285 | Mindfully Creating Products that People Really Want with Varshil Patel
Image of a smiling man in black glasses in a blue shirt in a cafe setting. The man is Varshil Patel, CEO of Therapy Notebooks.
Our guest this week on the pod is Varshil Patel. Varshil is the Founder & CEO of Therapy Notebooks, a company that builds tools for change, focused on our mental and emotional health.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Therapy Notebooks and Creating Products that People Really Want - an interview with Varshil Patel
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Varshil Patel
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app that helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Varshil Patel. And our topic is Therapy Notebooks and Creating Products People Really Want. Varshil is the founder and CEO of Therapy Notebooks, a company that builds tools for change focused on our mental health and emotional health. And let me just say full disclosure, I had a 15 year career in community mental health before I got into social entrepreneurship, which I've now been doing about 16 years about equal there. And I am so excited to have you on the show today. barsha. Welcome to the show.
Varshil Patel 01:05
Thanks for having me, Paul. I'm excited to be here.
Paul Zelizer 01:08
Not only is this a big topic in the wider culture, but I was doing some research for our interview and what I was finding and being reminded of that there is a lot of research that mental health issues like anxiety and depression and other mental health diagnoses are over represented in the entrepreneur community, we have a lot of strengths. But this is a place where we have some extra challenge, or at least disproportionately are faced with this as a challenge. So having you here is just so timely, and I'm super excited about it. So before we get into what therapy, no books is, and you know, why you created and how it works, and what mindfulness has to do with creating a product that people really want all super great stuff. She'll give us a little backstory, like if somebody didn't know who is this human, who decided to come into the mental health space in this innovative way. Like what's a little bit about your journey in the realm of your professional identity that somebody would want to know to understand what you're doing now?
Varshil Patel 02:13
Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to think about where to start. I'm actually going to start by I guess, talking about like, a little bit of like, how I got into the mental health space. So I've always like one of the things that I've always like identified with is this belief in people. And what I mean by that is, I think most people are like really capable of so much. As long as they have the right tools and support. I grew up in central New Jersey, I went to a school system that was relatively underfunded, especially compared to some of the schools nearby. And I had wonderful teachers, I had a lot of support from my parents. And I remember when I went to college feeling like, Okay, well, a lot of my classmates didn't get to go to college, or didn't go to the colleges they wanted to go to. And I felt like a lot of the difference there was largely in the support systems that they had, and the information they had access to not necessarily the broad abilities, because I went to college at Penn, you know, like, Okay, this is an elite university like, and people were clearly talented there too. But I just remember being struck by what I felt like was a bit of unfairness around the amount of resources that my college classmates had versus my high school classmates. And so, like, even in my career, like I've always been excited about, like, how do you help elevate and uplift people? Because oftentimes, like there's so much potential there that's being overlooked. And the way that relates to my mental health journey is, I think, as a result of that, I've always been interested in tools for change, like always been interested in always believed that people have the capability to change and to express their potential. And that if you own them with the right tools and support, they'll be able to do that. And so I was after I graduated college, I studied computer science and economics. And I was working at various New York City, only startups. I love that those are really fun. I worked in I was recently worked at a healthcare startup. And I took like, as I was like, sort of working there, like I developed an interest with my co founder Wesley, and working on on the doll startup with the new roommates. We're best friends since freshman year of college, both interested in like why people work the way they do and like how we might be able to help them. And so that led us to trying to start mental health, business and data eventually led to the creation of therapy notebooks.
Paul Zelizer 05:04
And it's fascinating that you started in computer science and landed on an analog mental health product. So I just want to put a pin in the map, we're going to come back to that. But one of the things I think is really important to acknowledge is that over the past several years, we've seen a pretty significant, shall we say, leveling up of the conversation about mental health in the US and around the world? What's your understanding of like, what's happened in the mental health space over the past few years?
Varshil Patel 05:36
Yeah, I think that the degree to which there's been an increase in dialogue has been amazing, and marginally good thing. I guess, from my perspective, having talked to a lot of our customers and met with lots of therapists, and just generally being keeping up with the mental health space, I think it's driven by to two major things. One is that over the last decade, I think people have started to develop this collective awareness that a lot of the ways in which modern society has progressed, hasn't really served the mental health needs of people, right. So like, so much has changed over the past, like many decades, and all that change has led to a world that isn't really easy to be mentally healthy. And I think an example that is the rate at which our minds are now consuming information, right, the amount of information that are consuming on a daily basis relative to what someone like me might think consuming 20 or 30 years ago is dramatically different. But our minds have not changed fast enough to to adapt to that. So I think that's one of the forces is just like there's this huge societal shift that our minds are collectively dealing with and struggling with. And then the second, the sort of, like, second change that's happening is, thanks to media, and thanks to like courageous people that are talking about their experiences. I think that there that the stories that have been shared on TV shows on podcasts, etc, have really enabled people to be like, Wait, like, maybe this is something I struggle with, too. Whereas previously, I think there was an attitude of this is not something I really deal with, or almost a suppression of some of these challenges. And so I think those are like two of the major forces at play that have been led to this, like collective awareness around, okay, mental health is a challenge for almost all of us, and will continue to be as the world can, you know, moves faster and faster every day. Yeah,
Paul Zelizer 07:42
this podcast is only six years old, or about little over six years old. But in the first 100 episodes, maybe one founder shared their personal experience with some mental health challenges. And what I've noticed over the past 100 years, now we're up to 280. Right? So you go back like six years ago, and it was rarely mentioned. But over the past year or so it's almost like every third or fourth issue, there's a personal and I'm not in asking for that there's just been a cultural shift. And that's just one simple example. We have people coming on saying, I go to therapy as a self care tool, when we start talking self care, or, you know, part of my background story, my origin story is this mental health challenge. And that's partially how I wound up into the social impact space that I had some real challenges include. And even in six years, there's been a pretty radical, if you go back and listen our episode, you will hear a very significant difference, even in a space that's talking about addressing challenges. So that was one simple little example, as a way for me to say, I've seen that change myself as well. And it showed up here in our, in our community on this podcast. So you got excited, you did several other startups, as you were mentioning, and then along the way, you put a pin in the map around therapy, and particularly of our show, which I'm really excited about is the accessibility issues in terms of access to quality mental health care, like, talk to us a little about what are some of those accessibility issues? And when you were getting started, like how were you and your co founder and other people involved in the startup conversations of what eventually became therapy notebooks like, what were you all talking about, as it relates to these accessibility issues?
Varshil Patel 09:35
Yeah. When Wesley and I first started testing ideas, we actually started with the notion that we could bring high quality therapy to more people. And this was before the pandemic. So this is in 2019. And we were actually looking at both London in New York City. So we're looking at Bill During a therapy clinic in New York, that was part coffee shop, part therapists office. And the idea there was like, let's make it a more casual, exciting experience rather than something that people felt like was more stigmatized, and you know, had to be this like quiet, like therapy Office experience. And what we learned very quickly in doing that was that, definitely, it's definitely helpful to get more people into into care with a therapist. But there just aren't enough therapists to serve the needs of the US population, and definitely of the global population. So when we were working these on these ideas, we were struck by the numbers around how many therapists are are in the country, and then how many people there are, they're actually looking for adult services. And so we quickly actually shifted our attention board accessibility, which is harder, we get mental health care to as many people as possible. So yeah, first lesson was okay, there aren't enough therapists to go around. The second lesson was that accessibility looks very different for different people. Like, I think there's sometimes the assumption that accessibility means that the product is available to you and affordable to you. But it must also resonate with your experience. And it must also be somewhat enjoyable or easy to use, right? There's like all these factors that go into making something super accessible. And so we changed our frame of reference from, oh, it's available and affordable to it's actually something people want to use and can use. And we've removed most of the areas of friction that are involved in getting someone to engage with the product. And then the third lesson is, which I think is important also is that what is happening with the mental health ecosystem today is that most of the best therapists who are deeply experienced for the sake of their own personal lives are often out of network. So they're not covered by insurance. And so you're seeing this like bifurcation of the space where the most talented therapists are out of network, and therefore serving those who can afford to pay out of network rates, like 200 miles an hour, and then everyone else is left with an even more limited supply of therapists don't have any time or or available hours offer them. So those are like been the three lessons that we've learned and have been guided us to okay, how do we make mental health products that are scalable, and that are accessible, and in the whole sense of the word of accessible.
Paul Zelizer 12:46
And one of the things just to be clear out of network means people are paying cash right for, for those sessions. And the other like quality of life issue is if you're in mental health, and you are on some insurance, or some somebody else's paying for care, the mental health of people in that system isn't very good. I remember back in the day, when I started, you know, you might have a full time caseload of expectations of maybe 18 or 20, maybe 22 sessions a week. And now that number can be as high as 35 sessions a week plus paperwork plus supervision plus, like meetings and plus, like talking to people around rescheduling, where there's a crisis, none of that is covered. So the load that therapists who are in work are being asked to carry is not very humane in my opinion and experience and a lot of others. Is that fair to say?
Varshil Patel 13:46
Totally. I think that providers, therapists are trying to do their best, and many of them are getting burned out to your point. Even the ones that are out of network, like yes, they're making more money, but they're also like, as humans and as providers of care, I think they're also trying to see as many people as they can and trying to provide sliding prices where they can, but the reality is like the quality of care goes down if our providers are also poor. And so I think providers are doing the best they can but the system doesn't really support their health, which ultimately leads to worse outcomes for patients also. Absolutely.
Paul Zelizer 14:25
So long, hum you and your co founder bright eyed and excited about doing something innovative in the space. And you land on this product. That was a little bit of a surprise this analog series of therapy journals, but talk to us a little bit about that process. Like you knew the space but you didn't come in with a predefined. You had this idea maybe it would look like this more coffee shop ish kind of bricks and mortar space that people could go to but you landed on analog journals, something really interesting happened about bringing a sense of curiosity and mindfulness to the therapy and to the mental health space, which was ready for innovation. And you all wound up on a product that kind of surprised you. And I, when I got the pitch, I was like, This is awesome, right? How did that process work? Like, how did you go from like, we knew we wanted this space, but you landed on something totally different than what you first expected?
Varshil Patel 15:31
Yeah, so I, you know, as I was saying, like, we went from this idea of brick and mortar therapy clinics, we realize that, well, actually building something more scalable would be helpful from an accessibility perspective. And so as, as Leslie and I both come from a software background, and so we got to work, trying to create digital educational products. So we were trying to create products that would give more people access to evidence based mental health tools, because we were like, okay, these tools exist. And tools like Ogden, behavioral therapy, like mindfulness, like I like to go behavioral therapy, these are all modalities of therapy, that offer people certain skills and tools that they can incorporate into their lives. And so we're like, what if we could bring those skills to people directly, instead of through a therapist? And I think for us, we're pattern matching to every other business we knew or the businesses we were, you know, we used to working in. And so the digital answer became, okay, well, that should be a digital product. So we got to work making audio courses in a digital app. And the feedback we got from customers pretty quickly was yeah, like, this is nice, in theory, I would use it. But this is not what I want to be spending my energy on. Like, I don't want to like listen to a long course on mental health. And I definitely don't want to spend more time on my phone. And if I'm on my phone, I'm going to be tempted to like Instagram, or Tiktok, rather than listen to your audio course. And so we're okay. Like, there's clearly friction here. And it actually took us a while, and a lot of experimentation to then arrive at therapy notebooks as a concept. Because we were actually I think resisting the idea that an analog product might actually be a viable solution. And so we resisted that for a while, because there's wasn't a pattern that we were used to seeing. And eventually, we were like, you know, what, like, why don't we do a journaling experience? And that led to us Googling, like, different domains, we saw therapy? notebooks.com. Really? Oh, that's a good one. And then we bought it. And we started to send landing pages to customers we were talking to, we're like, hey, what about this, like, what did we actually, like, listened to you, and didn't make it a digital thing, and actually made it a journal. And we got a bunch of text messages from potential customers being like, I love that, like, I love the idea of it being a physical product that I can write in, I already like writing a guided experience would be really amazing. And so we got a lot of customers like that, that there's something there. So then we spent the next six months, basically talking to about 50 customers, potential customers, rather, and working with a few therapists on getting the first theory notebook off the ground.
Paul Zelizer 18:34
So just want to pull out another episodes, listeners, I've talked about my spiritual highlighter. So I want to highlight what you just said, virtually all six month 50 potential customers or people who were like your ideal customer therapist, like you did what we would call in the space market research. And so many social entrepreneurs I know, in our like, good heartedness to help people, we sometimes cheat ourselves, our businesses from doing some of this, what we would call market research. And I love that you were willing to do this. And I want to nudge our listeners to not skip over this and rush to some predetermined result, like you said, you know, oh, yeah, I just, we just need a digital platform or an app, right? Like everybody wants to rush to the app. And not that I'm against a digital platform or an app. But sometimes people don't listen and aren't really understanding and then they create a product, that there's a lot of friction for the entire rest of the business as opposed to doing your homework upfront. Listening to the people, you want to help us identifying them and then listening to them. And sometimes that takes us to a place that we don't expect but what you did there just want to circle how valuable that is. And I really celebrate that you were willing to do that work. So before we go further down the rabbit hole of what you created and how it's, you know, coming into our business, let's just define a term here, you've talked quite a few times, you've used the language of evidence based evidence based mental health tools, you know, you wanted to really land this product on the research, talk to us a little bit more like what does that even mean? And what was some of the research that you're referencing that you built into this series of journals?
Varshil Patel 20:31
Yeah, thanks for asking, Paul. I think like, sometimes because I put a space, I'll also be like, oh, yeah, like those are, you know, everyone knows what those are. It's. So evidence based mental health tools are tools that have been rigorously validated by research. So they've been through randomized control trials, or been through at least a series of rigorous studies. And generally, when people use that term mental health, they are referring to tools that have been also embraced not only validated by research, but also embraced by the clinical community. So you think about, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, that is a therapy modality that consists of a set of tools and frameworks and concepts that have been used with patients in research settings, and in clinical settings, and have been shown to be relatively effective for treating anxiety. So now, you know, as a therapist, you now have access to through your training set have a lot of tools for different issues. And so the more widely and I learned about these, the more we were like, Okay, I think there's a way in which we can actually educate more people about the tools so that they can access them even if they're not seeing a therapist.
Paul Zelizer 21:59
So let's do this in a moment, I want to come back and hear how the journals get created, how you've built this business based on these really incredible evidence based products, what your team looks like, and all that granular stuff that we're so well known for. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing one or more important decisions in your impact business, and you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's going to cost you many 1000s of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through Paul zelizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing one to three immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure. So it's both inclusive, and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below. And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. In the second part of the show of our show, we'd like to joke about putting on our social entrepreneur glasses. So we understand a little bit about the backstory and the research and the process you've used. And now you said you started in 2019. Here we are in 2023. Talk to us, like if you took a snapshot of therapy notebooks as a business as a social enterprise right now. Like what do you see in terms of like team size and revenue streams and how people are finding you, etc?
Varshil Patel 23:54
You mean moving forward, or
Paul Zelizer 23:56
right here right now? We're recording this in January 2023. What does it look like right now?
Varshil Patel 24:03
Yeah. So we have five different guided notebook products. And each of those focuses on a different mental health issue that people face. And people find products primarily through digital advertising, so social media marketing, and through retail, so we work with retailers, like Urban Outfitters, Paper Source, Barnes and Nobles to get our books into the hands of people. And then let's see there's a there's a growing set of people who actually find our products through therapists. So therapists are somewhat organically referring our products to their clients, or buying some of these products in bulk. And so right now we have have a team of five people, we manage these five products we sell around the world. So anyone can buy this product and get it shipped to them. We have around to a little bit more than 200,000 customers in total. And that's important because we leverage our relationships with those customers to just keep learning about what are their mental health challenges that they face? And how can we best serve them?
Paul Zelizer 25:30
Congratulations, 200,000 customers. Awesome. That's wonderful. So talk to those five notebooks, if I remember correctly, for my research ones on depression, ones on anxiety helped us remember what those products are specifically.
Varshil Patel 25:47
Yeah, so one is on one's focus on anxiety. And that we'll use there is cognitive behavioral therapy, London is focused on depression. And that product actually has five different evidence based tools for people to try and experiment with. The third is focused on sleep issues, specifically insomnia and uses a tool called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. The fourth is on trauma, and leverages what's called a written exposure therapy. And then the last product is the therapy journal, which is actually meant to be used in tandem with therapy to help you make the most of your therapy sessions.
Paul Zelizer 26:33
And that partnership that's growing, you mentioned, it's organic, but anything you could say about how you might be consciously developing relationships with therapists, because seems like such a natural fit, if I'm a therapist, and I'm seeing dozens of people every week, you know, the it makes sense. If I see this as a valuable tool, the number of folks over the lifetime career of a therapists, you know, journey, they could send a lot of people your way, is there anything you're explicitly doing formally or informally to develop those relationships?
Varshil Patel 27:11
I think actually, the ethos of our products is what's drawing most of our therapist relationships. And what I mean by that is, even in the design of the product thing that we think about is how do we make this approachable and accessible for consumers, while maintaining the clinical integrity of the tools that we're presenting. And I think because there's such an emphasis on that, and because we don't hesitate to put things like depression on the cover of our books, and things like written exposure therapy, I think, actually what has sort of implicitly or informally drawn therapists to therapy notebooks. And then whenever the therapist reach out to us, like, we're very excited to have conversations with them and build a relationship with them. But because our team is small, and we're trying to stay focused, we don't do anything like outbound like we don't do anything that's more of a formalized program, we totally anticipate to but just not not until we have a few more resources to do that properly.
Paul Zelizer 28:16
That's anything virtually you can tell us about creating the journals themselves, like like it wasn't on your radar, your computer science people build a platform makes sense. And you pivoted to actually creating these wonderful journals. What was it like to learn about creating a product that has the that gravitas that you're talking about, like creating an experience and creating the kind of journey in this written way that really had the care and intentionality that you brought to the process in a physical product? That is that are these journals? Who did you turn to? Who actually makes them? How did you bake the intentionality into the physical product?
Varshil Patel 29:10
Yeah. I mean, it's funny, right? Because there's this whole discipline of people that study objects, like physical objects, and understand like how much influence and power they have to shape our experiences. And that's just, you know, not something that I was familiar with. But I think what we've what we've like seen is developing a physical journal versus developing, let's say the same thing in digital format, is both similar in many ways, but also dissimilar in a few very distinct ways. So I'll start with the similarities, because the similarities are like the product development process, in that I'm still thinking about what's the user problem, I'm still thinking about how can to iterate on the first solution we came up with to get some feedback before we let go prints 1000s of views. And I'm still thinking about how do we make the user experience really delightful and enjoyable for customers. So I feel like the tools of product development, like don't chain or hadn't changed that much for us. But what has changed is that obviously, the form in which this is done, so we've had to, we've had to get a lot more creative about, well, what does an MVP look like? Because like, we can't necessarily make like 100 books really affordably. And so we'll make like a little clips at our little print, shop and send those to customers, or will happen to do the exercises, like live through zoom. And that's been, I think, a big a big difference. And then the last thing is, I think it's actually forced us to be a lot more patient, in that. When we were working on digital products, we can make changes continuously. Whereas physical products, we have to be a lot more like, okay, like, let's like let's, you know, this will take two weeks for us to fully implement and make sure Q eight and is ready for launch. And I think that's obviously very challenging. But it also helped us build better products, because we're bringing this iterative mindset to a space that tends to be much more one and done, where it's like, okay, the books ready, let's go ship. Whereas what we do is, okay, let's make the first version of the book, then the second, the third and the fourth. And now we're ready to really send this off to customers. And so we're very careful about when we hit launch, because we know once we hit it, that like going back and changing things is a lot harder than it would be for a digital product. So that's one biggest category of things. The other piece is like we make these books in the US, we like spent a lot of time finding the right partners. And so we've like been through hundreds of prototypes with different print partners to find the ones that we feel like are making a really, really beautiful writing experience where the book lays perfectly flat, a paper is really nice to us. They have the colors that we're looking for, they have the cover materials that we're looking for. So it took us like a year to be honest to like really find the right supply chain partners to be able to take our content and transform them into beautiful books.
Paul Zelizer 32:22
I wish she could see the smile on my face listeners. This is an audio only podcast but the care and the just mindfulness you've brought our shell to this process and the way you've iterated and again, listeners, I hope you can take away that often time oftentimes, even if we're on the quote right track as social entrepreneurs towards creating a product or service that people really want or need. Sometimes we go a little too hard without some of this iteration that you're talking about martial and that if we can find the space to be to dig a little deeper, and to do that second, or third or fifth iteration, the friction over time, the amount of success we have both impact wise and also creating sustainable revenue. So we can be here doing this impactful work for years to come. I wish more social entrepreneurs would follow a journey somewhat along the line of what you're describing, Rochelle. So just a bow and an appreciation for the journey you've been on.
Varshil Patel 33:34
Thanks all I appreciate that.
Paul Zelizer 33:37
One of the questions I can imagine if I'm a listener like well, how do you pay for that? Right? So talk to us a little bit capital and startup funding? Is there anything you feel comfortable sharing about like how you were able to make space for doing a deeper dive in terms of things like market research, and iterating in terms of creating that product, where the papers really nice than the man lies on the table in the way you want it to that takes a little bit of time and take some there's expense to getting to where you all are now anything you can share about startup funding?
Varshil Patel 34:16
Yeah. We actually so when we quit our jobs in 2019, we are fortunate enough where our former bosses at the startups were willing to give us a bit of capital. So we raised about 100k from them and a group of sort of think of it as most friends and family. So we raised 100k, to basically be able to pay rent and like run experiments and whatnot. And that 100k actually is what we used to hear, you know, books off the ground. So our first like all the way from testing all these other ideas, so we spent a year testing nonsense Therapy notebooks ideas. And then we got to therapy notebooks like that 100 Day loss of the whole time. And I think we were able to be relatively capital efficient, because we were willing to just do a lot of the work ourselves. And also with research, I think there's a lot that people will tell you, if you just have the patience to like, ask them instead of like hiring away the problem. So we were pretty committed to being in the weeds, like we would go to go to parks in New York City and just like ask people about their mental health journeys and try to learn from them, or we'd show them prototype we were working on at a coffee shop and look at their feedback. So that's how we got off the ground was like that 100k really helped us like pay for the basic goals, and give us enough time to get the product, right.
Paul Zelizer 35:49
So at this point, you haven't done any capital that's involved dilution. In other words, listeners, there hasn't been somebody that said, I will give you some money in exchange for a proportion of the company, you have what we call bootstrapped it with some with this initial round of friends and family support that's allowed you and your co founder to maintain is it 100% ownership of the company still?
Varshil Patel 36:15
Well, so I guess that that's that all happened that per kg was given to us. In 2018. And 2021, we actually did raise as a result of the success, the therapy notebooks, we did raise an additional million dollars of capital to basically grow the team beyond just me and Wesley. And then, so we have raised capital since then. And a capital has been instrumental in helping us test new marketing and growth channels, as well as helping us build version two of the products, which is what's live now. But we basically like, learned a ton in the first year and a half of operating and revamped our entire set of products using that capital. The other note I'll make, which may be interesting for us to dive into is mostly who's again, my best friend coming out of college, like we were very close live together, also left the business in early 2022.
Paul Zelizer 37:13
So that million dollars was to allow you once you landed on something that all right, this is really working this million dollars of capital, where there was some exchange of equity in the company that was to help scale is that language that you feel like fit?
Varshil Patel 37:31
Yeah, that's correct. Awesome.
Paul Zelizer 37:35
So here you are, you got these five products, you're like getting hundreds of 1000s of people who are using it getting partnerships with therapists, things are scaling got a team of five, four years into the company, where if you look ahead, and the next, I don't know, three to five years barsha, where do you see therapy notebooks going?
Varshil Patel 37:59
Hey, now I feel like as an entrepreneur, the lesson that I've been learning is how to balance focus with opportunity. And so if you ask them this question a year ago, I'd be like, we're gonna be doing this and this and this, and this and this. And there's part of me that still wants to answer you with give you that answer. But there's also part of me that I think has learned over the past year since we raised that money actually, that even after you have more resources, like being focused is incredibly valuable. And so is that income next three, five years. The primary goal is, how can we broaden access to our products? Meaning how can we get our products into as many places as possible, like schools, like universities, employers, can we get this prescribed by Morpheus therapists, or psychiatrists? And can we eventually have insurance companies actually cover the cost of you know, books? Like that's really how I think about the next three to five years is how do we reach a much broader population, perhaps even a population that isn't necessarily engaged with mental health services and products today? And so we've meaningfully, like then brought more people into the fold. And that's what I think the next three to five years is going to be pretty focused on is taking what we've built and throwing that to a broader broader set of people.
Paul Zelizer 39:34
Beautiful, what a great vision and again, listeners, our space this entrepreneur, social entrepreneur space, we research tells us have a higher than average rates of mental health challenges, whether it's depression or anxiety, sleep issues, etc. So please, the link will be in the show notes and do tell your friends about therapy notebooks. Let's help spread the word of this great reason. worse, accessibility is very much a value of mine personally. And inclusion is one of aware printers core values. So here's a resource, it's relatively affordable compared to what therapy would cost in an ongoing way. Just hope you all help spread the word here. Or she'll as we start to wind down this interview, our listeners listen for a couple of reasons. One, the more established social entrepreneurs who have product market fit and are thinking about things like scaling, the things you're talking about here, I think it'd be really helpful this reference points and how you're thinking love what you're suggesting about focus versus opportunity, not spreading ourselves too thin as we start to see growth. Love that. Another bucket of our listeners, are the newer social entrepreneurs who are have an idea they have an impact area, maybe they have a product or service that's in the earlier stages. don't yet have, you know, they don't have 200,000 customers. Yeah, right. They're newer. And they're listening to get ideas about how to increase their scope and scale. Anything you can suggest to a social entrepreneur who's got a lot of passion, but is earlier in the journey than where you are right now.
Varshil Patel 41:19
Yeah, I think that really focusing on understanding the problem you're solving for, and understanding who you're serving, is going to play a really important long term role in your ability to create something useful. What I mean by that is, of course, like the sort of traditional advice around like, know who you're building for, like, make sure you solve a real problem for them. Like, I mean that. But I also mean, like, if you are excited about that problem, and you are excited about serving that person, then even if your firsthand attempts are wrong, like everything you've learned through that process will serve you if you assume this is going to get 10 to 20 year journey, right. So like all the things that I feel like I built the first year that didn't work, still helped me really empathize with the end customer, and also helped me get a much sharper instinct for what someone will want to versus not want. And so I think for folks that are like testing ideas, trying to figure out product market fit, like, all of the things that I would almost encourage people to think about their growth at that stage as pace of learning, like, how much am I learning every day, every week, every month? And if that answer is high, and you like the space that you're in you like the person you're solving a problem for any, like the problem you're solving, then you're probably on the right track. Beautiful,
Paul Zelizer 42:52
virtual, I can hang out with you all day, and you're a busy person. And so our listeners, if there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to today, and we haven't touched on it yet, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with, as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?
Varshil Patel 43:11
One of the things that we didn't really get into Paul, but I think that a lot is like, I want to do. Like I think about successes. I like what I do, and I like how I do it. And therefore I'm like Africa, exactly who's trying but as part of someone's writing, and and I think about that briefly. And so I think that's the other challenge of in particular social entrepreneurship, which is, of course, I think people are motivated to help. And then there's this question of like being willing to be patient. So you can say no to the opportunities that may actually be values fit, and say yes, the opportunities that clearly are, but that just requires you to be patient, so that you can feel like the whole of what you're working on is actually aligned with the actual mission that you're pursuing. But I find oftentimes can be tempting to like take on that particular source of capital or take on that particular product or new person, because they bring you this amount of growth that feels exciting. But ultimately, if they're not actually aligned with how you want to operate, then I will be careful to to not bring them on so that you can actually play the long term game.
Paul Zelizer 44:26
Love that suggestion? Or she'll it's been absolutely fabulous to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time and your good thinking.
Varshil Patel 44:34
Thanks, Paul was great to be here.
Paul Zelizer 44:37
So again, listeners in the show notes, link to therapy notebooks, please check it out yourself. Tell your friends, this is a huge issue in our culture, and even more so we are over represented in folks and I include myself I didn't say that earlier. I should have said that earlier. I include myself as somebody who's struggled with various mental health issues. So this is not you People should go check this out. This is us, including Paul, please check it out. Tell your friends, let's help spread the word. Before we go, I just want to remind you, we love I mean, we love when our listeners make suggestions for guests. If you have an idea, go to the AWARE printers website. And on our contact page, we have three simple guidelines that help you get a sense of who we're looking for. We try to be really transparent. If you look at those and you say, Yeah, I think this is a fit, please send in your ideas. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.