EW 045 – How Leaders Can Use Cognitive Behaviour Therapy To Deal With Challenges And Build Positive Outcomes – Winning with Landon Barrowman, CEO of Triskel Mental Health

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.824)
Landon, welcome to the show.

Landon Barrowman (00:03.704)
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.16)
Well, I'm super excited because I got to see you give a talk at the Emmett Construction Association and I got to see you talk about your approach to working out of a very difficult time in your life in a way that not only helped you, but is helping already dozens of other people that are frontline workers, certainly in the oil industry and maybe beyond that. It's just remarkable to me that people are going to get a chance to meet you and hear about your approach.

to getting real things done to help people in so many different ways. But a lot of people haven't met you. So if you had to introduce yourself at an event, what would you say?

Landon Barrowman (00:41.934)
Well, I usually start with saying my name is Lanin Berelman and I am a 488 journeyman pipe fitter who worked in the oil sands for over 10 years, who's now made a switch to become a student of psychology. In my first year, I've authored a book called the Working Man's Guide to Mental Health. And I am now a cognitive behavior therapy coach who helps people kind of go through it like I did. One of the hardest years of my life.

was 2023 and I went through a separation and a custody battle, my cancer scare, colon cancer scare, my father's death, and then a layoff at the end of it for a little cherry right on top. So going through that, I wouldn't have been able to pull out of it without cognitive behavior therapy skills. And the whole time I kind of looked around me and saw similar people going through same kind of stuff. And I just thought, how can I connect and give them this information that helped me so much?

Gordon Sheppard (01:38.808)
It's, I just need to dig in there for a second. That's a tough year. And most people will lay down, you know what I mean? With that kind of year, but you were able to sort of be tool seeking. You know what I mean? You were able, you were looking for something better. Is that fair?

Landon Barrowman (01:42.492)
yeah.

Landon Barrowman (01:48.94)
Yeah, and honestly

Landon Barrowman (01:53.966)
Very much so. then like, it's the way I kind of talk about it, it sounds like I was always going up. Like it was very much a, there were parts where I laid down, you know, and that's what kind of mental health looks like. Sometimes you lay down and you go, I can't fight it today. And then some days you...

get the tools and you work with them and you learn how they, which ones work for you and which ones work best. And you know, in the end it's about big wins over small losses and not to, you know, treat yourself so badly about having bad days. I mean, everybody has.

Gordon Sheppard (02:24.411)
I often think in the coaching and advisory work that I do, we often bring our 12 year old selves to the room. I'm just a bit shocked that we call ourselves adults, but really so many of the reactions are in there. And you've got again, this cognitive behaviour tool set toolkit that you're able to give forward. I need to get into a bit of, I mean, it was a really good introduction, but if I'm a pipe fitter and I'm working up north in Alberta, what's...

What's that like? It's its own kind of culture. Is that fair? And then what does that culture set up that led to, you know, your scenario and then getting out of your scenario?

Landon Barrowman (03:00.43)
sure it is its own culture. Like sometimes it feels like you're going back to the 1950s and sometimes it just it feels completely alien and anything you'd ever understand. Working up north a lot of times you're living in camps, you're fly in fly out, you're institutionalized without understanding what institutionalized is.

It's not as formal as like you're in prison now, but it's like, okay, I have to go into a place where everybody's living very closely together and I have to wait in line for my food and I have to, you know, get on a bus to go to work and it's very like formal. You need to know your roots and know what's going on and it starts to, you know, while it's exciting, you have a new job and you're making lots of money. You kind of.

put aside this whole institutionalized psychological aspect of it where you're being isolated and being treated in a certain way where, you know, it starts to rack on guys like really hard. They start to realize once after a few

mishaps that they just feel like numbers they just feel like another cog in a machine and you know, it gets tough it gets really tough up there and With fate the amount of facetimes you get and phone calls you have with your family It just it doesn't really compete to like being home with your family every single night Having dinner with them being in their lives seeing going to your kids soccer games, you know It's a sacrifice a lot of men make

And unfortunately, they kind of can get into this cycle where they've sacrificed so much to go and make money to bring home to their family. And then through isolating themselves, they kind of...

Landon Barrowman (04:44.972)
disrupt a lot of these family patterns and end up some of them losing their family and then they're just going up north and sending money back home to a family they're not even part of and that can become a really dangerous loop for a lot of guys up there and I saw that that was happening to me. You know you go through a divorce when you're up there or a separation and you know you're just sending home money to a family that you're not part of and you just start to it can be really really shocking and a real hit to a lot of big parts.

of you, know, so working through that. huh. yes. Very much.

Gordon Sheppard (05:15.899)
And it leads to negative behavior, right? Addiction, problematic behavior. Again, I don't mean to sort of get into it other than to say that can become a rampant thing along with the psychological damage in a sense that's happening while you're there. I heard, I was talking to someone else who worked in oil and gas on the upper end on the administrative side. And they said some of the men started to feel like ATM machines in terms of, and that phrase just stunned me. I couldn't believe that was sort of the way that felt.

Landon Barrowman (05:27.341)
Mm-hmm.

Landon Barrowman (05:44.908)
And some of them have like a kind of a radical acceptance of it. They just go, yep, just give them the money and that's all and just keep working. And, you know, that might be a, like a defense mechanism to just be like, it doesn't hurt me, but inside, you know, if you're just being used for money, you know, and you, you've come to this conclusion, there's something definitely not going right because you're a human who like deserves happiness. It deserves a good life. And if you just feel like you need to work to send money home, you're not having a good life, you know.

Gordon Sheppard (06:13.807)
Well, and I want to jump into something because we had a couple of good conversations leading up to this one. One was, you know, you'd be reading a book in the common area and not everyone was a reader. They may give you a hard time with that. So again, the nature of the culture is not an analytical culture. Is that fair?

Landon Barrowman (06:23.65)
Yeah.

Landon Barrowman (06:27.246)
you

Yeah, a lot of guys are on their phone. I mean, they're subject to a lot of this algorithmic polarization, especially when it comes to politically. Even when I was up there and like it wasn't as well, it was pretty bad in 2020 when it was the whole anti-vax or vax thing and a lot of the political opinions are flying around. So, you know, it's a lot harder to

to find guys who read and they're really analytical about what's going on and they stop and think as opposed to guys who are very reactionary, where it's like, this happened, I'm gonna react to it. And guys especially have a very like, I need to fix this kind of attitude. And I see, saw so much potential in that because if we have this, I can fix this attitude, what's missing then to do a really good job is just the tools to fix the things that we need. And a lot of that is just.

Gordon Sheppard (07:18.191)
And that's what you were sort of able to get onto. please, no, we can't, we're not saying that these folks are smart, they're driving the economy, they are unbelievable at their work, they have formed families and relationships and those things, but the situation of being away is part of what contributes towards this scenario. And then you had this tough year where not one thing happened, but four, five things happened, and then you had to start doing something about it and you found...

Landon Barrowman (07:35.139)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (07:46.171)
cognitive behavior therapy. Tell me about the moment, sort of just before that, and then what was it like once you found it?

Landon Barrowman (07:52.76)
So the moments before that, was kind of like going through couples counseling with my fiance at the time. And you know, I was asking a counselor, you know, what can I do? Like I knew that.

We were probably going to break up and all these other things. And I was dreading the worst and just kind of, you know, what we call it cognitive behavior therapy, fortune telling, writing the future, already deciding, and pretty much feeling all those feelings, putting myself through a scenario that hadn't even happened yet, which can be very emotionally draining. Right. So I was asking her, I need something that I'm going to be able to use to make myself like feel better or calm down when I'm up North in my hotel room. And I'm spiraling at night thinking about what is my new life going to be like now that

we have to sell the house and like with my son, which became a lengthy custody battle and what did like I had my whole future planned that I had to kind of, was going through the steps of grief with and she's like, well, I can give you this drug, you know? And I'm like, well, I don't really want to take a drug. You know, I work, I do drug tests. I don't need anything that impairs me. I'm working in a poisonous gas plant, like 12 hours a day for two weeks. The last thing I need is something that might take me out of that, you know, out of the game.

You know, and she just kind of pointed me towards, she recommended a book of dialectical behavior therapy and I thought, I just paid this person like over almost a thousand dollars in like therapy to get a book recommendation. And I'm like.

for a guy who like has a huge personal library, interestingly enough, I had the book she was talking about and I took it up with me and I used it a little bit, but I found it kind of discouraging. It was just like, it was too much journaling. was too not enough practical things. a lot of the talk was like just disconnected from where I was personally. And I was like, this doesn't reach out to me. And

Landon Barrowman (09:41.87)
After finding a connection to cognitive behavior therapy, I started monitoring my behavior a little bit and I was working out in a gym, which I talked to you a little bit about. was like a, the dive bar version of a gym in Fort McMurray. It's called Phoenix Gym and it's the craziest gym. go down there, it's like two degrees hotter than like the surface area. And it's an awesome gym, but I was just listening to cognitive behavior therapy.

speeches on my headphones while like going for little jobs and they kept saying the words tools cognitive behavior therapy tools your cognitive behavior therapy toolbox mental health tools and I just

really clicked with me and I was like, it kind of gave me this perspective that I was this worker who can work on my mental health and it wasn't something so removed from me in like that only therapists can do it. And I'd never really kind of understood self therapy. And then after going through this frame of therapy, I was like, all therapy is self therapy. All a therapist does is just facilitate those tools to you and help you use them. So,

I often use the kind of phrase like, a toddler with a screwdriver, you know, when you show a toddler how to do it, it's going to take them a little while to figure out how to screw in an actual screw, right? They have the tool in their hand. They know what it's for, but it's the use and the practice of it. So then I started using and practicing all these cognitive behavior therapy skills to see which ones worked for me. And I never looked back. It changed my life forever. I'm

You know, now I'm going to school to become a psychologist. I'm writing books. I have a good way of just like putting my life on paper to see what I need to do and where I need to go and scheduling good days for myself. Cause I know, okay, like I need to have good days. So if you plan good days, you have good days. just actually it was as simple as, know, just planning days where I can enjoy myself and do things that I enjoy. And I think a lot of people kind of lack that cause they're in this automatic.

Landon Barrowman (11:39.702)
day-to-day, you know, autopilot machine where they're just like work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat, and they just forget to do stuff for themselves and it can tire them out, right?

Gordon Sheppard (11:48.621)
And it lacks intentionality, which it sounds like you found intentionality around what you're talking about. How lucky for us that you have this conscious moment that you then get to bring it out to a wider audience through your book, through the work that you're gonna, what sounds like a lifelong passion now in terms of what you're gonna do. What strikes me about what you're talking about is yourself or the guys you're working with. Like, again, it's not about intelligence in this culture that we're describing at all. They're very super bright. And it's interesting that you were able to transfer.

Landon Barrowman (12:05.944)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (12:17.1)
your ability to solve problems. You could solve problems as a pipe fitter, or you can solve problems in this case. And what an interesting moment that that might be. Somebody could hear this and say, wait a second. I can actually just pick it up like tools. I was thinking, I can't remember if we want to say Leatherman or Swiss Army knife or whatever it is. You get that sort of option. But I actually prefer your, I like those big plastic screwdrivers that my kids would have played with that I think that's more fun in terms of the way you take that on. So how neat that we got to this moment where we hear your story. We hear the moment where you're in this

Landon Barrowman (12:39.318)
Okay, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (12:47.202)
whatever hot hellish gym and then, you're putting it all together and now, and then you emerge from that. And I liked that there was a moment in your book that says, did you say, is it first Barrowman is going to become a doctor? Is that what I saw in the book?

Landon Barrowman (12:58.018)
Yeah, it's a very ambitious statement. I wanted to get a PhD and that's kind of still the goal. There's been a few more steps in between there now where I'm gonna be kind a counselor first.

Gordon Sheppard (13:08.122)
I think it's gonna happen and it's funny about even, you cause you know you're on the journey. I just love the statement. I thought that was a great thing to say, you know what, I'm where I'm at now. Something that I didn't even imagine I could do is written in the book and now I'm gonna go do it. And I think there's something in there again that we can gain from your leadership of yourself in a sense that led. And then, sorry, there's one other moment in there where you're like, okay, I've got this toolkit and you had a big moment in your basement.

Landon Barrowman (13:35.757)
Yeah. So again, like you said with the, the, intelligence of the way people kind of process information, like a lot of these working men that I know they're, especially because I was working in sprinkler fitting, they can recite sprinkler code like this. They're, they're super intelligent when it comes to stuff like that.

But yeah, they don't read. So it's not more of an academic intelligence. It's a practical application intelligence. So I saw like this potential for these guys to understand this stuff. If it was explained to them in more practical ways that they're used to. And I started kind of teaching cognitive behavior therapy in my basement. And I asked some

friends that I knew were going through some similar troubles as me. One was a guy who was going through a similar custody battle as me. And he would benefit from something like this because he said that his anger was kind of always getting in the way of him making some bad decisions and writing some bad emails and things like that. So he came into my basement and we made up a program. Well, we didn't make, I found a program that was cognitive behavior therapy geared towards anger management.

And I worked with him like all the time. We had like probably about two sessions a week. And something I noticed is with a lot of these guys when they were like, I had some other ones too, but while these guys would like learn this stuff.

they would kind of come back the next session and a lot of it is like you give them homework. Did you do this thing? Did you do a thought record? Did you examine your thoughts or what did you, a lot of it's monitoring your behavior. Like did we mark down like what days did you get angry and like how angry were you? So I'd ask them like, did you do that? So I like, I kind of just forgot about it. Like,

Landon Barrowman (15:13.014)
as soon as I left and I'm like, okay. So I started making like sheets to give them so they could go home and hopefully that it would remind them. And that didn't work. So I made them like little cards they could carry with them. And that sort of worked a little bit. And then eventually I just wrote this book.

That they could carry everything that I would teach them within the first couple of sessions on there, including like behavior scheduling and how to go through a thought record. You know, a lot of different things that they could put in for behavior activation, just things they can do instead of having negative, actions to do and just monitoring themselves, which is basically one of the first steps of cognitive behavior therapy. I say, it's assessing where you are and then, you know, adjusting to where you want to be. Right. So a lot of it is just like.

coming out of that autopilot moments. But this helped them so much, carrying it with them that they said, you should put that on, you know, Facebook. So I put it on Facebook and immediately got such a good response through all the people in my Facebook network. And I was just blown away. I had people asking me if they could buy a copy. And after that, it created this huge rush.

A lot of them were people's wives, people's sisters, a lot of women were buying it for their spouses and their boyfriends. through that I could see that the stigma still very much existed. Not a lot of men were reaching out in comparable numbers. So eventually it got into the hands of the president of the Edmonton Construction Association.

He called me into his office and I came in there kind of shaking like what does this guy want with me? This is crazy And he's like why isn't this on Amazon and I did not have an answer for him. So I said it will be

Landon Barrowman (16:57.45)
in a month. So he, put it on Amazon in a month and he got me in contact with a young builders group and they scheduled me to come in for like a meeting and I was like, or sorry, to do a speaking event. And I'm not a public speaker. I'm a musician, but like kind of having that guitar was like almost like a shield in front of you or not as vulnerable or laid bare. So interestingly enough, I had to use cognitive behavior therapy methods to like train myself to speak. So I planned like a book,

like a book release event where I'd come and do a speech and through exposure therapy my thought was okay if I get exposed to smaller and smaller groups and eventually grow it bigger I'll be able to speak in front of people like a larger group for this big Edmonton Construction Association meeting.

And it worked. So the first event was that, which was my book release. And then the next event was going to be at a coffee shop, but something got in the way because I was going to sell my book to my aunt and she had told me that, you know, she was buying it for someone and

they didn't really read. So she was wondering like how he would access this information. And this started kind of a cycle of learning about accessibility for people who might not be big readers and what I can do to reach them there. So that kind of skyrocketed into making,

YouTube videos that are accessible through the book through this QR code you can access all the videos on YouTube that basically read this book to you and explain everything and Then this book just becomes a workbook But after that there was another kind of pivotal step and I thought okay Well, if these guys don't read the book and if they're not watching the videos How do I reach guys on site and I started thinking about practical ways to bring this information to site?

Landon Barrowman (18:44.661)
And what I came up with was a certified course where people would get a card at the end of it. And that would just like H2S training or fall arrest.

And it was a four hour course that would teach them mental health skills to help them deal with it. So that's when I made this book, which is, you know, mental health in the trades, mental health skills in the trades. And that became the next speaking engagement I did, which was a two hour speaking engagement in St. Albert here, to a lot of my friends in the trades to kind of just do a pilot of this, of this actual course. And the response to that was amazing. So.

Gordon Sheppard (19:21.771)
I love it. And so again, we hear I'm in a dirty gym basement where it's hotter than other places. I put it together. Then I do it for myself. Then I do it for one other person. Then I do it, and then someone says, write it down. Then I get a book. Then I get a video. Now I do a four hour course, which has all kinds of potential for making it into the mainstream of, think, and this is just my opinion,

of all those kinds of things where these are essential certificates, like just like every other certificate, you said, WHMIS, whatever you need to get on site, that is on its way to becoming that. And I really appreciate your persistence through this and sort of the mission driven part that you've got going because there's an element of just get her done. And that actually fits back to your work ethic. So this is not, you know, since crisis in the making, this is 10 years prior, you've got all this sort of structural way to go at things.

from your training, from the work environments, from the problem solving you're doing, but now you've applied it in this area and aren't we all lucky and those audiences that you're gonna continue to get in front of and the people that you're gonna benefit as you kind of go forward. Anyway, wow, what a great start to the interview in terms of what it is. When I get to this point, I always like to say if you had to describe your biggest win in all this, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Landon Barrowman (20:38.191)
So the biggest win comes from that pilot course session that I did. It was at Bailey's Books in St. Albert in like a little bookstore and I only had two hours to teach this four hour course so I kind of had to like remove a lot of the group participation parts so I was like, this gonna be as effective? But you know, at least I can kind of give people an idea of what I'm doing and see if I'm kind of moving in the right direction, right? And...

I've invited one of like the hardest guys I've known ever to this and he's kind of one of those stubborn like old dogs. I've seen wrenches slip out of his hand when he's tightening stuff and it punch him right in the face. Him just spit blood on the floor and just, what am I? Are you okay, dude? Do we need to go somewhere? And he's, I'm fine, don't worry, you know? I've seen him cut his hand open like, you know, completely. One time we were doing a pressure test on a system and...

a huge explosion happened under pressure and it sounded like a gunshot went off. I saw one, there was a safety officer in the room with us and his knees just buckled because he like almost fainted. It was so loud. And you know, it happened right in front of this guy's face and he just popped back up and I thought there would just be a bloody stump there. But you know, that's how hard he is. He's almost indestructible. That being said, he's like a farm boy who, you know,

It's kind of set in his ways and he's know salt of the earth guy and he's the exact kind of guy I wanted this to affect but I wondered if it would you know so after doing the two-hour course and going through it you know he has kind of like yeah you know shook my hand at the end of it and went back home to his farm you know which was hours away and I just thanked him for coming out I know that it was a drop long drive but when I called him the next day

I asked him, so like, what did you think about that? Like, how did it go? And what did you think? And he goes, I really think what you're doing is very important. I think it's about time someone did something like this. You know, I'd known him for a very long time. He was my partner up there. He'd gone through a separation and a custody battle that lasted almost 12 years or longer. And through that, you know, he'd spent countless hours, you know, wondering about things and, know, the effects to his health, you know, so.

Landon Barrowman (22:52.789)
as well he had lost a parent really close to the same time I lost mine. So he was definitely one of the people that inspired me to make this course because he was the person directly around me that said everybody's going through the same kind of thing as me, but if they don't have the same tools as me, that'd be selfish of me not to share these and let people know. So he was super grateful for it. And one of the things he said to me was, you know, you made me really understand that how the thoughts literally make our reality.

that like through our thoughts about what we perceive and how we feel and all these other things that makes us see the world. So by changing our thoughts and understanding them better, we can better understand our world in a more positive way or at least a more rational way than being emotionally upset and seeing it through those lens. And to hear him say something like that was like, this is crazy, dude. Like it was a real like win for me. Cause I was like, did I just

give one of the most inaccessible people in the world therapy. Like did I just give him skills for him to make those realizations himself and for him to put those together and affect his life in that way? And that was my win. I was like, this is the proof I need that I need to keep going and deliver this to as many people as possible. And you know, some people might just go, I don't need that, whatever, but in the back of their head, it might still be there. And when some kind of crisis happens, they know,

Well, what about that? What about that course I took that I got that book? Maybe I should take a look at that, you know, or if they do to say, that course was BS, but end up going to therapy and after paying $3,000 to finally get to a mental health skill, they go.

Well, that was the mental health skill that that guy was talking about in that book I took. I just paid $3,000 for something that my company just gave me for free because to learn a breathing like exercise or to learn how to like, you know, monitor your thoughts and stuff like that.

Landon Barrowman (24:52.171)
It takes a lot of a therapist assessing to see if it's going to be worth it to teach you that because it's a lot of an involved kind of thing. Whereas cognitive behavior therapy more or less puts those tools right on the table and goes, I'm going to teach you how to use every single one of these. And then you can pick which ones work for you. And, that's.

Gordon Sheppard (25:08.693)
And the a la carte piece becomes that customizable piece. The win is you broke through to someone, and we say one person, but in fact, that you know now that validating your concept for reaching people and you have a joy for helping someone like you, maybe harder than you. The pipe wrench image is unforgettable. Like in terms of like how, like, you who are we talking about here? We're talking about folks that, you know, don't have the emotional practice.

Landon Barrowman (25:21.071)
Thank

Gordon Sheppard (25:37.294)
that they might have had, and might have going forward as we kind of go forward in the future. That's a great moment to be in. There's that two hours sort of session that you packed it all in and you get the validation. There's the win. I want to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win now where we explore the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind the win. We've been hearing a lot about each of these areas as we lead up to this moment. Strategically, vision, mission, values. I heard that you are on a mission. Is that fair in terms of how you describe it?

Landon Barrowman (25:37.487)
Mm-hmm.

Landon Barrowman (25:42.127)
Definitely.

Landon Barrowman (26:06.607)
100%, like my mission, which changed, know, before it was just like, okay, I want to affect some people and I want to become a psychologist. Now it's, it's been cleared up much more than that. That one seems like so vague as opposed to what like is specific that I want to do, which is I want to make a lot of these therapy skills super accessible for men in the trades who work 12 hour days and they don't want to go to therapy at the end of the day.

They, so if I can get to them in their day through safety meetings, toolbox talks, you know, even through tick talks or through whatever, when they're scrolling, if they're part of this in their feed on, on, on their phones, or even through the course where their companies could say, okay, everybody's taking this course, right? that's how I reach them. And it's in practical ways that they're used to getting. So it's not super intrusive. It's not something new where they're stepping into an unfamiliar office. And there's all these kinds of.

Barriers whether they see them or not of them just being like, okay I'm uncomfortable and I don't like being here so they're not in a like mode to learn but guys who go into h2s courses and guys who go into like these kind of These fieldwork courses they're used they're sitting down there and learning and really taking in that information So if I can get into those spaces

That's where guys will do the most learning. And if I can get into those toolbox talks in the morning, that's where I can subliminally get into their heads where it's like, OK, I'm teaching you tools. teaching you. I'm prepping you for this mental health awareness and telling you that there are tools that you can use that are practical. Because I think that's just something that some people don't know. They talk a lot about mental health and their struggles, but they never really.

can define the tools they used to get through it. A lot of guys just go, I like hung out with my friends and that's kind of how it helped. And I stopped drinking and it's like, that is the behavior part of cognitive behavior therapy. You're doing it without realizing it. So naming it can help you strategize with it and go, okay.

Landon Barrowman (28:05.749)
I need to make this plan to hang out with my friends and stop binge drinking and stuff every weekend and instead really kind lean on these relationships I have and that's behavior activation, right?

Gordon Sheppard (28:16.698)
And we move to a healthier place through the way you're talking about it and how nice that the strategy is meeting people where they're at is a big part of what you're saying there because of your own frustration you were able to translate that and say no no no I now have the modality of sort of how to get into that that's great so there's a strategic piece any strategy needs a work plan so if we take your whole sort of

journey, there's a moment where there's crisis, there's realization, and then we get to that two hours. What was that sort of whole, there's a crisis year, what year did that crisis year start?

Landon Barrowman (28:47.823)
So that was 2023. That was when it was like, oh God, my whole life's falling apart.

Gordon Sheppard (28:52.442)
So this is pretty rapid turnaround. Like we're in 2025 now, like within a two year period, there's something then about you, there's something secret sauce about Landon, because there's other guys, no, no, I mean to say this because there's something in you around resilience or something that within a two year period, you've gone maybe not in a direction that you could have gone. There's four or five different ways this could have gone, right? In terms of negative outcomes for sure. But there's something then within a two year period and you describe all these moments along the way, I had the crisis, I needed a way out.

Landon Barrowman (28:55.062)
yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (29:21.998)
the therapy didn't work, and then it started to work. I started to integrate and figure this out the way that worked for me. And then I found out that it worked for other people through these experiments. So you validated along the way, getting up to this two hour moment. And then we can kind of see those highlights along the timeline. What do you think the, just for our own sake, what's your projected timeline over the next year? I mean, this is rapid progress. So what do you think is happening in the next while?

Landon Barrowman (29:44.333)
The next year I would like to like do a full rollout of getting this course and as myself on site as much as possible. I'd like to be.

traveling all over the Edmonton area and then possibly getting up to Fort McMurray where I'm even more needed and getting up there and making the connections I need to get on site so I can get some steel toe boots back on my feet and be talking to guys at first thing in the morning, you know, waking up at 5 a.m. again and staying with them all day to do toolbox talk, safety meeting talk, and then do a couple of courses during that time, you know, as well as complete my schooling in the next three years to get a BA in psych and then

become a counselor, work eventually on counseling.

Gordon Sheppard (30:28.046)
I think you're on your way to doing it, which is great. And I think it's interesting having, from my touches on sort of oil industry and this kind of thing, there's something about now connecting this up to the value of what that's gonna look like. So that there's a crass part of safety in a sense. And if we, if you wanna bundle this in safety and that's how it gets in there, that's great. If it's bundled into like life skills, that's fine. But there's something about there, there's actually for executives, there's a payout element. There is a human element to this that's really important. And there's so many things going on there when you describe where you're headed. So I hope that not only the workers that hear this,

can benefit from the conversation but also the executives who know they want their workers to be rounded out because we're talking now about going beyond just safety and you training skills we're getting into a full whole life approach here that's going to you know again get people ready for the rest of their lives

Landon Barrowman (31:13.487)
And that's one of the most interesting parts of trying to like wrap around how I'm going to convince people's bosses to get this there.

Right? You have to talk to them about safety. You know, you have to express it to them. And even to in the course, I talked to, you know, the worker themselves about why this is important. And a lot of it goes into, if you're distracted at work, you're not focused at work. And that's where most safety incidents happen. If you look at the common thread between all of these incident reports, it's his head wasn't in the game. And with, you know, hazard assessments that we write every single day, it's keep your head in the game, keep your head on a swivel, but they never assess what takes your attention away or

what can bring your attention back and I give those methods right doing a thought record.

Gordon Sheppard (31:55.141)
Well, and the sneaky thing I'll just mention, had a, Vaughn was on, he runs his own landscaping irrigation business, guy go out on construction settings all the time. On his, you said hazard assessment, on his sort of daily reports or those things, he actually talks about integrating leadership lessons or vision mission values into those areas. And I wonder if the hazard assessments couldn't start to absorb some of your very practical sentence or two.

Do you know what mean? Where we're starting to put that literally in a check box. So they're checking off whatever, is there a brick over my head? And is my head in the game because I, and something about that is headed in the right direction. But the actual real influence of the actual tools they use, because they're already customized to filling in those types of things along the way. So we've got strategy, work plan. There's always people involved in a win. We've heard a lot about you and your sort of what you knew and what you took on.

to get to know, we heard about your attitude through the whole thing. How would you describe your peaks and valleys? You you got crisis, you said it was up and down. And then how would you describe your attitude through this journey to get to the wind that you described?

Landon Barrowman (32:52.76)
Yeah.

Landon Barrowman (32:57.711)
So like the peaks and valleys, a lot of it was like coming out of all those things crashing down on me at once and coming to the only thing that I knew to help, which was like booze. So it didn't help that there was like a literal bar right in front of the place where I was staying in Fort McMurray. And I'd go to this Boston pizza all the time and.

A lot of times I'd be the last person there. I'd like, why are you putting the chairs on the tables? And they're like, okay, because it's two o'clock and you need to get out of here. And I'm like, so showing up to work, not in the best condition. And then sometimes not even showing up to work at all, you know, through behavior assessment, I started seeing where are my bad days? And they always followed that one good night. And I was like, I need to address this. Right. I had some great friends and some amazing people, a lot of 20 year long friendships and some new people who came into my life that influenced me to go into psychology. And we're just.

you know, shining lights that kind of showed me the way and believed in me. And through that, I was able to really establish it. One bigger part was a core belief.

core belief part of cognitive behavior therapy and exercise I did, I ended up literally asking my ex, like what is one of the best qualities you think about me? And when me and her are going through a custody battle and a divorce and it was not pretty and it was a lot of bad things said a lot of the time, she kind of hit me back with a, what's this for? And I was like, well, it's just for my own personal benefit, right? It's not for a legal thing, you know, she was defensive about it. She goes, it's your ability to learn anything. And...

I was taken aback by it and it kind of erased the whole core belief that I had that I was just some dumb tradesman who got stuck in the trades because I couldn't do anything else. And, know, I was a kid with ADD who liked to clown around in school and, you know, smoke a ton of pot and didn't really care about grades and kind of whittled my life away. And now here I am. And I was like, well, she kind of named a bunch of things like, you know, you became obsessed with the book Dune and you knew everything about Dune. And it was like, if you can apply that kind of learning to

Landon Barrowman (34:53.041)
anything else, you can do it. And it really changed my perspective about who I am. And that was like the bigger part where I was still in a peak, but I was looking up a different mountain being like, I can climb this. I'm able to, you know.

Gordon Sheppard (35:06.363)
I can climb this. I will be the barrowman with a degree. I just, again, I'm just, I'm quoting from your book. I just think it's so inspiring. The, there's other people in a journey and we can't describe them all. We talked about this colleague of yours who was the roughest, tumblest farmer with a wrench to the head and just didn't matter. Who was a big influence on you. Do you know what I mean? In terms of being able to absorb and give you feedback. Any other sort of key players?

Landon Barrowman (35:10.584)
Exactly,

Landon Barrowman (35:18.393)
Mm-hmm.

Landon Barrowman (35:24.078)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (35:31.651)
along the way here that like maybe one or two and how would you describe their attitudes in your journey to the wind?

Landon Barrowman (35:37.113)
For sure, my best friend Justice has been like just a strong key in my life. She helps me through tons of stuff. She's also studying psychology. She kind of helped me set everything up and go through that and kind of show me how easy it can be. And we always kind of lean on each other, but she's been such a huge support and showing me the importance of this, always reminding me to celebrate like every kind of little win to...

behaviorally reinforce my own good behaviors, you And she's been amazing through all this. I couldn't, I can't even express how much, as well as...

Gordon Sheppard (36:10.499)
And how nice to have a support along the way. And again, if we had that sort of nine hour interview, we would hear about all these other gentlemen that I know you, we've talked in the pre-interviews that were influences to you, people you want to help along the way. And now you, and you realized your superpower, which was the ability to learn. And then now it sounds like you, there's no, you know, you'll be a rocket scientist as well by the end of your life, like, cause you're just going to take on whatever you want to take on, which is great. So strategy work plan, strategy work.

Landon Barrowman (36:16.619)
sorry.

Landon Barrowman (36:28.932)
Yeah.

Landon Barrowman (36:33.856)
One more quickly.

Sorry, one more person I just want to thank is just definitely my family. Like they didn't come at me the same way that a lot of people do, which is, wow, you wrote a book and this is so awesome. But they supported me in a different way. And having to learn that that's just as valid was like a huge eye opening moment for me. I talked to you about it before and you said, it's the difference between that 12 year old mind where you're like, you didn't read my book and you didn't care about the things I'm doing, but they support me in so many different ways with helping me with my son and just helping me through.

everything so I just wanted to mention that.

Gordon Sheppard (37:07.107)
And so your ability to sort of use what you've learned to appreciate all the different kinds of support came out through this process as well. And you feel grateful to your friend, your family, your colleagues. And I can't even imagine all the people in your future that you're gonna sort of, again, attract.

Landon Barrowman (37:12.686)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (37:22.277)
to this good energy that you're putting out in the world as you kind of make significant differences in an area that's so needed as you go forward. Strategy, work plan, people. Operationally, we've heard a lot about the operational components. So I made the realization, then someone brought me in an office and they said, write it down. I was like, okay, I better write it down. Then you wrote it down, then you made a video, then you made a workbook, then you got to talk. The operational components, and you're also then forming, I think, thankfully, you didn't do your psychology degree first.

Landon Barrowman (37:34.475)
No.

Gordon Sheppard (37:49.466)
I think thankfully you came at it from your perspective and now you'll bolt on and it'll be interesting to see it in three years or whatever and you'll have then had a chance to assess how they teach psychology in a sense because right now you've got something that's working from your perspective as you've kind of gotten in. So we hear that operational component along the way. Any other, just maybe one highlight operationally that you need to talk about for delivering this win?

Landon Barrowman (37:50.191)
Yeah.

Landon Barrowman (38:10.827)
Yeah, mean, kind of a highlight for it was like you said, you know, not knowing about the psychological process and having my psych degree yet.

I thought was going to be a hindrance. So there's a lot of times where I would be faced with this imposter syndrome. Like, why are you telling people this stuff? Like you're not a psychologist. Maybe you're doing it wrong. All these other things. And something that helped was I had a psychologist reach out to me and tell me that they have my book. They love my book and you know, lots of other things about it that they use. And I was like, this is amazing. Like this is the, it's just letting me know that I'm not stepping out.

of bounds, I'm completely within it. Not only that, I'm stepping in a completely different field than where psychologists are. They're all over here helping people who are accessible, who can afford it, who can come into a couch and want to talk about their problems. I'm over here in this field trying to help guys who don't want to talk about their problems. And if they don't want to talk about their problems, that's fine. I'm giving them tools so they can deal with it themselves. And I'm making this accessible for them and no one's doing that.

So I'm just, it kind of made me realize that. And that was a huge part of making me highlight the operation.

Gordon Sheppard (39:26.415)
Well, and a big part of why I've got you on here is, you know, this podcast aimed at, you know, mid to senior leaders. And I'm going to give out your book to them because it's an honest reaction to your book. And by the way, I can go all day long on the academic side. I've got a master's degree in business and I've done, you know, work and my history has a, I did a drama degree. I love human behavior. I've got all kinds of, I've acted acting in the background. I'd worked in the television business for a while. I've 13 years doing the work that I do now to help leadership teams.

Landon Barrowman (39:33.187)
Yeah, that was funny. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (39:56.162)
I think the book, as you go through the different covers that are on there, there's gonna be applications for as you go. But I love your focus right now. I think it's great, but it's got so much runway, but you've made it accessible just like you said. You've made it accessible and you're getting a psychologist to acknowledge that. I think that's gonna just grow and grow and grow because I also believe in that universality of what you've put together. And I was talking to my daughter about it yesterday. I was gonna interview you and she said, does he?

Does he swear and stuff like that? And whenever I'm like, you're goddamn right he does because the world that he's in, that's just part of the lingo, but it's part of then creating the accessibility of what it is. And she was saying here, he can let him swear on the podcast. That's pretty funny. So anyway, so I love it. So we've talked about strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results. There's quantitative and qualitative results. Quantitatively, how many people do you think you've helped already? I've heard at least two. How many more?

Landon Barrowman (40:26.404)
you

Landon Barrowman (40:43.503)
Mm-hmm.

Landon Barrowman (40:50.797)
Yeah, I mean, there's quite a few. I've had a lot of people reach out to me and tell me how their books helped. I've helped people in my basement. There's one woman I helped through a exposure therapy. She was afraid to ride the bus.

I just told her, I'm like, you know, okay, well first just wait in line for the bus, see how that feels and get used to that feeling. And then wait in line for the bus, let it open, you know, go ride for just one stop. You're telling yourself it's just one stop and then keep going longer, keep going longer until you get to the mall or bring a friend with you. And so she messaged me the other week and was like, guess what? I rode the bus. And I was like,

That's amazing. So helping people get over phobias and fears. That's a huge part of it. But knowing that like this book has helped a lot of people too. There's a lot of people who've read it and said that like it really connects with them. There was one person I know who was unable to express their feelings. And then, you know, after reading this book, they were like, well, this is great. There's a whole thing in here that shows me like where my feelings are all connected. And, you know, I can easily read this and just know how my feelings interact.

into these like core core feelings. So it makes them understand like the structure of like their feelings, their emotions and how their thoughts can be misleading. And I think it's it's helped quite a few people that have reached out to me to tell me that.

Gordon Sheppard (42:11.642)
I love it. And again, if I mentioned Brene Brown, I've been reading lately a book called Daring Greatly, and there was something in there that floored me as I listened to that audio book around all the barriers we have to experiencing joy. And what strikes me about your book is it would be an opportunity to get to joy, to get to actually feeling joy as we get in our North American society for sure, all these things that are in the way, you've got a pathway now to actually get to that type of moment as well. That's great. So quantitatively here, the impact, qualitatively,

How's this wind feel?

Landon Barrowman (42:43.087)
It feels amazing. Like I said, I often describe it as

being the dog who caught the mail truck. I'm just stuck on there. I don't know what to do, but I'm holding on until this thing stops and I hope it's good where it stops because like I, from going from this small book in my basement, that was just meant for a couple of, you know, personal clients to now just still at this very small footprint, right? The people who know about it are very small and tight to my circle and it's just starting to grow. So I've actually had to write a few quotes to different construction companies that are

super interested in getting a lot of this stuff going. So I'll be very vocal about that once it happens because in shouting that out, know, lot of the awareness about mental health is already out there. It's kind of primed the way for me. And now to say there are tools, there's tools you can learn. It's more than just a poster on the wall or a let's have a conversation and talk kind of thing. It's about

understanding and explaining the structure of what can make your mental health better and giving you these tools so you can build it yourself and and just maintain it as well. It's not a one and done thing. You use these tools every day to kind of just check in on yourself and maintain your mental health and you know, it's great.

Gordon Sheppard (43:58.781)
It's good for all of us that you're on this journey. I love the enthusiasm, the energy that you're bringing to it. The last piece I just want to leave as we kind of get out the door, because we learned all about what you're doing, is if you had to sort of, if you were in front of that next fella who, you know, and he had a few sentences to say to that guy who's just learning about, you know what I mean? He's in, he's, he's working in an oil patch somewhere and he's, he's uncertain, but he's got hard times and whatever. What's that early sort of entry language that you can give to him that would paint the picture?

Landon Barrowman (44:12.239)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (44:28.602)
to say why it's worth going on this next step.

Landon Barrowman (44:33.203)
my God, that's a heavy ass question. I guess I would, you know, tell him there's people out there that can listen, but the hardest thing is listening to yourself, is listening to yourself and recognizing what you're telling yourself. And by looking inside and listening to yourself, that will clear up a lot of what's going on out here.

Gordon Sheppard (44:58.716)
That's a great, that's well said and thanks for saying that so succinctly. I just can't say thank you enough for bringing your experience. This, the dog who caught the mail truck, I'm going to tell audiences and conferences that image. It's such a great one. I'm glad that you're on the mail truck ride. I can't wait to see where it ends up. Although it sounds like it's just going to be going for a long time. Landon, thank you so much for being on the show.

Landon Barrowman (45:21.785)
Thank you for having me, like I said, not a senior executive, so I feel very honored to be in this group, right?

Gordon Sheppard (45:27.718)
Well, this is absolutely for senior executives, because if they care about their workers, they're going to find you. If they care about themselves, they're going to find you. Sorry, just another story. I met a woman at a networking event the other day. Again, she was in a senior admin scenario in oil and gas. And after 20 years, she said, the day I realized I needed to get into helping companies change was when I was sitting on my kitchen floor. That day, I got to make coffee, and I didn't know why. And it led her to a whole rollout in her world of

And what she described was PTSD from culture of 12 hours a day, relentless, all the stuff, all the worst of what it is. So again, it was neat to meet somebody out there in that world. I mentioned, it was so funny. I hope she gets in touch with you. Cause I'm like, you got to meet Landon cause he's doing similar work. But there's something then about my perspective is organizational excellence and the pieces that go together to create that if we can stitch them together and your piece is a critical piece. yes, it's absolutely for executives again.

They'll benefit themselves to get this book for sure. And they'll also take this seriously when they think, I've got workers who need this ability to go to work safely, to have better lives, to have those things that you're helping people to do. Lennon, thank you so much for being on the show.

Landon Barrowman (46:40.505)
Thank you so much again for having me.