Mood Matters: Why Leaders Can’t Ignore How Their Teams Feel with Dr. Mary Donohue, The Digital Wellness Center: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Feb 10, 2026

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In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking why leaders can’t ignore their team’s mood. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business: Mood Matters: Why Leaders Can’t Ignore How Their Teams Feel with Dr. Mary Donohue, The Digital Wellness Center

The mood of your team members is essential. Not just for business – for their personal well-being, too. It’s truly amazing what can happen to your productivity, culture, and sales when you’re feeling good. So, what’s the best way to do that? We wanted you to learn from someone with a ton of experience helping leaders & their teams with all of this, so we welcomed on Dr. Mary Donohue, CEO of The Digital Wellness Center. They help teams experience the transformative power of Mood Elevation Technology. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

Dr. Mary’s journey with Paul Newman and Fortune 500 companies
Your mental health ended when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone
How to change your mood in less than 3 minutes
Using mood enhancement for customer acquisition
Clear minds make better decisions

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

Mood Matters: Why Leaders Can’t Ignore How Their Teams Feel with Dr. Mary Donohue, The Digital Wellness Center
- [0:01] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [1:28] Introducing Dr. Mary Donohue of The Digital Wellness Center
- [2:23] Dr. Mary’s journey with Paul Newman and Fortune 500 companies
- [4:18] Everything must be measured in concrete terms
- [6:12] When you’re in a bad mood, do you make good decisions?
- [7:41] Two out of three people are stressed right now – and those people are your workers
- [8:39] How to change mood in less than three minutes
- [9:05] Your mental health ended when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone
- [10:41] Five hours of meetings and 140 emails a day
- [12:42] Why Millennials don’t respond to leadership cues
- [14:38] Delivering micro breaks by email
- [17:52] Five years of data from Microsoft and other major organizations
- [20:17] Engagement rates that never drop below 30% – compared to industry standard of 4%
- [23:07] Stress isn’t like a broken hand
- [26:54] The power of disruption
- [28:42] Using mood enhancement for customer acquisition
- [31:05] How changing mood in advertising vaulted Coca-Cola over Pepsi
- [34:50] Dr. Mary’s magical mood machine for casinos and retail environments
- [36:18] Clear minds make better decisions
- [38:39] First steps for improving team mood
- [39:35] Stop calling emotional regulation a “soft skill“
- [40:29] Red light, yellow light, green light activities
- [42:51] How data exposed a toxic leader
- [45:09] 66% of your population is having mental health or stress-related issues
- Quick-Fire Questions
- [46:32] Dr. Mary is reading Steve Jobs
- [47:50] Dr. Mary’s favorite way to manage stress
- [48:12] Her favorite place to go that enhances her mood
- [49:56] Go find some joy every single day
- [43:30] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- [43:38] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Linke dIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.

00:28
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about why leaders should care about the mood of their teams and how to impact it. And we talk about building team culture a lot, but this is just a little bit different because this is very, very personal. And even though the act of improving mood of the team can be in fact culture building, we really want to drill this down into how mood can boost overall wellbeing for the individuals within your team.

00:59
Yes, because when mood is enhanced, so many other things are affected. For example, overwhelmed decreases and productivity increases, anxiety and stress diminish, emotional wellness grows. All of these things are key to keeping the members of your team operating at their best while avoiding burnout. Yes, so this is so important for all leaders to hear, but especially ones who operate environments with high expectations, high turnover, and days where grinding it out is the norm.

01:28
And everybody’s like, there any business that’s not that, right? So we have brought on an expert for this conversation who also has a lot of experience in helping leaders and their teams with all of this. And that is Dr. Mary Donahue of the Digital Wellness Center. So Dr. Mary, do want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story? I would love to. I do chat a lot, so your listeners might not want my whole story, but you know, it’s all good. Give us the highlights, the sizzle reel.

01:55
Sizzle Wheel is. I have been doing behavior modification for the last one of young years and I believe it or not started out in PR. I went to politics. I was a morning show host. I did all kinds of wonderful things. I happened to meet a great man called Paul Newman who told me to go back to grad school and prove some of my ideas on behavior modification.

02:23
And so I did, and I got to work with some of the largest companies in the world. After my dissertation, I’ve worked with the Walmarts, American Airlines, Microsoft, TD Bank, a whole bunch of other organizations like that. But some of the top 10 companies in the world listen to what I have to say about behavior modification and conversing. I’ve written a book called Message Received, but that was back in COVID. It was one of

02:52
those books that just sat on shelves for a while. And now, of course, it’s all sold. I lost a business during COVID because I couldn’t travel and do what I do. And I understand that pain. And I understand that pain as a boss of having to get rid of people. I know it’s not as painful for some people as it was for me, but I found it really hard. um Then I had a heart attack. And so I thought, okay, now it’s time to rethink work.

03:21
It occurred to me that the machines that are currently harming us are machines that could help us. So I created uh with my team, with investors, a content company that brings joy to an otherwise harsh world through very simple experiences with measurable impact. My whole business is based on my experiences with Walmart. I had amazing mentors at Walmart.

03:50
Jabal Floyd, Mike Camp, Cole Brown, a gentleman by the name of Duncan. These guys actually showed me how to run an efficient business and why it’s important to run a business that way. Everything I’ve done, if it isn’t measured, it isn’t real. It’s all measured in concrete terms, both quantitative and qualitative data. And I’m very comfortable going against CFOs.

04:18
and telling them why this is an investment for the business versus what they call soft skill investments. I think that the world has proven that that doesn’t work. Look at what happens to you when you do that. That’s what I do. And that’s me in a nutshell. No, I love it. And is it the Paul Newman or a different Paul Newman? It is the Paul Newman. I have met Paul Newman. Paul Newman let me do my uh dissertation. uh

04:47
you have to do a period when you work in the field. I did that with his company in New York and also with his Camps Hole in the Wall camps. And I learned all about what I truly call ethical leadership. If you want to meet someone who is full of ethics, it’s Paul Newman, it’s Stocky Clark. I’ve met others as well because of my work, including Robert Kennedy Jr., who is now

05:15
a member of the government and different people like that, and really had the opportunity to hear lots and lots of different voices and lots of different ideas on change. I’m a big proponent of clean mental health and proactive mental health. And that’s what my company focuses on. Gosh, wow. mean, just it speaks to the power of mentorship, which is like a whole nother episode. I’m sure everybody’s just like very intrigued to hear.

05:42
all of those aspects about how all those people shaped your life and your business. That’s just fabulous. And I’m sure you’re going to weave some of that stuff in as we go along, but let’s just kick this off. Let’s get right into it. I want to start with why mood is so important for leaders and their team members. And it seems maybe like an obvious question, but maybe one that a lot of leaders overlook for the benefits of other things. And so Dr. Mary, why should leaders even care? Well, there’s,

06:12
A whole bunch of really cool things that you just said there. But let’s just start with one. Let me ask you this. Anybody who’s listening, let me ask you this. When you’re in a bad mood, say for example, you’re mad at your partner, your kids, your parent, your friend. Do you make good decisions? Absolutely not. Very emotional. Do say stupid things?

06:42
Well, the wine usually helps to actually at all. Yeah. When you drink alcohol and sometimes you drink alcohol because you’ve had such a week. What happens? Hmm. I don’t know if I want to actually share all that. Do you make good decisions? no, absolutely not. I mean, quite well taken. Well, the World Health Organization also says

07:12
that 66 % of global adults are suffering from stress-related diseases. Anxiety, depression, cardiovascular, chronic diseases, heart, any of those things. So if it’s part of the world and you look at other data that’s out there, it says basically two out of three people are messed up right now.

07:41
Those people are your workers. What good a job are they doing if they’re dealing with stress? If they’re dealing with, how are they dealing with your customers if they’re in a bad mood? How, like, let’s just talk about the call center people who never get any acknowledgement. How well are they going to do? If you’re stocking a shelf in the Walmart, how are you going to do? If you’re a CFO and somebody comes to you and says,

08:09
I need a raise, I can’t pay my mortgage. And in your head, you’re saying to them, I feel exactly the same way. Sing another song, baby. Like, how is that gonna help anybody? So you have to look at the one thing you can change. And my research shows that we can change mood in less than three minutes based in positive psychology, behavior modification, and generational anchoring benchmarks.

08:39
All right, so walk us down the path of those three things and talk a little bit more in depth. know, we always say double click into it and give us the insight into how that works because I’m hoping like me, everyone’s like you can change mood in three minutes. Give me the formula for that. And I will and I’ll do it with you. Let’s just start at the very beginning. Basically, your mental health ended when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.

09:05
Look at mental health numbers from 2007 to now, almost 20 years later. When he introduced the iPhone, what he did was challenge your brain to think in a totally different way. Your brains don’t naturally think like this. I’m already disassociating what you’re saying with what you’re actually saying and doing. For example, April, when you look up and to the right,

09:32
Typically, if we’re face-to-face in person, that would tell my brain that you’re remembering something. And I would say, oh, okay, she’s remembering a time when a CFO was mean to her based on my last conversation. However, when I watch you through Zoom, it looks like you’re looking up and to the left. And that means you’re constructing.

09:55
And so what that means in my brain is I’m not getting through to her. That story didn’t resonate with her. Oh my gosh, there’s a problem in our communication.

10:05
then let’s just take that problem with communication and transform it into email.

10:13
Thank you so much, Mr. Bill Gates. And so if we look at email, is there any body language or tone that is in email? Can you see it? Can you feel it? Can you experience it? No. So now we’re in Zoom and we’re on email. And uh Microsoft and myself put together a paper that was in Harvard Business Review and talks about the majority of people are in five hours of meetings a day.

10:41
Now, even the lowest of the low who’s getting email gets, let’s just say, 140 emails a day. Of those, % have to be answered. Is it possible to answer that many emails in a day? Absolutely not, especially when you’re sitting in meetings for four hours on your butt. Okay, so from a physiological standpoint, we already know that’s not going to be good for your health. Now let’s talk about your mental health. As you’re dealing with those emails,

11:10
And I challenge your listeners to try this. When you’re angry, look at how you’re typing. Look at your position. And then notice when you start your day. Typically you’re sitting up and you’ve got a ray of hope that it’s going to be a good day. And then you get into the emails and the reply alls and this needs to be done yesterday and the text messaging. Okay? So now look at your body position and how you’re in.

11:40
What’s happening is your brain is clouds are coming up and building in your brain. It’s not clouds, but it’s just simple for my analogy. And no sunshine can get through that brain. And when that happens, that’s in your intrinsic brain, that’s your very front brain. It can’t access the patterns of behavior that are required to make a good decision in your mammalian brain.

12:07
So that tells your reptilian brain, oh, fight or flight, fight or flight. And so we’re all in chronic anxiousness, 66 % of the time. And so if you talk to physicians, if you talk to uh naturopaths, if you talk to chiropractors, if you talk to bosses.

12:31
Look at what happens at the end of the day when people leave their physical bodies versus when they come in.

12:42
Now, what I discovered quite by accident through research is, first of all, if you use generational anchoring benchmarks that I came up with for Walmart in 2013 because a man named Jabal Floyd asked me, why aren’t millennials responding to leadership cues? Well, I admire and worship Jabal Floyd as a leader. So I went to find out.

13:11
And I wrote a whole book about it. I did all these things, but it’s patterns of behavior and how we adapted to technology in the workforce. So let’s say Anne’s a millennial. And I’m a Gen Xer and I’m communicating to her. I am not giving her what she needs to understand my digital body language. So now she’s stressing out. Now I have a stressed workforce. What I came upon was in the 80s.

13:41
Purdue did some work on workplace health and safety. And this is how I want you to look at this issue as workplace health and safety. And they found using micro breaks, and so we look at micro breaks, is that they didn’t really help with productivity when they were only 47 seconds long. But you know what? The breathing slowed down, the heart rate slowed down.

14:09
So maybe if we continue to change these breaks and make them longer, that will increase productivity. And in fact, it does. Fast forward to COVID, I couldn’t work with Microsoft in Seattle. I couldn’t fly to American Airlines and do my work with them. I couldn’t work with Walmart. I couldn’t work with my clients in Ottawa, Ontario. I couldn’t work with the armed forces because none of us could work with each other. And so I started delivering.

14:38
my micro breaks by email. And we started testing a whole new idea of email being useful. What happened? Well, boom, the cloud started to separate. And how did we do it? I use silly questions. Do you feel like a rabbit in a hole or a rocket ship taking off? Even when you see that email, you’re like,

15:04
Oh my god and she’s a doctor and she’s sending me this? Are you kidding me? And then they try it and they get a little wee break and those clouds disappear from the brain and the chronic anxiousness drops off. And I’ve got amazing stats about how it works and who’s hurt by it but you probably want to talk now.

15:29
You sound like April. I mean, it is super fascinating because, I mean, you’ve just taken us through a journey and the one thing that really clicked in my head back in 2013, you were saying we were having the same questions with leadership, following leadership and being inspired by leadership as we do now. And thank you for making me about 10 years younger than I already than I am because I am a Gen X or not a millennial. But

15:58
I mean, we have the same conversation. So it’s very interesting. The actual situation hasn’t changed, but we are still like we’re like 13 years later. So the progression of digital hat, like COVID, it just had a massive like shift with regards to how people actually engage in digital now working from home or working remotely and being totally like outside of our work environment where, you know, there’s other people is a norm.

16:27
And, you know, we all say, well, we want to all be together because, you know, when we’re all together, we can collaborate more. really, if I’m hearing you right, it’s like being in all together is an opportunity for a lot of these micro breaks that we’re no longer taking because we’re like kind of left to our own devices. So what I think is so brilliant about what you’ve done is you kind of flipped what has been quote unquote evil on its head to make it good. So you’ve taken what

16:55
traditionally stresses people out like emails, especially if you’re in the full remote environment and you have provided that as a tool that actually helps to benefit folks. So I find this really, really fascinating. Maybe you could speak in a little bit more detail about how you’ve implemented the emails in the context of the micro breaks and then maybe get into some of the stats of how it’s changed the way that

17:22
people, their mood, how they change their mood and how it changes then how they behave and show up at work. So we have five year data. Jordan Sheridan from Microsoft. He’s the global head of sales, was kind enough to support my theories in 2019. And together we did our first paper on behavior modification using email and it was specifically tied to sales training. And Jordan.

17:52
allowed me to use his sales force of roughly 100. What we were able to show was that it supported an increase in sales that Jordan’s team reached that year. think they were like, they’re an amazing team. Don’t just think my micro breaks did it because they’re not. Jordan is like an amazing leader, but it supplemented what was happening and encouraged more.

18:20
because that’s what a positive mindset does. So then I was like, well, this is super interesting. We couldn’t just always use education. So I started to look into history of when we had horrible, awful rotten times and people were treated horribly. I personally hated COVID. I hated being locked up with COVID. I could understand the first 30 days, but after that, really read the science books, people go outside.

18:49
What we did there was disassociate ourselves from our natural being of stress reduction. And then I could go for a coffee. April and I could just stand in the lunchroom and go, oh my God, did you see that? Or we could just talk about common stuff like, I totally loved that person on Star Search last night. Star Search, blasphemy. It’s been fun. No, it’s been been fun. Hello, April.

19:19
I did not know that. Well, maybe you should get with the time before you start criticizing, you know, going back in time. Yeah, yeah. But if we were in we could be our heads off at her right now together. Then I would know I would be in the know if I was in the workplace and we would know and she didn’t know because her eyes would have gone up into the right. Remembering Star Search when none of us got the spokesmodel category. I’m sorry. You have to be a certain age to understand that. But yeah, I wanted to be a spokesmodel.

19:47
I never got there, but you know, there you go. like we started to create these funny different puzzles and games and then we got into binaural beats and my investors allowed me to have money to take these things to a whole different level. We became this content company that brings joy to an otherwise harsh world. And now you say, yippee, Mary, what does that matter? Well, we had outside people

20:17
analyze our data. And here’s something interesting. Over the course of five years, our engagement with those emails has never ever dropped below 30. I think it’s 32%, 31%. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in consulting, whether we’re in the armed forces, whether we’re in technology, whether we’re in consumer affairs. I would say like a normal benchmark would probably be around

20:46
4 % or lower, right? Single digits for sure, yeah. And then when we don’t send them, people are like, wait, what? So this year we tried it in gambling. Same thing. We send out these emails and people get the opportunity to just catch their breath before they make a bad bet. Sports betting. So if we look at what’s happening right now and if we look at

21:14
how we can chill with email. Every single day you get these emails and you have to make a judgment call on whether it’s that 40 % that has to be answered. With my emails, you don’t. There’s no answering. You just look at it, you giggle. They’re very pretty. And then you move on. And now we find people coming back at two in the morning, at three in the morning, at one in the morning, at…

21:43
10 PM at night, we send the emails around lunch. So people are saving this content. And then we found people watching specific types of content 78 times in one week. So a binaural beat for creativity, 78 times. A module on ethical leadership, 78 times. We did something on how to get along with your kids.

22:11
102 times. When we start looking at this, we say, OK, now is it doing any good? Well, I forgot to tell you, you know that bunny and rocket ship question? We assign that a mood. If you’re feeling like a bunny in a hole, you’re sad. If you’re feeling like a rocket ship, you’re happy. And so then we run you through these things and you get to play as much as you want. But every once in a while you’re asked, how are you feeling on a scale of one to five?

22:39
And our AI that I learned from Netflix in an incubator I was in with Netflix, Google, and Facebook, they did a small training session during COVID for people like me just trying to do new businesses. And it’s a referral AI. And that’s what we developed was a mood referral AI. And we continue to develop that. So you play a few games and then we send you something else. Or based on your mood, we keep you in the same place.

23:07
People don’t think about mood as something you control. Stress isn’t like a broken hand or a broken elbow. You can’t say, my gosh, I fell in the ice. Stress is all in your head. It is self-created. It’s your reaction to your boss. It’s your reaction to your mates. It’s your reaction to not having digital body language. Yeah, and I mean, this is…

23:35
completely fascinating, Anne’s right, this is right up my alley. But I would love to hear, so when you’re working with these organizations and you first start sending out these emails, are you explaining anything to people? Are you just kind of letting them show up and see what happens? Are there company expectations of like leadership says, hey, we’re doing this now to try to create better culture? How does that work? Because I can imagine there would be different responses, right? If your boss tells you you have to open an email.

24:05
that changes things versus if you’re like, hey, we’re going to put this in here and see what happens. That’s a very different experience. We’ve never had anybody say you have to answer this. Just so you know, like not once. I figured that was the case, but you know, and I’m not 100 % sure we’d work with a company that led their people like that, to be honest with you. Poor leadership, but

24:28
What we do see is people will bring me in to speak to them, either in person or virtual. And I’ll talk about what I’m telling you now so people can have a basic understanding of neuroscience and what’s happening to them when they’re on digital all the time. Or, you know, we send people, like if we’re just doing it for consumers, would they just get a letter that says you’re going to get a silly Billy email once or twice a week, feel free to answer it or don’t. More pressure.

24:58
What surprises me is the length of time it took, less than three minutes for a mood to change. So we have a scale of one to five. If you’re stressed, you go to happy in less than three minutes. So that could be that I am the most brilliant content maker in the world. No, no. But it also could be that 66 % of the world are stressed.

25:26
And I’m probably one of the only people in the world that says, yeah, that sucks. Let’s get you happy without drugs, without therapy, without, and I totally recommend therapy. have a therapist myself, but there are moments in the day when you just need to say, okay, remember Calgon, take me away. Yeah. You know, just a little burst of joy in your day. Well, and I asked that question not to

25:56
you know, assume that companies are mandating, but more in my head, I was thinking it would be helpful to know why I’m receiving them and then the benefits like you talked about so that I within myself can start to recognize that just this three minutes a day could help me change my mood and become a, in my head, I go to more of like a practice, right? Where I’m like, okay, a tool in my toolkit. I’m not feeling great. I’m going to go in, I’m going to do this. And then I’m going to feel better versus

26:24
I get this email and I’m not really sure what I’m getting or why. No, no, you have to explain it to people. But I had somebody in the workforce get it and he was in his seventies and he hunted me down on LinkedIn and said, I don’t understand, but I got to tell you girl, you just made me laugh. That was the dumbest question I’d gotten all day. Said I didn’t plug in cause I’m afraid of getting a virus, I was adorable. love it. Like, okay. Yes.

26:54
And, but he said, just keep sending me those because you make me laugh every time you send them. Well, and I think that’s kind of the key, right? mean, I think that’s what it does is disrupting the state of anxiety and kind of giving a counterpoint to it. And I think it’s so interesting what you said, which is stress is self created. Like, and I think a lot of people do not.

27:17
see it that way, that they believe that it’s the whole world is, or people in the world are what is causing their stress. Where in fact, as you mentioned, and I totally buy into this, is that it’s our reaction to the stimulus that’s what causes the stress. Like we can choose, what’s it like if we see the world as evil, we see the world as good, where either one is right, right? It’s just our perspective and our point of view. So,

27:44
these things that you send, these emails, these little bursts that can make you laugh to make you like kind of get out of your head. It’s it’s almost like a quick disruptor that just kind of takes that process and just changes it. Like you just kind of just allows you to try and step out of the yourself for a second. So I think this the whole intent of it is so well done and so well executed. So I can see then how businesses can really help their

28:14
individuals with their teams and these layers can help these individuals of their teams really kind of just break out of those moments whenever those moments hit them. But you also had something when you and I talked um prep for this episode, you mentioned that you can actually use this as well for customer acquisition, which I thought was extremely fascinating. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, about how businesses can use this to actually lead customers down the funnel. So as we moved on.

28:42
we started to develop different.

28:47
ways to encourage consumers to use this. One of them is a QR code or poster that can go on like in an airport on a sticker on a TSA, you know, where you walk through the line and there’s those little black, I forget, I’m sure they have some name, but they’re like the little black holders for the rope you go through. You see a sticker on there, you can use your QR code and take a break and you’ll probably make a better decision.

29:15
But as we began to make these posters and put up these posters, something funny occurred, which was in the airports, in the casinos, people would make one of two decisions. I’m really tired. In a casino, oh my gosh, okay, that was fun, but I’m super tired. I’m just gonna go home. Or.

29:44
You know what? That was so much fun. I am going to challenge so and so. And then you talk to them afterwards. This is why you always need quantitative and qualitative data. So the numbers and the talk. And they say, oh my God, that was so much fun. I spent like, you know, $5 more on this machine and my friend and I bet together. In an airport, you buy a coffee because you’re feeling good or you buy

30:11
Maybe a little sneaky treat. You know, some of those airports have those yummy cinnamon buns for those of us that like them. Maybe buy a little cinnamon bun and a glass of water just to be healthy. But what we found is it causes customers when they’re in a good mood to spend a little more or make a better decision, which is pick up the trash and put it away.

30:38
and they feel good about themselves and they feel good about your brand. So in an airport, what that means is this isn’t just a horrible, awful, rotten place for me to be. It was kind of fun and you can play as many times as you want. And maybe I am going to go get something for my daughter, like a Minnesota sticker or something. I don’t know, but it’s how people respond and what we’ve forgotten.

31:05
is the rules of client acquisition that first came out in advertising. So let’s talk about Coke and Pepsi. Everybody knows they’re the kings and queens of marketing. Well, Pepsi was kicking Coke’s ass in the late 60s with all the different things they were doing. And Coke came up with this ad that is called, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.

31:34
And all it is is a song. You can get it on YouTube. You can get it anywhere. But it’s a song and it has a group of people together. Remember, it’s the Vietnam War. Korea was just over. There was all kinds of horrible things going on in the world. Like we think now is horrible. Let’s go back to then. And it was just this joyous, peaceful thing. And yet they were holding Coca-Cola bottles, but it wasn’t about Coca-Cola.

32:04
Well guess what happened? For the first time when mood was focused in advertising and the goal was to change people’s mood they vaulted over Pepsi and that began this whole campaign. Eventually we saw you know Michael Jackson and Cindy Crawford and all of these other kinds of things because they were trying to change your mood to get you to think X, and Z.

32:31
So now let’s get rid of all that because there’s Instagram, there’s TikTok, there’s everything else that is going to outdo you no matter what’s going on. But now give your customers a little bit of joy in an otherwise harsh world and who are they going to go to? And then we measure trust. Our trust scores? Rarely, rarely, I don’t think I’ve ever dropped below 2.5 out of three. Actually, no, never. Talk about that as an NPS score.

33:02
How many people get that? Again, if it isn’t measured, it isn’t real. People would be telling me, like I’ve talked to CEOs that say, piss off little girl. And I’m like, okay, whatever. But by the way, here’s how your competitor is doing with this. I love all of that. And I love that we started with the example of the more transactional, right? I’m in an airport, my mood improves, I go and I purchase something all the way through to customer loyalty.

33:27
And I think it is so interesting because we know that the relationship piece is so important. And so to tack on mood in this conversation and consideration of that, as you were talking, I was thinking like, oh yeah, that makes total sense. What do I need in this moment versus what does the brand want to push on me, sell me, et cetera. And being able to embrace that, that then improves my mood to want to have a longer term relationship.

33:54
with this brand because I feel like they see me, appreciate me, all of that, which we talk about all the time in our work. 100%. And it’s just simple science. Well, it’s a flywheel too, right? So when you can disrupt, again, going back to disrupting people’s moods, if they’re not feeling to say they’re not feeling great in the airport at work or even in the airports, jeez, I just immediately I’m in a bad mood.

34:21
You’ll have to ask Pam too how she feels when she’s putting that money on the table at the end. I my mom’s a big gambler at the casino here in town. I’ll have to ask her. We’re in casinos and I’ve actually made a physical machine for casinos that’s going to be going into casinos where people can, it’s called Dr. Mary’s magical mood machine and people can just, like it’s got the whole story about the heart attack, blah, blah, blah, and how I’m just committed to bringing joy to the world.

34:50
But this is just like it, think of that for consumers, for retailers. It’s that pony ride that used to be in the grocery store. Like get your head out of all the old fashioned stuff you used to know about customer loyalty. And it’s all about making the customer feel good, not about you and your brand. Which is the flywheel, right? Back to, yeah, what I was gonna say. The understanding is that it’s definitely, when someone, can disrupt people and make them feel better.

35:19
you, your decision-making changes in that vein too. And it does have a sense of wanting to continue to feel that good. And when do we feel good? We get the dopamine hit when we’re gamble. We get the dopamine hit when we are shopping. We get the dopamine hit when, know, when we were doing something nice for somebody else, like buying them something. So it totally makes sense that in shifting that mood, you can then generate more

35:49
benefit for you as a brand or a business. Now, some people might say, well, that seems like a tad bit manipulative. I’m going to put a mood machine in a gambling hall or in a casino and I’m going to make them feel good so they go gamble more. So what do you have to say to uh people who might have some criticism about that, Dr. Mary? Okay. But we just proved by talking to gamblers.

36:18
that when you have a clear mind, you make a better decision. And guess what? Sometimes the best decision is walking out or turning off that sports betting bet. And everybody says, well, how can casinos support that? Don’t they want to get the most money from people? No, actually they don’t because it’s like giving a 19 year old or a 16 year old 24 beers. What’s going to happen? Something bad.

36:47
is going to happen. You know, and is that good for the brand? Well, I can tell you from my work in beer, no, I worked with Molson Coors. That is not what they want to have happen. They do not want people harmed with their products. And so what we have to start doing is talking to the consumers. So that’s why I stood in so many casinos and observed and watched them and asked them how they were feeling because I can’t make a judgment call on what they’re going to do just from the data.

37:17
have to talk to consumers. And here’s the interesting part that the data is showing is less than 2.2 to 8 % of the people can’t make that decision. The majority of time, less than 2 % of the people can’t make a good decision about gambling. And so what we have to look at is let’s talk about that other at most 92 % and how do we keep them in the

37:46
good frame of mind, so they don’t make good decisions. They’re not that 19 year old that’s drinking 24 beers at one time. Yeah, so it’s regulation. like as a casino, just using them as an example, because it’s the it’s a very provocative one, they want you to come back, right? And so if you blow all your money in one, just go at at the casino, you may not be back for a few weeks.

38:12
But if you’re regulating yourself and you’re making good decisions, you may come back tomorrow with a little bit more money that you can then you put down. Right. So not speaking that I understand casinos and what they are going after, but I can actually like rationalize in my head why that would make sense. it, yeah, I can totally see it. I’m wondering, Dr. Mary, can you then help people drill this down? Then we went.

38:39
Kind of tangible, then we went broad. I’m gonna go back to tangible here for a second. What can leaders do as like a first step, like today? What can they go do with their teams to help them with their mood? I think the very first thing is believe in emotional regulation and stop putting it as a soft skill. Yep. I hate that soft skill expression and then I both hate it. So do I. And we hear it all the time. Leaders like that should be retired.

39:10
because what we know is that your phone is controlling your emotions 82 % of the time. So whether it’s through work, whether it’s through what you do on social, whether it’s what you watch on the phone, look at 82 % of adults can’t put their phone down long enough to take a bath.

39:35
So let’s start using the tools that are available to us, emotional regulation through digital to help people modify their behavior. If that behavior is you have no culture in your organization, well, you’re going to have to modify it. You’re probably going to have to spend extra time and do extra programs on behavior modification with your leadership team.

40:00
What happens then is you’re probably going to have to look at how to do digital behavior modification or emotional regulation with all team members, not just the medium or the intermediary team members. It’s like saying, oh, only such and such consumers are important to us. Well, that gets you nowhere fast. So then the next thing you have to do is look at yourself. Where are you on the emotional regulation scale? What are you doing at work?

40:29
and do red light, green light, yellow light activities and ask your entire staff to do red light, yellow light, green light activities. What I mean by that is before you go into emotional regulation, you have to find out what are your, what I call your red light triggers. Is it emailing after seven o’clock at night when you’re trying to clean the kitchen and help the kids with their homework or doing whatever? Is it email in general? For me, it’s email in general. Is it speaking at meetings? Is it having to…

40:59
go over financials that are sent to you at the last minute. Like that’s red light activities, yellow light activities, talking in a staff room, talking in a staff meeting, preparing a brief with little or no notice, green light activities, public speaking. Once you have an idea, so you don’t have an idea, let’s get some data and ask your staff to get some data. You’ve got to include your staff in this. So what you do is,

41:29
Every sort of like for myself, I do it every 45 minutes, but I’m old. I’m a Gen X. So I know I can pay attention for 45 minutes. When we look at boomer or millennials in Gen Z, maybe every project switch or every email. So that could be 20, 22 minutes in the workplace. Right, red, green, yellow, and find out what your day is filled with.

41:56
red light, green light, yellow light activities. So now you have some data. So once you begin to look at the generational data across your workforce, so some of the people I work with have 10,000 people. So you can do it in a very easy, simple way. You just send them a sheet and say, hey, you don’t need to share this with me. We’re just trying to chart your moods to try and figure out how to make a better environment.

42:22
And they do that and you say at nine o’clock, how many of you were read at 10 o’clock and 11 o’clock? So now you’ve got what’s going on. And you’re saying to me, oh, Mary, as if that would not work, that wouldn’t work. Well, actually it did. At one of our clients, what they found out was Wednesday at 4 p.m. the majority of their team were stressed. This was a very large team and a team that held a very important

42:51
portfolio in the company. And so I would constantly, so we used our emails as well because we would see who’s saying bad day, bad day, bad day and what time they were using it. And finally, once we were able to look at the data and RAD was coming through all the time from three to five o’clock on Wednesdays, what is causing it? Like this is a large office. One horribly bad leader.

43:21
who had their status meetings at four o’clock and used belittling techniques. So what happened was Thursday wasn’t a productive day. Friday wasn’t a productive day. Sales were dropping on what used to be an important day. And all this is from data. So you’re asking me to ask leaders to get data. You need it or you can’t make a decision on your staff in terms of emotional regulation and changing their moods.

43:51
What happened? Well, that’s why I didn’t say the name of the company. This person was let go with cause. I love the idea of because we can all have individual triggers, right? Which I feel like is where you started. Like what for me, right? I don’t like email either, but some people are quite fine with that, right? But it’s because I want to be around people. I don’t want to sit in my email all day, right?

44:13
But then fast forward to being able to not only help an individual understand their core triggers, motivators, all those things, but then organizations to see patterns like that meeting where, you know, and ask for tactical examples. That’s a super tactical example, yet you can see the repercussions of that one meeting, right? In my mind, my mood would in theory increase as I get closer to the weekend. It’s horrible to think that that one meeting stopped that.

44:41
right, for everybody. So I mean, I think it is just so insightful and inspiring because anyone listening should be able to hear, yes, okay, you have to collect the data. Like you said, you have to put this out there. You have to put the tools in place to find out. But once you do, there can be huge change by identifying things that aren’t, it was a big deal, the reaction that was coming out, but that meeting going away or that leader going away, I’m assuming changed everything for that organization.

45:09
But again, have to have like Anne’s looking at me. So I know what her next question is. Are you being very Pollyanna about it and just saying, make this a lovely workplace and we’ll just move on. But the answer is no. 66 % of your population is having mental health issues, is having stress-related issues or has a chronic disease or is about to experience something that will become a chronic disease. Six out of 10 people in your organization.

45:37
You are not going to change that, but you need to figure out a way to mitigate its effect on your business. giving them tools to manage their mood is one way to do that. And I think that is a great way to sum up this episode. And I think it’s extremely sage advice and that, you know, taking this all the way back up to

46:03
the beginning and the intro of the benefits of doing that, which is being able to overcome those productivity droppers. Just to your example, and a lot of times we don’t know why, and a lot of times we don’t care to look into why, but when we do, it could be something that’s very simple to change. It’s not always easy to change, but it could be very simple to change, and it could dramatically change how everybody feels, and then the team.

46:32
vibe overall. So I love this. I love this conversation. I think it’s been extremely beneficial. I know for me, there’s a lot of things kind of went off in my head, but before I let you go, I would love it if you would indulge us with some rapid fires. Okay, here we go. I’ve been dreading this. Okay, so this is a red for you. This is a red. Yeah, this is a red. What’s she gonna ask? I won’t make it too rough then. So the first one’s always easy.

47:02
It’s the mood shifter. So I’m going to switch you from an anxiety mode now to a happy mode by asking you what are you reading or listening to right now that’s uh more for your learning benefit. Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s so good. Oh, interesting. Okay. I love that. would think you weren’t a fan of his, I guess he keeps you in business, right? No, I actually I’m a huge fan of his just because he made the product. He didn’t dictate how we use it.

47:31
Oh, I know. I’m just teasing. So what is your best way to manage stress? Run. I feel you there. Sometimes I run too much. made a post on LinkedIn today because I tried to go back to my old running after the deep cold we had and run, walk. Sometimes you have to walk and there was a ton of snow and I couldn’t do it. I was like, like, some strange

47:59
Very nice man ran beside me for a while and said, you know what, you got this. And he was my break. It was, oh yeah, I kind of do. I should probably turn around now. No one’s saying you have to finish seven kilometers. Just turn around. You’re okay. Oh, Dr. Mary, we share that. Okay. He’s right. And I wave bye and he wave bye. And he was like my mood shifter.

48:30
Well, then I’ll keep on that theme. So I don’t miss it. We’re in a flywheel of good mood right now. What is one of your favorite places to go that enhances your mood? Water. Same. Oh, man. We are kindred spirits. I hear you anytime. And your last name too, by the way. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I just I go to the water. I run at the water. I walk at the water.

48:57
I work out as much as I can at the water. We have a house on the water. It matters. Love that. I love that. I mean, Dr. Mary, it’s been wonderful to have you. Why don’t you, if you could wrap us up, is there anything that we missed that you want to make sure that people know, put a bow on this and obviously tell people where they can find you? You can find us on LinkedIn, the Digital Wellness Center. I’m uh there as Dr. Mary Donahue, two O’s.

49:27
and happy, reach out, email me. You can do anything you wanna do. If you wanna email me, the easiest is drmaryee, as in my middle name, Eileen, Donahue at gmail.com. I’m happy to answer your emails, but what I really, really need people to do, whether you use my products or don’t use my products, go find some joy. Just take a moment every single day and find joy.

49:56
The world is kind of a harsh place right now and you need to find a little moment of joy. Otherwise you’re going to end up like me, heart attack, knowing you caused it yourself because of all the stress you created in your life. So just don’t. What great advice, great, great advice. And with that, encourage you all to take at least one powerful insight. And you just heard a really strong one as well as a gazillion throughout this whole episode.

50:26
and put it into practice. Because remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business. And make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!