IAM1658 – CEO Revolutionizes Leadership by Understanding Mental Health and Human Wellness

Melissa Mellor Teaser 00:00

Our world is just (oof). It's one thing after another. And whether or not you know that you're impacted by this, you are, your body is like a pressure cooker. It's just we're trying to keep it all in. We're trying to live the best possible life we can, right on the edge of not exploding. And all that happens, is you just boil a little bit too long and the whole thing just explodes.

Intro 00:24

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business? Successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview. If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:51

Hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and we're doing something a little bit different this year with some of our episodes. We're repurposing some of our favorite episodes around specific topics related to entrepreneurship. This month we're focusing on entrepreneurship and community. Us, we, our, together and we're gonna look at entrepreneurship and industries in different types of entrepreneurship and ultimately what that really means. But we're also gonna delve deeper into the importance of community, networking, niche communities, and how that supports being a CEO entrepreneur and business owner. So sit back and enjoy these special episodes around entrepreneurship and community.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Melissa Mellor of Hey U Human. Melissa, it's great to have you on the show.

Melissa Mellor 01:36

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:39

Super excited to have you on as well too. We had a phenomenal conversation in the beginning, so I'm super excited now we get to have you in front of the mic and hear about all the awesome things. And of course, before we do that, I wanted to read a little bit more about Melissa, so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Melissa is the CEO of Hey U Human, a globally recognized mental health and human wellness company. They serve corporations and individuals in over 80 countries around the world with over 15 different applications. Through Hey U human, Melissa is revolutionizing leadership and how business conduct work and lead their staff.  Melissa is passionate about igniting humanity, waking humans up, and helping infrastructure and institutions understand mental health and human wellness through a completely different lens. A lens which the company is no longer reacting to mental health issues and pandering to personal complaints, one that is proactively engaging the whole human to create an unstoppable workforce. If you are human with emotions or if you interact with other humans with emotions, you will want to tune into this very, very special episode.

Melissa, excited again to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I am CEO community?

Melissa Mellor 02:42

Yes, absolutely.

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Gresham Harkless 02:44

Awesome. Let's make it happen then. To kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Melissa Mellor 02:50

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I started with the company before Hey U Human came into existence. I was the COO of a coaching company. It was Sarah Leon Gloria Coaching at the time, the Sarah Show. And I basically ran the whole coaching, the whole operations of the coaching industry. And as a part of the coaching, for our coaching service, we developed a proprietary technique that I'll talk about a little bit later. And it was mostly based on manifestation spirituality. And what we noticed when people started using this method was that people were able to manifest and basically create magic in their life. But the amazingly surprising outcome was that people's mental health, happiness, well-being just general way of living was just dramatically improved.

I was sitting with our founder Sarah one day, and I just said, I feel like we're doing, the world a massive disservice by niching into spirituality, working with coaches to get into the mindset of building their business. There's just so much more out there. And we wanted to speak to people who wanted science and facts and not just the woo-woo side of things. We wanted to speak to men and women alike. And so thus, Hey U Human was born and it really was created as a brand for every human. And it wasn't like, I dreamt up this baby one day in my basement and started providing services and now I'm the CEO. It was a true company that was created and supported by a workforce, and I have the absolute privilege of leading it.

Gresham Harkless 04:28

Nice. I love that you guys decided to take that leap and that transition and that pivot.

Melissa Mellor 04:33

Yeah, absolutely. I call that the silo effect. So many different modalities out there. Especially when it comes to mental health or any type of mindset work, they work on very isolated incidents. So if you're like, I'm having a problem having a constructive conversation with my employee, you do all the work around that one silo. How to constructively engage performance with an employee, and how to address issues. We know how to criticize a performance. We know how to have constructive conversations, but we don't know how to activate the whole human. And so that's what makes me really excited and passionate about working with leaders is all of a sudden our work, which for most of us, if you're a CEO, consumes your life, your work becomes a tool to heal and to be a better human, which makes you a better parent, a better friend, a better sibling, a better leader, and a better everything. Just from one seemingly minute instance in your leadership journey. So, it's really fascinating.

Gresham Harkless 05:34

Yeah.

Melissa Mellor 05:35

In my opinion.

Gresham Harkless 05:35

Absolutely. Yeah. I would definitely agree with that in my opinion as well. It's very, impactful when you have that opportunity to see that domino effect, the ripple effect of doing the work, but actually going to the root cause. And I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know we touched on it a little bit and heard a little bit more on how you're working with your clients, and how you're serving them. Could you take us through a little bit more about that and what that looks like?

Melissa Mellor 05:53

Yeah, absolutely. So we work with both companies and individuals. I'm gonna start with the individuals really quick. We work with individuals that just wanna live a better life. A lot of them will have stress, anxiety, overwhelm, burnout, depression, PTSD. The spectrum really ranges and we work with individuals and we provide them the training and the tools for our rapid relief technique, which is our proprietary method of getting to the root, the core root, emotion, and healing it and processing it. Actually, I would be confident in saying, almost all modalities out there or coaching mechanisms out there teach us how to cognitively understand and accept and tolerate certain things in our life. As a leader, when someone's coming to you and complaining or has an issue, you can practice radical responsibility and help them see what they can do in that situation to make the situation better as opposed to pandering, essentially.

I think of so many employees that are, I'm overworked, I'm overwhelmed, and what do we do as companies? Okay, we're gonna give you more paid time off. We're gonna cut your workload. You don't like Susan? Okay, we're gonna put Susan on another project. We are pandering, we are treating the symptoms, and we're not going to the core. Whereas if you can understand and heal why somebody is anxious in the first place, which more often than not, has literally nothing to do with work. Work is just the straw that breaks the camel's back. It just, all those problems just melt away. It almost sounds too good to be true, but it really can be that simple.

Gresham Harkless 07:36

Absolutely. And it makes so much sense when you give that example, but so many times we're doing that where we're doing work-life balance or we're running or jogging or working out or whatever, to avoid or move away from the issues that we have at hand. But it's so important to treat that core issue. So do you feel like the proprietary method, the modality that you all use, do you feel like that's part of the secret sauce, the thing that you feel like sets you or the organization apart and makes you unique?

Melissa Mellor 08:00

It is, period. End of story. Yes, it is. Our rapid relief technique is unlike anything that is out there. There are certain things that are similar, but they don't go to the root and they don't teach people how to actually process and release. So many things help us dig deep and cognitively understand. But this is like a life skill. I call it a life skill. It's like the equivalent of learning the alphabet. When you learn the alphabet, you have this skill that translates to reading, writing, problem-solving, learning, traveling and creating, like you have this freedom when you can understand the alphabet and apply it to numerous different applications. That is the rapid relief technique. It is a life skill that unfortunately we do not know. It's simple in theory, but it's something that we need to learn how to do as an adult, which for some of us, we've been holding habits for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. Like with so many of us people who are in overdrive experience, that silo effect is gone. It's really, magical. It's a gift. To be able to live completely unencumbered.

Gresham Harkless 09:18

Absolutely appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Melissa Mellor 09:28

It's funny that you should say switch gears because I'm gonna just go back to, my hack really is the rapid relief technique because, you have your books, you have your tools, you have your technologies, you have your practice, you have your routines. But for me, it really is the rapid relief technique. It just takes all of the stress of, life, and like, it's gone. It's really changed how I look at work, how I look at business, all those gross emotions that come up as a part of the business. There are really good emotions that come up as a part of business and there are so many emotions you would rather not have.  And all of that's just been able to melt away and it's just made me just such a better leader.

Gresham Harkless 10:13

Yeah. I really appreciate you breaking that down. And you know how that manifests itself in life, and that might even be like some of the CEO nugget, which is typically a piece of advice or something you might tell yourself if you were to hop into a time machine. Is it really that not even realizing that it's almost you always hear I don't wanna be put into the box, but it's thinking like there isn't even a box or what is a box, so you don't even have to think about those limitations or think about what you're doing. Do you think that's part of like your nugget and part of what you were saying as far as like being able to not even think about, oh, I didn't have a reaction, it's just doesn't exist because it's never a part of the underpinning of who you are in your reaction.

Melissa Mellor 10:51

Exactly. But what's really cool is as you start doing this work, you all of a sudden start seeing situations that you're like, wait a minute. I would've reacted totally differently two months ago. Huh? Interesting. Like the things that you start clearing. You notice really to really embody and believe in something, it's not a cognitive experience. It's not changing your mindset. It's really about clearing all of the old reasons why you believed one thing. Releasing it, processing it, and then you're like a blank slate. Then you can anchor into your new mindset. But a lot of times what we do, we talk about this quite a bit in our chorus where it's like the equivalent of doing a renovation. And you have this like old rotten house and you're like you have two options. You can take it down to the studs, you can get rid of the rotting floorboards and the rotted studs, and you can rebuild it so that it is strong. Or you can put up some drywall, repaint, or make it look aesthetically pleasing.

That doesn't change the fact that your house is literally crumbling and eating away at itself on the inside. And that's what humans are doing right now. They're like the power of positive thinking. Think happy thoughts, and go for a run. I'm not gonna work tonight. And we're like, we're just throwing that mask up, but really inside we're suffering. And then you see real-life tragedies coming out, which is not going to change, right? Like our world is just, ooh, it's one thing after another, after another, after another. And whether or not you know that you're impacted by this, you are, your body is like a pressure cooker. It's just we're trying to keep it all in. We're trying to live the best possible life we can, right on the edge of not exploding. And all that happens is you just boil a little bit too long and the whole thing just explodes.

Gresham Harkless 12:55

Absolutely. And, as an English major, I always love metaphors and analogies and everything. So I love, the foundation and the putting up drywall and painting and how sometimes we do that in so many different ways, individually or especially as organizations. But I think it's definitely, obviously, a huge opportunity for leaders especially to be able to create the change that they hope to ultimately see in the world. And I guess, that segues me to my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping for different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Melissa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Melissa Mellor 13:26

A visionary. They are visionary in their work, in their practice, and in how they lead themselves. A CEO is just somebody that really can see the world differently in whatever aspect. It could be accounting, it could be in mental health like myself. It could be in anything, but they're just somebody who can lead, who can see things, who can lead through things organically. Obviously, there are financial obligations. Obviously, there are those types of work-related obligations, but at their core, it's just somebody who can lock into their secret sauce and lead and just see things differently.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

I, truly appreciate that. Obviously, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course how best people can get hold of you. Find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Melissa Mellor 14:20

Absolutely. So first of all, I love feedback. So if you heard this episode and you're like, oh my God, this was so good, feel free to reach out to me directly and just share that. I love it. If you are a leader, if you're a leader who's listening to this and you would love to know more about working with, Hey U Human, working with myself, working to understand this principle and how to apply it in your work, you can reach out to me directly at melissa@heyuhuman.com. And it's, Hey U. But I really appreciate the opportunity to share my heart with your audience, and my passion with your audience. It's such a privilege.

Gresham Harkless 14:54

Absolutely. I appreciate that, Melissa. We will definitely have the links and information and the show notes as well too, like you mentioned so that everybody can click through and find about all the awesome things that you're doing. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Melissa Mellor 15:04

Thank you. You too.

Outro 15:05

Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos@cbnation.co. Also, check out our I am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.