Tech, The Metaverse and Mental Happiness with Tamar Blue

can like schedule time with me. I ask them, you know, what is it that they're experiencing, So we're I'm constantly like looking at the product from their perspective. I'm Will Lucas and this is black tech, green money. I'm gonna answer you. This you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black, in building, or simply using tech to secure your back.

Its podcast is for you Tomorrow. Blewest, founder and CEO at Mental Happy, a mental health platform which helps individuals overcome challenging why events via professionally led peer support groups. The start up recently came through White Combinator, arguably the most admired startup accelerator. It's mental health month, and historically mental health was not a conversation in our community. And I do the opposite of a conversation a stigma, a

reflection of weakness. So I asked tomorrow, can she talk about how at least the conversation that's changed in our community and what might be behind the openness to have the discussion about mental health. Yeah, that's that's a very great question. We started Mental Happy six years ago and it doesn't sound like a long time, but I feel

like progress mental health is made. It feels like twenty years in the six years, because it just it wasn't a thing, and it definitely wasn't a thing about amongst people of color. I have a Caribbean background, my co founder UM is from you know, Ghana, West Africa, and we were the ones kind of pushing the charge like in our families and our friend friend groups to talk about it UM, especially like amongst even men right men

of color. It wasn't a conversation. And I think now the reason why it is becoming UM such a hot topic. I think people are just worn out. We're just we're just worn We're fed up with everything that is happening in society. I mean you have work stressors, you have life stressors, you have um just really horrific things that are seeing UM and experience collectively through social media online.

And I think we're just as a society just at our absolute breaking point mentally and emotionally, UM and and we want real solutions for ourselves and for our loved ones. What's important is that you have faith in people that they're basically good and smart and if you give them the tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. And how does technology fit in the scope of you know, helping

people both protect their mental health and repair their mental health. Yeah, we we battle with that being a tech company to write because we're a platform that brings people together. But we're not necessarily bringing people together to just you know, do a dance or you know something else that could be healing to the soul. Right, But we're just not that platform. UM and I do believe that we are a tool. But I agree with him and that we are nothing without the providers on the platform who want

to share their expertise. Were nothing without the survivors. Even on the platform, you don't have to just be a licensed professional to really help facilitate these groups. So it's a tool that we entrust in people who have experiences, who have expertise, and just who really have a heart to do this type of work. So did I hear you know this internal battle that you you battle being a tech company? Did I hear that in your voice?

Just now? Yeah? Yeah, you know it's you don't you don't want people to to to to you don't want to heal, right, Like as a healer, you just that means people need to be sick in order for you to exist as a healer. Like it's it doesn't feel good. I don't feel good knowing that a problem needs to exist in order, um for me to like keep solving. So I I internally battle with that a lot. Um. And yeah, as a as a tech company, UM, we're always thinking about like are we truly solving something? And

how do we keep people safe? You know? Um, when we started Mental Happy, we had over a hundred thousand people in a Facebook group that we were running these peer support groups through and it was tough, Like it was tough to keep people safe from trolling and and bullying and things of that nature. So we're always top of mind of like how impactful, Um, is our work and is it is it adding any value versus like creating one more thing that people have to like log

onto and manage and things of that nature. So I've read a story, Um, another interview you were on and you were talking about how the company started and you started like giving away or maybe not giving away, but you know, distributing like actual product or maybe it was care packages or whatever it was. And I'm hearing you talk about now like you're a healer and you know you started it with a Facebook group. But I imagine

and I'm going to speak. I don't want to speak for you, but I'm gonna I'm gonna say what I'm assuming is happening, and then I want you to give me clarity if you could. And so what I'm hearing is that you know you want to do the good work, but you might recognize that there has to be a market opportunity in order to do that work more fully and scale impact. Is that what I'm hearing you nailed it? So, Uh, giving is a is a good word. Um, It's accurate.

We started off really creating these uh we call them wellness kids at the time, and we did give them away and we gave him away to just a few people that we had admired, and only the few people at the time. Um, in the in the text stas and just people of color talking about mental health. They shared it on their social media. Um, so social media can be good. I'm not saying it's bad. But they shared it on their social media, and the product immediately

just went viral. Like we had people requesting to buy a product that we didn't actually even have at the time. We just made a few batches of this thing, and uh, my co founder looked at me and was like, well, I guess you know this is a business. We have to do this now. And so the product has evolved from us doing these wellness kids selling them to consumers who were gifting it to like friends, family member. We always get asked what's in the wellness What was in

the wellness kids? At the time, it was a long time ago, so I'm gonna try to remember, but um, it was just a way to At the time, there was like this box craves right, like everything was a subscription box, and um, I just kind of joked with my co founder like, you know, there should be a box that you know, there were all these like beauty kit boxes, like there should be a box to help you, um,

you know, focus on the beauty on the inside. So when we made these wellness kids, they had things like meaningful journals, but we also broke down like how to journal right, Like, remember, we're talking to a group of

people who don't know what these tools are. And UM, I just kind of collectively took all my experience that I learned from therapy, you know, practicing gratitude, practicing mindfulness, like how to journal, UM, using positive affirmation, ends and UM, positive self talk and thinks just so were we took physical products that represented those things and UM we put them in this kit and the kid kind of walked everyone through how to UM A self care or what

it's known professionally is is self activation self management UM. And people really loved it, and we started doing that back in two UM. It was a wonderful product. We actually got accepted into a y combinator because of it. We grew to selling it to very large corporations that had you know, thousands, like five thousands about employees that they were purchasing the kids for and and giving them to.

And those always had a significant life event UM. But you know, just being obsessed with the work that we're doing, we just kept on thinking, like how do we reach more people? Like how do we you know, sell a product that's you know, even less in expense and less in uh um roadblocks and shipping and you know, just all of this stuff and like what if you speak another language, like how do we reach more people? Um?

And that's how we made the transition from that physical product to UM the SaaS platform that we have that we have. Now, did you go into this thinking you were going to have to build something that scales or did when you started doing the wellness kits so care packages? Was that idea what we were going to do? Now? You know, I'm a big believer that you know, you can't get from here to there. You can only get

from like right here to like right there. You know, just like these small, these small steps right because there to they're just feels like a big jump and you probably wouldn't do it because it feels too big. But at the time, we were just focused on the here.

And then when we were focused on the here and then more things started showing up, more things started showing up, and someone introduced us to y Combinator and we were like, Okay, well you know, we'll we'll try to apply and see if we can if we can be this physical product company getting into this huge tech company, right um or this huge tech accelerator that has spawned all these great tech companies. So UM, it just really kept on snowballing. What do you think it was that it gets a

Y combinators attention and what you were doing. Then I get what you're doing now why they would be interested. But if you were them, you know six years ago he said, or when or whenever that you know period of time was what was it about what you were building in your from your perspective that says to them, this is interesting? Yeah? You know, UM, if I had to look at it from their perspective, not putting words in their mouths, but their perspective is that, um, you

know it. I think a lot of people have really great ideas. It's another thing to um figure out you're going to bring that idea into fruition on Zorow resources, like I started Mental Happy with like literally the last two hundred and fifty dollars I had on my American Express card. So um, and then we had to kind of figure out, like, how are we going to get

money for the product from there? Um? And I think that what they find interests in founders is founders who are people who seem relentless and seem like they're not going to give up no matter what the obstacles. Um. And then also people who say like I've built this product, like I've built this company, and you should give me money to make it expand versus people coming and saying, oh, I have all of these ideas, you should give me

money and let me figure out my idea. And and we we already had a business, um, we were selling to you know, really top companies in the country UM and and hospitals and so it was just kind of, I guess a no brainer for them at that point.

And then when you think of our perspective, right, um, as people of color, like we're so resilient as a people, Like we were coming to y Combinator, no IVY league background, no parent connections, no, um, you know, our family helped us raise a hundred thousand dollars for our friends and family around. They probably looked at us like, who who left the door open to let these people walk in here? You know, like who left the window open? Like, how

did you guys sneak in here? Because that's, honest to god, how I felt like, I felt like we snuck our way through. But um, we overcame a lot of ospitles to talk about that, because I've talked to somebody before who went through y C. And you know, you're a black woman and you're interesting, you're building something for mental health, and you're also in the same room with guys who are trying to implant your brain into somebody else's body, Like how does it how does it feel to be

in that space? Yeah? Yeah, you know, Um, I just truthfully, I didn't know much about why comedy are going in. I know, when they see this video, they're gonna laugh, But I didn't know much about why comedy are going in, So I had like zero intimidation on like who they were,

you know what. It was only until like I had gotten to the interview that I realized, oh my goodness, they spun up Airbnb, they spun up like door Dash and Stripe and just like all these companies, And it just kind of felt a little overwhelming in the interview. But um, I really think for for me, personally. I

don't know about my my co founder. At the time, it just kind of felt like validation, Like I felt like I had been doing all these things all my life and for the first time, you know, aside from color, aside from you know, being a woman, someone was just saying you were you're a bright, smart human being UM and and we're not. We don't get that privilege ever or at all as people of color to just be

smart human beings. You know. I love that often all too often technology can be the vehicle that things that want to attack our mental health right in and can you talk about how technology can be helpful to positive mental health? What we battle with right is like how especially on our platform with Mental Happy, we talk amongst ourselves all the time like how much of outside influence should we allow on the platform within the peer support groups.

So one of the things that we mindfully do is that we don't allow other social media links to be shared on the platform. Will allow like video hosting links UM, so like the YouTube's the videos, because that's a medium for like sharing education and information at UM. News articles and social articles we don't allow on the platform. UM. We also are mindful about not allowing uh direct messaging like gams. So social media isn't bad, it's just taking it,

just taking the best parts of it right. Like social media is great in that I wouldn't know what's happening out in Ukraine if it was like sometimes the truth, right, like the real videos of what's happening out and from like a perspective of someone who's you know, eighteen or sixteen who has to fight a war, or parents who have to be separated from their children. UM. So there there is a lot of valid information that can come

from social media. I think what we've done UM, at least I hope what we're continuing to do is really taking the best parts of what makes UM a digital platform and technology meaningful for human beings and taking out UM or leaving out some of the harmful parts. You know. I say this and some people might, you know, raising eyebrows. I'm like, I don't watch the news. I don't read a lot of news. I'm very mindful of, you know, my own mental health, because I could find myself I

can say I'm just watching news. I haven't watching news maybe nightline or whatever in a long time, or it might be interesting. Let me watch and then I find myself like having trouble going to sleep that night or the next day, being anxious or and I'm like, why am I so anxious? And I didn't realize that that gateway just watching a news program where it's you know, good news and bad news, but you don't realize what

it's doing to you. And I wonder, what are some other maybe unknown drivers that may have that may be mainstream, may be pervasive, that we may not recognize as inputs of negative you know, inspiration to bad mental health. Yeah, yeah, you know, um, just taking it off. I'm completely here. You'm the same way, and UM, you know, I think the feedback people would give people like you and me is that, well, how do you stay on top of what's happening in the world, Like how are you? Um?

You know, you can be an impactful human being if you know what's happening and you can't know what's happening, But you know, I don't have to listen to hours and hours or watch hours and hours of the news, or have that be like the first thing that pops up on my phone, like whether it's a shooting, a bombing, and then that's like the piece of canet. I watched people and I sitting next to people and they have their phone and like news alerts will go off all

day long. Yeah yeah, right right, right, yeah, a hundred percent, just like I don't know, I just I couldn't And then you become it's like watching a car accident, like you just you can't look away, you know, you want to know the developing thing, and the next developing thing,

next the heloping thing. So UM, you know, I take it as sound bites UM and I limited, but I think the other way that people can be mindful of, like what they're digesting with their ears, UM and their spirit right is engaging in UM conversations with people that that may be negative. Uh. The hardest thing to do

in that is disengaging from those conversations with family members. UM. We often here on the platform and there are a lot of groups that are around, like you know, dealing with like narcissism and your family, dealing with like toxic

people in your family. So I think making that that disconnect with news is oftentimes like having to do it with the closest people around you UM and just saying respectfully, like you know, hey, my boundary is that I've I've had enough, UM or my boundary is I'm not emotionally in a space to really process this or talk about

it now or even ever. And that's okay too. So we're having this whole conversation about Web three and particularly the metaverse, and you've probably been at least around a bunch of conversations around the metaverse and Ready Player one. I don't know if you've ever read the book or seen the movie Ready Player one, but it was my favorite book. UM. But it kind of describes, you know, vividly,

what the metaverse could look like one day. But when you hear things like the metaphors being described and people potentially one day spending a lot of time in this virtual world, what does that make you think about? You know, regarding your position as a healer and you know, a mental health advocate, yeah that you know. Don't get me wrong, I think cool things should exist in tech, UM, I really do. UM. I think we've made a lot of technological advancements, and it only makes sense that we start

imagining worlds in places are fun or interesting. UM really allow us to tap into UM. Escapism isn't a bad thing. Distraction is actually a really good mental health tool. You know, sometimes if you're experiencing moments of very high anxiety, kind of distracting yourself from that trigger works. But I do have some concerns that UM, you know, we might be really really really disconnecting UM from people and and relationships

in a meaningful ful way. I could be very wrong, you know, I'd like to think I have a crystal ball, but I probably you know, not a dent accurate all the time, but it is caused for alarm, especially for like younger kids that are UM trying to make sense of their physical world around them. So there was this um a tweet I saw where this guy was talking about,

you know, we already live in the metaverse. And his description was, most of so many things we care about, and so much of our lives is happening through virtual world, whether that be Twitter or our Instagram, which is you know, photoshopped in so many ways, filters and all these things with TikTok, and so we care the things that we value are the likes and the shares and the retweets and the reshares, all those things. And so he was

saying that we already live in the metaverse. When the things that we do all day are in this virtual world the Internet. Now, what do you say to that sort of take if you will? Yeah, Um, I see his point, and I think I think no matter what you create in technology, because I sometimes you'll build a feature and then people take that feature to a whole

another you know, I mean Instagram wash you know. It allows you to share your experiences, allows you to share where you've been through like video and photos and stuff. But human beings, once they touch your technology, they just kind of take it to a whole another level, for good or bad. Right, Um. But I would not completely

agree that we live in a metaverse. I mean, these products were come they came together with people in a physical space that we understand it, right, Um, a physical space, and they collaborated together and they continue to collaborate together. The the images and photos that are shared in this metaverse are of of a real, concrete time in place, right Like if I post a picture of my family, yet it's out on the Internet, but we were, you know,

on solid ground at the time that we took the picture. Um, So I I don't totally agree. I'm not saying the metaverse shouldn't exist. I'm just saying, you know, if if it is what it is, that's fine, but let's try to um digest it in a in a different way than than we have been digesting a lot of the

digital things that are out there. You know, you raised a million dollars last outlook, it might be more now, but you raise a million dollars for this, and you talked a little bit about, you know, the technology not necessarily wanting to embrace or seeing the need to embrace being a technology company. But you you went through y C and so there's obviously market opportunity for being a healer in so many respects. I understand that it's needed and necessary, and it's you know, good work. It's um

necessary work, UM, and it's purposeful work, you know. But when you think about market opportunity, when people are investing money into your thing, what is it that you know? How does that strike you as somebody who just wants to really help people? And I'm not saying you just want to help people. You want to live a good life too, I imagine, But how do you reconcile those two things? Yeah, I am, I guess I never thought

of them as separate things. Um, you know, the best thing I've I've heard at y C was, you know, just just build a product that people desperately want. You know, investors will follow suit. UM. Customers will follow suit too, But sometimes it takes a little pushing customers if it's something very new, right, UM, people didn't automatically want the automobile from going from a horse and buggy UM. But I you know, I like to think that I am a product CEO UM. I talked to customers on a

weekly basis. UM. I have like an open calendar where you know, customers can like schedule time with me, ask them, you know, what is it that they're experiencing on both ends, right, the group members and the providers themselves. So we're I'm constantly like looking at the product from their perspective, and when you when you're building something that you're passionate about, yet there is some like investors want to see this,

investors want to see that. But I think we've I think we've grown up enough as a company to just be like, you know, we know what our customers want from us. UM. We know where the market opportunity lies in terms of you know, currently in the market, there are only about thirty or thirty one licensed professionals per every hundred thousand people in the United States. UM. So if we all decided in which we are collectively, we're all starting to decide that we want to seek out therapy.

They just don't have the human power to deal with. Like I think the head of the a p A called this tsunami level demand, like the swell is just that much UM. And we we spend a product that allows these peer support groups to be either their soul practice in running peer support groups or an extension of their practice. And I think knowing the market, knowing where the pain point is is really what makes us very appealing UM to investors because UM, we do have the

proof points. We have UM since we started, since we launched it, UH this particular product like eight months ago, we have thousands of people enjoying over fifty these UH specialized groups that are unique to life events. You know, They're not just I have anxiety or I have you know, depression, And we we get to like the core what people want to talk about, which is you know, their life stuff. I went through a divorce, you know, I was diagnosed with this illness or you know, I'm taking care of

my partner and I'm now I'm a caregiver. I didn't expect to be married and be a caregiver. I'm taking care of an elderly parent UM or I'm adopted UM, and I'm just kind of unpacking that as an adult. So these are we have like over forty seven different

life event related categories. And I think understanding your customers, understanding your market UM, and really knowing how you'd use these people's money and telling them specifically how you know how we're going to use your money to grow to be this UM you know, to be this global provider is really UM is really what gets them to believe in you. And if and if that doesn't align, which more often than not, you're going to hear a lot of nose from investors UM. And that's okay. UM. We

are allowing people to invest in Mental Happy via start Engine. Yeah. UM we did a We did a stock a common stock ground which means people have like real equity stake in the company UM two years ago and we're bringing it back UM before we do our series A, just like one last time, letting micro investors invest in Mental Happy before we kind of only take on big investors in the in the check amounts are too high for people to thank. The minimum is uh. I've seen some

people go through this well. Isaac Hayes went through this. Dawn Thixon told, so we just go to start engine dot com and search for Mental Happy and start engine dot com and the minimum the minimum is five to invest, So you know, just a couple hundred dollars and you can be a real investor and have um a steak in in Mental Happy. You get real investor updates, you

really get treated like an investor. UM. You know, we don't treat you like second class citizens just because you know the amount isn't five hundred thousand dollars um like other investors. But UM, it's it's a really great opportunity that's near and dear to me because financial freedom is something I was taught about a lot as a kid from my mom, like owning a home, owning stocks and things of that nature. So UM, and she worked for a company that provided their employees with common stocks and

things of that nature. So it just feels really great to be able to extend, you know, this opportunity through start Engine for people who want to invest in pre I p O opportunities, which there aren't a lot of, especially a people of color, there aren't a lot of. UM. I read in an interview you did that, you know, like the sheltering place orders we were under as a country, UM and in many places in the world UM two years ago. How it impacted the demand for your offering? UM.

Can you talk about having great timing? UM? How you may see indicators in the market that the market is moving towards you in general terms, So it's not if I'm not building a mental health company, how to recognize indicators that the market is moving towards your offering? And then you know, if you were to embrace web three, what it might look like for what you're building. Yeah so web three? Yeah, you know, so Web three. I haven't. I haven't really UM gotten to the place of UM

thinking that through, so you know, full disclosure. I see the conversations that even like other social platforms are having about it, Like I think the former CEO of like Twitter, Jackie, made some comments about it. It's one of you know, it's like one of those inevitable things like I think digital wallets and all those things are going to change

as well, I don't. I don't think my I don't think my kids are gonna have they have bank accounts now, but I don't think they're gonna, you know, need a physical bank account even by the time they're five, right. Um. So so it is something to kind of like get ahead of and think about. But in terms of like, um, the other pieces of like what we're pulling together, um, with the technology and how it's it's going to change, it's something that we just we just try to stay

on top of and be mindful of. And the only way I could like really best answer that question is just really kind of getting out in front of customers and and putting some type of product that looks like that in front of them and stuffing out like, Okay, is this useful? Is it not useful in terms of like market indicator. UM, I'm just you know, I meditate every day, so I try to like ground myself and

see what feels internally true to me. Um. And we started doing this six years ago, and that's what felt true to me. And pivoting to software. UM, I'm not gonna lie to you, it was you know, I think we've me in particular. I think I've done a good job of proving everyone wrong with the product. UM. We've raised more money with this UM, with this as product than we did the physical product. UM, we have more

users and more followers, we have more partnerships. And with the physical product, every want to saying, no, it's going so well, you should just you know, keep forging forward and doing that. And I was just like, no, I just I really feel like, UM, the ties are changing and we should UM change with that. And then boom,

like the shutdowns happened. The lockdowns happened all kinds of like supply chain issues, like if we if we would have stayed a physical product, like everybody wanted me to, like even my co founder some investors, UM, we would have been kind of stuck, you know, we we probably would have forcibly, UM had to pivot versus having the forethought to pivot. And so I want to end here.

I'm gonna ask you for some advice. Was you know a lot of our even me, I'm an entrepreneur outside of you know, learning the podcast and afro teching, etcetera. And I was thinking about this yesterday and the ill wake up to a hundred emails that I actually have to respond to. I have a whole different email account that the spam those too, but the emails that are in my inbox I actually have to do something about, right. And then you're out in the world and inputs are coming.

All the people want demanding your time, and then responsibilities that you have to take care of. And I realized, if I don't take the time to write these things down, write the things down that I need to do, then they're all in my head and therefore that anxiety inducing and not just for me, but for the people like that. And so there are a lot the people who listen to this show, either startup founders, the entrepreneurs. They're trying

to build something. Maybe they're doing that internally at another company, or they're trying to build their own thing, but they're doers. There are people who want to do something. So if you could give us some simple things we could do. Mine was just just writing keeping your list to do list, like actual written one, because my notes one wasn't really satiating my need for decompressing. So an actual piece of

paper and a pen that helped me. But if you could give us some simple things that these listeners can do these viewers also, um, to help protect their mental health. Yeah, that's that's a good So I am uh. I am cursive handwriting years old. UM. I only recently learned. I only recently learned. It's not taught in school anymore. UM. I guess it makes sense. But I am that old um where we had to learn how to write in cursive.

So I'm a pen and paper person to even when I sketch out products and I do wire frames for the company. I know there's like a million wonderful wire framing tools out there, but I still uh pen and pad like sketch out a frame I do have because I'm paper conscious. I at least correction, my husband makes me favorite conscious. UM. I do now like a digital writer. And what I love about my digital writer it's called remarkable. UM.

It's a little bit of investment. But when we go like Mabe twenty notebooks a year, UM, I had to cut down the amount of from using UM. But Remarkable feels like paper UM. And it writes like paper. And that's where I take my notes every day. So I empty out my thoughts at night. UM again like you, just so I'm not high anxiety. UM. And in the morning, I'll so empty out um my thoughts, um, and then the other things that I start off in the morning,

um as much as I can is meditation. And honestly, now with my routine and being a new mom, that looks very, very different. I used to luxuriously take, like, you know, forty minutes of meditation and do yoga and all this stuff. But now it's like, you know, ten minutes of meditation and maybe five minutes of yoga stretching because that's all my little one will allow me to do before he wants my attention. UM. So you know,

I definitely deeply believe in meditation. I think even if you're not sure how to meditate, you're not exactly sure if you're doing it right. I think just even taking them all meant in the morning where you're not immediately running to your phone like you buffer, like I'm not going to look at my phone before you know, seven am or eight am or whatever that looks like for

your schedule. And you know, even if you can't clear your mind, you immediately clear your mind by just taking deep breaths in and holding and then deep breaths out, deep breaths in and then deep breaths out slowly and and just the the forcing function of focusing on your breath clears your mind. UM. And I would say the other the other tool that I that I do is if you can if you live in an area, connecting

with nature is so important. And if you live somewhere where it's like hard er, you know, you don't have a lot of nature around you, even something as simple as getting a plant, you know what I mean is is close enough to nature. But I try to um walk outside um as much as I can, because UM, I did suffer from panic attacks in my twenties and those were some of the things that I learned through therapy and then also learning UM what's what's right for me?

To Black Tech Green Money is the production to black of the Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and i Heeart Media, and it's produced by Morgan Dubon and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Love Beach and Marissa Lewis. Special thank you to Michael Davis your main hall, Ivan Necessariano. Learn more about my guests and other tech disruptor to innovators at afro tech dot com and the video version of this episode We'll drop

the Black Tech Green Money on YouTube next week. So tapped and join your Black Tech Green Money. Leave us a five star rating on iTunes, Go get your money, Peace and love, that's what