Better Than Global Outreach? An Interview with CPMAP Graduate Jack Beers – Episode 194

Dr. Greg:
Hello and welcome to the Being Human Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Greg Bottaro, and today I’ve got an amazing guest, another graduate from the CPMAP certification. And the day this episode is getting released, it’s a really special day because today is open house day. If you’re listening to this past Tuesday, October 1st, 2024, no problem. You can still check out the link catholicpsych.com/openhouse and we’ll have replays available. But today, if today is your day, if today is October 1st, happy Feast of St. Therese. Happy anniversary of Catholic Psych Institute. First getting started in 2012 and Happy Open House Day! We’re going to be showing you all about what happens inside the certification program. We’re wrapping up this series of graduates sharing about how they’ve used certification in their life and the ways that it’s impacted them. And so I just really hope that this has been helpful for you and a blessing to you.

AI-Generated transcript of this episode:

And you could see all the things that we’re doing here at Catholic Psych. If nothing else, please pray for us. If you’ve been touched by, impacted by Catholic Psych in any way, shape, or form, I cannot tell you how much we need your prayer. We are supported by prayer. Everything that we’re doing is held in the spiritual protection and grace of God. And this is a vocation. This is a ministry, and it is a work of grace. So I really don’t just say that like sometimes people do like, “Oh, pray for me.” Like, no, no, I really mean it. We have faced a spiritual resistance, let’s just call it that. We are digging deep into the pain and suffering of people’s lives caused by a lot of darkness and woundedness and trauma, and this work for all of the therapists that are out there, for all of the mentors, for everybody involved in this work of entering into the suffering and challenges of mental health and mental distress, pray for them. Pray for me. Pray for us. We need it. So this episode, Jack Beers is joining us to talk about his experience. I met Jack at Dynamic Catholic who published my book, the Mindful Catholic. And so this has been an incredible story of a relationship that developed professionally, that turned into friendship and Dynamic Catholic doing such amazing things. They are at the forefront of mass evangelization, bringing incredible content to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people. And Jack was right there in the middle of it. He was, I don’t know if he was number two, but he was a Vice President there, and he was definitely very highly involved in getting this work out there. And then through some conversations over the years, he really shared with me more about this individual calling. He had to minister more to go deeper with individuals and was really attracted to the life of therapy of that field.
So long story short, he was very excited to hear about our certification program once we launched it. And he jumped in. He’ll tell you more about his side of the story and what that looked like on his end, but it was a really beautiful experience and with its ups and downs, its challenges, eventually he felt God calling him to go all in on the work of mentorship and individual accompaniment. So now that is what he’s doing, and it’s kind of a family affair. It’s affected his family, it’s affected, it helped him to become a better husband and father as he talks about here in the episode. So I hope you enjoy it. I hope it blesses you, and I’ll see you at the open house. God bless.

I spent the last 10 years learning how to help people using the best techniques available in psychology, integrated with the Catholic faith. Now, we’ve figured out that there’s a better way to help people than just slapping a Catholic label on the same secular model of therapy you find anywhere else. The real question is how will we make this shift to a new model of truly Catholic accompaniment, keeping the psychological sciences in mind while opening up to a more human and more effective approach? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I take you behind the scenes of what this new model looks like, using recorded audio from sessions, working with my team, with colleagues, and even directly with clients. My name is Dr. Greg Bottaro, and I want to welcome you to the Being Human Podcast.

Dr. Greg:
All right, welcome Jack Beers. Thank you so much for being here on the show.

Jack Beers:
Great to be with you. Dr. Greg. I’m glad that we, for those who are watching the video portion of things, I’m so glad that we the notes [inaudible] to each other.

Dr. Greg:
It’s the Blue Polo podcast.

Jack Beers:
Yeah. And the come over and the five o’clock shadow, it’s literally the,

Dr. Greg:
I don’t have my glasses on though. I should match you with grabbing my glasses, but

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
I’ve been doing a series of interviews of graduates from CPMAP, and all of this is leading up to our open house on October 1st, which I’m not exactly sure when these are going to be published, but I think it might be possible at least that this episode is being released on October 1st.

Jack Beers:
Oh, wow.

Dr. Greg:
So you may be the sort of most recent experience in people’s mind who go from listening to the podcast to watching the open house video.

Jack Beers:
Thrilling.

Dr. Greg:
So no pressure.

Jack Beers:
I feel none. Don’t worry. I’m totally in the present. I got feel no pressure.

Dr. Greg:
And there what a great testimonial for the power of the program. But we, you know I talk a lot about the program and CPMAP and certification and Catholic Psych and all this stuff we’re doing with integration and all this. It’s like talking about something is not as powerful or impactful as just hearing from somebody’s experience who’s been through it. And so that’s why I started this series and why I’ve invited you on today is to just give people a little sense of what it means for Jack Beers as an “n” of one to go through our program and what your experience has been like. And so to start, what I’ve been looking back on is where you were at, what you were doing, what you were thinking about when you first heard about the CPMAP certification. That brings us way back actually.

Jack Beers:
Yeah, that brings us to a restaurant, an illustrious restaurant in Northern Kentucky known as Outback Steakhouse.

Dr. Greg:
That’s right.

Jack Beers:
At the tail end of like a four hour dinner. I, what’s funny is I’ve been asked this before and what I normally talk about it, and I give the same answer every time because it’s totally true. There was a blend of the personal and the professional that really keyed me up for that conversation for me to be really intrigued. So professionally, I’d been in ministry in a role of mass evangelization, not being evangelizing the mass, but evangelizing lots of people at the exact same time with one thing. So distributing a book, trying to reach you know a million people or doing a video and trying to reach 50,000 people with that video in one time, and the data and the tracking of those types of things has gotten so much more advanced. And it started noticing that the type of people who are interested in the way that evangelization has been done for the last 10 or 15 years started to move almost exclusively into this pocket of 55 to 75 year-old Catholics, mostly women.

And so like we would show up into these spaces where it was where the people who were attracted to this type of thing were 55 to 75 year-old women, and there’s like, everybody needs the gospel. 55 to 75 year-old women need the gospel. And that’s awesome that they are receiving the gospel and that they’re attracted to it. But it was becoming more and more polarized. I was like, “What is happening?” Why is it becoming more and more attractive to this group of people and less and less attractive to, let’s say a 26 year-old male and starting to do the digging would start talking to men of that age group and women of that age group. And I would want to talk about something like the mass or the Eucharist or sacraments, because at that time, the whole only what like 60% of Catholics believe in the true presence of the Eucharist or something like that had just come out.

So it was talking about the Eucharist, and it was like they were nowhere near ready to have a conversation about the Eucharist. The type of conversation that they needed to have was, “Oh, you have a soul.” You don’t know that you are a spiritual being. You think you’re only a physical and an emotional being, and you don’t think that you’re also a spiritual being. And you also think that your mental, emotional life is tops relative to your physical life. So what happens to you mentally and emotionally is way more important than anything else. And it’s almost like king of your life. What you think and how you feel dominates. It’s like, whoa, like there is true. They wouldn’t have said this, but there’s true. It’s like Descartes right in front of me right? I think therefore I am in my mind is this Cartesian dualism is happening. I’m like, well, I can’t talk to you about the Eucharist until you’re a spiritual being.

Dr. Greg:
So what was that like for you when you discovered that?

Jack Beers:
Well, I did, it was at first an amazing discovery. It was like, oh, of course, a conversation about the Eucharist isn’t going to land. And then it was incapacitating. Because I was like, “I don’t know how to talk to you. How do I have a conversation with you?”

Dr. Greg:
Well, so for you personally, that was a lot more like you feel at that time in your life you felt and had some background, some formation to already feel much more integrated as a person. Like you had you didn’t really suffer that Cartesian dualism. Is that fair to say?

Jack Beers:
A hundred percent. I had a huge, when I was 21, I had a big conversion, and the conversion was essentially a discovery that I had a soul.

Dr. Greg:
Hmm.

Jack Beers:
And it was really shocking for those who love philosophy. If you think of the Allegory of the Cave, Aristotle’s Allegory of the Cave, it’s like when the guy first comes out of the dark and into the light and it’s really, really painful. It’s like I had that. I was like, oh man, I have a soul you know and it’s grasping for air and I need to tend to it. So like I had that and I almost was taking it as an assumption that other people had that experience as well, who had, let’s say, grown up in the church. And I was shocked that they didn’t. And that it was all the way at this fundamental level of, like I need to help you understand that you are a spiritual being and you have a soul and you need to give that soul oxygen. And I didn’t feel capable of being able to do that in any capacity.

Dr. Greg:
Yeah and you were working at probably one of the most substantial, successful, faithful organizations to be doing ministry. And I mean, we can say it, you’re at Dynamic Catholic, and like if there’s any place that could reach people with whatever the problem is, like that’s the place. But I remember from our conversation, there was also like, there was just an, there was like an individual calling that you were starting to feel towards doing something different that was more individual in its direction.

Jack Beers:
Yeah and that was the other side of the professional calling, which was not wanting to be in massive evangelization anymore, but wanting to be in direct work, direct relational work.

Dr. Greg:
Yeah.

Jack Beers:
That content is a tool and a useful tool, but it’s most useful tool in the hands of a person. And that conversion happens people to people.

Dr. Greg:
And you wanted to be that person.

Jack Beers:
And I wanted to be in that mass with people. I didn’t want to be a million shallow pools. I wanted to have 20 really deep ones, and I wanted to be in that space with people.

Dr. Greg:
So at what point did I cuz I remember sharing with you pretty early on, some of my ideas about certification. But what do you remember as far as the first time you had an inkling of what was developing?

Jack Beers:
Well, the first time we talked about it, we really just talked about it from like a, how do I develop this thing? It’s a behemoth, like how do I do it from just a technical,

Dr. Greg:
Operational, technical,

Jack Beers:
Operational project management. And so I was just like, “Yeah, Dr. Greg’s doing this massive project.” It sounds like he’s trying to eat an elephant and he’s trying to figure out how to do it one by a time. The first time it really connected, this is where the personal comes in, is I was sharing with you that my son had some social emotional challenges and he was born in 2020. He was born five weeks into the shutdown of the pandemic. And it was like, I don’t feel equipped to walk with him and I really want to. And you started tying in because I hadn’t really shared the desire for direct relational ministry and work with you yet, and you just started tying in what you’re working on and also what you, how you integrate it as a father.

And you told me this story of how one of your sons, I think it was Gabriel, he was having a hard time with something and you could tell that he was really turning something over in his mind and you were like, “Buddy, what’s going on? What are you thinking about?” And he talked about how one part of him really didn’t want to do something and how another part of him really wanted to do it and how he felt torn because of that. And I think he was like, I dunno how old he was in 2021 or whatever, six or seven, I don’t think he was very old and he was using this language and how you just helped him process what was happening within him emotionally and how he was able to be like, “You know what, dad, I actually think that I want to follow this part of me that wants to go do this thing that is a little bit scary, but I think I really wanted to do it.”
And you were talking about how beautiful it was just to be a part of that journey of God moving through your son and you helping him discern that. And I was like, “That’s what I want.” I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to integrate the psychospiritual world for my kids so that they feel when they feel ambivalence or they feel afraid, but also called to something, that they have a way to discern that in the present moment without judgement or fear that they can just be able to be present to God. And it was like, “Okay, tell me more about the program.” And then you started telling me more and I was like, “Oh boy, okay. How are we gonna do this? When is this gonna happen?”

Dr. Greg:
So that got us to the front line to the starting line. What were your thoughts or feelings or concerns or hesitations before pulling the trigger?

Jack Beers:
I feel like the people that are listening to this right now that are considering doing CPMAP. You have a huge advantage to me because I had Dr. Greg explain to me three separate occasions what CPMAP was, what it entails, and how it was gonna play out. And I still didn’t really understand what it was and what was going to be asked of me. And I can see it having the conversation with my wife Katie, and she was like, “Well, how much is it?” And I told her the price, and she was like, “That’s a lot of money. What exactly are you going to be able to do with this?” And I remember looking at her and being like, “I don’t know, but we, I have to do it. I have to do this. I just know that the Lord is calling me to this. And I know how Dr. Greg has talked to me about what I’ll be equipped with on the other side of it. And I believe with everything in my heart that this is going to be, that this is going to pay a return, at least spiritually and emotionally, a thousand x on what will invest in it financially.” And she was just like, “Okay,”

Dr. Greg:
Like I really need this boat. It’s gonna be really good for my mental health.

Jack Beers:
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Greg:
Doesn’t matter how much it costs, it just matters how happy I’ll be.

Jack Beers:
Yeah. And I don’t remember what happened, but I remember that like I paid and then something really big happened with our house or our car or something like that. And I remember being Katie just being like, “would have been really nice.”

Dr. Greg:
Oh man. Yeah, that was a huge leap. That was a huge leap for sure.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
So I mean, in some ways people have an advantage now in other ways. I think it’s still pretty tough to really convey a sense of what you’re about to get when you’re starting.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
And I know the biggest thing for me that I’ve realized on my side of it is how the individual supervision and daily accompaniment and mentorship through the entire program sets this thing apart from anything else that exists. And there’s no way to make that like really, really tangible for people until you just do it.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
So that’s what I’m still working on, like how to really convey that. And the open house has improved since the first one, and there’s a little bit more detail. We’ve fleshed out like the names of courses now. Like there’s things that we have platforms and such, but that one component I think has been there from the beginning that we knew, I knew like we have to include this no matter the cost. It’s not worth doing if we don’t do this part and this is the part that’s gonna make it done right. And so I’d like to hear a little bit of your experience of that from the beginning. And then as it sort of progressed.

Jack Beers:
Yeah, I, the greatest gift that I gave to myself or the best choice that I made in the whole process with CPMAP is I was like, I am going to dive into this. I’m going to completely dive into this. I am going to put up zero fights on what this is and what the work that’s trying to be done. I’m going to fully enter into it and supervision. I’m going to be completely open. I’m not going to do a dance of like, “Let me see if I can trust this person” or anything along those lines. Like I’m gonna bear this out completely at every step of the way. I’m going to submit to it and I’m going to be totally obedient to the process.
And, and I that from a supervision and group supervision dynamic, that was by far the best choice that I made in any of the choices because things that I’d been working on, like no joke, things that I have been trying to process and understand and pull meaning from for 20 years, and I am not that old.

Dr. Greg:
Right.

Jack Beers:
I’ve been trying to process some of these events for 20 years and for the better part of 10 years since my conversion and my supervisor was able to get to it and get to the core of it and help me see it and understand it in so little time.

Dr. Greg:
Hmm.

Jack Beers:
And such burdens were lifted from my life. And this is my best way of describing the impact of supervision, my capacity. My capacity to handle things, to receive things, to respond in a loving way and to receive love like 10x in a month. Like, it was just extraordinary. My ability to all of a sudden be empathetic toward my wife and challenge my wife, both my capacity to handle whatever she threw at me when I challenged her and my capacity to love her when she needed empathy rather than try and fix her problems. Just got so much bigger. And that was like unbelievably eye-opening. And then it was just like, “Okay, well this is great. I want more of this. Give me more of this. Let’s talk about this thing. I was going to say this for later, but let’s talk about this right now. Let’s do it.” And my supervisor, Dr. Brian, like he doesn’t pull any punches.

Dr. Greg:
For sure.

Jack Beers:
He just got after me and I was totally obedient to it, and it was everything that I needed and more.

Dr. Greg:
Well, yes. So you’re glossing over any potential difficulties that you had in that process. Like what was, did you have any challenging moments when it got really hard?

Jack Beers:
Well, so I didn’t have like I wasn’t fully aware. So, me being like, I’m totally transparent. I was totally transparent of the things I was aware of. No joke, because my supervisor is different than literally all of the other supervisors.

Dr. Greg:
Everybody’s different from each other.

Jack Beers:
I know, but nobody else does it like this. Dr. Brian, on day four of me doing supervision was like, “Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and call BS on that.” And really just gave it to me hard, and it wasn’t easy to be obedient to that. I have a strong narcissistic part, so when I say I decided to go all in obedient, I don’t mean that like, “Oh, I’m just going to be obedient.” Like it was hard, hard to just let that be and fall into the group process, fall into the supervision and be like, I’m going to trust that you’re right and I’m going to go through that. That’s hard. But it was enormously fruitful.

Dr. Greg:
Yeah, and you know it doesn’t hurt that. This is something I think about a lot because I think the state of our education system is so broken and our program costs much less than going to grad school, but people take out loans to go to grad school. And when you get a government loan that pays for your education, you don’t feel it when you’re in school. You feel it afterwards for decades afterwards, but it doesn’t give you the same motivation and importance of what you’re actually doing with your time now. Like you cannot be as good of a steward with your time and your effort when you’re getting a handout.

Jack Beers:
Hmm.

Dr. Greg:
And I mean, I look back on time in graduate school in my program and I’m like, I had so many missed opportunities. I did not have the in integrity of intention that you just described, like going all in and you know all these extracurricular activities, you know library passes and lectures I could have gone to and professors I could have sat with and learned more from. And all these different things that a doctoral student has an incredible world of access. That people that are mentors and our trailblazers are happy to open the door and spend time with. If I try to call some of those people now, they’d be like, “I don’t have any time for you.” But you know, whatever. 15 years ago, I probably could have gotten all those conversations.

I didn’t appreciate it. And even though you pay a lot less to go through certification, if you’re paying it out of your own pocket, you’re gonna feel that motivation more. And I’m not saying that’s the only reason that you had, you in particular have an incredible integrity of intention, and that has been a tremendous strength for you, that has gotten you like through in a profound way. But I think all the students that come through, everybody can benefit. We don’t let people, like if somebody tells me, “Oh, I’ve got somebody paying for my whole tuition.” I don’t care if they’re paying double the tuition, we’re not going to let them in the program.

Jack Beers:
Hmm.

Dr. Greg:
So we work out even when we work out, you know we have certain scholarships and subsidies and things like that for priests, for other people, we always ask for even just a little bit of skin in the game because it matters. So I love the way you’re describing it because you brought your intention and then you had the mentor supervisor and you had the program. It’s like these three elements. You need to have a model, you need to have a mentor, and you have to have your own motivation. And when you bring those three elements together, it’s explosive. The kind of transformation that can actually happen.

Jack Beers:
Yeah, it’s kind of like you you know go to the doctor and the doctor’s like, “You’re gonna, if you don’t lose 50 pounds or you don’t stop drinking beer, you’re gonna die.” It’s like, okay, I it doesn’t mean that stop drinking beer isn’t hard. It’s really hard.

Dr. Greg:
Right.

Jack Beers:
You know but at the same time, it’s like, “I’m going to fully give myself over to this process cuz I don’t want to die you know.” There’s a degree of like if I’m going to do this, if I’m going to say yes to this, then I have to give myself fully to this process and trust that this is what, that the Holy Spirit has been involved in this whole thing, whatever it is. Because I didn’t it was actually useful to me spiritually that I didn’t know any of the details. I didn’t know what books I was gonna read, who my supervisor was gonna be, how many hours I needed to spend on the courses, how many papers needed to be completed a week.
I knew absolutely nothing. And it was so spiritually and emotionally fruitful for me that I didn’t know any of it, that I didn’t have a chance to be like, “Well, I like that, but I don’t like that. That’s a little trouble.” It was just like, I’ve got to jump into this pool and whatever the water temperature is, is the water temperature, I’m just gonna do it. And if the money wasn’t enough motivation, the money was a big motivation to beginning. Even my wife, I remember I went up to bed early one night and she was like, “Did you finish your reading? We paid a lot of money.”

Dr. Greg:
Remember that car we couldn’t fix?

Jack Beers:
Yeah. I was like, “What?” But if that wasn’t enough motivation right. I’m six months in and a client comes in the door, and once I realized when a client was going, I was going to be given the opportunity to walk with another person, it was like, I don’t want any of my crap to get in the way. I want as little of my crap to get in the way of what this person needs as possible. Like there’s another human being on the other side of this thing. And that in it of itself is also highly motivating because it’s like, it’s not even like, I want to transform this person’s life. It’s literally, for me, it was literally, I don’t want to screw this person up. You know I don’t want to hurt them.

Dr. Greg:
Hmm.

Jack Beers:
If yeah, like, I don’t. I don’t want to. I want to do everything I can to help them, but at a minimum, I don’t want to be so far in my own way that I hurt this person. And that is also enormously motivating. It’s not like “I’ll see a client in four years, I can go do this thing over here.” It’s like, “No, I was gonna see a client in a hot minute.”

Dr. Greg:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah, we do get through stuff pretty quickly. I was looking at other programs, just preparing for our open house. I was gonna make some comparisons, and I’m just looking at the course load and the kinds of courses that you spend time in the programs, learning about things, and you know it’s like there’s certain things like research design, you’re basically like in Calculus four. You know it’s like, “We don’t do that.”

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
“We’re not spending time there.” It’s like every course is just like boom, boom, boom. Like we’re gonna get you up to speed and get you ready to start accompanying people. And then it’s like, oh, three months in, or six, three to six months in, depending on how quickly you go through level one, you’re seeing people.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
Ready or not here they come and of course with supervision, but that’s intense for people. So that’s a great point that that also provides that motivation. So okay, we got through most of the program. Now let’s look towards the end of your experience because in the fourth quarter we start talking about capstone and you start thinking about what you’re gonna be doing with this in your life, and you’re not gonna be a student of CPMAP forever. And so walk through that a little bit. Were you thinking like, “Alright, now I’m gonna start justifying this cost.” Are you gonna start making money? Are you gonna what else changed in your life? Did it make it all worth it? Anyway, I don’t know what else was going on in your head at that time?

Jack Beers:
Yeah, well, so I found to level three and level four were incredible. It was a joy to be in level three and level four. And level four being the end. Level one and level two were really hard. Because everything was new, especially psychology. It was a whole new language. And for me, to a certain extent, it was like learning to play chess. And that chess, chess is like a game of patterns. And the more you see the patterns, the faster and better you are at chess cuz you’re because you see the patterns. You can start to see 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 moves down the road. And when you’re working with a client, it’s so helpful to be able to have a conceptualization of that person and a sense of the road to where you’re going. And when you’re first getting into it like I’d never heard of borderline before. You know like I’d heard of dependent, but I didn’t really know what it was.

Even you know narcissistic parts like, I was like I’m not a narcissistic. I don’t have narciss, I’m not a narcissist, right? And then I get into it and I’m like, “Golly, I have narcissistic parts,” that’s for sure you know. And that’s hard you know, but you start getting into it and you start having all these self realizations about all your own defenses, and it’s a whole new language and it’s really, really hard. And then levels three and four, you’re starting to get your feet underneath you and you’re starting able to actually experience what it’s like to be a mentor. And I love being a mentor. And so my caseload got up to five clients and I was just like, give me more. Like I love this. This is the frame that’s set being able to do it over voxer, daily walking with these people, like everything was just started to elevate for me spiritually and relationally. Like I’m praying for these people, I’m fasting for these people every day, and it’s just like I got to show up in a certain way. All that was just awesome. The challenge was when I started the program, I was like, “Yeah, I’ll have a side practice with mentorship. I’ll have like five clients max.” It’ll be something I do on the side. I still intended to do mass evangelization and just scratch the direct relational stuff as an itch off on the side. And then I got halfway through the program and I was like, God is calling me to this work.

He is not necessarily calling me to creating resources and writing and speaking anymore. He is calling me to mentor and to do this. And then my marketing brain started going in. I’m like, “Okay. Nobody knows what mentorship is really.” There’s a whole population who do, you know it’s sort of my part saying, “No one knows what this is.” You know like nobody knows what this is. It can seem really expensive at first. I’m new. I haven’t built up my own platform of any sort. Like how in the world am I going to get clients? And so that was really what was weighing on me. I felt really confident that once I got a client, I’d be able to keep one. If I could get over the hump and have a regular pool of clients, a way for them to come into the door. I knew it could work and I knew it could be successful, but it was like, “How in the world am I going to turn this schooling into a live full-time practice?” So as you know, you know like I bought my own domain you know level at the end of level three, and I was like, you know I started freaking out. I started freaking out. I was like, how am I going to do this? You know what’s gonna happen? And it was hard to sort of wrap my mind around, it felt like when you graduate, you were going to jump off the cliff and you’re like, alright, I hope this parachute works. So it was intense.

Dr. Greg:
Yes, so what’s it been like?

Jack Beers:
Way, way better than I thought. Like I, it’s it’s not it’s hard to start your own practice and to get clients and things along those lines. It’s not easy, but I think before you get into it, it feels almost impossible. And it’s not impossible on a scale of hard, like zero being really easy and 10 being impossible, it’s much closer to five than it is to 10. And it’s like the first two months when I was really starting to turn the thing up, I got no new clients. But in the next, as we’re recording this, it’s only, it hasn’t even been five months since I graduated, so it’s just about five months. So about three months, I’ve averaged three new clients a month. I think in a six week period. I went from 3 clients to 11 and it’s like I turned my first client down. You know I don’t have enough room for you because they needed a scholarship and I didn’t have any more scholarship spots available.

I limited the number of scholarships and I turned my first client down. You know that was a big milestone. And there are you know four more people right now who are considering it. I might have 15 clients by the end of September. And if you like think about it, and you do the math you know over the course of a 12 month period, if I told you that you could, you could start a business and within six months be making the equivalent of a yearly salary of 65 or $70,000 in the first year of your business in the first nine months of your business. I mean, that’s extraordinary. That’s extraordinary return.

And that is, it’s still hard. It’s not easy, but it’s also like incredible. It’s not my full-time job. I’m doing it on 15 hours a week and it’s building a life of its own and it’s building momentum of its own. And it’s like God wants this to happen. God wants people to be healed and God truly is calling me to this. And God is truly blessing this type of environment to heal and uplift people and this type of work to heal and uplift people. And it’s going to happen. You still have to put in the work, but there’s a headwind behind me that I never thought there would be, and that’s incredible.

Dr. Greg:
There’s so much there. But yeah, that’s really what we’re trying to share with people and being able to tap into individual stories and vocations and what God is doing in different people’s lives and then giving them something of what God has done in my life and in our life at Catholic Psych. And then you create these new opportunities. Yeah, something that like special to what you’re doing is with content, you know bringing background, your experience, your expertise. And I’ve watched you give council, give support to other partners graduating, giving them you know encouragement and feedback on your own marketing expertise, your own experience like how to write a good, I mean, your LinkedIn articles are killer. You’ve got some pretty amazing posts on LinkedIn, things like that. It’s like that’s something so particular and special to you. And then God is blessing us. God is blessing CPMAP. God is opening up new channels and avenues for CPMAP to go new places because you’re bringing yourself to that process. And that’s just been an amazing joy to watch that unfold.

Jack Beers:
I appreciate that. Thank you. What’s been cool too is when you have to market something, you have to start getting really good at figuring out what you do and the value that it brings to people. And I didn’t think about I didn’t really know what CPMAP was, you know so I didn’t have that. I didn’t really have that conceptually going into it.

Dr. Greg:
So I did a really bad job of marketing, it is what you’re saying.

Jack Beers:
I mean, my experience of you marketing it, I didn’t even watch the town hall. You just sent me a text. You were like, “Hey, the first round of openings is open from now through the end of the weekend if you want in.”

And I responded with “How much?” and you said the price, and then you said how much it was going to go up on Monday. And I was like, “Ah, all right, let’s do it” you know. And it did go up on Monday in case anyone was wondering. So I didn’t necessarily think about it, but as I’ve thought about it, we actually, when you become a mentor, you actually have the ability to reveal hidden obstacles to who God is calling people to be. So many times in life, people keep running against this wall and they keep hitting a limit and keep hitting a limit or keep having the same conflict or the same problem, and it’s hidden to them what’s causing that problem. And do they know what to do about it? Maybe probably not. But they’re trying to solve the problem blind. And one of the coolest things about being a mentor is almost within a few weeks, two weeks, three weeks, I know what the obstacle is. They may not be ready to hear it, but I know what the obstacle is and I can tell you.

And that alone, like I run a short-term program to help people get their mind around the context of mentorship. And it’s like, that’s all that I do is I just reveal it to you. I don’t provide a corrective emotional experience. We don’t go through the healing process, and I don’t promise the healing process. I just say, I’ll reveal your obstacle to you. Like you’re addicted to porn. I’ll tell you why. What you do with it is up to you. But I can tell you and how people are like, “You can, are you kidding me? I’ve been trying to figure this out for 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, and you can tell me in two weeks?” Like, “Yes, I can.” And I’m not BSing you. I actually, I have been taught how to do that, and I can do that, and I actually have to stop myself from doing it in the parking lot of a shopping center. When someone just starts telling me about their life, I have to stop from doing it because

Dr. Greg:
Yeah.

Jack Beers:
You get trained so well that you just see the patterns everywhere. I’m like, “Yes, I can do it.” And there are so many people who are so hurting, they’re in so much pain because they can’t see what they’re running into. And I’m one of them, and I was one of them, and I’ll be one of them again and having a mentor, and for me having a supervisor, it’s like, “Ah, I’m just gonna tell you what it is.” And what grace does when you have that awareness. Oh, man, it’s so cool.

Dr. Greg:
Well, and it’s also a beautiful thing to understand even the boundaries of like to turn that off in the supermarket parking lot, and you also understand like your own reasons why you would want to not turn it off in the parking lot of the supermarket. And you also then, like when you talk about Dr. Brian, it’s like Dr. Brian could challenge you on your fourth message and be like, “I’m gonna call BS.” When you’re all in, you’re all in. And when you’re not, you’re not. Like how do you think Dr. Brian is, you know at the dinner table at like a big extended family dinner?

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
Like I, you know for myself, it’s like I just love not talking at all in certain situations. And I’m not even thinking about analyzing anything or like understanding the chess moves in anybody else’s life. I just turn it off.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
And I don’t but then when it’s on, it’s on. And you do learn that trait and that you learn the chess, you learn the chess game, and you get the moves and you see the patterns, and that’s a really beautiful thing. And you’re absolutely right. People might not be ready. Like part of the pattern is also understanding the interpersonal dynamics. That it’s like a meta pattern. So you have the pattern in the other person, and then there’s the pattern between you and the other person. And the pattern between you two is what reveals to you when to tell the person about the pattern in the way that they’re gonna be most open to hearing it, and it’s gonna be most effective in their life.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
So it’s not enough to just know how to help a person or what a person needs to hear. You also know how to help the person hear what they need to hear in that process. That’s powerful stuff.

Jack Beers:
It’s amazing. I had this week alone, I challenged someone too soon. And it was obvious by their reaction that I challenged them too soon. And what was amazing about it is like when I was in CPMAP, when I was going through the formation, I did that as well and totally freaked out. It’s like, “Oh my gosh,” you know this is, but like this time around, I know that God can use that. I challenge them too soon. But this person also has a parent who’s never apologized to them before. So I also know that God is going to do something good if this person is willing to hang on, and I think that they are, but they may not.

They’re willing to hang on after having been challenged in a way that was upsetting to them. It will actually accelerate their growth, not decelerate their growth. And like that is also really cool. The repair and the rupture and repair is really amazing. And then the other thing that has happened this week for the first time ever, that’s been really cool.

I’ve left this one client every day this week, only 15 second messages, and the messages have been, “You got this. Keep going, keep going. Like you and the Holy Spirit are doing it. Keep going.” And like it’s been that same message every single day. Like I don’t need to intervene here. Like I don’t need to be the guy, and my narcissistic part isn’t freaking out you know, it’s not screaming at me, and it’s like,

Dr. Greg:
Yeah.

Jack Beers:
This is, this is amazing. And then translate across relationships, right? Like I can let my wife go do something that she might fail at. I can let my kids, I can apologize to my kids and repair that relationship with my kids. It just, man.

Dr. Greg:
Yeah, there’s a lot there. So it sounds like it’s returning on its promises for you personally, financially, things are going quite well for you. If they didn’t, would you? I guess this is a leading question, and I don’t want you to give me a BS answer but, and it’s really okay, I get it. It’s my podcast. But I’m super curious about it because not everybody’s gonna stay on doing this professionally afterwards. So like don’t want to I don’t I I want to be very careful about like using the actual revenue potential as a selling point. Although it’s like a really significant selling point, if that’s what’s important. This program costs less. You get through it faster, you start earning money more, and you end up earning more money. So like on three levels, there’s like compounding reason why this is like a far better financial decision, but what if that’s not your equation? We have priests, missionaries, people that go through the program. What would your assessment be of it in that regard?

Jack Beers:
For me, so during the CPMAP process, my wife also had a mentor. So I’m trying to think about it, quick math in my head. It’s like in a nine month period, we probably poured $30,000 into the mental, emotional, spiritual development of Katie and I, individually. Probably something around that amount of money. I would’ve gone into debt for the gift that it has been for our family, like for our marriage, for my wife’s capacity as a mother, for my capacity as a father and a husband, I would’ve paid three times as much. I would’ve gone into a debt and paid three times as much for the return. Because it’s like, what is the money? What is the money in terms of that type of return? Now, I am lucky. I’m a privileged position. Like I, Katie and I were both really, really frugal and we were able to pay that, and we didn’t have to do anything. There was some hurt in it, but we didn’t have to do anything.

So I am a bit privileged to be able to say that, but at the same time, I will shout to the rooftops about the impact of having a mentor and a supervisor alone. And I have been, and I could, I couldn’t possibly tell you the monetary value of what has been given to me by being able to do this, let alone going and having a business and doing all that stuff. Like this is gonna return a hundred fold for me over the course of my lifetime financially, and that’s awesome. Like I get to raise my family and do all kinds of cool things, and that’s great. But the depth of my marriage, my ability to love my kids, my ability to be a good friend and a better son, the intimacy I have with the Lord, the less of a hold sin has in my life. Like you cannot put a price tag on that. It is the pearl of great price for me. I would’ve sold everything to go put it in you know, put the pearl of great price in the land, bury it, then go buy the land. It would’ve done that had I known what the impact was gonna be.

Dr. Greg:
Wow. Praise God.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
That’s powerful.

Jack Beers:
Yeah. And you know, it’s not, it was despite you, you know. Despite you.

Dr. Greg:
Amen. Amen. Despite me, thank God. Power is made perfect in our weakness.

Jack Beers:
Yeah. No, I’m just kidding.

Dr. Greg:
No, that is so true.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
I could show you the notebook of pages of notebooks, of all the reasons that back up that statement of all the things that we’ve had to fix and correct and imperfections in the program and all the different things that we’ve learned and grown. And a lot of it because of our students who started with us that had the inspiration from the Holy Spirit. At one time, I had a student who really humbled me once in the most beautiful way, and I was telling her, I was like, “I really am so grateful for your trust in me.” And she looked at me and she goes, “I don’t trust you. This is God who brought me here. I trust the Holy Spirit.” I was like, “Oh yeah.” That’s really important talk about having a narcissistic part. Holy cow. I was like,

Jack Beers:
It has to be that way. I know that people will listen to this who are not called to do this work.

Dr. Greg:
Yeah, exactly.

Jack Beers:
And who are called to have healing and meaning and transformation in other contexts, in other ways. But for me and my family, I mean, it was saying yes to it has been the second greatest yes next to me coming into the church. Like it’s that powerful of a yes. And if God calls you to it, like you have to do it. You have to.

Dr. Greg:
Beautiful. Well, where can people find you?

Jack Beers:
The catholicmentor.com. They can also find me on LinkedIn. If you just search Jack Beers and the Catholic Mentor, you can find me on LinkedIn. I do post just a warning. I do post four or five days a week, so if you follow me, you’ll get that ping. You’ll get that notification. But

Dr. Greg:
You follow Jack Beers. You are a study in LinkedIn marketing in itself. It’s a wonderful thing to watch, and it’s you just you picked a platform and you went in on it, and it’s great. It’s perfect. It makes a lot of sense, and it’s really quality. I love your posts. I read your posts. I get pinged and I’m reading ’em, and I’m like every day. I’m like, “That was really good point. That’s a great angle. That’s a great.” I’m like, “Wow, I didn’t even think about it that way. That’s amazing.” That’s, so follow Jack Beers and check out the catholicmentor.com. You can schedule a free consultation with Jack. Talk about mentorship. What’s the name of the program, the short-term program, and where can people sign up for that?

Jack Beers:
Yes, same thing on the catholicmentor.com. There’s a waiting list right now. It’s just under the title of RISE, and it’s called RISE, and it, we cover the seven forgotten principles of the spiritual masters that lead to deep meaning and lasting impact.

Dr. Greg:
That’s awesome.

Jack Beers:
Yeah.

Dr. Greg:
That’s very good. Again, check out the show notes on the show here, the podcast for all of the links to connect with Jack, and I hope that this has blessed you. If today’s October 1st, then you can go to catholicpsych.com/openhouse and register and see us this evening. Otherwise, there will be a replay on that. If this is sometime in the future, then same link is gonna bring you to information about the CPMAP certification. So I hope this has blessed you, Jack, thank you so much for being here and for all the amazing work that you’re doing.

Jack Beers:
My pleasure. And thank you for doing CPMAP, you know they just thank you. So,

Dr. Greg:
Amen. Alright, God bless.

Thanks for listening to the Being Human Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and wanna help us spread the word and hear more, please head over to iTunes, leave us a review, and subscribe, as it really helps us to get our content out to more people. Be sure to listen next time as I take you deeper into what it means to be human. If you want more free content and information about what we do at the Catholic Psych Institute, head on over to catholicpsych.com. God bless you.