Turning Your “Weakness” Into Your Genius with Jeff Eamer

The Soloist Life

Everyone has difficulties in life—and sometimes our unique genius arises from how we deal with them. Take Psychotherapist Jeff Eamer who turned a challenging mental health diagnosis into a life of purpose:

How he moved from being an award-winning ad agency wonderkind to nabbing a 3-picture Hollywood deal.

Why crashing—hard—led him to get help with his mental health.

When saying yes to a $100K investment and six years of study and practice was exactly the right move.

The importance of building and maintaining routines and boundaries.

The signals that might mean it’s time to ask for help with your mental health.

LINKS

Jeff Eamer Website | LinkedIn | Desert Sun

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Jeff is an international award-winning advertising art director, copywriter and commercial film director. He had a brief stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer on the film Coyote Ugly.

He has dedicated much of the last 25 years supporting the mental health community as a Suicide Prevention Counselor, Psychotherapist, and member of the Los Angeles Crisis Response Team.

He currently lives on his desert ranch with his two dogs: Koda, a 14-year-old black Lab and Ruby, a 10-month old Border Collie. Along with 11 chickens: Scarlett, Mrs. T., Cathy, GPT6, Beatrice, Gypsy Rose, Betty White, Griswald, Honey and Seva.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:33

Jeff Eamer: I've been influenced profoundly by the symptoms of mental illness, and it created a phenomenon that created certain challenges that I could then relate to with my clients. So if I have a superpower in all of this, it's a greater sense of relatedness. And so when clients come spend time with me, I'm much more perhaps congruent or authentic and transparent than probably most therapists are. And so when clients come spend time with me, I'm much more perhaps congruent or authentic and transparent than probably most therapists are. Than probably most therapists are.

00:33 - 01:13

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton and today I'm here with my pal, Jeff Eamer, who's an international award-winning advertising art director, copywriter and commercial film director. He had a brief stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer on the film Coyote Ugly. He has dedicated much of the last 25 years supporting the mental health community as a suicide prevention counselor, psychotherapist, and member of the Los Angeles Crisis Response Team. He currently serves as a psychotherapist and lives on his desert ranch

01:13 - 01:27

Rochelle Moulton: with his 2 dogs, Koda, a 14-year-old black lab, and Ruby, a 10-month-old border collie, along with 11 cleverly named chickens who may be making a cameo appearance. Jeff, welcome.

01:28 - 01:31

Jeff Eamer: Thank you, Rachelle, and my chickens thank you, too.

01:32 - 02:06

Rochelle Moulton: All 11 of them. So, Jeff, we first met in LA maybe 15 years ago. And I only knew bits and pieces of your backstory, which was all about the ad world and the creative life of glitz and glamour that can be LA when you work in film. But in 2015, you had a major event in your life that completely changed how you work and how you live. And when you said you were willing to talk about this and your experience with mental health, I knew that we had to have this conversation because mental health, especially amongst

02:06 - 02:28

Rochelle Moulton: entrepreneurs, is so rarely discussed openly. So let's dive in. Why don't you set the scene for us? So it's 2015, you're in LA, you've been doing design work as a soloist, you know, for pay, along with your volunteer service with suicide prevention and crisis response. You're enjoying life. What happened?

02:29 - 03:09

Jeff Eamer: Okay, here we go. Well, we'll have to backtrack a little bit to 1995, which technically is when I dropped into the soloist mindset and self-employment. So, and we're gonna sort of take a trip through bipolar disorder so your audience can kind of get a sense of how I experienced it and some of the challenges were around that as I was at that point in the advertising world. So I had joined McCann Erickson in the early 80s and I spent about 15 years as an agency guy, as you mentioned. I bounced from major agency to major agency,

03:10 - 03:48

Jeff Eamer: McCann Erickson, as I mentioned, J. Walter Thompson, Young and Rueckham, all of the really big ones. And I ended up at Leo Burnett. Now through that 15 year period I had tremendous highs and tremendous lows and I referred to as states of bipolarity. The technical term is bipolar disorder and during that period in the what would be the manic states my creativity was truly remarkable. There was a problem with it, though, because at a certain point, it got out of control, in that my state of righteousness and state of arrogance and hubris kicked in. And I

03:48 - 04:26

Jeff Eamer: think I was terribly proud of in hindsight, but that's what was happening. So during that 15-year period, I lost jobs. I was self-employed through that entire period. I lost jobs for 1 of 2 reasons, because I was clinically depressed so bad that I could no longer work. And I was hospitalized and I was hospitalized 5 times for suicidal ideation and for in fact, suicide attempts. Sadly, I'm really shitty at killing myself. And the last time, I can make jokes of it. It's just crazy that world as a suicide prevention counselor, I talked to 3, 000 people

04:26 - 04:58

Jeff Eamer: and of course it's tragic, but life is tragically crazy sometimes too. So I would lose a job in the clinically depressed state. I'd also lose jobs in a manic state and I would be fired. And the last time that happened, I was working at Leo Burnett and as fate would have it, I was doing incredible work. I was doing the job that they asked me to do to create a better profile for the agency. And I was doing that. The problem was I was doing it in ways that the agency wasn't comfortable with. And they determined

04:58 - 05:10

Jeff Eamer: I was more of a liability than asset. And so they, you know, the creative director walked into my office 1 morning. I thought he had an envelope and I thought, you know, I'm either getting a raise or I'm getting fired.

05:10 - 05:11

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, no in between.

05:11 - 05:41

Jeff Eamer: Yeah. And I knew when he was kind of shaking handing it to me, so I thought, ah, this is not going to be good. But again, in that state, it was like, well, I'll be fine. So as opposed to trying to get another job, this is when I kicked into being self-employed. And in fact, by definition, and your definition of soloist, so this is what took place. I thought, well, I got some money, so I'm going down to down to Florida. My brother lived down there and he had a big motorcycle and I think I paid

05:41 - 06:09

Jeff Eamer: him some money to buy it. I don't know if I actually technically bought it. And I went to West Palm Beach and I got on this motorcycle and I was riding to Key West. I was gonna go all the way down there. And I stopped in Miami at the News Cafe. And I'm sitting there and as I want to do, There was a pretty girl across the way, and we sort of locked eyes, and they said, would you like to join me? She said yes. And I sat with her, and she said, what do you do?

06:10 - 06:40

Jeff Eamer: And I said, well, and I thought for a moment, I said, I'm a director. And I wasn't a director. I hadn't directed anything at that point, but it sounded like a good answer, again, in that very state of which I believed anything. And she said, well, what are you working on? I said, well, I don't have any projects right now, but I think when I get back to Toronto there's going to be 1 waiting for me. So I said goodbye and I spent some time with her and then I thundered down to Key West and then

06:40 - 07:11

Jeff Eamer: I returned to Toronto. And because I was a writer I could actually freelance as a writer. So I went into this agency and they had this campaign it was for a back then a big record retailer it's called Sam's and and they had this giveaway there for every album you bought they they gave away a box of macaroni so I write this campaign about macaroni aid, which is sort of like far made. It was like a farce on that. And I said to the creative director, I said, look, you guys don't have enough money to do

07:11 - 07:44

Jeff Eamer: this, but I can get support from a production company and I can direct these. And he said, Well, you're right, we don't have the money to do it. So, you know, if a production company is willing to front this for you to get your real started, then sure, go ahead and direct them. And so began my career of being technically self-employed. That was directing this contract work. You work with the production agency, but technically I was self-employed. So that's how I began the process of going off on my own. And it certainly went from there.

07:45 - 08:05

Rochelle Moulton: With a lot of confidence, which makes me smile, because not all soloists start with confidence. Sometimes they have to like work up to it. But so, all right, so that was the start of your soloist career. So you're in LA, can we fast forward to 2015 or is there another event in there that we should we should talk about first?

08:05 - 08:44

Jeff Eamer: I think there's a few things along the way and so I was still in Toronto then and again sort of there's there's a line between confidence and and overconfidence perhaps And I would straddle that line when my moods would shift. And then of course there was like times when I had no confidence at all. And I don't lay my career or my life at the feet of my mental health diagnosis. I don't, I had other problems of not taking about accountability and not being responsible. And so it wasn't just that, that just made it worse. But

08:44 - 09:22

Jeff Eamer: what I found was interesting is that I could believe in something to such a degree that I could make it happen. You know, I don't want anyone to think I could win the lottery just because I think I bought the ticket, but especially in business and in business circumstances, I could actually envision something and move towards making it happen with no evidence that it should happen. But I had a vision, and as somebody who was self-employed, I could do a lot of different things. So I actually, this story started, I was in Los Angeles. I actually

09:22 - 09:54

Jeff Eamer: created a board game called Rumors, and that's a whole other story, but I was standing on the Venice Boardwalk at the bottom of Westminster. It right, I could take you to this spot right now, There is this giant peace sign that was painted on the ground. And I stood in the middle of that peace sign. Now, this is 1995. I was in Toronto, as I mentioned. I had no ability to work in the United States. I had no green card. I had no job. I had no access to do what I'm about to say. I was

09:54 - 10:33

Jeff Eamer: standing there and I said, 1 day, I'm going to live and work in Los Angeles and make movies with no possibility of doing that in that moment. But I had the vision that this was gonna happen. And fast forward to 1999, I go back to that spot and I'm standing there and I did it. I was in Los Angeles working on a major motion picture, living there. And do you know where I was living? I was living in the building in front of where I stood. I was living in the Westminster Hotel, the very spot that

10:33 - 11:05

Jeff Eamer: I said 5 years before that I would work and live. And not only was I working and living, I was living exactly where I was standing 5 years earlier. And I think What's interesting with that is vision. And a lot of times people think that they need, they need money to start something and they'll, they'll get stuck or they don't know enough how to do it. And so, well, I don't know how to do it and I don't have money. So I'm just going to give up before I started. And what I realized is you neither

11:05 - 11:41

Jeff Eamer: need money or the skill in that moment to do it. You just need to believe that you can do it. I remember my son once said, Dad, you've done a lot of really interesting things. How have you done this? I said, well, I'm stubborn and I'm naive. And sometimes those qualities are really great because you're stubborn, you're not gonna quit, and you're naive, you don't think you can't do it. And so you just start doing it. You take the first step and then you take the second step. But the vision of where you want to be

11:42 - 11:54

Jeff Eamer: is so important and to not so much worry about how you're going to get there. Sometimes the universe gives you a tremendous amount of support if you're clear about what it is that you want to do.

11:55 - 12:03

Rochelle Moulton: Clarity is such a critical part of this because it's hard to know what the next step is if you don't know where you want to wind up.

12:03 - 12:08

Jeff Eamer: Oh, and sometimes you step in a pile of shit, Rachelle. I mean, so you know, it's not like...

12:09 - 12:11

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, no, that never happens.

12:12 - 12:45

Jeff Eamer: It's not like all the steps are the right ones, But then you learn, you go, wow, better not step in that pile again. But that's that that's how you get there. And I think there's a lot of notion to, wow, there's so many stories about people who have failed multiple times. And every time they failed, I think it was Edison, I figured out 999 ways not to make a light bulb. You know, so that is the process of getting there. And when you're by yourself, it's really tough because you don't have somebody there that can say,

12:45 - 13:13

Jeff Eamer: that can bolster you, you don't have a partner, you don't have employees, and they're like, we're gonna do it, boss. You're on your own. And yes, you can surround yourself with people who are supportive. And eventually you have to bring a lot of people into your life, relative to that vision, in terms of making it happen. But I think, as I mentioned earlier, the mistake a lot of people make is they don't think they have the time or skill to actually complete it and said they don't even start.

13:14 - 13:35

Rochelle Moulton: Gotcha, gotcha. So I wanna bring you to 2015. So you did the movie thing, then you didn't do the movie thing, right? When I met you, you were art directing, basically, and writing. And so you did that for a number of years. And then 2015, talk to us, what happened?

13:35 - 14:07

Jeff Eamer: Yes, I was in the film business and then I was out of the film business. It was in Hollywood East stories to how that ended. Not how I would have imagined and again I have to bring in the mental illness piece. At that point, when I got to LA, I was critically depressed. A few months later, based on taking a medication that I wasn't aware was going to have the impact that it did, but it ricocheted me into a manic state. And so my film career took an incredible hit because of that time period, and I

14:07 - 14:37

Jeff Eamer: never went on to make what were the next 2 pictures. I had a three-picture deal. And so from that point, I was in Los Angeles with nothing to do. When you apply for a green card, you can't leave the country because they won't let you back in until there's a determination as to whether or not you're gonna get it or not. So I'm like, what am I gonna do? Well, the first thing I did was I volunteered. I was flipping through a newspaper back when there were newspapers, and there was an ad for a suicide prevention

14:37 - 15:10

Jeff Eamer: counselor, volunteers. And so I went there and I talked to the director, and I said, hey, I don't know much about being a counselor, but I know a lot about being suicidal. And he asked me a bunch of questions. He said, yep, you qualify. So I spent 4 years there. 1 as a volunteer, the next 3 as a supervisor. But during that time, I wasn't making much money doing that. So during that time, I technically was continued to be a soloist. So I was working on design projects, and that's how I actually met you, Rochelle. And

15:10 - 15:50

Jeff Eamer: I think that wasn't 2015. That was a few years before that. But during that time period, I just dropped back into being self-employed and just working on my own. I had a lot of freedom to do a lot of different kinds of projects. I did design projects, I did some writing projects. I was still writing in the entertainment world, but not all that much, just some projects that got optioned. And so that period from 2000 and basically 1 to 2015, I continued as being a very small soloist. I was just making enough money to live in

15:50 - 16:28

Jeff Eamer: Venice, to live in this tiny little bachelor apartment. I was gonna live in the dream, but at a certain point, my work wasn't very satisfying. I really didn't want to give it my all to working on design and branding projects. And I thought, well, I can't sell my...