Starting a business that helps people feel good
Kirissa and I went to Radhaus for beers and brats after work yesterday. We talked about starting a business focused on healing and community. I recorded the conversation using Otter. Here's the transcript:
What's a change you would want to create in the world via a business?
Cole: Let’s talk about the business we would start. What’s a change you would want to create in the world via a business?
Kirissa: Accessible healing modalities for a generation of women that are underrepresented and also fed up with the mainstream type of trendy healing.
Cole: What is the mainstream, trendy type of healing?
Kirissa: The stuff you see on Instagram, like influencers who say “manifest” but haven’t really done any of the soul work or healing that is necessary for actual spiritual revolution.
Kirissa: And to fund and provide a space and resources for what I believe will be the next generation of humans, evolved humans, evolved human consciousness.
Cole: As opposed to the basic healing modalities that don't really spur spiritual evolution, what healing modalities are you imagining?
Kirissa: Energy healing, inner-child healing, trauma-informed healing, mindfulness, meditation. I feel like this generation of Gen Z is obsessed with feeling better because nobody understands or is as connected to healing as they want to be because we’re inundated with things that want us to feel the opposite, like constant scrolling or content-heavy mediums. Like nobody really reads anymore. We're like lost in a way. And I think mindfulness and healing and getting back to yourself is going to be what our next generation needs to survive. So I want to cultivate the space for it, the dialogue for it, the awareness of it, by way of content, safe spaces, retreats, and community.
Kirissa: I think my work is definitely going to have a really strong community component. I think that's what people want, that's what they crave.
Cole: Two of the major themes I'm hearing are healing and community. What do you think would be the business that would maximize the amount of healing and community we can bring to the global population? What do you wish existed that you could participate in, in order to be part of communities and heal?
Kirissa: Do you have any ideas?
Cole: I agree with the premise, which is that Gen Z wants to feel good. And the current ways that Gen Z is trying to feel good aren't really serving them. Scrolling, consuming content, social media, TikTok.
Cole: You also mentioned spiritual revolution. I feel that business is one of the best ways to get things done in the modern world, for better or worse. So we're trying to package this societal change in a business. In order for this business to really grow, it needs to make money. And in the current U.S., venture capital, tech-obsessed world, we needed to attract VC interest. So I'm thinking, we have our actual purpose, but how can we pack that in a business VC-funded model?
Business models for healing and community
Cole: One model would be a platform to connect individuals to healing. I'm not sure that you and I believe that all the healers who would want to be on the platform are healers we necessarily think are aligned with what we think is going to be good. So that's an immediate problem with the healer connector platform. But you can imagine the business model—you log in, you search for what you want (mindfulness, Reiki, yoga, whatever) and you get a list of all the practitioners.
Cole: But just connecting with healers is not quite good enough. It’s not very prescriptive. People think: “I don't know what I want to do. I just want to feel good. But how do I do that? What do I need?” So we need a model that's more prescriptive. So maybe there's an intake form, maybe there's a survey, and you fill it out with what you’re experiencing.
Cole: Also, I think another system that's really broken is therapy. Everybody wants therapy right now. I'm looking for a therapist myself and I tried to look on my health insurance website and there’s no way to determine which therapist is going to be good for me, whether they're going to be a fit, whether they're actually a good therapist or not, whether they're going to give me therapy in a very like scientific, sterile way or in like a mindful, meditation, Buddhist way. I've heard of stuff like Talkspace and other online therapy options, but I don't want to do therapy online. I want to do therapy in person.
Cole: So what would a service look like where you fill out the intake form and then the service is extremely prescriptive about what you need to do in order to feel good? It's what the healthcare industry should be. And it's totally not. Because you only go to a doctor when you have an ailment. There's a place for Western medicine—surgery, pharmaceuticals—you need these things sometimes when you're really sick. But if you're just kind of generally feeling bad and you want to feel better with modalities like therapy, yoga, meditation, energy work, bodywork—where do you go? What if there was a website where you can just type in a URL, answer some questions, and it takes care of the rest in terms of prescribing you a plan, giving you things that you can do on your own with content and instructional guides and helpful videos, and also connecting you with healing professionals if that's what you want.
Kirissa: Like Modern Health?
Cole: What does Modern Health do?
Kirissa: If you're a subscriber, you can book treatments with mental health professionals. And you also get these wellness checks—you answer the questions, and it'll show you where you are on the mental health scale. And then you also have access to mini-meditations. Like daily prompts or like here's a little simple thing you can do to get over fear or here’s something you can do to regulate your sleep. And it's just like a subscription to updates and modules based on how you improve your own wellness, and you can do it on your own.
Cole: Do you feel like it actually helps you?
Kirissa: It does help to give me lia quick reminder, like it has what they call a pause. "Hey, here's your daily pause of the day." And then that's it. So yeah, I mean, it's helpful.
Cole: How do you like the interface? Is there an app?
Kirissa: There’s an app. There’s a website.
Cole: What if we made the app more like Duolingo? Duolingo is super addicting in terms of like, incentivizing you to keep going.
Kirissa: Yeah, but how do you infuse the community aspect?
Cole: Great question. Okay, so we agree that community is part of feeling good. Meetup is one of the apps that claims to get you into communities. So how do you build an app or a service or a website that connects you with authentic communities?
Authentic relating
Cole: There's something I've been doing recently called authentic relating. It’s a specific way of getting to know other people that's very non-intimidating. You feel like you can show up and the facilitator is going to be responsible for making you feel involved and helping to facilitate your interactions with the other people who are there. So how can we use the principles of authentic relating to create community interactions where people don't feel pressure, they don't feel judged? They feel like they can be their authentic selves.
Kirissa: I like that. Yeah, like what does accessible authentic relation look like in app form or on a platform?
Kirissa: There used to be this tool that matched you up with another person and you have to have coffee with them. The goal was for you to actually get to know people. You sign up and then the app auto-assigns you meetings with other people.
Cole: There's a service called Donut. And Donut connects you randomly with other people in your company. And you can fill out a survey of your interests. But still, these meetings are very awkward. You show up, but somebody has to take the lead.
Kirissa: So how do you improve on that? How does that look in an authentic relating type of scenario?
Cole: Is it even possible to do that on Zoom? Or do you really need to be in person, in a certain type of environment?
Does it need to be in-person?
Kirissa: I think it should be in person. And I think because of COVID we are craving in person, more people are hungry for in-person experiences, getting rid of that extra layer.
Kirissa: That's where it becomes hyperlocal. Is it too much to have physical locations that are associated with the platform? Like maybe there are certain hubs. Like New York has Soho House, for example. In San Francisco, there was The Wing and The Assembly before the pandemic. But those business models didn't seem to be successful.
Cole: So we think that these community authentic relating interactions need to be in person. One of the first things we would do is get a space in a city like San Francisco where we could test the model of how people show up.
Kirissa: I personally feel like physical space is very important for connection and community.
Cole: Maybe we lean into a partnership with the authentic relating movement. There are a lot of great authentic relating facilitators who could facilitate at our location.
Cole: I’m imagining the location will have Middle Eastern rug, sit on the floor, tea house vibes. It’s a center for healing. It’s not just the authentic relating. It’s a collective of wellness practitioners. A place where people can come to get all sorts of different healing modalities. There's a place in Denver that does this as well. It’s called Nurture.
Cole: People can come without a feeling of any judgment at all. Their experience right when they walk in the door is very welcoming. Even at The Center, they don't do this well. You walk in and you have to find your own way. What if you walk in and your hand is held immediately?
Kirissa: Very white glove. Concierge.
Money
Cole: If we make it white glove, we probably have to target high-earners.
Cole: There are two paths forward. So one path is we do it on our own, which is going to be really hard because that involves putting money down for a lease for a place on our own. Any expenses are going to be on us. We build the business from scratch with our own money. The other route is we go VC, which has its own troubles because if we get into a place where we believe in the purpose of the business, but it’s not going to be maximizing profits, investors might put pressure on us to make the most money, no matter what.
Kirissa: How much money do we need?
Cole: I don’t know. How much do you think The Center rents for? Probably $40,000 or $50,000 per year?
Cole: We can also just plan one-off events at existing spaces like The Center, but then we have less control over the vibes.
Next steps
Cole: I think the first step is building a community. We need to start putting out content and hosting ad hoc events. It's a community we want anyway. There's no risk to this because it’s what we want anyway in our personal lives.
Kirissa: Figuring out what people want, what people need.
Cole: We can spin up a website and start to generate content. What is manifestation? How to meditate. What is authentic relating? When we have good SEO traffic, then we can launch an online community on Discord or Slack and invite people who have subscribed or viewed the website to join the community.
Cole: The end goal is something that makes people feel good. In order to achieve that at scale, we’ll have to either get investments or invest our own capital, to either start a business on our own or to launch a VC-backed startup. Before that, our immediate action items are starting a community and creating content. From this community and content, we’ll be able to do a lot of discovery: What’s going to make you feel good? What service doesn’t exist in the world that you would want?