things that I think we're, we're, we're we're all we all. And now that we look back or sort of wondering the why behind it, because interestingly enough, I was actually, you know, I had sort of gone through my own thing years ago and had been creating my own content around mental health and around sort of the issues that I went through.

00;04;48;17 - 00;05;02;07
Brent Herd
She hadn't she had not heard of, she had not listened to, had not experienced, had not digested any of the content that I created. It was more of a, I just think, a sense that she had based on our conversations over the years.

00;05;02;10 - 00;05;11;01
Paul Sullivan
And when you say you were creating your own thing, what was what had actually happened to you? You know, years ago and what had that idea moved you to start start creating.

00;05;11;03 - 00;05;39;28
Brent Herd
Yeah, yeah. So I, I, I've, I've been in the media technology world most of my career, early days at Yahoo, early days of AOL opened up, Twitter offices, here in Atlanta. When I left Twitter, when I resigned from Twitter, two days after I made the decision of leaving, I had an emergency appendectomy, followed by walking pneumonia and the health crisis that I had.

00;05;39;28 - 00;06;05;04
Brent Herd
And I was a very healthy dude, turned into, a mental crisis. And what I mean by that is that, in going through the the surgery, the pain of the appendectomy sort of opened the the only way I could describe it as it opened up something in me and, in leaving Twitter, I just began to question sort of my whole self, like, who am I in this world?

00;06;05;04 - 00;06;31;19
Brent Herd
I'm. I'm no longer the Twitter guy. The technology guy. Who am I? And that question led to many, many more questions that I sort of went on my own. I like to say eat, pray, love, journey, of studying these things about why I was feeling a certain way. In a lot of cases, men will run the other way.

00;06;31;19 - 00;06;59;17
Brent Herd
I ran at it. And the reason I ran at it was something I'll never know. But I went on a journey of learning sort of why these things were happening, to me, and I, in doing so and in learning all of these things, I launched, what what is called the awakened at the awakened. Dad, ironically, was a program that essentially put together all the things that I had learned about.

00;06;59;19 - 00;07;15;29
Brent Herd
And these were big questions like, why am I here? What's my purpose? All these big questions that I never even thought about, I even never even knew to ask. And they were the bigger questions in life that I just began, that began to kind of come up and out. So I began to study. I began to read.

00;07;15;29 - 00;07;41;07
Brent Herd
I began to digest as much as I could in understanding really myself and in going through that process, I created just a bit of a program called The Awakened Dad, which was essentially just bringing it back to people who I worked with in the corporate world. Who were going through similar things. Now, at the time, no one was talking about this stuff, awakening mental.

00;07;41;12 - 00;07;50;06
Brent Herd
This was 2018, 2019. And, yeah. So that's, that's that's kind of what my journey around mental health was.

00;07;50;09 - 00;07;54;15
Paul Sullivan
And, Shawn, do you know about any of this at the time when you reach out to Brian.

00;07;54;17 - 00;07;58;02
Shawn Lesser
I knew nothing. I knew nothing, just my wife had a feeling that was it.

00;07;58;09 - 00;08;09;26
Paul Sullivan
So you reach out. What is the first conversation like? What? What do you. You know, do you immediately feel comfortable talking to Brian about what's going on? Tell me what was going on with you. And and you know how Brian helped you.

00;08;09;29 - 00;08;35;02
Shawn Lesser
Yeah. So hard to describe. I was just in a lot of mental pain. Right. And having dark thoughts. And this felt kind of worthless, honestly. And, that's my whole body with tense. And it was great to talk with someone who had been through a similar thing, because it's hard. People don't like hard to explain, and people don't get it right.

00;08;35;02 - 00;08;52;15
Shawn Lesser
Not not that you're supposed to get it, but it's just so such a strange feeling that you have to be there, have that same experience. So being in Brant, we met for the first time. He basically said, let's go for a walk, right? We went to a park. I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't seen the guy in a while, you know, gave me a hug.

00;08;52;17 - 00;09;10;29
Shawn Lesser
And then we just started talking about what's going on. And it was great that he he could really relate to what I was saying, right? That he had been through something as painful as I had been. I was in the midst of. Right. So great to have someone that been there, done that right. A little bit like alcohol dominance.

00;09;10;29 - 00;09;16;15
Shawn Lesser
You have to sponsor someone that's been there. And I'm not. That's that's a similar way that I felt.

00;09;16;18 - 00;09;36;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And you know, you and I never met in in my previous life with The New York Times, but I remember getting, a lot of emails from your company, Big Pack Capital. You were organizing, you know, incredible event bringing together investors for the Social good mission, you know, and it's a classic Guinness with men suffering from mental health crisis.

00;09;36;22 - 00;10;05;19
Paul Sullivan
Classic like, on paper, everything looked amazing. But of course, that's not the story. And this is how many men refused to seek help because you look at it on paper. You look at all the credentials. You looked at the LinkedIn profile. Yeah, this guy's got to figure it out. He's, you know, and you know, how did you, you know, come to to reconcile all the sort of, you know, the public version of you that people would see going on LinkedIn page versus that, that, that private version that was, was struggling.

00;10;05;21 - 00;10;25;20
Shawn Lesser
I would say it was it was scary. They'll just give you a little background of the story. So I got depressed around September, couldn't really eat, couldn't sleep. I lost about 40 pounds, was in bad shape. The December came and I had a full breakdown. I was not functioning. I was on the zoom. I remember being on a zoom call and I was like, I can't be on this call.

00;10;25;20 - 00;10;49;05
Shawn Lesser
I just can't function. And then, was and I was, I think a facility. And that was just a super strange kind of experience. And then when I got out, there were some changes in my company. Big bath. And I got bought, put out by a partners and that, you know, big like you're saying, I lived my whole life around big fat.

00;10;49;05 - 00;11;15;12
Shawn Lesser
I was wearing the hat. That was my whole. My whole life was the company. Right? And everyone think path equal, John. And all of a sudden it's just gone. And I'm like, who the hell am I, right? I'm worthless, right? You get these thoughts. And also, when I left my people before I was in there, people constantly emailing, texting, you know, I have a lot of, I spoke to that to stop.

00;11;15;15 - 00;11;22;06
Shawn Lesser
But just so it's a strange feeling, of pain when that happen.

00;11;22;09 - 00;11;40;24
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And from your side. Right. What do you remember of that when you know you. Because you had had, you know, as you said, you you left Twitter, you know, back, back when Twitter was still Twitter. And that was, you know, a big identity for you. Look, I left the New York Times that was a, you know, part, a huge part of of my, identity.

00;11;40;24 - 00;11;50;29
Paul Sullivan
But but, Brett, you had had that combination of, you know, leaving your identity behind and then having this mental health crisis when you were hearing Sean's stories, you know, what did you think of?

00;11;51;02 - 00;12;17;27
Brent Herd
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. And I'm just going to back up because I, you know, it's it's it's this common thread that, I was seeing for many, many years prior, meaning I had gone through it. I had sort of gone through this study of why, why was I feeling as depressed as down as, like, just sort of unable to figure out my way for.

00;12;17;29 - 00;12;48;19
Brent Herd
And what I learned over the years was, you know, we all, are programed in a way where our career has become, in a lot of cases, our identity. If we don't know what our true identity is prior to our careers, most of us don't know that because we're all thrust into go, be and do this thing. So when I left Twitter, it was essentially pulling the rug out from underneath me in the sense of this was who I thought I was, but I'm no longer that person.

00;12;48;21 - 00;13;12;09
Brent Herd
And and then it was this process of figuring out, okay, now who are you? And this is the process that most men go through. It doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how big the house is. It doesn't matter how big the car is when you leave. It's it's usually career related. And when you either leave, a big job, you leave building a company.

00;13;12;11 - 00;13;35;03
Brent Herd
There is an identity that we begin to associate ourselves with with that position or that role. And the deeper that identity becomes, the deeper the sort of dive, if you will, becomes when you leave, especially if you don't have the awareness, of that concept. It's sort of this false.

00;13;35;03 - 00;13;40;18
Paul Sullivan
Identity, meaning the awareness that your identity is linked to your profession or the company that you work for. Is that what you mean?

00;13;40;20 - 00;14;07;05
Brent Herd
Right? That's exactly right. And the truth is, it's not. And when we can become, knowledgeable enough within our own selves, sort of, you know, kind of think higher level in the sense of, you know, our true identity of who we are is, you know, we're all these, like, we're at work. We're we're fathers were husbands were, you know, friends.

00;14;07;07 - 00;14;28;10
Brent Herd
We're all of these things. But we're not the banker. We're not the lawyer. We're not the accountant. We're not the executive. We're not the, all those things that we have said for so many years that we are at the core, caw, caw. And this, you know, can get into some woowoo stuff, but, you know, I'll let you take me there.

00;14;28;10 - 00;14;46;08
Paul Sullivan
No, but that is that's a tough like. Do I agree with you? Of course I agree with you. But but people particularly, you know, I mean, high achievers in America are sort of program that way. Like, you know, maybe it's, you know, who are you in high school? Are you an athlete? Are you the editor of the newspaper or are you the student body president?

00;14;46;09 - 00;15;12;17
Paul Sullivan
Then it's, you know, unfortunately, I believe it's unfortunately, for a guy who has, you know, pretty solid academic credentials myself, I see it with with what? You become defined pretty quickly by where you go to college. And then if you go to graduate school and then, you know, where is that, you know, first job. And I've talked to a lot of guys, you know, have come to the company of dads who are in their 20s and 30s and they, you know, a couple of them in particular.

00;15;12;17 - 00;15;29;10
Paul Sullivan
It's almost like they feel like the greyhound when the greyhound catches the rabbit, you know, totally screws up the greyhounds minds. They can't believe they've actually caught the, you know, the, the, you know, fake rabbit. And they feel this way like they've achieved all of this. And now what is next. Now you're kind of going the opposite ways.

00;15;29;10 - 00;15;52;21
Paul Sullivan
You guys kept going going, going. And then you know something changed. But it's like we've been programed to this. So how you know, Sean, you can take this or Brett, you know, how do you help change that narrative in people's minds that you are not the sum total of your accomplishments, that being a man is more than, you know, being the money maker.

00;15;52;21 - 00;15;55;04
Paul Sullivan
And, and the provider.

00;15;55;07 - 00;16;17;22
Shawn Lesser
I'll start another brand because I was a poster child for that, because everything was based around that company. Everything. Right? Every. I'm wearing the hat 24 seven, everything. I'm talking about it around the company. And then that thing just it just goes away and you're like, who the hell am I? But, Brant, you could talk about what you do.

00;16;17;25 - 00;16;38;01
Brent Herd
I mean, listen, you know, the only thing I want to say, first of all, I want to say companies and careers and professions. I mean, these are things that give all of us so much in the sense of provide for our families, in the sense of homes, in the sense of like, you know, shelter, food. I mean, all the things like that, the these are amazing things.

00;16;38;03 - 00;17;13;12
Brent Herd
The issue becomes when, when we when we fail to see the sort of separation of, of who we are. And those careers are those big roles meaning for me, I, I identified my whole being my whole self with the, the, the Twitter guy, the technology guy, the head of this, the guy who built that business that is that is kind of my, you know, those were the the, the things that I felt that I stood on in the world.

00;17;13;12 - 00;17;34;01
Brent Herd
And when I showed up at a party or I showed up an event, or I showed up in front of other people, that people would see me as that. And that's what brought value and worth and all of the things to me. And for me, that's what I thought it was all about when that ended. And I, you know, I ended it myself.

00;17;34;01 - 00;18;15;05
Brent Herd
And some people ended themselves. Well, whatever way it happens, you quickly, quickly realize that's not it's a it's almost this false self that, you know, we, we, we build upon throughout our life because of programing. It's so deeply in us that, in some cases people don't, quote unquote, wake up to this until they're on their deathbeds. Some people don't wake up, quote unquote, to who it is they truly are, until they go through a crisis, a loss, something that that that cracks us open, if you will.

00;18;15;07 - 00;18;37;18
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. You guys get together. Really? You know, one on one, for, you know, you, Brant, to help, you know, Sean or to at least, you know, share and what he was going through because you'd gone through something. So at what point, though, does that become an idea? And a and we're going to talk about the real now.

00;18;37;18 - 00;18;44;05
Paul Sullivan
But but what at what point does that become an idea for something bigger than just, the two of you?

00;18;44;08 - 00;18;59;23
Shawn Lesser
I'll, I'll pick that. So, gone through the journey. I also went away for treatment and treatment, and I just I always contact with Brant at the treatment letters. And then when I came back, I came back. I was about a week after, and we were just talking. Right. And he was so happy that I was back.

00;18;59;23 - 00;19;17;01
Shawn Lesser
And we're going to get together. And we were just talking about the thing that we went through, which is it's just it's it's real, right? It's just it. Brant said that this is real. And I was like, yeah, this is real. There's something there. There are a lot of men I know I care about men, but it's not just the man, it's the women.

00;19;17;03 - 00;19;37;29
Shawn Lesser
It's the families, because it affects everybody that are going through these difficult times. So how can we use this journey that we were on to help other folks? So that's really how it started, where it goes. Still a work in progress, but that's what the mission was pretty clear that saved men and their families.

00;19;38;01 - 00;19;39;18
Paul Sullivan
And go ahead, Brian.

00;19;39;21 - 00;19;58;12
Brent Herd
Yeah. No, I just just on on on top of that. Yeah, we were we were we were literally having a conversation, you know, after Sean had got back from going through a lot of his own, you know, personal work, on himself. We got back and we talked about it and, yeah, we were having a conversation and and I don't know where it came from.

00;19;58;12 - 00;20;12;05
Brent Herd
I was just like, this is real. Meaning, like, this is real life. Meaning like a lot of guys are dealing with this stuff on a day to day basis. And then Sean was like, that's what we're going to call this. And I was like, what is this?

00;20;12;07 - 00;20;13;05
Shawn Lesser
And.

00;20;13;08 - 00;20;36;23
Brent Herd
And and so we called it the was this is real. And now it's called the real. But the, the, the mission of this is, this is that if we can simply do more of what we're doing right now, telling the story, and other men can hear this story, that it gives us the ability to potentially save other lives.

00;20;36;23 - 00;21;00;23
Brent Herd
And the reason I say that that's a very big statement. The reason I say that is because so many men, I know, have these feelings and these thoughts and these emotions. We are also programed as men to not share these feelings and emotions and thoughts. And so what happens with men? Because we are loners primarily we are loners as people.

00;21;00;26 - 00;21;18;05
Brent Herd
We try to deal with this stuff on our own. We try to solve it in our own head, and that's what will cause a man to walk out the front door and take his own life. And that's what this whole mission is about, is about telling this story as much as we can, and as broadly as we can to save as many men.

00;21;18;05 - 00;21;30;19
Brent Herd
And we know that if we save men, we can save the children and the spouses and the sisters and the brothers and the mothers and the fathers of going through the level of pain that people go through who lose someone.

00;21;30;21 - 00;21;32;25
Shawn Lesser
I know and let me.

00;21;32;28 - 00;21;34;27
Paul Sullivan
Know, well, guys, you.

00;21;35;00 - 00;21;46;21
Shawn Lesser
Know, take because we're also trying to you know, I was at a horrible point. We don't want to have people going to that point. So we also want to help folks like where I was before.

00;21;46;22 - 00;21;47;27
Paul Sullivan
Right before you got to that point.

00;21;48;02 - 00;22;07;12
Shawn Lesser
Right? Right. Because once you get to that point, you have a different mindset. You you just lost you just you just lost in pain. And you just want the pain to end. But there's people that are still kind of going along in life. We want to help those folks and also those folks that are deeply into it like I want, but we don't want folks to get there.

00;22;07;15 - 00;22;08;05
Shawn Lesser
That makes sense.

00;22;08;07 - 00;22;34;03
Paul Sullivan
It does. You they talk about, you know, women, broad brush it, but socializing face to face meeting, they, you know, they're talking to each other and looking at you and they say the men broad brush, you know, socialize shoulder to shoulder, meaning you go and you watch a, you know, we're talking about golf. You watch a golf tournament TV, you go watch a baseball game or what are you or you stand on the sidelines of your kid's baseball game, show their shoulder and you watch it, and you guys think about this.

00;22;34;06 - 00;22;55;04
Paul Sullivan
When does this change? You know, because as kids, we're playing. We're playing with each other face to face. We're probably on a team. You do. If you're not on the team, you're, you know, maybe you're, the person you're on the stage, you know, saying your lines to, to to the other kid or, you know, I was, see the newspaper guy, you know, you're in a, you know, the student newspaper and you're face to face.

00;22;55;06 - 00;23;06;21
Paul Sullivan
When do you think it changes for men? And we go to more shoulder to shoulder. And, of course, how do we how do we work to change that back so we can have those this deep face to face conversations again?

00;23;06;23 - 00;23;25;04
Brent Herd
Yeah, I, I, I think it's a great question. And you're right, you know, the, the sort of social framework of women is, you know, you're feeling down, you're feeling, you know, you're having issues at home. You can easily go sit in a coffee shop with four women and truly, like, let it all out, like communicate all of your deepest emotions and feelings.

00;23;25;04 - 00;23;49;18
Brent Herd
And that social framework will will hold. You will sort of check on you, will take you in and embrace you. And then there's a lot of healing in that. And on the other hand, like you said, man, you know, shoulder to shoulder, you know, you're out of you're watching a game, you're having a couple pops and, and, and that's the thing that maybe opens you up to then have those conversations.

00;23;49;20 - 00;24;15;27
Brent Herd
What I believe deeply is that, you know, we're really we're programed. We're programed shoulder to shoulder. Most of us males were told in some way, shape or form, whether it was from mom, dad, friends, society that it is not healthy or or strong to talk about your feelings and emotions. It was simply off the table for one of those reasons.

00;24;15;27 - 00;24;46;14
Brent Herd
You either heard it at school, you heard it at home, or you heard it somewhere. So it's this, I believe, level of deprogramming that is beginning to happen. Now, that will continue to, grow in scale because the conversation is now at the table in a way that it was never at the table. And I also believe that the younger generations today are much more open to talking about their feelings and emotions.

00;24;46;17 - 00;25;12;10
Brent Herd
And it's the sort of, I think 40 plus guys who still have that deprogramming who are like, you know what? I don't really want to go to that vulnerability place and so I think as the conversation grows, I think as more stories are shared, that guys will slowly begin to open up more and more, and I think not only become shoulder to shoulder, but but but but hopefully.

00;25;12;10 - 00;25;15;14
Brent Herd
And I think our goal is become face to face on this stuff.

00;25;15;16 - 00;25;35;00
Paul Sullivan
And you guys have a speaking tour planned, for the summer, you're going to hit a bunch of cities on on the East Coast. That's important. Because you're telling the story face to face. You and and the audience, you'll reach, you know, the people who are there. But what's the the goal for the real. What's the goal?

00;25;35;00 - 00;25;54;24
Paul Sullivan
The sort of, you know, Sean, as you said, you know, reach those men before they get to the stage of of of crisis to reach them and, and yeah, you know, those guys in their 40s and 50s where, you know, change is still, possible. What what's your goal? To use the real to, to reach those guys and, and to help them.

00;25;54;26 - 00;26;21;15
Shawn Lesser
Great question. I, I think we want to start a movement, you know, getting more men involved. I also think that this could become a media company, mental health media company, where we're having retreats, conferences, different programing and then also bringing community together where men can go and feel comfortable. So I don't know exactly where it goes, but that's kind of a big vision for it.

00;26;21;17 - 00;26;23;11
Shawn Lesser
Brian, you want to add anything? I'm sorry.

00;26;23;14 - 00;26;40;01
Paul Sullivan
I was gonna say, what are the barriers to that? Because this is it's so important. It's so crucial. We happen to be talking in May, which is, you know, mental health, awareness Month. It's so crucial. But it's, you know, as I found, we started the company dads, some guys, you know, immediately opt in and they're like, I'm the lead dad.

00;26;40;01 - 00;26;54;14
Paul Sullivan
And the lead dad is the go to parent. Whether you work full time, part time, devotes all of the time to kids. But a lot of guys who I know who are the dads are hesitant and they fall back on, oh, wait, I'm not, you know, I'm not Mr. Mom or I'm not the Househusband. I'm like, that's not what you are, man.

00;26;54;14 - 00;27;14;16
Paul Sullivan
You can be working full time. You're just super involved, dad, that's a that's one level of stigma. But, you know, mental health is so important to talk about. Insurance companies don't value it properly. Try to get reimbursed for seeing a therapist. Let alone some of these other other programs. It's a real slog. So what is a plan to get beyond that barrier?

00;27;14;16 - 00;27;25;03
Paul Sullivan
Because this is super important work that that you guys, are planning to do. But how do you get beyond that? So you can, you know, welcome men in. You can call them into this and not, you know, call them.

00;27;25;03 - 00;27;46;07
Shawn Lesser
Out. Yeah, I would, I would, I would say leading by example. Right. It was really hard to send the I have 30,000 people on LinkedIn. I hit the button basically I had troubles. Right. So just so many people came back and were so supportive. If you see the thread where people are sending me private messages, you know, or I've had a lot of conversations, straight conversations like this is what happened to me.

00;27;46;09 - 00;28;03;13
Shawn Lesser
And almost every time someone's like, John, no, I had a family member that had that situation where I was in treatment. So it's kind of just destigmatizing it that people feel like they're in a safe space, right? Because that's challenging to go.

00;28;03;15 - 00;28;05;23
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Yeah, I agree that. Yeah, that.

00;28;05;29 - 00;28;32;03
Brent Herd
You know, I was going to say, I think it's just it's, I think the simplest thing is just starting the conversation. And the more we start the conversation, the more things have begun to, even in this short period of time, have begun to sort of grow in, in, in, in what we're up to now, I know that most a lot of men high percentage will, just like you said, you know, sort of stay behind the door.

00;28;32;06 - 00;28;49;25
Brent Herd
But if those same men that are staying behind the door listen to this podcast, see the media that's out in the world of what we're doing here, one of our speeches, they are the ones who could begin to reach out to one person and say, hey, listen, I've been having these thoughts. I want to have a conversation.

00;28;49;27 - 00;29;13;08
Brent Herd
If all of this media has one guy reach out and have one conversation and say, you know what? I've been having some pretty dark thoughts. I want to chat. Then this work has been successful. I'm not a therapist. Sean's obviously not. You know, we're neither of us are therapists. We're just guys who've had experiences who know how important it is now to talk about it.

00;29;13;11 - 00;29;19;03
Brent Herd
And we know that successes, that one guy having that one conversation.

00;29;19;06 - 00;29;31;17
Paul Sullivan
Brant and Sean, thank you for being my guest today on the Company of Dads podcast. Last question. How can people find you guys? How can people say, listen to this? How can they reach out and find you guys?

00;29;31;19 - 00;29;44;04
Brent Herd
Yeah, they can, they can come to our website, the the real.biz tag rtl dot busy. And they can find us on LinkedIn and on Instagram as well.

00;29;44;07 - 00;29;50;08
Paul Sullivan
Great. Thank you again, guys. I appreciate your time, but I even more appreciate what you're doing.

00;29;50;10 - 00;29;52;27
Shawn Lesser
Thank you for.

00;29;52;29 - 00;30;18;09
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the Company Dad podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company of dads, possible. Helder Moura, who is our audio producer, Lindsay Decker, and is all of our social media, Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;30;18;09 - 00;30;35;28
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dad. It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.