- And at the end of the day, oftentimes, I would be
in my bed, laying down, and it would be 10:00 PM
and I didn't take one breath for myself
or even eat or even like, write one note
or touch one piano key.
I was like, "Whoa, who am I?
"And how do I even find any type of balance?"
(soft music)
I like to center a lot of my thoughts around gratitude
and so I feel grateful.
I am grateful for this conversation
and for our connection,
and for our honesty and transparency,
and being able to talk about a piece
that means a lot to me and a lot to all of us.
And I think that so many of us are going through
because it's just unrelenting.
The world we're living in is unrelenting
and so at some point, we have to figure out
how are we relating to ourselves within that.
And so it feels like this is part of those conversations
that help us get to the bottom of it.
- I'm feeling really grateful to be part
of this amazing group of people
and having this conversation that I think is so important
to have so that people know that it is okay
not to be okay and when we're not feeling that way,
it's important to talk about it
and share that with other people.
- I was diagnosed with being bipolar at age 25.
And I started talking, initially, just to a few people,
like, one sibling, one friend, one person at work.
I wanted someone from each of those three elements
of my life to know what's going on, it's like,
to keep an eye on me.
The one thing I learned as being a young executive
in software, is many times you take somebody
who's like, bright and early in their career
and they get promoted a few times.
And then we get hit with imposter syndrome
where we feel like we're incompetent.
Someone's gonna discover I have no idea
what I'm doing running this team.
And the secret I learned about imposter syndrome is
if you're simply vulnerable to your team
and you acknowledge the things you're not good at,
you're not hiding anything anymore.
And to me, it's getting rid of the hiding is
the first part of the healing.
- And it matters that we are able to have the space
to share what is happening and what we're going through.
- So it's the year 2000 and I had no idea I was unraveling.
I was spiraling upward.
And it was the turn of the millennium
and I can remember seeing a video of people praying on TV
for the arrival of the Messiah.
And I came to the conclusion, mixture of drinking
and the unraveling mental state that that was me.
And I ended up in a hospital and I spent a week.
And the good people there got me medication,
they got me healthy.
It was the hospital, actually, where my mom worked
and where I had worked.
And so there was a sense of secrecy
about what was happening on the outside.
And I got diagnosed, I remember the words
bipolar disorder type one.
And I couldn't process it.
It was a moment where coming out,
I felt so much humiliation and shame
about my memories of the manic episode
that to acknowledge that that had happened
would be to acknowledge the diagnosis.
And then in the formative years of building a startup,
Bonobos, I started to experience catatonic depression.
Couldn't got out of bed, suicidal ideation.
I went through, you know, co-founder divorce.
I went through always being six weeks
or six months, or whatever the duration was
from running out of money.
And so I began medicating my good moods with alcohol
and treating my depressive moods with silence
and secrecy, just hiding from the world.
And then 16 years after the diagnosis,
I had a catastrophic psychotic episode.
And the next six months were really a floating pain cave
of am I gonna get better,
is my relationship gonna fall apart?
Am I gonna get fired from my job?
And that was the reckoning
and that was when the journey began.
- Speaking of this idea of normalcy, this idea of,
you know, I think we all deal deeply
with a game of perfection or the name of perfection,
or this idea that we're supposed
to be perfect in some way, and same with me.
I'm a New Yorker, I felt like I didn't want people
to kind of violate me, I put up a wall.
But I put up the worst kind of wall,
the wall that you pretend is not there.
You know, the wall that you keep there
so you think you're protecting yourself
but in actuality, you're hurting yourself.
Because if you would just tell people exactly what you feel
or that you're inadequate
or that you're completely terrified,
or that you're, to Paul's point, that you feel
this sense of, you know, uncertainty, or ability.
You don't feel certain that you can even do anything
that you thought you could or claimed you could,
or said you could, this whole imposter idea.
And so all of it kinda like, boom, was that at once.
But all I knew what to do was just to...
They say fake it until you make it.
That's the only thing I knew how to do.
I was just gonna try my best to do the best that I could
for as long as I could, pretend like I knew
what I was doing, and eventually, people might believe me.
And maybe I would believe myself, I guess that's
what it really boiled down to.
- So I think it starts with the safety to tell your story.
And I'm forever grateful that after we sold Bonobos
after a decade to Walmart, during the transaction process,
you know, $300 million transaction,
I disclosed to them that on my background check,
they might've found out that I had been arrested.
And I said, "Here's the issue
"that I dealt with and deal with.
"Here's what happened."
And I was on pins and needles for two weeks
wondering whether the deal might fall apart,
you know, high profile executive coming in
with bipolar disorder.
And when I found out it was no issue
that they had, you know, done a process internally,
tears streaming down my face to be accepted
by the organization as a whole being.
I'll never forget that.
- That's beautiful, wow.
- There's a traditional view of the workplace
that people have their lives and then they put their lives
to the side and then they would come to work
and they were in their work phase,
and then they would go back to their life.
And I think what we are evolving towards is a model
where people can bring part
of their lives into the workplace
because you don't stop being a human being.
And that has always been true, but I think business leaders
and organizational workplace leaders
have not recognized that.
And I think that change and showing that vulnerability is
what is actually allowing people
to be able to perform better.
Because when you can bring your whole self to work
and you don't have to worry about trying to hide parts
of yourself, whether you're being in the closet
about being LGBTQ or being in the closet
about being or having a mental health condition,
you don't have to exert all that pressure and energy
to hide and push down who you are.
And I think it's really important that we recognize
that putting that pressure on people
impacts different types of people disproportionately.
- I think the main responsibility we have
as business leaders, when it comes to mental health,
and really, all health issues, is
to let your team know that you have their back
and you will be there for them when they're struggling.
I have found that it's been helpful to my team
when they hear me be a little vulnerable
and talk about things that I've experienced, myself.
And I don't want to go on a soap box about it
and some people are uncomfortable hearing it,
so I don't wanna make anyone uncomfortable.
But at appropriate times, I'll be open,
sometimes in smaller groups,
and I think that gives other people
the permission to be open.
I've often said that when you look
at business leaders, people follow confidence,
but they are loyal to vulnerability.
And so I think just being that open, transparent leader
and willing to share your own troubles makes you someone
that other people wanna share with you.
- I think that if you can create the structure
and the openness and the culture and lead it
and be very clear, give people directives,
then they'll start to feel that protection
that Andy is saying.
'Cause not everybody's as brave as Andy to say,
"Okay, look, take me or leave me."
But some people, if you give them the direction,
then they can feel, hopefully, a little bit more confident
that there's a trust that can be built
and then they can open to what you said.
And then I think that's a small
but feeling like a real way to start
to integrate these type of ideas.