What does it take to lead in moments of crisis? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Jessi Beyer, crisis mental health clinician, SWAT negotiator, bestselling author of How to Heal a Crisis, and founder of the Life Model of suicide prevention.

If you are a leader, entrepreneur, parent, educator, HR professional, or first responder, this conversation will expand how you think about trauma-informed leadership and crisis response.

What You Will Learn:

How leadership evolves from personal ambition to collective responsibility.

What verbal de-escalation skills look like in real-world crisis situations.

How to support someone experiencing suicidal ideation without being a therapist.

What integrative trauma therapies exist beyond traditional talk therapy.

Why organizations must build internal crisis response skills instead of outsourcing responsibility.

How heart-centered entrepreneurs can balance service with sustainable compensation.

What the Life Model of suicide prevention is and how it can be applied in everyday settings.

Why self-care directly impacts leadership effectiveness in high-stakes environments.

FAQ:

Are there alternatives to traditional talk therapy for trauma healing?

Yes. Integrative trauma therapies include nature-based therapy, somatic practices, movement therapy, sound therapy, animal-assisted therapy, and indigenous healing practices, many of which are research-supported.

Why should businesses train staff in crisis response skills?

Employees often confide in colleagues before seeking professional help. Training teams in de-escalation and suicide prevention creates safer workplaces and reduces organizational risk.

How can leaders balance compassion with financial sustainability?

Leaders must recognize that showing up as their best self requires proper compensation, rest, and infrastructure. Sustainable leadership ensures higher quality service and long-term impact.

Resource:

Jessi Beyer

Website

Book: How to Heal

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 123 Jessi

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Now here's your host, angel b Hartwell.

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries Podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time. And provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

She has been featured in over 200 media outlets and has spoken to thousands of people around the world through groups like Penn State University Leader, cast now, and the Institute on Violence Abuse and Traumas International Summit. Jesse holds master's degrees in critical psychology and human services from Prescott College and in military psychology from Adler University.

I'm excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show, Jesse.

Jessi: Thank you so much for having me. I'm stoked to be here as well.

Anjel: Yeah. So I like to start our time together talking about, you know, I, I like to take it from one angle or another. So I think today I'm gonna start with you around leadership. Were you always like the leader?

Jessi: Yeah, I would say that I've always been someone who likes to lead, but I think it took me a while to figure out what it meant to be a leader.

I've always been entrepreneurial. I've always been ambitious. I've always had projects and things that I was working on and wanted to create in the world, and I think for a while I missed. Took that as leadership because I was the one leading towards said goal. Without recognizing that as I was pushing forward, I also had a responsibility to those that were working with me to, to bring them along and support them as well.

So yes and no, I guess would be the best answer to that question.

Talk about like when you learned that, like what was it, what was the like kind of defining moment where you said, oh damn, I need to bring these people along.

Jessi: Yeah, I would say that it's when I started working in kinda my first real job, like my first W2 job. 'cause I had some independent contractor things, some volunteer opportunities and things like that.

But when I really started working in a, I guess, more traditional corporate environment, um, I was still trying to lead, right? I was still trying to push programs forward, but was kind of butting up against some of the corporate bureaucracies and hierarchies and all these other things that we have in large organizations.

And I, I watched myself kind of falter under that and I watched other people falter under that. And so I made this commitment to myself of, you know, when I have a real team, you know, when I have people relying on me and I have this big infrastructure beneath me, I'm not gonna do it that way. I'm gonna be the type of leader that is like, give me everything you have and I will defend and protect and support you until my last breath.

Like, it's, it's a circular relationship is what I learned. Mm-hmm. Everyone is supporting everyone. As you lead, you also circle back around and bring the people with you. Um, so, so yeah, it was really that first instance of being in a big organization and being like, Ooh, this is not how I wanna do it. That triggered that shift in a leadership definition for me.

An initiator often has vision and they initiate and, and they are kind of in a leadership role when they're putting themselves out there. They're standing apart from everyone else to initiate a program. And initiation doesn't always necessarily. Um, simultaneously come with these leadership qualities that you're talking about.

So I'd love to have you speak a little bit about your visionary journey. Like when did you start having visions around, you know, things you could do, initiatives you could take.

It was like a 26 mile trail. Everyone walked it, biked it, ran it. It was a, a big part in our little community. And I, the ever entrepreneurial kid was like, I'm gonna start a lemonade. Stand. And so I, I go down and I, I set up a lemonade stand and the part of the trail that I was next to was adjacent to this lumber mill.

It was a privately owned lumber mill, which comes into play later. Um, and as I was setting up that lemonade stand, you know, I was shelling out lemonade for, I don't know what it was, 25 cents a cup or whatever I was selling it for. And, uh, park Ranger came over and, uh, I was maybe 10, probably younger than that at this point.

And he is like, well, do you have a business license? And I was like. No. Is it lemonade? Like, no, I, no. And he is like, well, you can't be on public land selling things without a business license. And I was like, okay. So I backed up 25 feet until I was in the driveway of that lumber mill right by the trail and kept selling my lemonade.

Anjel: Well, I certainly hope the lumber company, you know, patronized you in the end of their driveway. Beautiful. I love this. Um, idea roadblock, adjust. Keep going. So how did we end up a crisis mental health clinician?

Jessi: Yes, absolutely. So this particular story also starts when I was young. I was in high school and the boy that I was dating at the time, well both of us, we were really struggling with our mental health.

But, um, she, she came in and she sat down with me and just, you know, I'm crying my eyes out, right? It's a really traumatic night for me. And, uh, she hands me her business card and she's like, Hey, if you, if you need anything, if you need someone to talk to, you can always call me. And she was just this, this little bright spot in a very, very dark night.

And so I, I took her business card and I thanked her and I promptly went home and put her business card in my bathroom drawer and never looked at it again. But that moment really stuck in my mind and I was like, how cool. Like again, in this night of darkness and this night of trauma, and this night of grief, here's someone who showed up and was a little bit of a bright light.

Personality wise, that's kind of how I've always been, like a little bit of an adrenaline junkie. I like the short, fast interventions as opposed to the long drawn out one. So I got my EMT license. I worked in search and rescue. Again, just kind of circling this crisis intervention space. Ended up going to grad.

School and again, focused in trauma and crisis intervention and more of those high acuity moments with this thought in my brain of like, wow, it would be cool if I could do this in the field, but that type of stuff doesn't exist and I don't wanna be a private practice therapist. And so I don't really know, you know, where I'm gonna go with this.

And less than three months after I graduated grad school, I got a call from an organization and they're like, Hey, we're standing up an infield crisis response program. Do you wanna be our, our clinician? And I was like, this is a thing. This is actually out there. Like, yes, I would love to. So accepted that, uh, really spearheaded the launch and growth of that program over the last number of years.

So, yeah, that's how I ended up in the field that I'm in today.

Anjel: Beautiful. I, I call that divine intervention. Absolutely. I love divine intervention. There's all kinds of amazing stories on this podcast of divine interventions, and I've personally experienced many divine interventions myself. Yeah. So, um, so Jesse, now talk a little bit about, are you now still employed in that organization or, and you're an entrepreneur, so you tell us a little bit about your vision for your entrepreneurship and where that came from.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I probably made a lot of mistakes in that relationship, trying to support him, and so really trying to help. Other college students, other students and young people in general, know how to intervene in these types of situations. I knew even before I started doing that work that a nine to five desk job was not gonna be it for me.

I mean, I probably could have told you that when I started the lemonade stand at, you know, 6, 7, 8 years old. Uh, so I, I was always looking for something else and I have two wonderful parents that worked traditional jobs my whole life. Um, and I, I watch them and I'm like, this is not. What I wanna do. This is not the type of lifestyle that I wanna lead.

And doing my infield work as well, so we can have a whole nother discussion about time management and self-care if we need to. But I am doing, uh, both of those simultaneously and absolutely loving both elements of the, of my life in that way.

Anjel: Alright, beautiful. Well, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna talk a little bit about your book and where that came from because not only are you working a full-time job and running an entrepreneurial business, you also somehow managed to.

Birth a book in that process as well. So we, you know, we may go into a little bit of time management and, uh, and we could pass the break here, but right now, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries? Consider joining our community and sharing your feedback and takeaways from each episode.

Discover more about this opportunity@leadingvisionariespodcast.com slash Creative Age Leader Lab, or click the connect with angel button on the website to apply and qualify for a consultation for more personalized access and support. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content.

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Anjel: And we are back with Jesse Byer. You can actually find out more about Jesse, probably hire her for a workshop or a speaking gig or some other. Body of work that she is offering and probably get her book as well How to Heal, uh, at jesse byer international.com. We will have that link for you in the show notes.

Jessi: The book was born out of something that I wish I had when I was healing from my own mental health struggles.

So my family, I'd say it was partially my family and partially just the time, but we didn't really talk about therapy. That wasn't something that came up. And so I never really had any support in that way. I went through a lot of those struggles by myself. And after the night where my boyfriend at the time attempted suicide, I sat down with my mom a couple weeks later.

I can vividly remember this memory still. Um, and I sat down and I was like, mom, I think I need to talk to someone. And she's like, okay, I'll, I'll find the person, I'll make the appointment. Like, I'll take care of you. Um, and so she did, she found me a therapist, and I went and I had one session with that therapist and I was so uncomfortable, just absolutely hated it that I literally ran out of the building and I never went back.

This is not it. Get out. This is not where you need to be. And so I went through the years following that, really kind of on my own and just trying to figure out how to metabolize everything that had happened in high school and in that relationship. And so when I was an undergrad, I ended up taking this course.

I just needed a few extra electives and I was like, I like the outdoors, so I'll take a course on nature-based therapies. And it just completely blew my mind open. I, I remember sitting there and I was like. There's other things than talk therapy, and not only do these other things exist, but there's like research that supports these other things, and that just sent me off down this whole rabbit hole of integrative and alternative therapies.

And I just, I just kept going and I kept reading and I kept learning and I interviewed all these different practitioners from different modalities. And realized that other people needed to hear about this. And so that turned into the book. And the way that the book is written is not like a psychology textbook.

It's a letter from one friend to another, one person who struggled to another. And the goal of it is really to let people know there are other ways to heal. I'm not gonna tell you what the right one is, but there are other ways than what the mainstream psychology world will tell you. So yeah, so that's what really started the book for me, is what I wish I had known about, because maybe if I had some of those other therapies in my toolkit, my trauma healing journey wouldn't have been quite so long or quite so difficult or quite so much of a rollercoaster.

Right. And for me, talk therapy, it was just such a frustration. I kept going in and telling the same thing and nothing was getting fixed. And it was like, we just kept telling the same stories over and over and over again. And the sound therapy lady got me on a journey of, uh, you know, experiencing a whole lot of the alternatives, including shamanic medicine and.

Well done, Jesse. Beautiful. Thank you. I appreciate that. So let's talk about your entrepreneurial business and um, when we think about that, I'd love to hear what your big vision is. You know, is this something that you, obviously you're entrepreneurial in nature, so if it's not this, it's gonna be something else.

But I'd love to hear your big vision, like moving forward from here, maybe three to five years. Where do you want your entrepreneurship to be?

Jessi: Yeah, so the two things that I really specialize in within, well, I guess we'll start at the top of the funnel. We have mental health as a whole thing, and then we have clinical, and then we have the whole world of trauma and, and working with crisis.

To take someone from a high level of crisis to a place where they can survive, right? Literally make it through the next day and connect with a longer term resource. And so I've been slowly rolling that out to a few first responder departments, to a few corporate clients. And really my vision for the next couple of years is to expand that across the country.

You know, I want people, this is. A little bit of a pie in the sky dream. And I, I feel a little bit weird saying it out loud, but um, I want people to walk into any business in any small town and be like, oh yeah, the life model. Yeah, we used that the other day. Oh yeah, we were at this and I saw it at that, and things like that.

A a very young woman, wonderful human, very accomplished, but a, a young woman. And, uh, she told me, she's like, we had a, a suicide on campus last year. And we don't have any mental health resources on campus. I had all of these students coming to me for support and I had no idea what I'm doing. Mm-hmm. I'm not a therapist, you know?

Mm-hmm. I, I'm a, I'm a high school sports coach, turned student life director. Like, I, I don't know what I'm doing. Please come help us. And, uh, the. And the empath in me, I suppose, was like, I don't even care. I'll come do it for free. So we ended up working out, you know, a client rate and all that jazz. But I, I went down and I, I worked with that campus and instilled this knowledge in them with the hopes that if they do have another student in crisis, they actually have the skills to handle it moving forward.

Anjel: Well, that's a very, very beautiful vision, Jesse, and I'm gonna see your vision and raise it. And I would add,

Jessi: thank you.

Anjel: Parents to the list, uh, having, you know, navigated multiple suicide attempts with one of my children. Um, I know that root and having tools in the toolbox as a parent would be huge as well, I'm sure.

Ad: Mm-hmm.

Most people who are really passionate about what they're here to do. Uh, anybody who might be listening to this show who has, you know, kind of a divine calling to move themselves in a direction to solve something major in our culture, which is, you know, certainly describes you, we can often have this imbalance between our heart's desire to serve and our organizational structures requirement for, um, you know.

Compensation. So I'd love to have you speak a little bit about how you have learned to let your entrepreneur, you know, serve and support the mission.

Jessi: Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought this up because not only is this something that's a challenge for heart-centered entrepreneurs, for lack of a better term, but it's also something that's very prevalent in the mental health space.

Um, and there is within this industry at the kind of. One-to-one clinical intervention level. I'm not talking like pharma and things like that, but in this level of the mental health industry, there's very much the assumption that you are here to serve. You are here to support. You are not here to get rich.

And that has been something that I've grappled with a little bit because every space that I find myself landing in is serve, serve, serve, serve, serve, uh, and don't get compensated for it. For example, even to this day. I am on call 24 7 as a negotiator for our SWAT team. I make $0 from being on the SWAT team.

I was doing all the free interviews, all the free gigs. You want me to drive four hours and speak for a hundred dollars? Absolutely. I'm there. You know, build the resume, get exposure. That's kind of the mindset that I was in and I was hustling, and I was hustling and I was hustling and I was getting all this great feedback from clients and, and amazing conversations with folks after presentations.

And then I'd look in my bank account and I would have to decide between putting gas in my car or fixing the flat tire on my car, you know? And it was like, I can't, can't do this. Um, this is not working long term. And I, I learned, and it's, you know, it's funny because even in the mental health world, they tell you you have to take care of yourself in order to take care of other people.

I remember the first time, well, let me actually take a step back on that. Most of the hotels that I stay at are the type of hotels that we get swamp calls to. Um, and are less than 80 bucks a night if I can help it no matter where I am in the country. There has been a shooting in the parking lot of one of the hotels that I've stayed at.

Like the night that I was there, there was a full blown domestic argument right outside my door of another hotel room that I was staying at. Like I am a cheap traveler. And I remember the first time that I traveled for work at the, the job that I have. Um, and they put me up in a hotel. And they were like, I'm sorry, you know, it's, it's not a super fancy hotel.

Shoveling Oreo cheesecake in my mouth as I'm driving across Louisiana to try to stay awake from the red eye that I just flew in on. True story. Uh, and so that was kinda the moment for me of like, I am going to show up better for my clients. I am going to deliver better services. And when we're talking about what could literally save a life, you need to show up as your best self.

And so that's right. And so yeah, I need to be and you to be

Anjel: compensated.

Jessi: Yeah.

Anjel: Yeah. You still have to and you need to compensate. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Well, thank you. Um, you know, we could spend an hour and a half having this conver just this part of the conversation. Yeah. But we are at the end, and so I wanna encourage our listeners to go to your website again, jesse beyer international.com.

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