The Voices for Voices Podcast Episode 14 with Guest, Dan Flowers, President and CEO at Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank

Justin Alan Hayes:

Today, I am grateful to be joined by Dan Flowers, the President and CEO of the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. Dan, thank you for joining The Voices for Voices podcast.

Dan Flowers:

It's great to be with you today, Justin. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Awesome. Awesome. Would you be able to just start out by telling our listeners about the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, how it began and how you got involved?

Dan Flowers:

Sure, sure. Well let's see, where do I start? All right. I think I'll take it from scratch. So the food bank movement in this country began in 1967. A retired school teacher was volunteering at the St. Mary's Soup Kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona. He had already had a full career, raised his kids and had a full, robust life when he moved into volunteerism as a lot of people do when they get older. He observed one day at the soup kitchen a couple eating food and heard them talking about a dumpster at a food company nearby that was throwing food away that they could, you've heard the term, "Dumpster diving," right?

Justin Alan Hayes:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sure.

Dan Flowers:

Where they could go and salvage food out of here that was good to eat still. And it dawned on him, "Well if I go down to this food company and ask him to donate this food to the soup kitchen, maybe I can get it before it goes bad, and then we'll just bring it down here and serve it." And so he went down to the food company, made the pitch, they agreed. And then the idea just hit him. "Well I'm just going to start going around to all of these food companies around here." And before you know it, he had a lot of companies making donations and he was bringing back more food than the soup kitchen could use.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Ah.

Dan Flowers:

So he started reaching out to other charities in Phoenix saying, "Hey, I've got all this food, do you want some?" And he eventually started getting so much that he was like, "Let's put it in a warehouse and then all these other charities can come and pick up this food because I guess there's all this donated food available," which there was. See, in the years after World War II, we industrialized the nation's food supply. People moved off the farms into big cities and food started being made in manufacturing plants at an incredible scale. And because of the industrialization of the food supply, there was a centralization of surplus. He didn't invent a new concept. It says in the Book of Leviticus that when you reap the harvest of your fields, you shall not gather from the corners of the field nor shall you reap the gleanings, you shall leave them for the poor.

Dan Flowers:

And so 4,000 years before, there was this concept that of your surplus, share. And that's the notion that he came about at a point in time when there was tremendous surpluses available. He started traveling around the country and talking to other communities that had heard about this concept of a food bank. The St. Mary's Food Bank was the first one. If you go to firstfoodbank.org, it'll take you to the St. Mary's Food Bank website. So he started traveling the country and going to other communities and telling the story of how their food bank was formed and the idea spread. And in 1982, a group of local charities headed by Tom Allio from the Catholic Commission in Akron, Malcolm Costa, who I just had lunch with yesterday, he found the food bank 40 years ago, and Rita Kelly Madick and Tom [inaudible 00:03:35] and a number of others.

Dan Flowers:

They got together and they incorporated the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank in 1982. So next year, we're going to celebrate our 40th anniversary, which is a real milestone in our history. Now, the way the food bank operates today, it's still pretty similar to that model that John van Hengel started back in 1967. And the majority of the food that we bring in is surplus food that's donated by local wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors. And then we bring that food back to our food bank where we then distribute it to 500, well almost 600 now, soup kitchens and homeless shelters and food pantries and Medina, Summit, Portage, Wayne, Stark, Tuscarawas, Carroll and Holmes counties. So we are the regional source of surplus charitable food for basically any charity doing anything related to food in the region.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow, that just amazes me. I mean the history and how you've stayed true to the roots and how it's still relevant today where different ideas and things may move on, may be adapted, that it's still relevant that we as human beings, we need to eat food in order to survive.

Dan Flowers:

That's exactly right. And the value proposition that started the whole thing which is there's surplus food that comes by virtue of a number of variables, but primarily the fact that food is perishable. And so oftentimes, it can't be brought to market before the date or an expiration date on it. And that is the prime driver. But you see, food is a valuable commodity. Last year, the food bank had an all time record. I'm sure we can talk more about this if you'd like, the pandemic. But we distributed over 36 million pounds of food last year. It was the biggest food distribution year ever in the history of the food bank. Now, the average dollar value of a pound of food is a $1.70.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Just want to let you know about our upcoming Voices for Voices, A Brand New Day event, which is our annual gala event. It's on October 12th at 7:30. For those that are in the Northeast Ohio area, it's going to be held at the Canton Cultural Center and tickets are $20 and all the proceeds go towards the Voices for Voices organization, which is also a 501(c)(3). Dr. Jessica Hoefler is going to be one of the ... I call it the blockbuster speakers, but one of the three individuals that's really going to talk a lot about what she's talked about here with us today and really just that thought of A Brand New Day, kind of like with Piper's Key, of unlocking and setting her free, that's with Voices for Voices and with the brand new day event specifically.

You'll want to share experiences of real everyday people, not celebrities, just people that are going through and have gone through some traumatic things, whether that is mental health related, whether that is anything really traumatic. So it doesn't have to be mental health related. That's how I started the organization, but obviously as I'm learning and want to have a broader reach, that individuals with mental health challenges aren't the only individuals that have gone through traumatic experiences. So again, Dr. Jessica Hoefler will be one of the blockbuster speakers. We're also going to have Brian Laughlin, who is a lieutenant at the Twinsburg Fire Department. Then one of my actual former students, James Warnken, he is an online specialist with expertise and search engine optimization and data analytics and he's actually legally color blind. So he goes through certain software packages to be able to do the work for his businesses now. Even when he was my student at Walsh University, there were some I guess, accommodations, accessibility, things that he was able to do.

 So really not only from a spectrum of age range, but from first responder to somebody in education, traumatic, male, female, that we are all going through and have gone through things and I really want with A Brand New Day is to talk about not just some of the tough times, but how the message of a particular mission and vision is living on and how it's touching and reaching and helping more people. So again, you can find out more about A Brand New Day at voicesforvoices.org, or you can go to Eventbrite, which is the official event platform to put events together, and you can search A Brand New Day and then you'll find the event tickets there. Then you can join us in person. We'd really love to have you and bring a friend, a family member, somebody that would like to be uplifted.

So it’s not just the speakers, we're also going to have a special needs band, RockAbility, going to be playing. So some real rock music. So some of these individuals are going to be playing real live instruments with some mentor musicians and everything from the music. It's all going to be played live, in person. We're not going to use auto tune like some of the music today, and even the singers, the vocals, are going to be done. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We hope you'll make plans to join us and you'll see more on this coming up on our social media pages, the Voices for Voices on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you consume content, as well as future podcasts.

Dan Flowers:

And so if we had 36 million pounds of food given to us, the value of that food was 45, $48 million. And so if this was a for profit company. But instead of paying for that food, over 200,000 people around the region got that food for free. So it was a literally $45 million subsidy for people in need across eight counties, they got that food absolutely free of charge, addressing their food insecurity, of course, and the nutritional needs, but also saving them that money so they could buy their kid shoes, so they could pay their heating bill. So I've said for years, we fought hunger and poverty at the same time, hunger is a symptom of poverty, and we can address both by making this surplus food available to people.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I love that model. I mean it makes complete sense of, as we're saying, higher gas prices and higher prices that the dollar may not go as far as it may have used to. So as an individual, if you're having a dollar to spend and you have the choice of buying children's shoes or buying dinner, it really brings things home, it makes things real.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, exactly right. And most of the charitable work done in this country has traditionally been done by churches.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Okay.

Dan Flowers:

Churches operating soup kitchens, food pantries, clothing ministries, and that's still the case today even though we're in a much different landscape now. Of the 600 programs that we service, now the vast majority are faith-based, the vast majority have no paid staff. My brother was a pastor to church for many years and people would come and knock on his door and ask for help, people that were desolate, didn't have money or didn't have food. And the church didn't have many money to give them, most churches struggle. But it's free to join the food bank. There's an application process, there's some paperwork and our food is free. So you can come down and get all the food that you want and give it away to people in need. And so it's really I think one of the reasons why it's grown so much is because people want to help, but most of the people that want to help don't have money themselves.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right.

Dan Flowers:

It's funny, the donors are wealthy, the hands and feet are usually poor volunteers. I mean we've got some more affluent middle class and upper middle class volunteers in our network, that's true. But have you ever heard of the term, "Compassion of the afflicted?"

Justin Alan Hayes:

No, I don't think I have.

Dan Flowers:

That's really relevant to conversations about mental health and service in general. But people that have experienced poverty understand it. And a lot of times when you've hit a rock bottom in your life and someone's helped you, then you know the rock bottom and you know the difference help makes. And when you put yourself in a position where you can offer help, people do. And so a lot of our helpers were helped.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow. This is incredible. I'm just blown away by the outreach that you have with your organization. I guess I'm just guessing from a... Or not guessing, but my question is from a personal level, how do you manage that to keep all that straight? It seems like a lot of food, a lot of organizations, a lot of people, a lot of moving parts.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. It's the largest human service agency in the region on budget. I think we did $63 million in business last year.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow.

Dan Flowers:

We've got almost a hundred employees. Of course, most of that 63 million is the value of the donated food. Our operating budget's something $12 million. So it's a big responsibility. I think we had 12 or 15,000 volunteers in 2019, changed a lot in 2020 with the pandemic. So yeah, it has turned into an enterprise in a way from its very grassroots start. But at the end of the day, it's all about people. It's all about dented cans and banana boxes I say. But I try not to be overwhelmed by it. It's a humbling experience certainly, having a responsibility for not just the organization and its wellbeing, but for its mission. And even in a more esoteric sense, being in some ways a spokesman for the values of the agency.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yes.

Dan Flowers:

Which is a really heavy thing to carry. No I think person who's awake can live under the illusion that they're worthy for long.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Right.

Dan Flowers:

And so I think that for me, there's been a dual progression, science and art. And so for me, I've been fortunately blessed with just some aptitude for business. I get it. I haven't had to work that hard at that. I've learned a lot and tried to continue to learn so I could be a good steward of the resources in the organization and run it efficiently and effectively in compliance in all those areas. But my journey as a human being has been very much informed through the struggle, the dynamic, the imposter syndrome of leadership.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yes.

Dan Flowers:

The humility that comes from the humiliation and mistakes. And there's this saying my brother used to say which I really, really loved and I hope people will tune in when I say this, is that the builder builds the building while the building builds the builder. So as you're building something, the building is building you in return. And I try to preach that to the staff that if we're not awakened and alert to the personal growth and... What's it called? Transformation.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Transformation.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, that comes from being aware of your own development and the process of applying yourself over the years. You're missing a big part of it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

So anyway, I can talk about that all day.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah. I'm curious, with the pandemic, how did operations change? And were you able to maybe see a difference with either your employees or the organizations or the individuals that consume the food that in the past maybe different types of struggles are happening?

Dan Flowers:

So the pandemic, I'll just maybe just summarize the experience.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, that'd be great.

Dan Flowers:

When it came in March of last year, it was really frightening. I think everybody was like, "Man, what? Are we all going to get sick? What's this mean?" The governor announced the shutdown, we all huddled by the radio in my office. We're like, "What's going to happen? We're not shutting down, are we? We're not shutting down?" No, we're not. That's not an option here. In fact, we're going to work harder than we've ever worked and that's exactly what happened. 2020 was I think a heroic year at the food bank. Not long after the first shutdown, the National Guard was sent. We had 42 members of the 1-145 and still that spent over a year with us. They just left in July of this year in the summer. These young soldiers were in there every day. During the shutdown phase and early pandemic phase, they brought these big LMTV military trucks down to the food bank.

Dan Flowers:

And we had a lot of agencies shut down, a lot of these retired volunteers were very concerned about social distancing. They couldn't do social distancing, policies were changing constantly every moment. And so we kickstarted a food delivery program. Normally, our model is we have a warehouse in Akron and now we have one at Canton I want to talk about too if we get the chance, we open that this summer. But it's always been our model that charities came to us. They picked up their food, they made an appointment, they come and pick up their food in our warehouse and then they take it back for distribution. But we knew that we weren't going to be able to keep running it that way. So we started a food delivery program from scratch in two weeks and we did over a thousand food deliveries on the military's big giant LMTV trucks between April and December 2020 alone.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow.

Dan Flowers:

We were dropping food in parking lots everywhere. And then we created a food box building program because we weren't in the box building business before. So we had these soldiers and staff, we worked crazy hours building food boxes. So we were just pumping out food boxes, setting them on those military trucks and setting them in parking lots all over the place. It was cool. It was cool to be a part of it. I mean we were exhausted working like crazy, but we felt like we were a part of something special, our moment had come and we were going to meet it. And we had to wrestle with our own fear of getting sick because we didn't put masks on it until May, nobody even knew you were supposed to. So I probably put hundreds of boxes in people's backseats of their cars before then. We were taking a risk for a reason.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

And we knew it and there was just something incredibly unifying about that experience. And of course, we've learned a lot since then. And we've realized what we thought was just a short deployment is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. The National Guard left in the summer and we're still at it. Our distribution's gone down a little bit this year as I think some of the government programs to push that demand down a little bit. And some of the hysteria quite honestly has fallen off too. But talk about being squarely on your purpose, it was quite a run last year.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow. Yeah, that is fantastic. And yeah, definitely want you to jump in about the new Canton warehouse.

Dan Flowers:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we'd been planning this. So check it out, it was in February 2020, we had the public launch of our capital campaign Growing for Good. And the idea of the capital campaign was to build a new food bank in downtown Canton and expand the one that we have in Akron. And a week later, we kicked off our harvest for hunger campaign which is our big annual fundraiser. And we knew just having two events that close together was going to be a lot of work. What we didn't know is that a few weeks later, we were going to get shut down as a result of this pandemic.

Dan Flowers:

Harvest for Hunger was going to get basically canceled, we didn't know where most of the money that we needed to operate during the rest of the year was going to come from because the corporations that support us. And I was like, "Oh my goodness, what are we going to do?" We've got to distribute all this food, I have no idea where the money that we need. We have to raise six and a half million dollars, you're going to keep the lights on.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Just to function. So every pancake breakfast matters, every corporate fundraiser, every potluck lunch. I mean so it was a trip. But we'd already started doing some capital fundraising to get this building in Canton going. Now, you do that before you announce them publicly, it's called the quiet phase.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Ah.

Dan Flowers:

So we had this quiet phase and we'd already raised quite a bit of money for the capital campaign before we announced it publicly and we broke ground. We'd broken ground over the summer of 2019. And so we were already doing the work and we were just going to finish off the campaign after the public launch. And well, we had to do a pandemic response and finish building the building in 2020. And so we spent all year doing these thousand food drops, working all the time and still had to go to Canton every Tuesday for these drop site meetings and get the building open. And we had the ribbon cutting on July 1st, my dad died on May 18th.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Oh my gosh.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. And so the first half of this year, we're going to talk about mental health, there's one for you, losing your dad, losing a parent, that's been hard man. Anyway, so that happened. My dad died on May 18th, we cut the ribbon on that new building in Canton on July 1st.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Oh my Gosh.

Dan Flowers:

With my mom there and my brother there and all my family there and not dad. And so it made it a bittersweet arrival in a way, he'd have loved to have been there. And so now, we're running two food banks. We got one in Canton and one in Akron. The National Guard left us on July 1st, the same day we cut the ribbon. So it's a tail of two years, the first half of this year and the second half of this year have been very different, certainly professionally with running two operations now and personally living life without my dad.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Which has changed everything. And we were very close. You've got your folks?

Justin Alan Hayes:

I do. I'm lucky.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, yeah. I was having lunch with my son yesterday and I don't know, I think I made some comment like, "It's been a crazy year, son." I don't know.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dan Flowers:

He was like, "Well what's going on dad?" And I was like, "You'll find out when your dad dies."

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

And he says, "That's you." And I said, "It is me."

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

"And I know the love we share, son." And nothing could prepare you for the loss of someone that's that close to.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

And so there's been a lot of grief that's been mixed in with it for me and my experience. And I know we're going to talk about mental health more.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

And there's a lot to talk about where mental health is concerned. But I don't know, maybe I'm being indulgent, but I wouldn't be telling the story of the year if I didn't put that in there.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah. And I'm glad you did for our listeners because this podcast, this organization, these organizations that I'm a part of that I decided to found and start, at the core, it's about human beings and how we live our lives and how different situations and experiences happen, some good, some bad, some expected, some unexpected. And to have you be just so candid about that, I'm grateful that you'll share because I know with my mental health experience, it took me over 30 years to get over myself.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Get over my ego of, "I'm a guy, I'm supposed to just power through this. I don't want to have anything mental health related. It's got to be something else in my body, it's not in my mind. I don't want to take medication, I don't want to go to therapy," and it was just, "I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this." And it wasn't until I was really at that breaking point of, "Okay, if you don't accept yourself and the cards you've been given and move forward that you might not be able to move forward in life." And just understanding that from a human perspective of, "Okay, I can't plan for something in the future if I don't know if I'm going to be able to," because my mental health has really taken... My calorie intake was down to 200 calories a day. I felt like my body was allergic to almost everything that I was eating and I didn't have a history of any particular allergies. I had a fear of driving, fear of going to the grocery store.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I'd walk in with my now wife to a grocery store and in five seconds, the sensations of the lights. And it just hit me and I was like, "I have to leave." And just little things like that that I just take for granted of going to the store or driving a car that I'd driven a car for many years and to have to pull over because I was feeling dizzy. It had nothing to do with what I thought. I was like, "Oh, it's my heart, it's a heart attack," because that's just where my mind was gone that it was the anxiety and the panic of not eating coupled just with the anxiety of driving and then having the light sensations, which is partially I guess on the autism spectrum on the lower end, which is why I got these blue light blocking glasses on to just help me from being around screens and lights. I'm able to function and not be wired towards the end of the day and end up staying up later from having just that screen sensation.

Dan Flowers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Justin Alan Hayes:

Anyway, so I went on a little tangent of myself. Why don't we get into the mental health aspects?

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I mean that term the, "Compassion of the afflicted."

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

So I'm feeling that now because I've had many of the experiences you just... While I've been the CEO of a huge company.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I can't believe that. Wow.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. So I came prepared to do this today which is tell my mental health story.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah. Please do.

Dan Flowers:

And so I've got to start to when I was like... This could be emotional for me too. But I've got nothing to prove. But here it is, all right. When I was 10, my mom was shopping at a store, Meijer in Michigan where I grew up, and a display of toboggans fell on her and hit her on the head. And she was 40, I think she was 40 at the time, and I was 10. And that somehow triggered, this head injury, this period of anxiety and depression in my mom's life that changed our whole experience as a family after that. She would spend a lot of her time in the back room of the house. She would drive to her little job. She worked two days a week. My dad was a school teacher and I have a brother. And mom would drive to her job and I remember her saying she was having one of her swimmy head episodes. It was an anxiety attack.

Dan Flowers:

And my dad would go pick her up from work and she became more isolated, more scared to drive. She sat in the back of the room, she gained weight. And she was scared to death to go get help. She's told me in the years since then that she was scared they'd take me and Dave away if they knew how bad she was struggling. And so she got sidelined in life then. What we didn't know then was that she was 20 milligrams of Celexa a day away from being herself again. And it cost her all those years. But she's been able to be treated and lived the rest of her life the healthy person she was before those toboggans fell on her head that strange day that just shifted everything around in my family. I didn't know I had anxiety until I went off to college and I remember having my first full blown anxiety attack while I was there.

Dan Flowers:

I'd always been high strung, been nervous and everything, but I didn't really know what it was. And so I just danced around it. I like to drink beer, I would drink to relax and party. And so I refused to own or acknowledge any of that. Where my brother, similarly though, in his early twenties started going to counseling and I was like, "Dude, there's something wrong with you, Dave. What's your problem?" And I just refused to admit it. So I get my career going, we get married and I completely disowned any notion of mental health even though I knew I was quirky, fast, moving around a lot, yeah, that I had to work to overcome my nerves. I was speaking publicly quite prolifically. My career was going good. At 32, I got hired a CEO of the food bank in Akron. I moved my wife and our two kids at the time down here to Akron and I grind.

Dan Flowers:

We started capital campaign, I'm working like crazy in absolute denial of anything related to mental health in my own life. In 2008, my dad who died in May of this year had his first heart attack and he was taken into the hospital for a bypass. And I mean I love him so much because when mom was sick, it was dad. So I had to speak one day to the Lions Club in Kent and I was drinking a bunch of caffeinated beverages. I wasn't prepared for the speech. I drove out to Kent, got up in front of this Lions Club group and started just riffing like I always do. I didn't need to be ready. I was really able and good to just public speech. Something hit me in this speech. I felt my heart start to race, my hands start to tingle. My legs started to shake and it consumed me. My hands went numb, I couldn't stop my heart from racing. I did not know, I thought I was dying.

Dan Flowers:

I thought I was having the same heart attack that my dad had just had and I didn't see the correlation between what happened to him at the time. So I couldn't finish the speech. I was freaked out and I didn't want to drive home. So one of the guys that was there drove me over to Robinson Hospital and I went in and they ran a bunch of tests and you know what happened. The doctor came in and said, "Well it appears that you may have had an anxiety attack today." I'm like, "What? What just happened to me today was an anxiety attack. You're telling me that..." I mean because it was so full body and real. And he was like, "No, no." I said, "Well what do I do now?" "Just go home." So my wife picked me up, she had the kids at Geauga Lake. She came and picked me up and we went and got my car. And I went home and started my life as someone who has a mental health problem, you know what I mean?

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Because that was the beginning. I went back and spoke in front of that group the following week scared as can be that it was happening again. And I got up and I was ready this time and I got through the speech. But then the speech after that, I was like, "Well maybe it'll happen in this one." And this led to me being scared that I was going to have an anxiety attack every time I spoke in front of a group. But I kept speaking. And then I started being afraid that I would have an anxiety attack in a board meeting.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Or in a staff meeting or at launches with people. And it just crept into every area of my life where I was spending a great deal of my time just scared. And so I called my brother who now was a therapist and I just related to him what I was going through. I was like, "Buddy, ever since I had that anxiety attack, man, this is messing with me. I'm exploring this a lot." He was like, "You need to go to a therapist." And I was like, "That is you, Dave."

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

"You're the one who's got a mental health problem." He was like, "Well I think you've got one now." And I was like, "Well okay." So I found a therapist in Canton, shout out to Dr. Margot Kessler. I don't know if I can say her name. She was my therapist, she was awesome. And so I got my first meeting. I think it said on her website, "My clients are professional people that sometimes need a little help." And I was like, "That's me." So I showed up for the first meeting suit and tie, I mean from work. And she said, "Wait," she motioned me over to sit at the sofa. And I said, "I prefer to sit at the table, please." And then she says, "Okay."

Dan Flowers:

So I think she already could tell I was full of shit. And so we sit down at the table and I open up my padfolio, I hand her my business card. "I'm Dan, I'm the CEO. And I want to just tell you right up front, I don't think I have a mental health problem." Well God bless her. Probably two months later, I was curled up in a ball on her sofa crying.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Making progress. And between six months of therapy for her and medication for me, I think my career got saved. I think that saved my career. There was never a day. I took a single day off. I never canceled a single speech, I never avoided a single thing. But I spent about 18 months scared.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow. Oh my gosh.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And once I saw her, I started figuring it out, she gave me this great anxiety checklist. So I was able to look at my life habits and my beliefs that was creating this. And I still go back to this checklist today when I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety. And I think the medication was really big for me too because what I came to learn is it doesn't change who you are, that it doesn't change how you think. But it's like my wife's natural nervous state is a four. So when something stressful happens, she becomes a six. My resting anxiety level is eight.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

That's just me. So when something happens, I'm a 10 and I spend a lot of time redlined. Well I used to.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dan Flowers:

And when I found that medicine, it made that eight a five. And now, I spend my life in a normal acceptable range. And with those other tools, I found healing. I tell you, Justin, I know I'm going on at great length here, but-

Justin Alan Hayes:

Good, good. Please do.

Dan Flowers:

I see pictures of me at that time in my life and in the decade before then and I want to cry sometimes when I see how much quality in life I lost by not accepting help, getting help, how frightened I was unnecessarily so much of my life. I mean I've been fortunate enough to have enough... It's been 12 years since then, that time that happened in my life. And I've had enough life since then to see how much more enjoyable it can be.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

To not be on the edge all the time. And so that's my story. Every single thing that I just told you happened while I was the CEO of the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. And I never missed a meeting. And I was scared to death to tell anyone what I was going through, not because people wouldn't have judged me, it's the most loving community in the world. But because I wondered if I was worthy. What would they think of me while I'm trying to do this job while I'm still scared about going into this meeting that I'm going to have a panic attack? And so here's my message to your listeners, if there's one, if there's a million, first off, if you are in that space, you can get through what you have to do today. I am living proof-

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

That you can summon the will to not quit. Number two, it doesn't have to be that way though. And between therapy and different medications, if you're willing to accept them, you can get your life into a state where it's so much more pleasant to live it. And then maybe if you're lucky like I am, you'll be on a podcast someday on the other end of it and you can unpack it to people and maybe help them see a light towards a better life for themselves, which is the only thing that matters to me now.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Thank you for being so open and transparent. I know it's going to help so many of our listeners. And being transparent is something that I struggled with and still continued to struggle with today. And what I've found just specifically as an example, teaching college students, being up there as not just an instructor, but a human being. And so when I talk about I'm an instructor, but I'm also up here nervous that I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack. So while you're sitting there thinking that I have everything together, that I'm this perfect person, that everything's in line because I talk about this podcast and this book and this trip and these exciting things that are coming up, that there's also the nervousness, the anxiousness, the times of just wanting to lay down and take a nap just to refresh because I'm so exhausted by my mind for whatever I had just completed.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And when I started sharing that with my students, I found more students just interested in that aspect and saying, "Hey, thanks for talking about that. Not a lot of people will talk about it." And it took me so long to get to the point of getting over myself that I needed help if I need therapy, if I need medication, whatever that is. And what you said is so spot on about living an enjoyable life of being almost in a way happy of things that happen and more positive instead of for myself being a task master like, "Oh, I've got to do this, I've got to do this, I've got to do this." For me, it's taken a little bit of a step back of saying I did these things, that's great. And it probably took a lot of just energy to do that. So if I'm feeling a little bit worn out, it's okay. It's not something that's negative.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And what I also found, I guess for our listeners, that I haven't shared, one of the first ways I knew that mental health was the way I wanted to go, I get asked often by I mean even the students, "How are you okay talking about such personal things?" And actually, this was prior to my wedding a few years ago and we were attending Christmas mass, so we're coming up on the Christmas season, I went to mass with my now wife, my mother-in-law, my mom and my dad. And obviously, the church is packed, one of the busier services of the year. And we sat somewhere middle to the back on an aisle. And before church started, I had so much anxiety, I felt clammy, my heart was racing, but I basically spent the whole time that church was going on in almost the back cry room where the children are at, because I thought I was going to pass out, I thought I was having a panic attack, I thought I was having a heart attack.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And I was just like, "Oh my gosh, something's going on." And so I was just chalking it up to like, "Oh well, there's a lot of people here and I have this coat on so that attributed to it." And so in my mind, I'm trying to just justify things and not really coming forward with the truth. And so fast forward to two years after that, so basically take that Christmas mass where I was having a panic attack and wasn't able to basically attend the service just even sitting in the pew with my family, I went back to church for the first time. So the December after I got out of the hospital, I didn't attend church for Christmas. So it was the following Christmas. I was like, "I need to get over this panic inducement that I had." I accepted my mental health illnesses, accepted the therapy, the medication. And so I wanted to just get back to church. And so I ended up being crazy.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I was worried that I wasn't going to have a seat. So I got there, I was the first one there even before all the ushers. And so I got a seat right on the aisle because I was thinking, "If I have a panic attack, I've got to have a way to get out easy," because I was still just at the baseline of my recovery. And then also for those out by recovery, it's not a destination, it's a series of steps. And so you may be in recovery for 10 years, 20 years that you still can have recurrent things that come up. So I still have times of panic. Now, I have tools where prior I didn't. And so that's just something to think-

Dan Flowers:

Same.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Something to think about. And so at this mass, I'm sitting there and people are starting to file in and I'm getting more and more just anxious, more restless. And a family ended up sitting next to me. And there was a gentleman that sat next to me next to his mom and he had asked me two or three times before church actually started like, "Hey, can I get up? I'm going to go take a walk." And I didn't think anything of it. So he came back, I think it was after the third time, and he said, "Oh, there's cops outside." And I was like, "Yeah, they're probably just directing traffic." And I could just tell he was just very, very stressed at that time.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So the fourth time he got up to take a walk, his mom said, "I'm sorry that..." Forgive me, I can't remember the young man's name. "Forgive me, my son, he has stress and anxiety." And when she said that to me, it was almost like a light bulb went off that I was put here not just for that reason, but I was here to maybe help this young man through a panic attack that he was going through. So here I was, someone that-

Dan Flowers:

This is your very first service back.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Very first service back.

Dan Flowers:

And this other guy is having the same thing.

Justin Alan Hayes:

He's having the same thing and just happens to sit next to me. So when he came back, I said, "Don't worry about it. If you have to get up 20 times, do it." I was like-

Dan Flowers:

"I know what you're going through."

Justin Alan Hayes:

"I know what you're going through." And from that point on, I think that was just one of the early nuggets of, "Okay, maybe I do want to get to a point where I can share and talk about my experience and acceptance." And so now, I'm at the point where it's a little more freewheeling and it sounds like it's so easy for me to go through because I've done it.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah.

Justin Alan Hayes:

But there are times where I've seen my therapist and he says, "Justin, did you ever think about writing a book about your mental health story?" And I was like, "No." I was like, "It's personal," because I had written one about the workforce preparation. And then he goes, "It can be cathartic of just cleansing the mind just like journaling is." And so I was really thinking about that for a few months. And I finally came to the realization that I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to put the time in, the work in. I'm going to basically put together my mental health autobiography of my journey."

Justin Alan Hayes:

And from that point forward, I've just decided that here with The House of You, with the organization now that was originally founded around career preparation and workforce transition to incorporate and intertwine mental health into it as well as found Voices for Voices around 100% mental health related. So giving individuals the opportunity to share their voice, much like Dan is today, to share it with others, that we might not be able to change the world all at once, but we might be able to change the world for one individual and that might mean the difference between somebody deciding, "Yeah, I want to continue living," versus, "I want to give up or maybe go in a different direction."

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, yeah. A couple thoughts on that.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Please.

Dan Flowers:

I think that there's a natural process of self-actualization I think that we come through in life and a lot's been written about that over the years. But I think when you're earlier in your career especially, you're really trying to make a name for yourself. You're really trying to prove yourself. And for me, I know that what I've always wanted to do was have a reputation for being a rock solid dependable individual. And that meant more to me than my fear. And so that's what I was determined to do. It also probably exaggerated my suffering because I didn't tell anybody.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

I went through that whole episode of my life alone. No one at work knew what was going on, nobody on the board. At home, I didn't talk about it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Me neither.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. I went to my therapist and I talked to my brother, and I was miserable. But I did everything I could to hide it. Not just then, but 10 years after that, I never said anything. It's only been in the last few years I've started talking about this. And the reason why is because it meant something to me.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yes.

Dan Flowers:

To Before I talk about this, show by the time that I spent, listen, for the last 15 years, this was a reality in my life and it had no effect on my ability to carry this duty and responsibility.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

Now, it certainly influences who I am, but that's not always a bad thing because your greatest weakness is a greatest strength in a different context. Why do I follow up so relentlessly? Where does my unlimited reservoir of energy come from? Why is it that I'm so passionate about this work? Where does the energy come from? It comes from the same thing that causes me to sometimes be too anxious and I suffer for it. And it's been my mission to reduce the suffering that that might bring to the people around me. And that's not just true with anxiety, but it's true with every aspect of your behavior. You need to be as a leader being aware of the way your behaviors influence people. So I've always been trying to take this in. So if there's younger people listening today and they're thinking, "Well geez, do I really want to come out and have this open conversation?" Well you might not want to. I mean the fact is that I want all this acceptance. But if you're not ready to talk about it-

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right.

Dan Flowers:

You may need to wait a little while before you are, or find someone to talk to besides your boss maybe. Maybe you're not comfortable talking to your boss about it. And so I guess my point is though that wanting to establish yourself in your career as a dependable person, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

You want to. And let's say you don't have a mental health journey, there's a million other things wrong with you.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

There's a million other things wrong with your leadership, your style, the way you judge people, the way you judge yourself. So take mental health out of it, we've all got work to do.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We do.

Dan Flowers:

And you're not going to be able to own up to all the work that you've done to become the person you've become until you're maybe a little more of that person. And then when you've shown people around you that you're dependable, that you can do it, then you're going to be able to say, "Oh, and by the way, I did that whole thing while I was feeling a tremendous amount of regret because I didn't spend enough time with my brother or sister or my son," or whatever your life is. So I don't know if I'm taking the long way around the barn, except for to say part of your life journey is establishing a track record to run on anyway.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

You know what I mean? And that track record is going to give you a platform of achievement by which you're going to feel like you can stand on when you become more vulnerable about who you are in any area of your life because everybody's screwed up.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right. And yeah, I mean I can't say it any better. And again, we all have work to do, we're all not perfect whether it's mental health related or not. And at the end of the day, I think for you and I both, we had to be the ones to accept it, not somebody... Obviously, I wasn't sharing it with many other people either. So the other people couldn't like, "Hey, I think you should. I think you should." Had many ER visits, "Yeah, you're okay. You're okay." And I'm like, "No, I'm not." And it wasn't until the third ER visit after two weeks that the psyche staff was brought in and said, "We can let you go because all the tests came out fine or we can admit you and get you on the right path." So it was like, "Okay, my life's going to be different going forward."

Justin Alan Hayes:

But I had to make the decision. My wife was sitting there, wife of only a few months. And I said, "What do I do?" And she's like, "Well you need to do what you need to do. It's your call." And so even at that point, I was still trying to scapegoat something and have somebody else make the decision for me. And so I can't stress that enough to our listeners, whether it's the individual listening or someone they know, a loved one, a friend that you may know, you may see a friend, you may see somebody struggling, but at the end of the day, until that individual makes that decision, it's going to be hard. We might see an intervention on television where a lot of people, a lot of loved ones tell people, "Hey, we think you need help," not to say that that individual might not need help, but it's not going to mean as much until that individual is ready to just buy in like, "Hey..."

Justin Alan Hayes:

For me, alcohol was huge. I was just a binge drinker. And anytime I needed to take the edge off, I would drink. And so that's something that I had to say, "Am I going to be okay not drinking? I don't know but what other choice do I have?" I can either go down the path of not knowing or go down the path of not knowing a little bit less I guess.

Dan Flowers:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know what? I remember talking to my brother when I first scheduled my first visit with my therapist, my brother is a therapist. So I was very blessed to have a brother I'm very close to to walk me through this. And I shared everything with Dave and that meant the world to me. He's a minister and he's a licensed clinical psychologist, David Flowers, daveflowerstherapy.com.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Great.

Dan Flowers:

And he does online therapy and he's just a loving, loving, loving sweet guy. But I told him, I was like, "Geez, if I go see this therapist, what if he tells me I have an anxiety disorder?" He was like, "Well then you'll know."

Justin Alan Hayes:

Then you'll know.

Dan Flowers:

Then you could fix it. And I'm like, "Oh, so it's about me accepting it." And then he also recommended I read the The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. Did you read that?

Justin Alan Hayes:

I haven't.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. The Road Less Traveled, oh God, it's so good. It ends with of course you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. And the context that he said that in is when you know what's true about you, whatever your diagnosis is, well then that will set you free because you know what's true. And as long as you're afraid of that truth or running from it, finding, facing and following truth is the number one way to cure what I think ails us as humans because the truth about me that I've run from, knowing that, facing it and following that truth to the transformation that's needed to be a better human being within my myself and within and among the people that I love, that's the most important thing in life.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

But the student is ready when the teacher appears. No, the teacher appears when the student is ready, that's it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right.

Dan Flowers:

There's one other aspect of it I wanted to spend a minute on with you today.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Sure.

Dan Flowers:

Just for your listeners and it's the topic of suicide.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, please do.

Dan Flowers:

Yeah. So this chapter of my life, I'd moved well past it. I was probably eight years I guess... So you used the term, "In recovery," I've never used that word, but it's probably true for me too, in recovery, after I figured I started getting this stuff figured out a little bit. My, it was the night before my, my, my brother's oldest, daughter's high school graduation, open house that his youngest daughter attempted suicide the very night before. So all the family was gathered for this event and she OD'd on a bunch of medicine and she'd been cutting for a while and she did some cutting of herself. And when they found her, took her to the hospital, she was in rough shape. And so my brother spent the afternoon with her overnight. The next day, all the family and friends came to this open house and our whole family was there while she was in the hospital clinging to her life while we were greeting all these family members. And it hit everybody like a brick.

Dan Flowers:

I had never experienced suicide and fortunately she didn't succeed in her attempt to kill herself. But it was a foreign concept to my family and every generation of my family. We never discussed it, it wasn't anything we never knew anybody to do. And goodness sake, Justin, that was like to me the second wave. There's my story and then there's this. So of course, a huge hit for my brother, his wife, their other daughters and Anna herself who had a long road to recovery after that. And I have to say she's recovered quite nicely. She's engaged to be married this coming summer and I think life has gotten much, much better for her, as a result probably of that experience more than anything else. But that is when I was like, "Okay, this mental health thing is out there." I've had relatives that have had substance abuse issues, incarceration. But after I had my healing journey and saw this with Anna, I was like, "I've got to step up to the plate."

Dan Flowers:

And I was asked to host... I don't know if you remember when the Beacon Journal did the first series of reporting about the opioid epidemic, they, they, they, they really kind of brought it out. Well, the publisher was a friend of mine. He asked me if I would facilitate a community conversation down at the night center about this. So I agreed to do it. And man, what a intense night, a lot of people that had lost family members to opioid addiction and everything came up, they showed up, they told their stories, Jerry Craig, who was then the executive director of the Summit County ADM Board which I'm a member, was there along with several other people that work in the field. And I was like boom, struck by that. I was like, "I've got to get more involved with mental health." And so I sought a seat and now I'm a member of the County ADM Board.

Dan Flowers:

And I feel like because of my firsthand experience as a consumer, because of what happened with my niece and what's been issues of substance abuse in my family overall across the many different branches of the Flowers and [inaudible 00:54:42] family, I think that it's a real passion for me to sit in this space with people and then to take maybe some of what might be useful professional insights and help maybe agencies run better and be a little bit more tuned hard on those things. But I think that the suicide is a really difficult topic for people because I think if most people were honest, they would probably come clean that they've thought about it. I think most people, it crosses their mind at one time or the next. But I don't know much about that topic except for to say I think don't do it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

That's for to say don't do it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Don't do it.

Dan Flowers:

Don't do that. If you have to go to the hospital for a long time, go do that instead.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

And so I just want to have a plea if people are thinking that or hearing that if those thoughts go on for too long, then you know that's something worth reaching out about and the lives of so many people, not just your own. I think that's what Anna would tell you more than anything. I think she underestimated the extent to which it would rock our whole family. So anyway, that's the only other thing I wanted to talk about.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I love it. I guess what's your biggest takeaway? We talked about a wide ranging, is there a takeaway or some tips, some things you want to share in closing?

Dan Flowers:

Yeah, for sure. Yes, some tips for sure. So I think what got me through that tough time was exercise more than anything else. I've always worked out a lot. And so if you're experiencing a great deal of anxiety and running, getting good cardio can be a lifesaver for you. I developed a lot of routines because before I had any medication and even now, if I have a speech to give, I always write the speech out.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah.

Dan Flowers:

That's another thing I would say. If you have a social public speaking anxiety, write your speech out word for word every time you speak and don't accept a gig where you don't have time to write your whole speech out and practice it before you go. If you get up in front of that group and you're feeling good, well rock on. But if you feel nervous, read your speech.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Read it.

Dan Flowers:

Just read it and don't give your best speech that day. And then live to see another day.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right.

Dan Flowers:

You know what I mean? But write your speech out word for word. So that's one piece of advice. I think caffeine intake is really important. If you've got a big meeting or speech, don't drink caffeine. If you can get a good workout in, keep your caffeine out and be prepared, you're going to have a much better experience where anxiety is concerned. That's part of my regular regimen. Get eight hours of sleep at night, take your sleep very seriously. And hopefully, if you're taking some SSRI or something like that, hopefully that'll help you sleep better. I think it does for a lot of people. I think those are really big things.

Dan Flowers:

Meditate and if you don't have a meditation practice, if you meditate just enough to learn how your body feels, to learn what it is to breathe, you can drop in on those techniques when you need them without going full meditation. And then finally for me, martial arts is a big deal in my life. When I was going through this early anxiety, I was signed up for Tae Kwon Do and I've been doing Tae Kwon Do in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu ever since then. And I get a tremendous amount of stress relief and anxiety relief from just wrestling.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow.

Dan Flowers:

So that's a really big thing for me too. I like to play guitar, I like to jam, and those things are really good for you. And then maybe here's one more parting thought for people, this is not a sign of weakness.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yes.

Dan Flowers:

This is not a sign of weakness. If you, Justin, can have gone through your whole life with the level of anxiety that you had to grapple with, you're a strong person man.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Thank you.

Dan Flowers:

I'm telling you. And I feel that too. I'm just at the point in my life where I'm just not open to anybody trying to convey to me that I'm not strong because I've talked about this because nothing could be further from the truth. You have to be strong in whatever mental illness you're struggling with. And the people who come out of the other side of that are the strongest among us. They're not the weakest among us. And so I've got no time for any judgments of what people have been through and to think that there's a weakness or somehow an inherent flaw in those people. God bless you, bro. Thank you for a chance to sit and talk with you today man. I want to just put a blessing on you and everybody listening today. And come down to the food bank if you need a hug. And if you want a hug, come on down, I'll give you a hug.

Please donate to Voices for Voices, a 501c3 nonprofit charity today at: https://www.voicesforvoices.org/shop/p/donate

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