Johnny Crowder

After more than a decade in the trenches battling his own mental health and abuse demons, Johnny Crowder has emerged as one of America’s exciting new voices on resilience, support, and people-first leadership. He is a 30-year-old suicide/abuse survivor, TEDx speaker, Billboard-charting musician, mental health and sobriety advocate, and the Founder & CEO of Cope Notes®, a text-based mental health platform that provides daily support to users in nearly 100 countries around the world.

But in the years leading up to these incredible leaps in advocacy, every day was a battle against schizophrenic hallucinations and suicidal ideation. After a lifetime of resisting professional care and shying away from sharing his story, Johnny’s curiosity flowered, and the healing slowly began.

Armed with 10+ years of clinical treatment, a psychology degree from the University of Central Florida, and a decade of peer support and public advocacy through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Johnny created Cope Notes in 2018. The award-winning startup continues to gain worldwide attention and adoption for its innovative approach to helping people of all walks of life build mental wellness on a daily basis.

Since his first keynote in 2011, Johnny’s refreshingly vulnerable and candid perspective has attracted praise from hundreds of outlets, including Upworthy, CNN, and Forbes.

With authenticity, well-placed humor, and unconventional wit, Johnny draws on his own experiences to provide hopeful and proven insights into building greater mental health and a deeper connection with those around us.

Most recently, Johnny earned his CRPS certification (Certified Recovery Peer Specialist) in the fall of 2022.

Beyond Coping: How to Foster Resilience, Connection, and Happiness in the Workplace

Crippling burnout. Chronic absenteeism. Rampant resignations. The multi-headed monster of compassion fatigue, longer working days, and employee isolation are damming up the rivers of productivity at thousands of companies. Employers are concerned—and rightfully so.

Leveraging insights from his own lifelong mental health journey, Johnny Crowder shows audiences why talking about mental health should be as straightforward as talking about physical health, even in the workplace. In plain English, he shares the hard-won strategies for emotional wellbeing that led to the creation of his science-backed breakthrough mental and emotional support program, Cope Notes, which is now in use in nearly 100 countries around the world. This entertaining and actionable keynote program delivers proven steps to:

• Rethink and reframe professional and personal challenges as they arise
• Build work cultures that proudly prioritize and support mental health for all
• Process mental and emotional distress in a way that builds relationships, confidence, and happiness

Radical Vulnerability: An Unconventionally Candid Conversation about Building Mental Wellness

Play it cool. Keep it together. Don’t let ‘em see you sweat. As CEO of the global mental health company Cope Notes, Johnny Crowder knows how it feels to bury emotional health challenges for the sake of maintaining a “professional” image in the face of watchful employees and a discerning marketplace. After all, that’s what a leader should do, right?

In fact, keeping up the “everything is fine” charade didn’t help or protect him. As researchers now know, emotional resilience requires vulnerability. But self-judgment and shame keep people from developing the authenticity they need to confront pain, learn self-acceptance, and practice better self-care. In this fun and engaging presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Leverage past hardships for the benefit of others
• Work toward being truthful and authentic in even the most challenging situations
• Process mental and emotional distress in a way that builds relationships, confidence, and happiness

The Surprising Productivity of Self-Care: Using Mindfulness to Combat Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

48% of the U.S. workforce struggles with compassion fatigue. The result? Burnout, absenteeism, mental and emotional distress, poor sleep, unhealthy diets, reliance on dangerous coping mechanisms, and sky-high turnover, particularly in caring professions.

Empathetic and compassionate people are invaluable on any team. But when compassion makes it feel as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders, genuine empathy can devolve into unhappiness, unproductivity, and an inability to help the very people you care about in the first place. Mindfulness is one of the simplest and most practical tools for self-care, and Johnny shows audiences how to gradually make it an important part of anyone’s daily routine. Your audience will learn how to:

• Identify the sources and symptoms of compassion fatigue
• Rethink the assumptions that trigger impostor syndrome and guilt
• Implement self-care strategies that drive a renewed sense of energy and purpose in the workplace and beyond

Lessons From the Accidental Entrepreneur: Unlocking the Key Mindsets Behind Success in Any Business

By embarking on any entrepreneurial journey, you are likely signing up to fail – at least, that’s what the statistics say. So what do you actually need to succeed? Outside capital? Industry know-how? Friends in high places? If that were the case, today’s Fortune 100 companies wouldn’t tout garage-to-NASDAQ stories that inspire scrappy self-starters to pursue innovative new ideas.

Johnny Crowder built a global mental health company without a business degree, a business plan, or even a desire to build a business in the first place. So how did Cope Notes® become a worldwide force for good? In this relatable and tactical presentation, Johnny peels back the startup veil to teach your audience how to:

• Differentiate between the nice-to-haves and the essentials for a successful venture
• Identify and foster the types of mental strength that entrepreneurship demands

Discover and apply self-care, focus, and resilience strategies that build stamina and long-term success