Normalizing Bipolar: The Bold Journey of Andrew DeGood
What does it take to lead with empathy and transform workplace culture?
In this episode, we sit down with Andrew DeGood, a seasoned leader in the finance and technology industries, who shares his powerful journey from struggling with bipolar disorder to building a successful career.
As an advocate for mental health and a builder of things that matter, Andrew discusses how he used his experiences to create an open and supportive work environment.
Throughout this episode, Andrew emphasizes the importance of vulnerability and transparency in leadership, especially when normalizing mental health struggles in the workplace. Tune in to hear how Andrew's bold move of embracing vulnerability as a leader transformed his career and empowered others to do the same.
Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments
Andrew’s early life struggles and challenges, including a troubled youth and high school expulsions.
His self-discovery of bipolar disorder and the impact it had on his career and personal life.
The power of vulnerability and transparency in leadership to create a supportive and healthy workplace.
Andrew’s bold decision to publicly share his bipolar diagnosis and the positive response he received.
How creating a psychologically safe space for employees helped foster a culture of empathy and support.
The importance of being open about mental health to reduce stigma and empower others.
Andrew’s experience of growing a startup and the impact on the company’s culture.
Insights into the role of CEOs and senior leadership in driving culture change and promoting mental health awareness.
Words of Wisdom: Standout Quotes from This Episode
"The most important thing I can do is continue to talk about bipolar so people see me and realize it’s normal." - Andrew DeGood
"I always wanted to make sure my employees felt like they could be vulnerable and transparent—especially about their mental health." - Andrew DeGood
"I believe I was fortunate to be bipolar because it opened up the door for others to feel safe sharing their struggles." - Andrew DeGood
"It’s about creating environments where people don’t feel the need to hide—they can speak up, get help, and be themselves." - Andrew DeGood
"Sometimes, the biggest bold move is just showing up as your authentic self, even when you’re scared to do so." - Andrew DeGood
"Your ability to put yourself out there and voice trying to normalize bipolar is helping so many people." - Courtney Turich
"Your journey proves that it’s okay to be vulnerable." - Courtney Turich
About Andrew DeGood
Andrew DeGood is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience across finance and technology. He has held diverse roles in operations, product development, client service management, and business development. Andrew co-founded Canopy Financial Technology Partners in 2020 and successfully sold it in 2022. Currently, he serves as the Co-Founder and CEO of Ask Bob AI, a groundbreaking AI startup that helps organizations save time and reduce costs with custom large language models.
Beyond AI, Andrew is passionate about mental health in the workplace. He co-founded IronTribe, a men's community focused on connection and growth.
With a proven track record in startup environments and Fortune 500 companies, Andrew excels in strategy, team building, and creating innovative company cultures.
His dedication to fostering supportive, mentally healthy work environments and delivering impactful solutions sets him apart as a forward-thinking leader.
Follow Andrew DeGood:
Stay Connected with Courtney Turich:
A Team Dklutr Production
BLOG TRANSCRIPT
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Courtney Turich: Hey everyone. It's your host, Courtney Turich with Bold Moves, Confident Choices. We're here to talk about making fearless decisions and taking charge of your own path. So let's get real, get bold, and take charge of your future.
Today's guest, Andrew DeGood is an empathetic leader and builder of things that matter. He advocates to normalize bipolar and as a seasoned leader in the finance and technology industry, he's brought over 20 years of diverse experience as a founder and C-suite executive. His approach is rooted in strategic growth, innovation, and fostering a healthy workplace culture.
So before diving into anything further, Andrew, welcome to Bold Moves and Confident Choices.
Andrew DeGood: Thank you so much, Courtney. I'm so excited to be here.
Courtney Turich: We are so happy to have you. So before we jump into that big, bold move for you, I would love for you to share your story with our audience.
Andrew's Early Life and Struggles with Bipolar
Andrew DeGood: Yeah, absolutely. I'll try to keep this as concise as possible, but, so I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I was born, like, literally on a beach, and spent kind of my early years in Clearwater, like any good Gen Xer. I had a really, really ugly divorce. I feel like that's like a rite of passage. Yeah, I think you're right.
I lived in Clearwater until I was about 13, and moved to Tampa later on to move in, with my father. And I was what you would call a troubled youth. We'll get into it a little bit later on the bipolar, but, I would not find out for a long time that I was, but really started showing signs of it at age seven.
Fast forward to high school, I was asked to leave two different high schools, in Tampa, which eventually led to me moving to boarding school, in Northern California, which ended up being an amazing time and space for me because it was this very psychologically safe environment. But only there for a couple of years, right?
Then got ejected from that back into the real world and unfortunately, they didn't really prepare us very well. So. I went to the University of Kansas, I was in the engineering school, to start off with, but would end up leaving the engineering school, and then eventually, by the end of my sophomore year in college, um, dropping out, college was just not for me.
I still seem to really kind of be struggling not understanding why in life. So that would set off a series of what I would call early mini careers. I spent about eight years in high-end restaurants. As a food and beverage manager for a major hotel, was also a beverage director for several, large, or high-end restaurants, particularly in Kansas City, and then in the Northeast, I would actually move to the Northeast, to do one of those.
I left the restaurant industry because I knew I was getting to a point where I wanted to get married and have kids. I did everything from selling cars to selling furniture. Just absolutely had no idea where I was going to go. I was a completely lost, late 20-something kid who was a college dropout.
And I really didn't have any skills, honestly, at that time. Other than maybe talking, I don't know. And so went to lunch, I'd moved back home to Tampa from the Northeast. I'm still really struggling to figure out where I was going and happened to have lunch with a friend who was talking all about this company that he was working for.
And I was like, man, that sounds like that could be up for me. This was in the mortgage boom of the early two thousand what he did and what I would go on to do for a while was mortgage-backed securities. So what I did was he got me a user manual from his company and at night I was selling furniture during the day and at night I was studying these materials.
David McCullough was a great guy, he was the one who was helping me through all this and letting me learn it and then he created a fake resume for me. So they were hiring so quickly back then, like, and they just needed bodies, like people who could breathe, that they would hire anyone. And so I sent in this fake resume.
They called me literally. Five minutes later, they ask you a series of 10 questions. And if I could get seven of the 10, right, then they would hire me on the spot. And sure enough, I got 10 out of 10. I was well prepared. And I got a job offer like literally that moment. And they were like, how soon can you be in Connecticut?
And I was like, tomorrow, when do you want me, right? These people were going to pay me three times as much money as I had ever made. Right. So it was like, it was huge money, but like, at the time, it was massive. So, really fortunate, would go on, to have, about 20 ish years or 18, 20 years, of a really, really fortunate career, in that space, that would then move me to Denver, where I did my first, startup with other folks.
I was not a founder, just an employee, but really got to see a company go from about 20 people to 600, over a span, I would go on to work for a few more companies, both in the mortgage-backed securities world, as well as the technology world.
I continued to struggle with my bipolar, throughout that period. And in 2010, I was actually put on administrative leave without pay, from a company, because they just couldn't handle my outbursts during hypomanic episodes, which I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand why I could almost watch myself from the outside. Going, why are you so pissed off? Like, why are you so stressed and wanting it to go away, but not knowing why? And so one of the best things that ever happened was me being put on an administrative leave. I had just moved my wife at the time and my now 15-year-old, who was one, I don't even know if Caleb was one yet, you know, all the way across the country to Colorado.
And I'm the only person making money in the house. And so terrifying to be put on leave. And so I just started Googling like crazy, like trying to figure out what the heck was going on, went to a psychiatrist, and quickly found out that I was bipolar two, which is different, there are two variations of bipolar and bipolar two. Bipolar two is a little bit milder but can last a little bit longer. And it's hypomanic episodes. Versus manic episodes in bipolar. The funny thing is I self-diagnosed. I literally found, like, I was Googling all the problems with me. And like, Google was like, you might be bipolar too. And so I went to the psychiatrist and he was like, yeah, the checks.
And he gave me a little blue pill and sent me on my way. And I would continue to take that little blue pill for the next. Well, I still take it to this day. But I wasn't a hundred percent healed. I was still, there were still some issues, if you will. It was just like that, things got better.
Right. I always describe to people, it's like everybody in the world was driving a Porsche 911 GT and I was walking on the roadside and then somebody handed me a Honda Civic and I just thought, not realizing that I really wasn't quite at the same level as everybody else. So fast forward, like I mentioned, I had done a few more companies.
And then, I was sitting in Newport Beach, California at the Newport Renaissance, the night that Adam Silver canceled the NBA season because of COVID, I still laugh that the moment I decided that COVID was a legit serious thing was because We couldn't play basketball,
Courtney Turich: right?
Right. Of course.
Andrew DeGood: And so I would get on the plane the next morning and fly back to Indiana, of which I didn't really know anyone. I had gotten divorced a few years before that. And so it was me, my ex-wife, and my kids all here in Fort Wayne, I had been working in New York and California, during that period.
So it was a really, really bizarre experience to all of a sudden be back because I traveled like 40 weeks out of the year. So now it's back home and I'm like, secondary markets had, like, completely shut down. Everybody thought the world was going to end, and the P. E, or the private equity firm behind the company that I was with at the time, said, we're basically letting go of the majority of people.
Cause we just don't know what's going to happen. And we're bleeding cash. And so we would part ways that have been, I think about June of 2020. and that opened the door for my first company, my dear old friend and colleague, John Levin, called me up and said, let's start our own company.
And I was like, you're crazy. Like who is going to give us money to start a company? In the middle of a worldwide pandemic where no one can leave their homes, basically, right? But sure enough, like, amazingly, with a five-page PowerPoint and an Excel spreadsheet, we were able to start Canopy. And the canopy was hyper, hyper-focused on mental health and on corporate culture.
It’s still probably one of the things I'm the most proud of. 2022 would go on to be a difficult year, for the markets and for us as a result. And so we made the decision at the end of 22, to sell the company. I think everybody who knows me well knows that's the last thing I ever wanted to do.
But sometimes you'd have to make hard choices and that was one. I would leave that, and kind of wander around. It's actually when I found the outlier project, it was New Year's Eve of 2022. That was when I met or learned about Scott McGregor and the outlier project, which would go on to have a huge impact on my life.
The last couple of years and all the people who I've been able to meet from it. But I really was, I've always been fascinated by emerging tech. And so what I did was I really kind of dove straight into generative AI. That was, 2022, the beginning, or sorry, the beginning of 2023 was really when it came onto the scene and, sort of the darling technology.
And, so I was fortunate enough to be able to spend about six months with an AI startup out of Boston. And that was all I did. I basically eat, sleep, breathe, AI. Unfortunately that. Startup and I, we're just not a fit long term. And then fast forward to the beginning of this year, my now new co-founder Tim Nguyen, had reached out to me, and actually, I had reached out to him to get our mutual friend.
Lindsay Dowd was doing some market research with CEOs. And after she spoke to him, Tim was like, Hey, we need to catch up. And so he was like, Hey, do you want to start, I want to start this new company, do you want to co-found with me? And I was like, 'Maybe, 'cause we didn't know each other that well.
So I actually got on a plane the next week and flew to Southern California. Went to his house. We had a strategy meeting for about eight hours. I got to meet his kid and go to lunch with his wife. It was phenomenal. And we got to the end of the day and we were like, yeah, let's do this. anAndo. That was what started the journey of asking Bob AI, which is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous names ever, for a company.
But, we love it because we get to create Simpsons characters for all of our different products. Um, and we have, we actually have our second product that is going to be coming here, about next month called Betty. Of course, Betty is smarter than Bob. So Betty does some new things. So we're right now we're in the phase of actually not only building the product, but what I love doing is, building out what Betty's cartoon character is going to end up looking like.
Courtney Turich: Oh, my gosh. Okay. Andrew, there is so much here, and I'm trying to take notes as you're talking about things. I just want to touch base before we really talk about what that big bold move was for you, so everybody knows Andrew and I met through the outlier project, which is this tremendous community of a lot of like-minded individuals who are trying to elevate their game.
I will tell you we were together at a retreat a few weeks ago, and this is where I really got to know Andrew. And I walked away being like, this guy's amazing. I don't know if he knows how amazing he is and he was a little guarded. The reason is I'm a Hoosier, right? I'm from Indiana and I kept giving him crap that he's a Hoosier and he just, wow.
He put the guard up and would say, I am not a Hoosier. You did not like that. Did you, you didn't claim,
Andrew DeGood: I don't claim Indiana. I don't,
Courtney Turich: That's true, but that's what drew me to him. Right. Because he, Lives in Indiana and I'm from Muncie, Indiana. So, we're on this bike ride, in between our breaks and I'm talking to Andrew about what he does.
And goes on to share that, he started this business during COVID. And, he's just nonchalantly talking about it. Like it's no big deal. Well, Andrew, how many people did you provide jobs to during the pandemic?
Empathetic Leadership in a Crisis
Andrew DeGood: So we were really, really fortunate. Obviously, it started with two of us, just John and I. Our initial crew, when we went live, was 13 people.
We would end up growing that, over the next five months to 130 people. So we were adding almost, I think about 30 people per month. Was, right where we were at. And it was fantastic. It really was like, I really missed that period of time for sure.
Courtney Turich: I mean, that's incredible.
And I go back to your title on LinkedIn, empathetic builder of things that matter. And that is what you did during the pandemic. You helped so many people, Andrew. Like, I really hope that you take a moment to embrace that part of your life and what you did for so many people during a really, really hard time.
Andrew DeGood: I appreciate that. But honestly, what they gave me over that journey was, um, was far more than I feel like I'll ever be able to repay. Wow,
Courtney Turich: true leader, Andrew to good, true leader. Um, so the other thing that you mentioned is, you know, normalizing bipolar. That's a big, it was a big part of your journey and your life and discovering that.
How do you try to continue to normalize bipolar for everyone and mental health?
The Power of Talking About Bipolar to Normalize It
Andrew DeGood: Yeah. I mean, it's really, honestly, very simple. I just talk about it a lot. Very. There we go. I'm, you know, I'm very open about it. And as a matter of fact, I had a post today that was on that very topic and it's really interesting because I have a lot of people who are very close to me.
Particularly my guys in the iron tribe, which I didn't talk about. We can talk about that a little bit as well. But, um, Who, whenever I say I'm bipolar, they're like, I always forget that you're bipolar, right? And so that's a huge part of it is, um, the majority of people with bipolar, um, live in what we refer to as the BP closet, um, because of fear of retribution.
I get DMs all the time from people. Who is like, you know, I'm, I'm having a hard time with my bipolar right now. Um, and you know, I want to be able to tell my employer, but I'm terrified of retribution even in 2024, this is a real thing. Um, people are scared to check the box that they're disabled when applying for a job, because technically, people with bipolar, we, the government categorize us as disabled. I really hate that word.
Courtney Turich: I did not know that.
Andrew DeGood: So, yeah. So, for me, it's, you know, all, you know, the biggest thing I can do is to continue to talk about it so that people see me, see how I operate in the world, and are like, Oh. Seems totally normal, maybe not totally normal, but you get my point.
Courtney Turich: Oh, you're normal, Andrew.
I'm just kidding. Okay, so I could keep asking questions from your story, but I think it's really important for our listeners to understand what was the bold move or confident choice that took things in your life to that next level.
The Bold Move of Embracing Vulnerability in Leadership
Andrew DeGood: Yeah. So this was a really easy question for me.
I know it without a doubt. There are a lot of huge moments that have occurred over my life, but, um, in the first quarter of 2021, um, I had an employee who was super struggling. Um, it was our best employee, uh, just top, top numbers, like just brilliant minds, but they would just vanish. Days at a time. And I couldn't figure out what the problem was and this individual, all right, you know, I basically, I was like, listen, I'm gonna have to let you go.
Like, I don't know what else to tell you. And that was when they had the courage to tell me they were bipolar. And it hit me like a wave, like, here I am. Like, I didn't see it. I didn't see it. Um, and, uh, my response was I like, I chuckled a little bit, um, which is probably the worst, but it was because I'm like, I'm like, oh shit, dude.
I'm like, I'm bipolar too as well. Right. Um, and it was just this aha moment where he was like, what? He was like, I thought you have lived this gold-paved life and that was the image that everybody had of me. Because in 2010, when I got diagnosed, I told an HR leader, Hey. Uh, I'm bipolar and they said, don't ever tell anyone that again if you want to get ahead in life and they were right.
That was what the atmosphere was like. That was what life was like. So I had created this avatar, if you will, of Andrew and everybody from the sidelines, and the cheap seats were sort of like, hey, that guy's life is so easy. It's so easy. You know, again, paved with gold. And so that was the moment in which I realized, uh, I needed to come out.
And it was. Terrifying. I remember calling me, my co-founder at the time and, uh, I, you know, I said, this is, this is what I'm going to do. Um, but I need your support because this affects all of us. This is going to affect the company. This is going to, you know, everything. Um, And he was a hundred percent supportive of it.
And I remember making a joke with him. I was like, dude, I'm like, I'm about to commit career suicide. So I really hope this company works out because back then that still was kind of how it felt, right? Like nobody would want to touch. Um, you know, this person, um, and so that night I called an all-employee meeting.
I did not want my employees to hear this on LinkedIn. I wanted them to hear it from me directly. Um,
The support I got was insane. Like I did not, I really didn't expect it. I really am not at the level of, you know, the messages that I got that night from, you know, all of these employees that were just. So supportive and so beautiful about the whole thing. Um, and so the next morning I put out the post, which is still pinned to the top of my feature section on LinkedIn, uh, three years later, um, that, um, God, uh, that was titled, this is what bipolar looks like.
And there were three photos of me. One is maybe five or six years old. One is a teenager and one is an adult. Um, and it was terrifying. I mean, it was terrifying. Like I will never, I was so scared to, cause I didn't know what would happen. Right.
Courtney Turich: Right. Right.
Andrew DeGood: Um, and as you can imagine, like it, it was overwhelming.
Like, the messages I got were. It was kind of difficult for me. Like I had people who were like, you're a hero. And I was like, no, please don't use that word.
Um,
Cause I'm not, I'm just a normal person, right? There's, there's nothing, you know, uh, you know, I, I don't mean this in a bad way, but I just mean like, I'm not any different than anybody else walking down the street.
Right. Um, right. You know, there are things that are special about me, but I'm not special. I'm not more special. How about we're talking about, um, so yeah, so that would be the thing that would really end up shaping the canopy more than anything else. And, it became this incredibly safe space. For people to share what they needed to share.
And we had 10 core values, but we had two that were number one and number two. And I talked about them, there were probably employees who were like, God, will you please shut up? Um, number one was transparency. And our rule was you had to be transparent with a hundred people, a hundred percent of the people in the company.
Um, and number two was vulnerability. And I used to always say that I don't expect the employees to bear their soul to the world. Like apparently I'm comfortable with. Um, but I wanted them to have their tribe. I wanted them to have their people inside of the company. Um, the reality is, there is no work-life balance.
There is no work-life separation. Um, I, they're fused one into the same. Um, and. It's so important, I think, for the people who are around us in our workspace to know what's going on. Again, it doesn't have to be everybody, but we had instances where people were struggling. They have, a tad the willingness to be vulnerable, with a small group within the company, and we would see this group surround themselves with this person and take things off their plate.
Right. Help them with their work to allow them to have the time that they needed to deal with whatever was going on or to heal from that. Right. And it was, it was just such a beautiful thing to see.
And it was really the eye-opening moment where I realized. And again, I talk about this a lot, it's incumbent on executives and senior leadership to create these environments.
Who's going to do it ?t. Mean, if you're a CEO or COO or CFO or whatever, and you're listening to this, like sharing your struggles, right? Goes such a huge way. Right. I'm not talking about emotionally puking on your employees either when you are abundantly clear on that. What I'm talking about is, is this being willing to be vulnerable and share things that you've struggled with, right?
Opens that door for everybody else in the organization. To feel that level of psychological safety of, Oh, hey, I can approach these guys. I can say these things, right? For sure. Granted, I'm almost fortunate to be bipolar, if you will. Because, well, it gives a really heavy thing to be vulnerable about when everybody's like, oh, crap, he'll talk about that.
I can talk about anything, right? a process to start to set that stage for your employees. Because that's really the only way that we're going to start getting rid of the stigma and people are going to start being able to be. More open about it. Biggest. Oh, sorry.
Courtney Turich: No, please keep going.
Andrew DeGood: Just the last thing I would share on this is that my management of my bipolar got so much better. The moment I started talking about it, I started having other people come into my life. I'd never, this is an interesting thing, Courtney until that person told me they were bipolar.
I had never met another bipolar person in my entire life.
Courtney Turich: Really?
Andrew DeGood: Well, if you don't ever talk about a thing, how's anybody gonna actually know that you have a thing?
Courtney Turich: Great point,
Andrew DeGood: right? Yeah, completely talk about it. So none of us knew anyone. And since that point in time in which I became open about it, I started having people who dm me on LinkedIn who are still private about it.
They're still in the closet. They're not comfortable with coming out yet. And I fully respect that. Right. You gotta live your own life and for a lot of people, it's, they're just not in a position professionally to be able to, but I got to talk to more people. I got a better understanding of my own condition, right?
And I started learning other ways that I could manage things. And I just started seeing my life get better and better. As a result of being able to openly and freely talk about it.
Courtney Turich: So powerful right there, Andrew. I mean, thinking about an employee who came to you, who was so vulnerable and opened up, just exploded your own world.
Andrew DeGood: Oh, and
Courtney Turich: What happened? I have to ask what happened to that employee.
Building a Thriving Culture in a Remote Workforce
Andrew DeGood: Unfortunately they never really ended up getting the appropriate. Treatment. And so, I'm not sure where they are in their life and in their journey. Now, my hope and my prayers are that they've figured out what their management needs to look like, and they're living the best life that they can.
But they actually would end up kind of vanishing on us. After the fact, I wish I had a better ending to that person's journey, and their journey is still going on. So, hopefully, everyone, time takes time. But hopefully, they know what a major impact they ended up having on me.
And how it really changed the entire course. Of how I operate in my personal life. But more importantly, it totally upended how I approach leadership, within an organization. And culture became my favorite thing. That was like all of a sudden I didn't know or realize.
And it was like, Oh my God, how can we, because we were 130 people in 25 different States with no brick and mortar, right? Like
Courtney Turich: within two years, right?
Andrew DeGood: Yeah. So we're all remote. And so it was like, we had to get, I was like all of a sudden like obsessed with like, how do I build a great culture with 130 people living in, 130 different places, right.?You never physically interact with each other. So yeah. So how did you do
Courtney Turich: that? How did you do that?
Andrew DeGood: So it took a long time to find all of it. So I'll try to do it at a high level, but over-communicating was a big part of it. So we had all employee meetings online once a week. Didn't matter.
Sometimes they lasted five minutes. Sometimes they lasted 45 minutes. Okay. And if we had nothing to say, I wanted all senior leadership to say that they had nothing to say so that people heard that the next thing we did was called industry night and it was optional for people, but I would bring in someone from, an industry who was, Really, had succeeded significantly to tell their story.
I wanted my employees to see other people who had succeeded and what their journey looked like. Too often we look at where a person is at today and we forget the grind of decades that it took them to get to that point. We had a lot of employees like in their twenties. And so it was really important to me that they be able to see that path.
And then the last thing I think that was huge was we did a lunch, Q and a every Thursday, if you were an executive or senior manager, you had to host one, with five employees in the company. Now our head of people was the one who scheduled all of it. But basically, I think it turned out that like, you would be able to talk to an executive once every six weeks.
With a very intimate sort of situation and it was their time to tell us what they thought. And it was really interesting because In the beginning, it was very active and we got a couple of months in and like, I would have people like not show up to it or have no questions to ask me. And so afraid of you.
We sent out a survey to kind of figure out, like, do you guys still want to do this? Like, right? And the overwhelming response was. You know, lately, I haven't had anything to share, but I just love knowing that I always have access to share. So I think leaders get, I think leaders get scared about opening that door super wide cause they think they're going to get inundated.
I found that it was the exact opposite. Don't get me wrong. In the beginning, there were like a million different ideas, but we were able to respond to each one of those ideas and go, Hey, you know what? That's an awesome idea. It's going to cost me a quarter million and we don't have a quarter million to spend right now.
Right. Like just be open and transparent. That's all people like, all they want is transparency from their leadership. And the more transparency you give, guess what happens. You get way fewer questions and way fewer complaints because now they're like, oh, I understand the vision. I understand where the ball's moving.
I don't need to bug them as much, but I also, just love knowing the safety that if I ever want to approach Andrew with an idea, I can approach Andrew with the idea.
Courtney Turich: Right. And so to reiterate from a leadership standpoint, it has to come from the CEO in your opinion or top leadership.
Andrew DeGood: I do.
There are some people who will argue my point on this one, and I get it, that you can build culture from the bottom up. And there's a little bit of truth in that, the reality is, is like. If the CEO does it, they can, like the CEO is driving the boss. That's what I always say, right?
They may not be doing all the things and they're blocking and tackling people, but at the end of the day. Like if you're the CEO of a company, you have the ability to change your culture, period, stop the end, your line-level employee. I don't know. I don't want to say no, but like, that's a slog, right?
Like that's going to take a long time and you're fighting an uphill battle. Whereas at the CEO level, they can, or, somewhere else, maybe the COO, would be another place where, could possibly, sort of start and change, but yeah, I think it's, really at that executive level.
Courtney Turich: I agree with you. I find that I think we've all been in scenarios where we've been in a culture that's been a little bit of a struggle and we've tried to change it, but it's a slog. Like you said, it is an uphill battle and it's exhausting for many. So, okay, Andrew, I could keep talking to you all day like, like what?
But our time is coming to an end and there's one big question and take your time answering this And I mean that because I love everything you're saying. I'm a true
Andrew DeGood: Sagittarius
Courtney Turich: like me. I know, right? You've already had me in tears today. And so what would you say? Your 18-year-old self, if you could go back today.
The Path to Normalizing Mental Health
Andrew DeGood: Absolutely nothing. Cause there's no way he would actually listen. No, I'm kidding.
Courtney Turich: So if he would listen,
Andrew DeGood: I think this is a very simplistic answer. I would just want him to know that like, it's going to be okay. It's been a long road.
Like I won't lie. It has been very bumpy, and rocky, there are so many things I've done that I'm not proud of. as a result of unmanaged bipolar, but I'm really grateful for where that road has taken me. I wouldn't change anything about it, so I think the only thing I'd want him to know is that, like, it's gonna be okay, because I need him to make the mistakes.
That he's going to make me get to where I am today. And, I feel so grateful and blessed that I can do what I can, what I do today, and that hopefully I can move the legal needle, sorry, needle, just a little bit. And so, yeah, his entire journey needs to stay the same.
Courtney Turich: Wow, Andrew, you got me again.
Something so simple yet so powerful, it's going to be okay and I didn't know half of what you shared with me today and it really brings to the surface your statement of being an empathetic builder of things that matter. Your ability to put yourself out there and voice trying to normalize bipolar is helping so many people.
I've had someone close to me experience it as well, and it's a scary thing for many people. And how do you share that with others? So I'm glad you're an advocate. For them, and so they know they're going to be okay. You're wow. You're an example of it's going to be okay. You have achieved so much.
You're an inspiration, Andrew to good. And I'm so glad you're in my life. I'm glad to be connected to you. Even though you are a Hoosier, you're a Hoosier now, but thank you for your time today and being with me and being vulnerable and honest, I'm taking away so much from our conversation.
Andrew DeGood: Thank you, Courtney.
I really appreciate it. I always love chatting.
Courtney Turich: You are so welcome. So to our audience, I want you to go away, be bold, be confident, and be you. And thank you so much for listening today. Have a great day.
