Jimmie Thomas is the founder of Thomas House Consulting and a Senior Advisor and Board Member of Nuro Coach Medical Group. Jimmie has 18 years of medical device leadership, training, and management experience focused on Diversity, Equity and inclusion, Neurosurgery, Neuromodulation, and Pain Management. Leading, managing, and developing processes within high-performing teams is the foundation of his success. Intentional and meaningful connection is what drives him in life. Jimmie's enthusiasm for spreading awareness on mental health is matched by his dedication to sharing his experiences as a father in an upcoming book. His friendly personality and wealth of knowledge make him a prominent figure in the battle against mental health stigmatization.
In this episode, Steve and Jimmie discuss:
- Mental Health Epidemic
- The Importance of Mental Health
- Addressing the Root of Problems
- Embracing Failure
- DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion)
Key Takeaways:
- Appreciate the need for de-stigmatizing mental health and its impact on individual and societal well-being.
- Understand the critical bond between mental and physical health for comprehensive self-guidance
- Utilize failure as a catalyst to drive personal advancement and transformation.
- Implement inclusive practices to create a trusting and transparent atmosphere.
- Utilize proven coaching techniques to push the boundaries of success in all aspects of life.
“Availability is a currency. When people have a level of trust, they know they can reach out to you, and you will respond. I think that's one of the most important things in leadership.” – Jimmie Thomas
Connect with Jimmie Thomas:
Connect with Steve and Jason:
- LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
- Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
- Email: grow@rewireinc.com
Show notes by Angelo Paul Tagama
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
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Listen to the podcast here
Jimmie Thomas - The Currency Of Availability
I have a guest. Where do you meet this? Let’s wait. I know I say that a lot. “This person, that guy, this lady, they’re the greatest ever.” No one’s got anything on my friend, Jimmie Thomas. Jimmie Thomas, say hi to The Insight Interview world.
Hello. Thanks for having me.
I’m super excited that nobody’s tuning in as excited quite yet because you haven’t shared anything yet. Jimmie, you’ve got an incredible background. I presume you’re in Texas or not? Are you somewhere else in the world?
I am in the great city of Austin, enjoying a little bit of sun.
I meet people based on how you and I met. Maybe we should do a whole show on serendipity because I thought that was a super weird experience. I feel like I’ve known you for quite a while, but if we were honest with each other, I haven’t. I’m getting to know you too. I made all these presumptions about who you were based on what I thought I saw you do. When I got to know you, I was like, “Wait, what?” That’s when I get to invite you to the show. I’m looking forward to our time together.
Before we jump, I have a funny question. We do these questions up front and I know you’ve tuned into a couple of episodes. I don’t mean to stump you, but I’m going to go in a slightly different direction. Here’s what I want to know. Before we even get into who you are, what you’ve done, and some of the things that you’re involved which are all super cool, I want to know, in your life, was there an event or something that happened to you in a positive way? It could be twenty years ago, last year, or when you were little. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think that thing that happened was probably one of the most pivotal points in your life? What was that?
It’s pretty clear to me. I was in middle school and I had a coach who coached me in baseball, Tim Hessman, a great guy. He ended up taking my brother and I to this park and used to practice with us. He’s a guy who when I think back in my life instilled confidence in me from a coaching perspective. He’s somebody that wasn’t in my family, although I had a great family growing up. That was a pivotal moment when I realized that other people thought that I was important, specifically him.
I remember from then on, my confidence changed as a young man and I started to have a little more of a vision for what I wanted to do. I reached out to him in the last couple of years. I found him on Facebook and got to share with him that same thing. I would say that that’s probably one of the most pivotal moments in my life that I can remember back to when I felt confident as a young kid. That’s carried me through my life as well.
Part of our show is to draw out insights. When you were saying that, I was thinking to myself, “That guy did something remarkable.” I suspect he might not have even known how remarkable it was when he was doing it.
No, probably not. Hopefully, he felt like it was genuine when I got to share it with him. It’s been cool to see the way that he’s developed. We have kids that are similar ages now, so it’s cool to reflect on some of those things. I remember he used to take us and we’d get in catcher’s gear and play hockey in the park and do stuff that was outside of what I had grown up with. He spoke life and confidence into me all the time. I remember being in a moment where I felt like somebody believed in me for sure. Outside of my family, but somebody different.
I’m already walking away with one juicy insight and that is I love that people like that even exist. It makes me want to emulate them. Do we undervalue and underestimate our own ability to do that for other people, whether they’re children or human beings in general? Even with what you’re currently doing, maybe there are going to be people tuning in to this going, “Jimmie is that guy for me.” I don’t know. It makes me want to emulate it, so thank you for that.
Agreed.
We’re already a few minutes in. Maybe there are people tuning in going, “Who is this guy?” My partner and I do this a little bit differently. He’ll read off bios and stuff like that. I found yours and I can read off all the stuff. I’d rather have it come from you. I know it’s fairly extensive and you’ve done a lot of cool things, but give us the thumbnail or Reader’s Digest of Jimmie Thomas. Who are you? What do you do? What’s the thumbnail there? Give us the lowdown.
First of all, I like to tell everyone my most important role is being a husband and a father. Outside of that, in the professional world, I own a consulting company now. I’ve been in med device for many years. I work in the med tech and med device space helping with diversity, equity, inclusion, and strategy. I also sit on the board of a mental health company. I get to try to tackle this mental health epidemic that we have within this country. There’s personal experience with my own son who’s gone through his own challenges, but I am passionate about that. I’m starting to write a book as well about being a father. That’s the high-level view of who I am and what I’m doing right now.
When you talk about the mental health epidemic and what’s going on in our country, sitting on this board again, maybe some people tuning in are going, “Yeah.” Other people are tuning in going, “Wait, what?” Help us with that. How do you see that and why are you passionate about being on this board? Give us a quick view of that. Would you mind?
The team that I’m working with, we set out to expand access to care post-COVID. You heard about the toll that it took on the country and people being isolated and stuff. What you see is it playing out in the healthcare space as well. That’s from providers to nurses, people who were on the frontline, all the way to the patients who were not able to get the necessary care that they needed. That impacted them in a mental way as well. In the mental health space, a lot of the provider psychiatrists and psychologists have been squeezed in their practices, so they can’t take insurance. They have gone to more self-paid models or subscription models, which are pretty prevalent in society right now.
We’ve flipped it on its head. We think that access to care means that everyone should have access to mental healthcare. We try to partner with every insurance plan that we can if somebody has insurance or reduced cash rates to give everyone access. The other piece of access means from a telehealth standpoint. You don’t have to be in a physical location to get access to the care, which is another big piece because there’s a stigma around it. You and I are men who have pride. The likelihood of us sitting in a clinic and waiting for help for mental health issues that we may have is unlikely. You’re more apt to pick up a phone to call somebody or connect with somebody via text. We think that that’s an important way to tear down the stigma and give people that access.
When we got to go out to lunch together, we started to broach this topic. I think I’m probably the one who leaned away because I didn’t have nineteen hours that day for lunch because I think this is such a rich topic. I’m curious. You’ve been involved in healthcare. You said for many years on the med device thing and in and around healthcare. Now you’re talking about mental health.
When you talk about professionals getting squeezed out and then go into these different models, and if I’m hearing you right, those models might be okay from a business perspective, but they cut a ton of people out who need this care in our country. They don’t have access to it anymore. Why is that so important? Is mental health that big of a deal? How do you view that? Is it as big a deal as physical health? Help me understand.
One of the things that I always point people to is physical therapy. If you have an injury to your body, you’re going to get a recommendation to a physical therapist and they’re going to say for 6 or 8 weeks. Roughly, in 2022, we spent around $34 billion on PT. When we look at that from a mental health standpoint, the total spend on actual care was around $2.9 billion or $3 billion. It dwarfs what the norm is for your physical body. As you know, the mind controls the body.
The challenge for us that we’re trying to solve and elevate to more people is that taking care of your mental health is much like training your body from a physical standpoint. It has to be trained. You have to work on it. You have to apply different techniques to be mentally strong and stable. We’re very passionate about it as you know, but think that partnering with a lot of the key providers and physicians who have platforms in different spaces in neurosurgery, pain, cardiac, cancer pain, and oncology. We think that that’s the way to get the message out that there still are ways for those patients that they see to get access to the care that they need.
Here’s the part that I didn’t want to bring up during lunch, or maybe I did and you just thought, “Poor Scanlon, he can’t handle the truth.” If my math is right, there’s a $31 billion gap between money spent on physical therapy and mental therapy. The part that I didn’t understand and maybe you could speak to it is if you took the average person on the street and said, “Your mental health is as important and/or you understand that the stuff is connected,” even people that aren’t in neuroscience or even the physical sciences, that’s not mysterious.
No.
You and I aren’t doing any groundbreaking anything by pointing out the fact that our mental health is so vital to our overall health, then why the gap? What is it about people in the industry or is it legislators? What is it about humanity? That’s such a substantial gap for something that seems so painfully and blatantly obvious. What do you think that’s about?
I think we spend a lot more money on housing resources. Things that insulate people who need mental health support, but the actual clinical spend of what currency that’s transitioned is around that number. That’s the delta there. I think the gap or the stigma is so great that people don’t start the process of getting help. When people do, you see these profound results that people can overcome mental health that they had or mental diseases. They come out of it much stronger practicing it. You see this in athletics. You see this in people’s personal lives. You’ve heard all the testimonies of these people, but I think the normal human like you and I, man and woman that’s walking around, it’s hard to dip our toe in the water and start that cadence to get the help that we need.
Notwithstanding the fact that that delta in terms of the spend. I appreciate you saying that. It’s not like maybe we don’t do anything and there’s housing and different things. On the clinical stuff, it still boggles my mind because what you’re basically saying is the stigma of getting some health care for your mental health is greater than the reason that exists and the rationality of the fact that we’re integrated human beings. You’re talking about even becoming more mentally healthy, but you do work also on cardio and pain. This isn’t just mental health. If I’m hearing you right, that’s utilizing mental health to cure other things.
Mental Health: The stigma of getting healthcare for your mental health is greater than the reason that exists and the rationality of the fact that we're integrated human beings.
It’s multifocal. There are multiple components that contribute to pain. We know that psychological pain is one of them along with physical pain. We see patients who have back surgeries or other traumatic injuries. When they go to recover from those or they’re dealing with physical pain that they deal with, there’s a mental component that contributes to their rehabilitation process into getting healthy. Not to mention the new physical limitations that you may have, which is a whole other hurdle for people to jump over.
As an organization, we’re super passionate about letting people know that there’s help and there’s resources. As I said, the partner physicians that we have been phenomenal and are starting to level this up. We have a long way to go to get it out to the masses, which is the exciting thing that we get to work on.
I love the positivity with which you come at it. I’m trying to drag you into the muck and you’re like, “No, it’s good because we have all this opportunity.” In that part of your vocational world, when you talk about that organization that you’re super excited about, what are the key questions that you all ask in that organization? What are some of the key questions you all are asking each other and of people in order to get this gap and delta lesson?
We ask how we connect with people and how we make it a more sticky process so that once they start with us, they stick with it. We’ve built this quantitative and conceptual process that they on the ramp and then stay in within six months. It’s a treatment plan that they get into. There are ways to exit on the treatment plan before that if you’re doing better, but the whole goal is to allow people to become self-advocate by the end of those six months so that they have all of the tools and the practice right.
I was looking up something on Steph Curry to bring this in. He’s arguably the best shooter who’s ever walked the face of the earth and played in the NBA if you’re a sports fan, but even he has a shooting coach, which is Bruce Frazier. They call him Q. Even the best people train to hone their craft to become better at what they do. Steph Curry at shooting, he’s got a coach and he’s got a trainer.
One of us should have somebody who’s training us on our mental health or physical health. Whether it’d be in our job to be proficient at what we do there. We try to partner with physicians who believe the same way and figure out a way to make it sticky for patients to not only start that therapy, but to go through the entire process to become experts and efficient at what they do mentally. It’s the tools that they have in their bag as well.
Do you suspect that Steph Curry has any shame or embarrassment in finding a coach who can help him become a better shooter?
I doubt it. He looks at it as, “How can I become as efficient at my job as I can be?” There were three principles they had. The mechanism, the rhythm, and the confidence. They talked about that. In mental health, you look at things like talk therapy and different ways to cope with anxiety and depression. Those are things that we measure for patients when they come in. We also think sleep is a big component of that, which I know that you’re a big believer in. Also, we look at different stressors that apply to patients. We try to look at that as a baseline, treat the acute condition that the patient has, and then give them all the tools that they need to become self-advocate and apply those in their daily lives.
That one alone would get us going down a cul-de-sac that would never end, just the sleep one. I am a huge advocate and have been as a result of the work that I do with that. The problem that I see, and I’d love to hear what you think about it is, we can tell people that sleep is important. A lot of people know that, but when you don’t get sleep, the world has crafted so many interesting ways to deal with a lack of sleep. Whether it’s caffeine or whatever else it is, we have so many ways to deal with the lack of good sleep that it almost seems like the pain of getting a good sleep.
It’s interesting. It almost feels like we’ve become a nation of symptom fixers, not problem solvers. We fix the symptom, but here you are laying out, “No, there’s this bigger problem.” I don’t want to be negative. I’m excited about helping people get to the root problem, but I sometimes wonder, are we going to have to turn away from some of the symptom fixing so that we can study and look at and get better at the actual problem?
We've become a nation of symptom fixers, not problem solvers.
I think we will and there’s a hunger for it now. The stigma is becoming less. Obviously, with mental health awareness month, you see a lot of these things leveled up and people sharing about family members and encounters that they’ve had. We will leave and people will forget about that or they’ll jump off the train that they were on to get healthy. It’s much like riding your Peloton. You would do physical fitness, go to the gym, or whatever you may have a resource where you keep your body healthy. That’s a continual thing that needs to be part of your lifestyle for your mind and your mental health as well.
If I’m somebody tuning in to this and I’m thinking to myself, “I want to know more about this. I want to get some resources.” What would you say? How does someone know more about this? How do they know more about you?
NuroCoach.com. That’s where I would tell people to start there. Honestly, reach out to your healthcare provider that you’re with and make sure that you communicate that. Even primary care physicians we talk to all the time, especially men, say, “There’s a need for mental health support.” They would love to refer you to someone, but having that initial conversation with somebody that you trust is an important first step to start down the path of getting the help that you need and the resources.
Thank you for that. Is there anything about that topic and what you’re doing there to promote stuff through Nuro Coach? Was there anything about that I didn’t ask you or you were hoping I would?
No, I think you covered it mostly. The only thing that I would leave as a final step on the mental health side is that it’s incorporated into everything that you do, whether it’s in your professional life or your personal life. A lot of times, we think, “Mental health is a personal thing. That’s not a professional thing.” I have a great friend and a mentor who works for one of the largest med device companies. She and I talk about mental health and mental wellness all the time. She often tells me, “Jimmie, it is as important as anything that we do for the employees that we have in our organization.” I would say it’s not a personal thing. If you’re a professional leader, you’re a business person, or you’re a CEO, caring about people’s mental well-being in a professional setting is as important.
Mental Health: Mental health is incorporated into everything you do, whether it's your professional or personal life.
I get that from time to time in my work too, if I heard you right. People want to separate their work life from their personal life. I’m the guy going, “You know you only have one brain, right? You’re going to bring personal to work and you will bring work home because we’re only dealing with one brain there.” It’s the same point you’re making. That’s great. You have shared with me some of your thoughts and ideas on how you’re involved in a lot of these high-up organizations.
When I finally met you, I was like, “This guy got so many great thoughts on a lot of stuff. One of them was leadership.” I know you probably can’t share everything about all of this, but even hearing you talk about Nuro Coach and mental health, you’ve said a couple of things to me about leadership. One of them was, “Availability is a currency.” I thought that was super unique. Can you talk about that one?
In our culture, you often hear the term, “It’s who you know.” I often tell people it’s not who you know. It’s who knows you and who’s willing to pick up the phone when you call. It doesn’t come off as slick as it’s who you know. I think availability is a currency when people have a level of trust, they know that they can reach out to you and you would respond. That’s one of the most important things in leadership that I’ve seen modeled and I’ve started to enact and try to apply in my life and obviously my professional life as well.
People are always appreciative even if you answer the phone and say, “I’m about to go into a meeting. I’m on a call with somebody. Your call is important to me. I want to make sure that I get back to you.” I think that there’s something that’s been lost in our culture of the canned text that’s like, “Can I call you back?” “I can’t answer right now. I’m on another call.”
I always respond to those like they were talking to me and then they worry about me. They want to go, “Maybe he doesn’t know.” “I know. I just wanted to add a little humanity to it.”
Availability is a currency because our time is the most valuable resource that we have. When you make time available for someone, it shows that you’re intentional about meeting with that person, developing that person, and sharing insights with that person as you often do on this show and in the work that you do out in the community. I appreciate the people who have helped develop me and mentor me. I have a group of people that I rely on. They’ve made their selves available to me in so many ways. I keep that in mind and I talk to other people that I mentor about managing their time and making sure that they have time available for people to give back and to develop as a person and as a leader as well.
Availability is a currency because it is the most valuable resource we have. When you make time available for someone, it shows that you're intentional.
Thank you so much for that. There are some statistics that talk about people being givers and donating to causes and whatnot. If you go up to someone and say, “Would you donate to this cause?” and they say, “I’m going to wait until I have a little bit more money before I donate,” they’ve done some cool neuro research. However, they’ve done some neuro research when people think they don’t have enough money, they never get to donating.
One of our coaches did this cool project where she got involved and time is the same way. If you keep thinking you don’t have time, you actually won’t have time. When you wrote it’s a currency, I love the way you said that. It’s almost like tangible. Yet, a lot of people who aren’t even that busy think of themselves as busy and then they are.
I had a friend tell me that I worked with, “Jimmie’s advice is free so take it. That doesn’t mean that you have to apply it, but take it.” I think that the application of the advice is where you start to cash in that currency that people are giving you with their time and their availability with their thoughts. I often try to listen more as I’ve developed in my career, get a little bit older, and talk a little bit less because it’s so valuable what people share, especially when they take out time or you’re intentional about a meeting. There’s always good stuff to take away. It’s much like the lunch that we had as well.
I was the taker in that one. I’m taking things right now. I feel like the taker. You are offering such great things. We don’t have a ton of time. I got one more for you. Talk to me about failure. It was the other one that you had made that point and failure is part of growing. I think you said something like fail fast. That’s the second time we’re talking about the stigma of failure. That’s one of your key leadership principles. Tell me about that one.
The inevitability of failure is there but there’s so much to learn from a failure. The successes are good because you have the high of the wind, the triumph, or the thing that you’ve overcome. Often, we capture those in pictures and it’s this nostalgic feeling that we latch onto when we think about those things. The failures are the things that refine us and develop us at our core and our character. I try to keep in mind that failure is part of the growth process because you need to take some lumps, you need to fall down, skin your knee, you need to trip up, you need to say the wrong things sometimes to be educated on what the right thing is, or you need it modeled for you in a different way.
Mental Health: There's so much to learn from a failure. The successes are good because you have the height of the win or the triumph on the thing you've overcome.
I try to keep that in mind when I’m sewing into people who are on my teams. I want them to have the freedom to fail because I don’t think failure is the end. Some people think, “I have to be perfect at everything that I do,” and they don’t step into what they’re called to be doing. I’d rather you figure it out by failing and go, “I was close, but I didn’t have this one piece with it. I didn’t think about this component the way that this would contribute.” I’d say jump in headfirst and fail fast so that you learn quickly, you start to refine yourself and grow from it.
What about that mantra, “Failure is not an option?” Doesn’t that sound good? I guess if you’re landing men on the moon in their 60s and they could die or whatever it is, what I heard you say was it is an option. In fact, if I heard you right, it’s almost a necessity. Of course, failure is an option.
We’re so disappointed when we don’t believe that it should be part of the process and it can derail us from reaching the heights that we set out to reach. You’re almost capping yourself if you don’t think that failure is part of the growth process. If you can embrace the failures and overcome those, the sky is the limit as they say. There’s no ceiling on what you can achieve or what your impact can be. I often ask people, “Is it about achievement? Is it about impact? Is it about influence?”
For me, I want to have an impact. I want to be successful but I don’t care about that achievement. That’s not what I’m going to lead with. I don’t necessarily need to have influence because influence is almost a selfish chaste to want to lead. If you want to have an impact, then you’re intentional about the things that you do. You learn from the failures and ultimately, the actions that you put out there. The things that you do will naturally impact people in a positive way.
With what you’re doing to bring mental health to the world and in diversity, equity, and inclusion, which we didn’t even get around to, which is pathetic and sad, can you come back on and can we talk about that?
I would love to do that. Thank you for the invite. Yes, I would.
Who cares how long it takes? This is a terrible thing because I know it’s such a deep topic. What’s one thing you would have us as an audience be thoughtful about? When you hear about DEI in this modern world in the United States, what’s one topic you would at least go, “Explore that or think about that, that you can at least wet our whistle with it?”
I think the most impactful thing from a DEI standpoint is the inclusion piece. I would say don’t fall into the AirPod culture. No offense to AirPod or earbuds. We have so much distraction that we miss seeing people for who people are. If you can stop and see people and try to connect with people, then our workplace will be more inclusive. People will feel more seen and confident that they belong in the place that they are. I would say that’s the biggest thing that I often talk about.
Don't fall into the AirPod culture because we have so much distraction that we miss seeing people for who they are.
Inclusion is a direct reflection of the culture in organizations. If your culture is poor, you’re probably not an inclusive organization. If your culture is strong, there’s a high level of inclusivity that’s been created there because it took intention to see people or incorporate people into the fold. We can talk more about that, but that’s my teaser.
I made the mistake of even going there. I’ve got 50 questions. Thank you for that. Let’s pay attention to the AirPod/earbud culture. I love that. I like how you said it. You’re not trying to put that down. You’re not trying to put the technology down. You gave us, “There’s a problem with that. It’ll end up being, you won’t listen, you won’t hear, and therefore we won’t include.” Thank you for your time. Any other ways to reach you or reach anything? If I want to learn more about DEI and what you’re doing, same place?
My direct consulting group that we’ve started is called Thomas House LLC. I’ll share all the stuff or send me a message on LinkedIn. Get my number and text me. I try to be available and personable. I love to take people’s calls and figure out how we can connect and help benefit this world and the culture that we’re in.
I’ve been the benefactor of being with you and I hope it’s the beginning of a lot of stuff. I’m grateful for your time. Thank you for being a part of this. I got so many insights I can’t even begin to list them. Thank you for all the insights. You’re awesome.
Thank you. The pleasure is all mine. I’d love to talk about the meeting that we had and how serendipitous it was. I think that there’s definitely a part two of this.
I showed up to speak at a church in a place that was 2,000 miles away from where I lived to meet a guy who knew my son. That’s nuts. We’ll get to that later. In the meantime, we will let the existing insights rest with us as we think about them and we’ll have you back on the show.
Thank you, Steve.
Thank you. As we always say, it doesn’t matter what insights Jimmie had. It doesn’t matter what insights I have. What matters the most is, which did you get? Thanks for being part of the show and we’ll see you next time.
Important Links
- Nuro Coach
- LinkedIn - Jimmie Thomas
- Thomas House LLC
- https://Twitter.com/JimmieOrnell
- JimmieT@ThomasHouseLLC.com
- Jason Abell - LinkedIn
- Steve Scanlon - LinkedIn
- Grow@RewireInc.com
