We were lucky to catch up with Amber Miller recently and have shared our conversation below.
Amber, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
I’ve been a nurse for almost 5 years now. I’ve been in the medical field for about 15 years total. My career changed when I was 23. I was struggling with my own mental health and I attempted suicide. My mom called me just before I was going to finalize the attempt. I picked up the phone and I told her everything. It saved my life, but it didn’t stop the severe depression. This occurred at the end of September. The next day, I went into a store and bought Halloween socks because they made me smile. A few days into October, I realized I’d worn a different pair of socks every day for that month. I made that a goal, to wear a different pair of funky socks, (colorful, interesting designs, crew length or above), every day for the month of October. I didn’t realize that I was coping with my depression at the time. It got me through October because it gave me something small to look forward to. In November, I planned a large Thanksgiving meal for my clients, and the day after Thanksgiving I moved home. I received therapy for my depression and I got through that dark period of my life. A few years later, I faced another obstacle in life when a loved one struggled with addiction. I decided my story might help someone else and I started handing out socks with my story. This was the beginning of Socktober, the non-profit company I started to help bring the issue of mental health to light and to prevent as many suicides as possible. I work in mental health as well and have a lot of joy from my career.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I said I’d never be a nurse. My mom told me when I was young I’d be great at it, and I told her I’d never do it. I thought nursing was disgusting. When I was pretty young, I worked for an independent supported living home for people with disabilities. I was quickly humbled because I realized if someone didn’t help these folks, they wouldn’t be cared for. I got over the “gross” of my job and am now one of the first people to get their hands dirty if someone needs something. Socktober is an organization I created that is dedicated to meeting people where they are. We hand out socks in the month of October to everyone we can with a message promoting mental wellness, encouraging people to find something small to look forward to, and providing the number for the suicide hotline. Additionally, we have started handing out “blessing bags” with essential items (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shower wipes, food, etc) to the homeless with a list of local resources in hopes of connecting these individuals with mental health services. Our organization is growing. I remember a few years ago when this was just an “odd duck” thing we did and I was sticking them on windshields and handing them at random to people in stores. Now we have events and people come to us. We have a large community support. I was told by our local shelter that several individual asked them to help them get connecting with mental health services last year. That’s huge for us! Saving even one life would make our mission worth it!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I think that being personable and approachable has helped build our reputation. We go out in the community and promote mental wellness, but we embody it too. We show up with smiles on our faces, kindness and understanding in our eyes and remain nonjudgmental to those telling their stories. It’s so inspiring because people do tell us their own personal backgrounds with depression, and we see those folks showing up for us when there are events. We get such a huge response from people about our message and we hear that it’s needed and that it’s important. That support helps us keep going! We see what it means to those around us!
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
For us I think the most effective strategy has been getting out in the community and participating in whatever we can to help others within the community. We talk about our business, hand out socks, and we hand out merch as much as possible. We have little keychains that have our QR code for the Facebook page on them, and people usually like getting those. Our first event was pretty big for us. We had a silent auction, live music, and a table with merch and a donation bin and people were interested in what we were doing. It was really awesome!
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