Project 55 And A Practical Way To Support Mental Health

55% of adults are struggling and not receiving treatment, and the scariest part is how easy it is to miss the moment when someone needed us to lean in. I’m joined by Justin Goodman, an insurance industry leader and mental health advocate, for a grounded conversation about what it really takes to support people without pretending we’re clinicians or having the perfect words ready. He shares the personal turning point that pushed him into this work, including chronic pain, addiction risk, and the intervention that changed his life. 

We also get surprisingly tactical about learning and performance. We talk the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, why most training fails without spaced repetition, and how AI tools can weaken memory, focus, and executive function when we use them as a shortcut instead of a tool. If you’re a parent, teacher, coach, or leader, the ideas here translate directly into better study habits, stronger onboarding, and clearer communication under stress. 

Then we break down Project 55, Justin’s free online mental health first responder training built to remove the excuses that keep people silent. We cover stigma at work, fear of being labeled a liability, why “help” might be the bravest four-letter word, and how saying no can pull you out of the red zone. If you want practical mental health resources, leadership lessons, and a way to show up for the people you care about, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with one person who needs it, and leave a review, then check out the free training at Project55.org.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Guest’s Mission

Gary Wise 0:28

All right, everyone. How are you doing today? Hop today, Ohio. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whatever time it happens to be when you are listening to the sound of our voice or watching us here on the Words from the Wise podcast. I still continue to be Gary Wise, your host for this podcast. And today we have a very exciting episode. We have a gentleman coming on the podcast who's he's in the mental health space, he's in the leadership space. He he wrote a book called Named Retain. And I'm definitely looking forward to talking about that book because I understand the importance of retention. And I just I have a feeling that's or he's gonna know a lot about that subject. So without further ado, let me invite to the stage our guest for today. He goes by the name Mr. Justin Goodman. Hey Justin, how you doing, man? Fantastic, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Man, thank you so much for reaching out for coming on the podcast. I will tell you, when I first uh got some information about your Project 55 organization, it really, really, really resonates with me because look, I I deal with mental health challenges. I am a retired veteran, and part of why I chose to retire was recognizing I was challenged and it was not going the way I wanted it to go unless I changed something, right? Like I had to, I had to strategically um, I don't want to just say take a knee, but definitely like lateral somewhere else to take care of myself a little bit. And I was living in that red zone a lot longer than I needed to be or should have been. And I know a lot of my friends still are because they're afraid to do what I did, which is maybe no longer continue in that hot zone, right? And so I'm I'm definitely interested in talking about uh your Project 55 Space.

Justin Goodman 2:16

Awesome, awesome. And uh, you know, thank you for your service. I mean, we we we so often brush over that moment, but as you know, we we look at like the current conflict that we're we're in at the moment, and uh I'm in Southern California, uh near the Pendleton base, and uh a lot of our family and friends have been impacted by the deployments that have taken place. And it's so easy to forget when someone comes back and they're part of everyday life because a lot of the the military, right? You you come back, you're interacting, you're you're still part of the the little league team, you come back, and yet you're not sharing the burden that you continue to carry after a deployment. And um what we've seen through our families and friends over the years, especially is that burden still exists, and as as we now face this current uh challenge, um there's gonna be more needs and and more struggles that that we see that that come back. And it's just it's something that just always sticks in the back of my mind that I'm so grateful that there are men and women that are brave enough to tackle that, let alone one time. But the fact that we can still rely on a volunteer military versus going to a draft, the fact that there's that many uh young men and women who have that that moral courage and fortitude uh to do that, um, especially now knowing the cost. Uh the cost is not just the physical, but that emotional, the mental on the family. And so um just very grateful for

When Success Still Feels Like Crisis

Justin Goodman 3:55

your service and that of many others.

Gary Wise 3:57

No, no, I appreciate that. And and I will tell you, you know, for me, it was a hard thing to hear from the doctor when they said, hey, you know, master chief, maybe it's not a heart problem, right? Because I was convinced I had to have a heart problem. I was convinced it had to be a thyroid problem or it had to be a smoking gun, physical problem. Never would I have ever thought it's my it was in my mind or mental health issue because of how how successful I had been, right? I was being how I was still doing the thing every day, but then I was struggling. And I looked back on just picking things apart throughout my life, and I looked at when did alcohol become a problem, when did communication become a problem, like with my wife, when did just keeping life in balance. And the more I the more I started therapy, right? I when I started therapy and talking with a therapist, and you know, and then I got you know, I got put in all the different mental health medications, they took you down that road trying to figure things out, and it's just it's a road that a lot of people don't want to go down because it's scary, and and you feel like you're going to be unfortunately a statistic, or at least I'll tell you in the military, you feel like you're gonna get put out to pasture before maybe you're ready for that answer, right? Before you want to hear that that thing. And a lot of career people don't want to go to the doctor because they don't want to hear that answer before they they do it on their terms. And I'm sure we're gonna talk about all this. I want to get back to quickly before we go down the middle health road too far. Uh, because we're I'm sure we could do that

Insurance Sales And Social Anxiety

Gary Wise 5:35

all day. But you started off in the insurance space, right?

Justin Goodman 5:39

Yes. So, my background, I'm third generation person in the insurance business. And my old man, before uh he sold his company, said, Hey, you ever gonna come in this business? And I'm like, Hell no. You've complained about this for years. There's no chance I'm ever going in this business. And I was selling shipping supplies in an internship while going to school, and I uh met a girl and I realized I wanted to marry her, and then I realized the insurance business with recurring commissions was a pretty uh pretty good business model if I could do it. So went and begged for a job, and that's what started my career off in insurance. And 25 years later, I've since I've run an agency, sold my agency, and most of the education work that I do now uh for my day job, in addition to the mental health nonprofit, is focused on education both for uh the industry professionals on how they do the job, but now pivoting more even towards the leadership aspect uh within our space.

Gary Wise 6:41

Okay. I I love it, right? I I'm interested in it because when I think of the insurance space, I think you have got to be able to communicate with people the need that they have for insurance. And oh, by the way, get them to recognize what's out there, why your thing is valuable, and then why they should best work with you and your team. So I think that has to be a complicated conversation. So that's a leadership for me, that's a leadership space for sure. Uh, and I tell you that because as a teacher right now, I know a lot of my students don't have uh insurance, right? And so I can only imagine having to exist in a space where your your your primary way of making the income to support your family is by finding the people and getting them to go ahead and work with you and your team. And then I think about also the people who you hire who come to work for you who need to be able to provide for their family as well. And so I can see the need for a lot of leadership in that space because you know, I'll tell you, selling things or communicating things is one of the most complicated ways to be a leader. You know, I look at the military. Well, it's complicated. Everyone there is in the freaking military, right? We're gonna we're gonna get you to do what we need you to do. Um, not everyone's happy about it, but for the most part, they're gonna listen. Uh, not everybody always wants to wake up every day and and possibly talk about insurance, right? So did you find that to be, I mean, you said you were a multi-generation, so your dad already had kind of figured out things that worked for him.

Justin Goodman 8:09

Yeah, I mean, and and things uh in general. Uh I was specialized in the construction space, and for that I was very lucky because I knew one California has lots of construction, and I I had a father who had a background, but more importantly, um going into work for a larger company that was established, it was I I had the business relationships as far as the insurance companies I wanted to deal with, all that was set up. The difficult part, obviously, is knocking on doors and getting people to say, hey, I want to buy from you. They were required to buy it for protecting themselves in the state of California, but pushing them to go with you is a different story. And for me, actually, uh, I had severe social anxiety all growing up and even through my early stages of my selling career. And so it was one of those challenges for me that I had cold call reluctance, and we had email or we had physical mailers being mailed out where people would respond and say, Justin, uh, quote my XYZ insurance. And I had such anxiety about calling the person who had told me to call them. So I had through some of that, I was having to work through some of those challenges. Um, but other than that, it's it's a great industry. It's what I pitch everybody towards. It's like if if you're reasonably intelligent, you want to work hard, it's a fantastic injury industry to jump into.

Hiring Culture That Keeps Great People

Gary Wise 9:35

Okay. I don't know. I as I was kind of doing some research on you as we were preparing for this for this conversation. I thought that was very interesting, leading a team that's in that space. But then I was like, man, I get where his leadership talents were going to be required. And then when I saw you wrote that book and the title was Retain, I was into that because we all understand that in the human resource space, it is a constantly a competition for talent, right? It's like everyone is looking to find the right employee, and there's this perception or the right team member, right? There's this perception that there is just an unlimited amount of people that are always looking for work. But I will tell you, it just doesn't feel like that when you're on teams. And one of my favorite things to tell leaders is that look, the team that you have is probably much better than the team you might get in the future. Sometimes you want to work on retaining the correct talent. So when you wrote that book, retain, is that what you were you were leaning into?

Justin Goodman 10:35

So with that book actually, that so I wrote a book called The Insurance Talent Magnet that was focused on on that issue specifically. My other book, Retain, was actually focused on how the human brain uh retains information. Uh, so that's kind of a nerdy, nerdy aside, but I'm as someone who's battled ADHD, I'm like, well, how do people learn how do they retain information? And then how do you essentially systematize that within organizations? And so that's what that book goes about. But yes, when I was writing the other book, that really was top of mind was well, I gotta find the best talent, but I can't even find the best talent if I don't have a great culture and great leadership and great structure within the organization that I already have. Right. More often we're always looking for that shiny new object versus seeing, do we have the right positions on the team? Is everybody in the right spot? Now have we equipped them while they're in the right spot to do the right thing consistently.

Gary Wise 11:34

Okay. And so I like the magnet analogy there from your first book. Uh just wave tops for people that are listening, what are three or four recommendations you would give to an organization to be a good magnet by the right kind of people for their team?

Justin Goodman 11:51

I think the first thing is showing that you care, right? The the the fact that it's humans doing the work, it's not human capital, it's actual human beings. And if you can become an organization that actually lives that out and does so in a way where, specifically in our industry, uh we see a lot of challenges where you're looking at 3% increases every year is your salary, regardless of what you're doing. So you have to find a way to incentivize the right type of employees that believe in your mission and also make sure that they are seeing that they can go and be there for those family events. We're no longer in the days where dads and moms are skipping out on their kids' games, nor should we go back to those days. They need to be able to see it so you can support them there. They also need to be able to know that roadmap for their career. I work with a lot of younger uh individuals, and by younger, I mean in less than 30, and they want a career roadmap. They want to know where they can go within your company. And if it's just a rung on a corporate ladder, that doesn't necessarily interest them. And then past that, you have to show them how they're going to get there. What are the steps that I need to take to be able to achieve that? And then lastly, it's really building your organization so that you can onboard train very efficiently so that you can honestly say to people, if we're not the right fit or you outgrow us in two years, or if a position is not available, you can go elsewhere and we're happy to give you a recommendation. Why? Because you kicked butt for us for two years, and now we'll just bring in somebody else, train them up, and and just part ways positively. If you can say that you're going to be looking out for their career interest before your bottom dollar, what ends up happening is they stick around, they stay longer, but ultimately when someone does leave the organization and it's in a positive fashion, that other group hears about it. And now more people get attracted to the organization because they're like, wait a second, your your owner actually helps you negotiate your raise with this other company that's going to take you away from them? Yes, because I had a system in place to replace that individual.

Gary Wise 14:03

Yeah. No, no. Well said, man. And I think you're spot on. Authentic talent management, authentic talent development, and providing future opportunities, people is really what they're looking for, right? There's there's so many opportunities or the perception of a lot of opportunities that

Why We Forget And How To Learn

Gary Wise 14:20

sometimes the best place to be is where you're at, as long as they can provide you somewhere to grow, right? And so, well said, and then to the retain book or to that concept, I will tell you some high school teacher now, and I teach all grades, ninth through twelfth grade. I'm teaching high school ROTC, but I will tell you there is a problem with our young people, and it's I'll just say it's also coming to us older ones as well, and that is there's so much information always coming at us all the time that retention is no longer as prevalent as it once was, right? And I think a piece of that is overwhelm, like there's just so much coming. For me, a challenge is I don't believe in memorizing things that I can look up because I feel like there's only so much space to have things in your head. On the reverse, I can still dial my aunt's phone number from when I was 15 years old, right? I have those numbers ingrained in my head, but I watch these kids prepare for tests, like the SATs, the ACTs, standardized tests, and they're really struggling on not just reading comprehension, but also like memorizing or remembering the things that they need. Did you find in the research for your book retained that this is a really big problem for our society?

Justin Goodman 15:40

It's a huge problem. They actually have studies now, and it's gotten so bad. First, we could have complained about social media, but now with AI, what's happening is they've they've done studies on uh college students' brains and their ability to retain information, those that were using Chat GPT throughout their high school tenure to write papers, et cetera, um, those cognitive abilities are diminished. That executive functioning has gone down. So now you combine social media with AI, and everyone says, well, I can just go get the answer. Well, at the end of the day, if I have a human-to-human interaction, you need to be able to spit out an answer to me, looking me in the eye, not saying, hold on, why do I go, why don't I go to ChatGBT or Claude or one of these LLMs? But one of the reasons that these kids are struggling is also the fact that when they're learning, they're often not taught the proper study skills. And so there's a thing called the Ebonhaas forgetting curve. And I won't bore you too much on it, but basically it says you're gonna forget 90% of everything you learned on any given day within 30 days. Within one week of that time period, you hear something, you'll lose 70% of it, unless you are hearing that information and seeing it regularly. And your brain goes, Oh, I need to use this number. The reason you remember your aunt's number is because you dialed it more often than you probably could think of, right? It's I had to use it regularly, so it stayed there. It's an important number. Same thing. If they're studying for an SAT, they need to say, This material that I covered on Monday and I went through this practice quiz, I actually need to repeat those questions over again three days later, a week later, two weeks later, and then if they have enough time, a month later, because then it tells the brain, you're gonna see this again. And if you're gonna see it again, it says it needs to move from short-term memory to long-term memory. And then the only other part to that is when they're doing the test taking, that we often don't do is we often don't test before we give them material to learn. And if we don't do that, the brain also doesn't know how important this information is. So I'm a huge proponent of test preparation where you quiz somebody, you test them on something they've never seen before, and then you give them the study materials because then the brain goes, Holy crap, I needed to know this stuff and I didn't, and now it automatically dials in a bit more.

Gary Wise 18:10

I like that. I'm gonna do that from now on, I think. I like that a lot actually, because as I prepare my students for really tests, quizzes not so much of a test. We will work through like reviews, but I think giving that a test of some flavor that's similar in what they need to know ahead of time will help them much more pay attention during the review. Then, of course, they'll they'll they'll do well on the test, right? Because really it's about strategies, it's about under like for a lot of my stuff, it's history and it's memorization and things. I'm not I'm not a math guy, I'm not teaching you scientific calculus, but I will literally go through the review of like all of the things we've done over the last three months or whatever it was, and the kids will still bomb the test because they will not pay attention, they won't actually study, though they'll read it and then they won't remember anything. But I think if I was to provide them a snapshot, right? Maybe even like just a portion of what it could look like, that might wake them up a little bit more to think about maybe I need to pay attention to this stuff. So that's a good

Painkillers Depression And A Turning Point

Gary Wise 19:15

idea. I like that. Okay, so as you're going through working, leading your industry, leading your insurance organization, your team, uh, what gets you into the mental health space, man?

Justin Goodman 19:27

So for me, it started uh over 25 years ago. I had, I think I already mentioned my social anxiety, but um I got a degenerative spinal diagnosis um that was kind of very rare for people to have. But long story short, if you think of the hunchback in Notre Dame and that condition, that's the condition I have. And at the time when I got that, I was an elite-level golfer. I had plans of playing it in college and and hopefully beyond. Um, but the the progression of that disease and the pain level was so, so massive that when we met with the surgeons on like what to do, there was only two options. One was an extremely invasive surgery, um, where it was gonna be cut open from the front, the back, and it wouldn't limit it wouldn't limit my pain, it would just prevent the progression. And then the other option was we're gonna give you heavy painkillers and hope something better comes down the road. We opted to delay surgery because the surgeon, uh the neurosurgeon said to me, He goes, Justin, until you're crawling, I don't want to, you know, and you're in so much pain. I don't want you messing around with the surgery because you'll be in just as much pain, if not more, and a lot can go wrong along the way. So heavily medicated on uh narcotics. This is obviously before the real big push to limit that uh came out. But I ended up uh by the time I was in college, I was at 15 to 20 extra strength viking in a day just to be able to get through the day. And ultimately uh between dealing with that um and and just trying to struggle to find purpose, um, I had uh right after uh September 11th, um several of us in the fraternity said, Hey, we want to enlist. Well, I went to the Marine Recruiter's office and I was like three sentences in to like, you know, I I would like to enlist and sign up, and it was your medical condition, and I'm on narcotic painkillers, and it was a deal killer like instantly, right? So, you know, we all who everyone who's impacted in that moment, you felt the surge. Well, I had several fraternity brothers. Um, one left for the Naval Academy, one left um and and just straight enlisted. But the the end of that story was I was feeling like a pretty crappy human being because I felt there's this moment in time we can stand up. And because of my condition and the fact that I'm still stuck on all these painkillers, I'm there's no chance for me doing this. Um, so I then take even more painkillers versus just kind of working on myself and and getting better. And I really stopped start dropping the ball in lots of different areas. And ultimately I was like, this is it, I'm I can't live this way anymore. Um, and I feel like it's only gonna get worse. So I decided that that was gonna be the end for me. I took a hundred extra strength icon, um, set them all out, and I was about 35 into them uh when I had a couple fraternity brothers step in and see what was going on. They saw the suicide note that was on the computer screen that I had already typed out. Uh they quickly, you know, got me out of the room and you know, hid the pills. And the next day they uh staged an intervention. And the way they staged the intervention was one of them had a brother who had substance abuse problems, and he was given training through Al Anon and uh uh the narcotics uh anonymous group as well on what to do and how to approach somebody. And with that limited training, these two gentlemen said, you either go home and confess everything to your parents right now, just how bad this situation is, or we're gonna call them. You have one hour to get home. I live in Southern California, so I was an hour away from my campus at USC. And so I made the decision, went home, told my parents, who they're aware that I was on a lot of the painkillers because they were involved in my my health care, but they didn't understand the extent of the problem. Well, right, I went, got clean, you know, got off the meds, and ultimately that was the starting point for me turning my life around. I would along the way discover that I wasn't just taking the pain pills for the pain. It was also to help, you know, teeter or peter out the social anxiety, but it also helped with the depression I was having. And then down the road, we discovered, oh, by the way, you're a type two bipolar. And so there's actually some medication that you should probably be taking instead of a narcotic uh that can help you function a little bit better, and got my life in order, and then obviously working in business and whatnot, that eventually I decided like we're not talking about this

From Speaking Out To Building Training

Justin Goodman 24:28

enough. So I offered to speak at one insurance event on it, and the next thing you know, I was getting asked to speak at more and more events on mental health. And the end result of that was I'd have people that would line up at the end of my talks, and there would be one group of people who either lost someone to suicide or someone who was really, really struggling and they're trying to figure out how to help. And then there's this other group who said, I've never experienced what you guys talk about when you talk about depression. I'm the farthest thing from it, but I see friends struggling in everyday life, and I'm always afraid I'm gonna say the wrong thing, so I don't jump in. Like I don't know what to do about that. Well, then I had a few friends say to me, Justin, you've got an education company and you know all these mental health professionals, right? There's gotta be some synergy there, something you can bring to the table. And that's ultimately where I decided to go from just advocacy to then also focus on a training solution.

Gary Wise 25:27

Man, oh my gosh, brother. And I, you know, look, I have gone through my own personal hill and I made thought some really bad shit. Um, I wasn't to the point where, like what you were doing with the with the note and all that, but I think uh anyone who's really contemplated bad things can relate in some of those ways. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Um, and I'm very thankful your frat brothers found you and they were able to convince you to go home. And I'm able, I'm glad you're able to get cleaned up and figure things out in your life and and balance it all. And just what a powerful story, man. Especially because you know, to have that condition that damn near you were just barely, you were just hanging on with those narcotics, so you probably felt like they were never not gonna be a part of your life, and to go down that road of not having them, but then figuring it out that's that had to be scary.

Justin Goodman 26:20

Oh wow, yeah, it yeah, it definitely was, but uh yeah, again, fortunately, you know someone who cared with just enough training, you know, makes a big difference.

Gary Wise 26:33

Yeah. Uh and that's so part of what now you said you have an education company already that you were already doing educational stuff with.

Justin Goodman 26:42

Yeah, so my my day job, I've got an education company for the insurance industry, and that's where we turn on the job skills and the leadership and the the soft skills as well.

Gary Wise 26:53

Awesome. And so then that was where when you with Project 55, you were kind of able to go into the space where you're training people how to have that just enough information to be someone to help.

Justin Goodman 27:05

Exactly. And and the idea was how do we eliminate the excuses that all of us make for not leaning in in those moments? And how can we make it paint by numbers so that not only is the training effective and tactical for a bunch of different life events, but that we have a resource library that even if people forget whatever they learned in the course, they can go and immediately grab those resources when that moment arises when they do need the information. So it's that just in time type of uh resource at your fingertips.

Gary Wise 27:41

Man, I can see the value for that in so many different areas as well. I mean, not for nothing. I will tell you in this service, we had a thing called intrusive leadership. And it made a lot it made a lot of people not happy because they didn't like the idea of intruding in on somebody else. But I will tell you, for me, it was when people were going through certain kinds of challenges, it was being able to get into that conversation and and poking that bear enough to get them to hopefully talk and and let you know what's going on. Is that something that's part of your training is teaching people how to hear for the right things and then know when to kind of ask that follow-on question that might be a little uncomfortable, but unfortunately might need to be asked?

Justin Goodman 28:25

Yeah, 100%. I mean, we uh the the quick nuts and bolts on the training are the first third of the course is on the things you need to take, the steps you need to take to kind of get that oxygen mask on yourself, right? This is what a healthy individual does for their own mental health. Then we go into these are the diagnosable mental illnesses, and then we say, by the way, a lot of human struggle isn't a diagnosable mental illness, and you can still help, you know, because moving the needle in those circumstances doesn't require always a therapist or a psychologist. Sometimes it requires just a caring friend. But what we teach, and there is a really a five-part framework in that first step, which you're mentioning, is that engage part where you teach the everyday person not only to spot some signs, but how to start the conversation. As I mentioned, these younger than 30 individuals, um they're they got hit with COVID at the worst time in their life they could have, which was their adolescence. And so a lot of them didn't develop these social skills. And so when I talk to organizations, I've had individuals that are in their early 20s say, Justin, how do I start a difficult conversation with somebody who's struggling when I can't even walk up to somebody who's in a normal setting and it's just about trying to like break into the group? And so we realize we had heavy lifting that there to do. But yeah, to your answer, it's it's for 14 different life situations. We're gonna tell you exactly what to spot, how to step in, the type of words to use, the timing of it. So we try and again remove and demystify anything that would keep you from jumping in.

Gary Wise 30:04

Well, I think it'd be value-added for that. Again, I'm thinking back my past life, and then I'm thinking about the parents of all my students who are trying to raise kids going through their adolescence. And that would be also really good skills for them to have because not all parents are equipped for the conversations, and it's scary because you know, like I mean, no one really teaches you how to do something, you just kind of figure it out one day at a time. But I've had a lot more training than the average person. Uh, but I but I can see the value in that group as well, being you know, parents of adolescents or or at-risk teens or whatever it may be. Um very valuable stuff.

The 55% Gap And Stigma At Work

Gary Wise 30:45

And now, project 55 is what you called your nonprofit. Uh, and what was the 55% about what that was about the number of like the percentage of adults that are struggling?

Justin Goodman 30:56

55% of adults are struggling and not receiving any treatment. So it's the you know, it's a real problem. I mean, and we weren't overly creative with the the naming convention. I'm kind of a simpleton that way, but I'm like, okay, well, if we can get the 55% who are struggling and not getting help down to 35, I'm fine with the name change.

Gary Wise 31:18

Yeah. No, I mean, that's that's when I read that number, when I when I read that number, I thought about it. I thought that's it's probably spot on. Because how many people just do not want to talk or do not want to even consider that they have a challenge or that it's a problem? And the longer you hold on to it, the more that poisonous pays inside you, unfortunately, the worse it's gonna get. You know, you gotta you gotta figure out a way to share.

Justin Goodman 31:43

And past that, I mean, you look at the the cost, right? So if you go through insurance, you're waiting six to eight weeks on average to be able to see somebody. The only therapists and psychologists now that accept insurance are the newer ones or ones historically who have not put in, let's say, the extra work to specialize. And so what you have is the people who need this most, if I'm relying on insurance, I have to wait the longest. And then I'm going to be either getting someone who's newer to the field and yes, still trained, but I'm not gonna get the 15-year professional who's specialized in domestic violence recovery, right? So those are the type of challenges. And then also, even if you can get in and and you can afford it with insurance, then it becomes the fact that how many sessions are you gonna do it? What's your your outcome? Is there gonna be an impact on on the business, your your spouse, the stigma that's surrounded by this? Because once you raise your hand, and obviously you give the much better example in the military where you guys are trained to go and you know kick ass and take names, and like that's that's the job to be able to say, oh, I'm I'm struggling some, that stigma is is a very real thing, even in the business world. And especially amongst sales professionals, if I've had sales professionals concerned about using their company's employee assistance program because they were afraid the boss would find out that they used that resource and then think they were no longer a qualified salesperson. And so those those fears are are very legitimate, and we see it pretty often out there.

Gary Wise 33:28

No, it's huge. It's huge, right? Because people start to feel like you're not going to be an ass. And unfortunately, the lot of us in in business and or operational places, we are all there to get the job done. And once you start to feel like someone's not able to do the position they've been hired for, that become it can become a liability, right? And that's a concern I think everyone has. Nobody wants to be in that space. But then we also want to have, like we talked about earlier, that ability to trust the organization that we're a part of that we can get right, provided we're communicating, provided we're doing our best, provided we're being honest about what's going on. And I think if you're an organization that's investing in your people, helping them stay whole might be a good strategy to retaining that talent because maybe they'll be more quick to talk about what's going on in their home life or in their marriage or in their business space or whatever that's causing them to struggle at work, right? And then, or because it's not just about the workplace, but I believe if holistically you can help a human being be happier with their role and pushing the rock up the hill, they're gonna be a lot more happy to be around and more productive in all other areas of their life as well. Right.

Justin Goodman 34:45

A hundred percent. And and even with that, when you look at the business community, several hundred billion dollars a year is lost to absenteeism and presenteeism caused by depression and anxiety. So there's even a business case for us to actually treat this as a serious challenge and get everyone the help they need, because either the person's not going to show up to the office or they're showing up, but they're on their phone, they're not engaged, they're not trying because they've got some other thing that's going through their head all day long. And to your point, yeah, you bring home the work with you back home, you bring your home stuff to work, and if we don't equip enough people to work through and solve some of their own problems, or be able to direct them to the resources where they can get assistance solving them, then we'll continue to have the same cycles

Project 55 Training Model And Cost

Justin Goodman 35:35

we're having, but I just think at a faster and faster pace.

Gary Wise 35:39

Yeah. So for Project 55, are you guys just opening it up where people come to you 1v1, or do you guys primarily work with organizations and go in and teach and work with a whole team?

Justin Goodman 35:53

So great question. Um, it's 100% uh online self-paced training. So it's highly interactive video. Um you know, we've got all these different activities you go and do throughout the coursework, but we've designed it to be this free self-paced program where it doesn't matter if you're Jill, the stay-at-home mom or Bob who's a trucker and he's on the road half the year. Anyone can use this training. Um, we do have organizations who'll say, Hey, we want you to kind of have a kickoff call with us and launch this. Um, so we do some of those type of things, but most of what happens is it's that um, you know, self-directed learning path that they go through. Um, we have started including, like I've I've I had a bunch of people request a difficult conversations cohort where they said we're having trouble just even having difficult conversations, and that's impacting people's mental health. So we've now done live role-playing classes. So we're chart starting to implement more of those as we hear back from the community on what those needs are. But by and large, this this first responder training that we've we've built is designed to be self-paced that anyone can go through. It's 10 to 15 hours, depending on if you take any optional coursework that you can immediately go and deploy in your everyday life.

Gary Wise 37:16

Is there any cost attached to getting access to the curriculum?

Justin Goodman 37:20

Uh no, it's absolutely free.

Gary Wise 37:22

That's incredible, man. You know, and when I think about that is uh the remember the groups I was talking about earlier, like the parents or the person who's struggling within a marriage. Maybe you don't want to go to counseling right off the bat, but maybe something like that, your video series would be a good first starter, right? Would be a good first foray into asking themselves these questions. And the fact that it's free, I think again, you just got to get the word out there and share it. And hopefully people can see the value. That's awesome. That's awesome, man. The fact that you guys got out there free is incredible. I was waiting to hear, no, it's kind of like you got to get a purchase by your company or there's something along those lines. Free is amazing.

Justin Goodman 38:03

Yeah, no, the the idea was we didn't want to. I mean, when you don't have a thousand dollars in emergency savings as the average American doesn't these days, to say, oh, we're gonna spend $150 on an additional training for mental health, people say, well, I just don't have the disposable cash. So for us, it was important, make it free for everybody, make it comprehensive, resource focused. And for us, when my I had my engineers build it, I said, we need to build it that if we have 10,000 people going through the trainings every month that the system can accommodate it. And sure enough, we can accommodate 10,000 people in a month going through it. We just need to get the 10,000 people in a month in there. And so our biggest need, we don't ask for outside funds as an organization. Um, it's a self-funded uh nonprofit. What we are looking for, and why people I've reached out to people like you and others is just getting the awareness that this training exists, it's absolutely free. You know, first name, last name, email, we're never gonna sell you anything else. Uh, but just so it gets in enough hands so that if someone is in crisis, you have resources to where you can lean in. And even in those cases, right, just being able to say to people, if they've gone through our training, they realize you're gonna say the wrong thing half the time. But the fact that you show up and say the wrong thing eliminates that lie in everyone's head when they're struggling with suicidal aliation that no one's gonna miss me. You know, you cared enough to have a conversation. You said something stupid, but you eliminated a lie in their head and potentially saved a life in the process. And so that's why we are just like, let's get it out to as many people as possible,

Teens Loneliness And Friendship Through Service

Justin Goodman 39:50

as quickly as possible, and and continue to have the dialogue.

Gary Wise 39:55

Do you see a future in your curriculum and your guys' framework where people are going to be able to certify in that framework and then maybe host like groups of people that are like all working through the framework on their own, but then come together to discuss it in person, like focus groups and communities?

Justin Goodman 40:15

So there is a certification for going through the program. Um and and we have had some people, like I have an organization right now where they are doing breakout groups to discuss as they're going through it independently on their own. Um so yeah, it is part of that. Um, as far as like a train the trainer, um, we haven't gotten to that stage yet. We're about nine months in post-launch of the training program. Um, but that has been something that a few others have brought up and said, well, it would be great for those of us who would like someone to help facilitate the process and answer questions along the way to do something like that.

Gary Wise 40:54

Yeah, that's kind of what I think about. You know, I think for me, I'm gonna give access to this website. I'm gonna show my students, right? A lot of, especially the ones that are getting ready to graduate high school, right? They're gonna be going off to college. And it's self-paced, but I would I'll I I'd love to see them get together and talk about it and and maybe even chew on it a little bit. And just it can be more of an experience as well as the opportunity to get access to the information. I kind of think almost like a Bible group, right? Like where you get together for just a finite amount of time. You don't do it enduring, but you know, X amount of weeks to get through the modules and have some in-depth conversations, and hopefully y'all can walk out of there with not only having had some good socialization practice and training and and get the chance to communicate with people, but also maybe you'll do a little better at retaining some of that information, right?

Justin Goodman 41:44

Yeah, and and and that's the hope. And and the truth is, you know, yeah, you there there is an adjustment when you talk high school um versus the the workforce, but the principles remain the same. And even um, I'll I'll speak to this. So um I was talking to a student who does national advocacy for mental health for teenagers, and one of the things that came up was just the fact that these kids feel um, you know, so alone in so many different ways, that type period of life, but they've got their social media friends, but how many real friends do they have? And one hack that I discovered through this whole training process was that following these principles and leaning in towards helping others, ultimately, if you you do it in the right way, ends up broadening your friendship network drastically. And and what I found is is kind of the opposite of what you might suspect. When you lean in to help someone else who's struggling, one, they feel noticed, but two, they feel like they they owe you something in return. And what happens is they get course corrected on their path, they end up circling back and saying, Well, what caused you to to you know do this? And then finding out more about you. And ultimately these friendships happen. And I'll just give a quick example. My son had had surgery, and it was a pretty extensive surgery about two months ago. And I had some really close friends and they knew the surgery was coming, and I didn't really get any texts from them. But I got 10 separate texts from people that I have helped out along the way over the past couple of years in the mental health capacity who had stayed in touch with me after the fact, who all knew that my son was having surgery, all checking in that day. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, for these young kids, it's like, oh, yeah, the hack to really building relationships is caring enough about the other person and focusing more on what value you can bring to them. And if you do that, and if you're that listener, and if you take interest in others, you're gonna have more friends than you can count. And I think that's some some of the when you talk about the skill sets, these younger ones are lacking, it's that socialization. that that practice of leaning in to really get to know somebody. And if they can do that, that will solve their loneliness problem while also equipping them to help others.

Gary Wise 44:10

I think that is a that is spot on. And the other thing that I've seen that not just young people but people in general but I'm a father of an 18 year old. He struggles in asking for help, right? And a lot of these younger people they don't want to ask for help. And I'm guilty, right? I I'll own that too. The difference is is in my professional life I was trained to ask for help because I had to be able to negotiate timelines and communicate concerns and bring up that bring up the sticky thing that nobody wants to talk about, but that's my job. And so I'm real good at doing that. But I'm not real good at asking about help for myself as a human being, right? I don't want to show that. And I think that's again for the younger kids what I see is there will either be a pair there's a paradigm. Either they're going to bring up a million reasons why they can't do something or they don't want to bring up anything at all and they'll just be very quiet and then not be doing any progress not making any progress and then it all comes out in the wash and there's a huge there's there's there's like really not a lot of in between for the kids that are struggling right for those kids it's either usually one or the other and I think teaching them how to communicate with people will help along the way and telling them what's wrong, what's on your mind, what are you worried about? Why are you why do you think you're struggling and then if you can learn to not just care about yourself but care about those answers from another human being then maybe you can have some better connections right yeah and and it's and I'll take it a step further you know I'm now being asked to like speak at these high schools and and talk to these these the the younger generation about it.

Justin Goodman 45:46

It's it's you're learning to lean in and ask these questions but what's also necessary is the recognition that no matter what happens in life, you're responsible for your next step. Right. And and so um I borrowed this quote from Will Smith and he was like you may be a victim of of something that happened but you have a responsibility to heal. That's yours and yours alone. That's that you can't put that on anybody else. And so for these kids to realize oh I have agency I can make and determine that next step is important. But past that in this age where as you said they don't want to ask um for help they'll they'll go to ChatGPT or Google for answers, but they won't ask somebody who they have to lean in and have these conversations with well the problem is if you go to Google or ChatGPT to give you the answer, you're not learning how to solve the problem. And a lot of these kids haven't learned and there's a framework we use in psychology called the solve framework that teaches people how to solve their own problems. And so we so often see with this younger crowd, one of the reasons they struggle and feel helpless is no one ever taught them how to solve their own problems. And so that and one of the ways you can solve your own problem is by raising your hand ask for help. Now it's dependent upon what type of help you receive right if they're just giving you the answer versus somebody who's a mentor who's going to say tell me about your problem what are the circumstances what are the options available to you so all of those things I think are going to become hugely necessary for this younger generation because a lot of them did not get that.

Gary Wise 47:27

Yeah that's all framework I've seen that before I'm going to bring that up again. I think that'd be another good thing to you know I I'm at the time of the year where I'm really trying to have life skill conversations with this class because some of the kids may never come back. They might do one two years in the program and call it good. And then my seniors that I've had for four years, it's like I've had a bunch of babies about to fly out of the nest and I'm just trying to make sure I give

Diagnoses As Tools Not Excuses

Gary Wise 47:50

them everything I can before they all go their own direction and try to figure out life. And I I couldn't agree with you more we ultimately all of us need to take responsibility for our lives especially when we're finally to the space where we can take care of ourselves right physically mentally emotionally all the above and try to unpack we've all gone through challenging things in our lives one thing I wanted to maybe hit on real quick again is you talked about some of your diagnosis in particular your mental health stuff right and a lot of these kids or a lot of people today have received diagnosis you know whether they were diagnosed with possibly ADHD autism whatever it may be right how complicated does that then also make the mental health picture in today's world as they as people are moving forward and what about the people that were never diagnosed but there could be potential that they got challenges out there that they haven't even thought about so I have mixed opinions on diagnoses.

Justin Goodman 48:52

If you're going to use the diagnosis as a tool to move forward that's one thing. But a lot of people use the diagnosis as their excuse get out of jail free card for everything that they're weak on going forward in life. And so the challenge that I see is amongst let's just say someone is 80 struggles with ADHD and they say well I you know I just have ADHD so I just can't focus. Well no you can you have to learn these other skills to then be able to focus better or well I'm just to I have depression and the best they can do is give me medication. Well no there's all this other stuff that you can do that are easy lifts to help with your depression that you should be doing are you doing those things? And so there's there's good rules of thumb that's all backed on evidence of what we could be doing whether you have a diagnosable mental health illness or not. And for so many people it's I've got the diagnosis, hopefully a pill fixes it if it doesn't or even if it does that's my get out of jail free card. And then there's others who can't get in or couldn't afford the professional help and they bounce around trying to figure out what's wrong with them and thinking they're a defective human. And so it's it's a limiter to those who have a real uh struggle that that needs a diagnosis in order for treatment. But it's also something that you have to be careful that you say, why am I getting the diagnosis? Is it so that I will then take action and take if I need to take a medication for a period of time, great. But what are the other steps that I'm going to take in light of the information provided to me and I just find that so often like your kids you were mentioning who find a reason not to try, people will use a diagnosis as a reason not to try XYZ and as if it's just like theta complete their future certain parts are written off because one doctor said one thing.

Gary Wise 50:58

And I agree bro just so you know like and what sucks for me or what's where I'm frustrated is a lot of these kids were diagnosed when they were so young that they really it was pre they have it just it happened you know elementary school even and now they're now they're in high school and you get all kinds of different exceptions you get all kinds of different things or we'll adjust things to help best support you. But then I will tell them like look here's the deal man once you graduate high school they're not going to give those kinds of exceptions for you out there in society out there in the world at some point you have got to learn to take responsibility for your learning style for your ability to to conquer an objective to go after something strategically the best way you only you can do it but if you really want something you have got to stop telling me all the reasons why you cannot do it because it's one thing like your freshman year but by senior year we've got to figure these things out otherwise you're not going to get access to certain opportunities right and then the other thing is like again I'm I'm in a military style class a lot of my young people will think about joining the service but then find out that a lot of those diagnoses are going to be problematic to them possibly going to join up and to serve. And it's there is it's not it's not it doesn't mean you can't but you might have to go ahead and go a different route to to earn the opportunity to go serve your country and to show that you're going to be an asset to the organization. And I just as I see these things happening as I talk with the kids I just I see it probably being bigger than just even in my own community right then I always hear people make these offhand remarks so my I have a younger son who's currently in sixth grade and he asked me the other day if he had ADHD and I was like no bro you don't right I want to let you know but I can tell that he probably from school kids are talking about it and they they flippantly will say something along those lines and it's almost like a a a plus up in that moment right advice being a complication or or something that's it's real and you have to learn how to work through it right and but I thought it was an interesting thing that he brought to me and I just see it being a part of the conversation right 100%.

Justin Goodman 53:22

And even with ADHD right they they've done the studies and part of it is just because we had an American system that we still use today that was used to try and uh train up factory workers right that was what our education system was modeled after. How do we get enough manufacturing line workers and it's been that way and it's not changed well that doesn't work for everybody. That doesn't mean you have a diagnosable illness it just means you learn differently past that we start kids earlier in school than we do in other other countries and when we start them early and we don't give them enough time to run especially boys get them exhausted they will focus when they're they're exhausted if if if you have a 12 year old a 10 year old an eight year old and you have them an hour of recess to start his school day and then come in and learn the outcomes radically improve but we try again with our backwards knowledge in a in in the states is oh we're going to try and cram as much education in one day as possible and eliminate the the recesses and the lunches and minimize those when that's what's necessary to get the boys exhausted enough so they can sit still and take in information.

Gary Wise 54:39

Yeah you know what's funny about that is when I think about recesses especially the longer ones because when we when I we were younger I'm not sure I'm 40 I'm almost 49. When I was a kid recess was a big deal especially elementary school and and then my again my younger son just came out of elementary school and he almost had no recess. For schools to get sued or whatever it is but but you know unfortunately that's it that doesn't always

Rapid Fire Leadership Parenting And Boundaries

Gary Wise 55:15

make society better right it just changes things. Good stuff man I appreciate that conversation and I tell you it's a very real conversation we're going to continue having in on our country and in the world today where would you like to see Project 55 go?

Justin Goodman 55:29

Just kind of be it be out to 10 000 users a month or a year is that the goal yeah I mean our real goal is yeah get it to 10,000 users a month um and and really be able to drive uh the outcomes down because for us it you know just taking this certification it's one thing it shows hey I'm I've got a willingness to lean in but what we are starting to collect and where we want to be is instead of the 800 emails and texts I get over the past six months of people struggling looking for help, I'm wanting to continue to hear the stories that have started coming in where it's oh my gosh, I didn't have any training other than what you gave me and I stepped in and by the way this saved a life or this saved this marriage or this father who was grieving over this I was able to support him in a way that he found really impactful. And so for us it's can we scale it at the same time the the number only matters if we're changing outcomes. And so that's really the goal can we get enough users to materially change the outcomes that drive this people the the percentage of people who aren't getting the real help down from that 55 to as low a number as possible I like it.

Gary Wise 56:42

I like it I'm definitely gonna do what I can to get the word out there and make sure we get it not far and wide hey typically for my show as we wrap things up I do a little rapid fire question and answer if you have a moment or two. All right are you ready? Yep Justin what do you believe is your most single your single most valuable leadership lesson that you would pass on to somebody if you had just one opportunity for a conversation I'm gonna steal another line I heard from Tom Hanks.

Justin Goodman 57:14

Now he got it he got it from uh the the Bible but it's this too shall pass and the reason is whatever is going great in your business tomorrow could go south. And when it's going south and you're struggling you're wondering when you're gonna escape from that hell if you keep going you'll get out of hell and eventually it becomes normal and good and can become great again. And so whatever stage you're in it's all temporary. And so trying to keep that emotional framework there of going if it's bad it's going to get good so I can have hope that it's gonna be good. And if it's good I have the the perspective that understanding that when it goes bad that'll be a temporary period of time. So as long as I take care of myself I'll survive these just fine.

Gary Wise 58:01

I love it. I love it. You know just keep on breathing the sun's gonna talk tomorrow right we'll figure it out. All right so you're a leader you're an author what advice would you give to parents trying to raise teenagers in this world uh that uh that wants to coddle them right that wants to go ahead and give them all these reasons why they're not gonna be able to succeed what's the advice you give to parents to help them not fall for that track I think it starts early and I think it's something where we as parents made the mistakes as well.

Justin Goodman 58:33

It's as soon as your kid is capable of doing something on their own, don't steal that opportunity from them. So as soon as they're able to make their own bed that becomes part of their responsibility. As soon as they're able to put dishes away and clean dishes after dinner that becomes their responsibility those small things will make a huge difference. Oh you're going to an airport and you need to get the bag tags they can put in the code they can do it they can learn to do this as many opportunities from the young age where you can get them to get that I have agency and control over my life, you drive different outcomes. The other part is and this is a uh a thing that I think husbands and wives disagree with but the men will tell you the world isn't going to do you any favors it's gonna deck you in the face over and over again. So it's either pain now or massive pain later or we get you know just a little bit of pain and a little bit of frustration along the way and we can go into this world well prepared compared to the rest of our competition who's been coddled and now we have kids that'll not be 28 year old dependence on the parents right no I agree give them opportunities to fail I like it and and and the win right don't rob them of the success of having that victory perfect. What advice would you give for to a professional who feels like they're in the red like they're in the red zone but they they're afraid to ask for help two things help is the bravest four letter word in the English language use it and you'd be surprised at how many people would view it as an honor to step in in your life they they are looking for an opportunity to give back in some way and on the flip side when someone has taken their own life the biggest regret of those friends and family is that we could have done something more. So don't steal your friend of that opportunity to serve you in that way when asking for help. But then also learning to say no. It's a complete sentence we have too many things on our plate we're pulled in too many different directions you can learn to say no and that will take you out of the red line just if you start saying no until you have enough bandwidth and energy to evaluate what else you can add to your plate.

Gary Wise 1:00:54

Well said man well said right final question all right so I was the chief petty officer of the United States Navy the chief's mess we have some guiding principles uh the first one is deck plate leadership where it you know it's what it sounds like leading from the front leading by example all those good things uh there is going to be institutional and technical expertise the idea there is you are you are you are an expert in the institution of what you're a part of as well as being a technical expert. There's professionalism and that goes that's more than just you know that high that high haircut and shiny boots but it's like you recognize you are a professional in whatever you your chosen profession is and you take it seriously there was character there's loyalty right so character of course you stand for if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything and loyalty is about being loyal to the organization even more than you're loyal to relationships right it's about understanding that it's for the good of the country it's for the good of the organ it's for the good of everything that you're loyal to uh there's active communication and and then there's a sense of heritage and remember where we come from uh out of those principles which one of those best resonates with you I think the character one because I think a lot of those other things come into play if you've got solid character and a solid moral fiber uh my mom used to say to me all the the time anticipate the need and it's been kind of this guiding principle in my life and if you're a man or a woman of good character you're going to care about the needs of those surrounding you you're gonna care about performing you're gonna care about that you can't help these people with these needs unless you're an expert in the field for which they need help.

Justin Goodman 1:02:39

So I think that character is really that grounding thing that resonates most. I love it.

Where To Find Project 55

Justin Goodman 1:02:45

I love it. All right brother we're wrapping this thing up what's the best way for people to check you out is it project55.com uh actually project55.org and um we're also heavily on LinkedIn less so on other social media channels but if they ever want to reach out it's real easy to find me on LinkedIn connect there but also if you're interested in the training absolutely free and all it costs you is a first name last name and an email in the system and you'll have all the resources you possibly could want very cool man we'll make sure to get it out to everybody and I really appreciate your time thank you so much brother thanks so much yeah man you have a good night out there bye everybody thank you for listening by many forget