Lissy Alden - Founder of MYNDY: Mental Wellness, Building a Category, and Balancing Gut Instinct and Objective Data

Lissy Alden  00:00

I can trust my gut as a first pass, knowing that what we're building is new. And then I use data and information to help inform the evolution of that thing. But early days, my gut told me the data was wrong. And so that's where I was like, okay, something's missing. Let me sit with this. Let's hear what they said. And let's create something completely different. And that's what we did.

Callan Harrington  00:22

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Lissy Alden. Lissy is the founder of MYNDY, a research based mental fitness platform that offers a practical approach to mental fitness, which is simple, self directed and focused on helping professionals get unstuck, make progress, and feel more focused and energized daily. Before building MYNDY, Lissy partnered with some of the world's largest corporations, including JP Morgan, American Express, Charles River Laboratories, and the New York Times. She also spent time in the startup world as a founding member of the Enterprise team at General Assembly. I could have kept this conversation going all day. Lissy is super sharp and has incredible energy, which you'll see right out of the gate. We talked about using surveys to validate your ideas and products, the unsexy sides of founding a company, and we dove in a little bit on what it takes to build a category. Now my favorite part of the interview was talking about when to use gut instinct and when to use objective data. This is something that I struggle with, as I tend to lean too far on one side or the other. At some point of feeling very creative, I very much lean towards decision making from a gut instinct perspective. And other times, I want to just validate and validate and validate as much as possible. I love the framework that Lissy described on when she uses her gut and when she uses objective data. It's something that I've already implemented in my own business, and I think it's a super helpful framework for anybody that operates in any sort of ambiguity, whether that's an intrapreneur entrepreneur, or whatever your position is, if you're operating in ambiguity, I think the framework that Lissy provided is super helpful. So with that, let's get to the show. Lissy, welcome to the show. I'm excited for this.

Lissy Alden  02:55

Thank you. Me too. No better way to do this than to jump right into it.

Callan Harrington  03:00

Well, and speaking of that, I want to jump right in. Tell me about the start of your career.

Lissy Alden  03:08

Let's see, I always say I wish I had a glamorous start to my career. But unfortunately, it was a little bit of a fumble. I had my first internship at a bank. And I was super excited as a sociology major that I was able to get in to this great job. And I was gonna be working for the summer in this like very, very specific analytical department. And I show up day one to this internship, I have a pencil skirt on, my backpack on, I'm ready to crush it. And I sit down with my boss, who was the first person I had ever met, really face to face from Brooklyn. And she had this amazing accent. And I asked her, so I will change her name just for the sake of the story, "Sarah, I'm so excited to be here for the summer. Let me know like, what are we going to be working on?" And she says, "well, you know, it's nice to have you. We're going to be working on what we call a ruckflow." And I am taking furious notes, and I write down this word, R-U-C-K-F-L-O-W, ruckflow. I'm like, wow, this sounds important. She's like, "it is. I gotta go to lunch, but I'll see you later." So I'm thinking thank goodness, right? I run back to my desk. I go on my computer. I'm like typing away, like, what's a ruckflow? And Google has nothing for me. So I'm like, oh, this must be like a super secret bank project that like nobody else has ever seen before. Let me check on the internet. Maybe there's something there. I Google it and there's nothing. So I'm thinking like, okay, all right. Well, this is extra secret. This is so secret, it's specific to my department. How lucky am I? So my summer progresses. I'm working on my project. Everyone's talking about their internship projects at lunch one day, and my buddy, we'll call him Fred, for again the sake of the story. He goes to me, "hey Lissy, what are you working on?" Now I have been working furiously. I'm working extra late hours. I'm so excited about this ruckflow. And I tell him, "Fred, I'm working on a really special project. It's called a ruckflow. Can't really find anything about it on the intranet or the internet. But yeah, I mean, I'd love to tell you about it. But like after the summer is done." And Fred just looks at me and says, "you mean a workflow?"

Callan Harrington  04:50

(laughs)

Lissy Alden  05:01

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, no, no, no. Oh, my gosh. So you can only imagine, like my stomach sinks. I'm feeling sick, almost immediately. I like cannot finish my sandwich. And I'm like, no way. It is not a workflow. Because in my head, someone would have corrected me, because I have emails, I have documents. I have text messages with the word workflow in them, and somebody would have told me if that was not the case. But I have this sinking feeling in my stomach. So I show up to this meeting with my boss after lunch, and I'm watching her talk about my project. And I'm watching her mouth, and she's saying, ruckflow, wukflow, wookflow, workflow, workflow, oh my gosh. I immediately excuse myself for the day. I'm like, I deserve- you can't see me right now, I am blonde. I was like, this is the most blonde moment I've ever had, I am never gonna get a job offer here. This is terrible. So I'm home in bed, sick, but really just emotionally thinking my career is over. I have this like, bright shooting star moment where I was like, moving in my career. And now all of a sudden, I'm stunted. Because I had no idea what a workflow was. So I call my brother, one of them, and I was like, I don't know what to do. I'm- not only do I feel so stupid, but like, I'm never gonna get a job. And this is the beginning of my career. And it's like, never gonna take off. Like, I don't know how you go anywhere from here. And my brother was just like,"Liss, Ctrl+F the situation." I was like, what do you mean. "Ctrl+F the situation, hit Ctrl+F, find the word ruckflow, and replace it with workflow in every email you've ever written and any document, and pretend like it never happened, because everybody else has. Like, nobody said anything to you, which is crazy." So I go in early that next morning, 6:30am, I Ctrl+F the situation, and no one ever said a word. I had a full time offer. I was like, absolutely celebrated as a very powerful intern that summer and ended up working there after school. But like, to me, I always say like, I wish I could say my career came was off to like a really, really like, killer start. But it was rocky as hell.

Callan Harrington  07:53

That is such a good story, right? Because it's one of those things too where, when I hear that story, what immediately comes to mind is there's these things in our head that we think are like, that's it, right? This is the most important thing. And then everybody else is like, oh, yeah, you made a mistake. Who cares? It's nothing. Nothing. Was that the case?

Lissy Alden  08:15

Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, like my intern friends think it's still the funniest story, you know, like, what, twelve, fifteen years later? Not a single person ever said anything to me. And again, my family brings it up pretty regularly, the whole ruckflow workflow debacle. Yeah. I then wished that I could Ctrl+F all the mistakes in my career, you know, and in my life, but yeah, no, it was definitely something that I blew totally out of proportion in my head, and was easily able to remedy, but have not been able to live down, I will say.

Callan Harrington  08:45

I bet. That I believe. That's such a good story. I love it. So I'm actually curious about, as kind of a segue in this, is looking back at your career before you started MYNDY. You've had a pretty eclectic career, you're at a very large, biggest of the big company with that JP Morgan, you've done the startup early on with General Assembly, and then you also had an actual research lab. Can you just walk us through briefly, what did that look like prior to starting MYNDY?

Lissy Alden  09:15

Yeah, so I always say like, when you look at the container of things, oftentimes it can feel like really like yeah, I did a lot of jumping around. But the actual problems I was solving, in each of these places, kind of built on each other. So when I was working at the bank, my big question was, how do you build and run a company? I had an operations job. So I basically decided to go in and better learn how to basically like set up workflows and process. How do I think about managing a big picture, P&L? And I really could not figure that out. I mean, the bank was too big for that. I learned a lot of things. I learned basic skills around Excel and basically like you know how to analyze numbers. I was on the customer service team. So I was able to really, really hone the skill of customer service. I'm smiling about that, because it is hard to take on other people's challenges, which is usually why they're calling you. But what I was really craving after that job was two things. One was like a place where I was really able to get my arms around an entire business, not just a small piece of it. And then the second thing was, I really wanted to be part of building something. And so I ended up at General Assembly, which I freaking loved. It's an EdTech company. I was one of the founding members of the corporate education team. I was a producer there, so my job was to basically put on these educational programs for C-suite executives at companies like American Express and the NFL. And what was so cool was that I didn't think EdTech, I was thinking more about the, again, the problems I wanted to solve. I wanted to really learn how to run and build a business and grow it. And when I was there, it was incredible. We grew from forty to a thousand people in three years. And I then was like, how do you do this in a way that doesn't feel so hard all the time for employees? Not to mention all of our corporate clients were growing like crazy, too. And they were all trying to better understand like, how do we support our employees during this growth period. And so I ended up going to grad school to build a framework to help companies grow healthy and well, from the inside, so they could make more money on the outside. That's what I always say it's good from the inside out. And then I ended up at a biotech company. I actually pitched 200 companies after school. I built this framework while at MIT. And they basically hired me to use this kind of model to help them in their high growth period, transform their internal operations for growth. And so that's what I was working on with a very cross functional team for two years. But what I found was that even when you poise companies for growth, with all the right systems and processes, managing things like work life balance, through demand planning, and workforce planning, making sure you pay people the right amount and career ladder, everyone was still stressed, which is what brought me to my current company. So for me, it was more problem first than like container first, if that makes sense. Even though every container I ended up in, I will say, I feel very lucky to be there and was like a very, very cool learning experience, because they were different industries.

Callan Harrington  12:18

It makes total sense on what you're saying. What I hear you saying is that you kept trying to get to the root of this challenge. How can we actually build this organization from the inside? How can we solve those issues? And you found out, wait a minute, it's not the organization whatsoever, it's the actual individual person. Am I hearing that correctly?

Lissy Alden  12:38

I think it's a little- I always say it's not an or, it's an and. It's like, there is organizational structural elements that really matter to help employees feel good and supported, especially during high growth periods. But the actual day to day challenge of stress usually doesn't always come from the work environment. A lot of it has to do with the individual, and how they manage their days, and how they think about using their technology. Obviously, they need to be in an environment that respects their needs, which is like where these two things play together. But I was like, it's going to be way more important for me to focus on the individual than the organization, because companies change every day. But if we can get individuals within every company the tools they need to feel good, no matter what structure, way or day you're in at a company, you have the tools you need to feel your best and therefore can operate at your highest performance level.

Callan Harrington  13:31

Yeah. So playing that back real quick. Is it almost, sure you could be the most mentally healthy person in the entire world, but if you're going into an organization that is going to be fighting against that every day, it's never going to win? Is that essentially correct?

Lissy Alden  13:46

You're gonna always hear me say this. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to win. That's what I'll say. And most importantly, you may win in terms of outcomes and hitting your goals. But you're probably going to feel a lot of friction daily, in what we call your mental wellness, which is the ability to basically practice these behaviors that help enable your mind to feel calm, focused, and resilient every day.

Callan Harrington  14:07

Yeah. And you know, one of the things that I love is, when you look at this is how, and we talked about this before, right? That it wasn't this lightning strike moment, it was a culmination of all the years of work that kind of led to the solution. One of the things to move into that was, you know, you said this before, and I really liked this, but you said that you were working on the problem for twelve years. And you had to start a company in order to do that. Walk us through what does that mean?

Lissy Alden  14:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that some people say like, I was born to be an entrepreneur, or I've always wanted to start something. That was not me. I always wanted to solve this like really hard problem of, a long time ago I said, helping people help themselves. Like I was like, part of the microfinance club growing up, because I thought that that was like a really meaningful way to do that. I was always in after school education programs as a tutor to do that. But I think for me, I always saw myself operating within a bigger company, because building something felt- again, it's the container right, for like solving the problem. I've always been like, very problem first. And so by the time I ended up starting MYNDY, I had kind of like, been looking for the solution for myself and also for my clients, right, which is like: what is available for people to work on their mind, for me to work on my mind, every single day? That's like the gym that's accessible, affordable, and as enjoyable as possible, knowing that it's not going to be like eating a bag of Cheetos, which is like one of my favorite guilty pleasures. And so, by the time I finished working at this biotech company, I had left because I was like, okay, it's time to like, figure out how to solve this problem. And I did the research, I was looking for companies that would offer me a holistic solution to what I call like, stress management, stress, exhaustion, overwhelm, and I really couldn't find it. And so it was kind of this like, really scary moment where I was like, okay, I think I'm gonna start something. And I always tell people, this is not sexy. I think most people start their companies and they're like, alright, I'm all in, I'm gonna go find my co founder, let's do this. Like, for me, it was like, I'm gonna give my- you know what I mean? Like, it's like, this very intense, like Gatorade infused kind of energy. And because I didn't have that kind of like, certainty, it was always scary to me. But then I decided, okay, I'm gonna give myself three months to build this like little test, which was, at the time, a class on this stuff that I was able to teach. The class sold out, it was just a quick evening thing. I taught it at MIT. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna give myself six months to do research on the brain, just like I did on companies when I was at MIT. And I'm gonna come up with this, like theory. And if by the end of six months, all I know is more about the brain, I'm going to be an even better coach and an even better consultant doing the work I used to do. It ended up at the end of six months, there was like, one more tiny question that I had. So it was like, okay, I'm gonna give myself one more month. Then I was like, will people pay to learn about this stuff in a bigger format? Can I make a difference with this content? So I started teaching six week courses that I charged for. And so my whole journey was almost me, coming up with my next learning goal, or my next thing I needed to prove to get to the next step. And that's like, how I ended up building the company because it wasn't company first or container first, it was, I'm going to solve this problem. It's like, how do you work on your mind so that it works for you? I built a mini class, then a bigger framework, then I built a course, and then people were like, hold me accountable. Then I started building accountability tests. Then I realized I needed to raise money, right. And so it's just been this unfolding, moving forward, which for some people is very inspiring, and other people, they're like, boring, you know, I'm looking for a lightning big moment from you. And it's just it hasn't been the case.

Callan Harrington  17:49

So one of the things I'm curious about is, were these cohort based courses, I'm assuming?

Lissy Alden  17:54

Yes.

Callan Harrington  17:55

Okay. When you were doing these, what was the driver in, I need to build this into a tech company? Versus, because you could have continued to create that, you could have went the content creator route, and would have had, you could live a really good life that way. Why did you have to do a tech company versus go that route?

Lissy Alden  18:13

Oh, my gosh, so much hand wringing. So I actually came up with a whole business plan for an education- I called it an education company, right? It's like content first, like teaching these courses, going to companies. And I had a very big company come to me and want to, like basically buy me out for the year to use this content at their company. And I couldn't sleep, because the number one feedback I got coming out of those sessions was help hold us accountable moving forward. That's the thing they wanted. So when I asked them, what's next for you, it wasn't more classes, it was like, help me do this every day. So I always say like, it's kind of like going to a retreat, a yoga retreat. So transformational, so special, really can calm the nervous system, teach you new skills. But how many people then bring that yoga practice back every day? Oftentimes, they look for yoga studio, or something else. And it haunted me. I mean, this was consistent. The feedback was like so consistent, I couldn't ignore it. And I'm like a data person. I was doing surveys back then. I did surveys every week, and at the end of, you know, the first week, and the second, and the third, and the sixth. And for every cohort I ran, I ran another one the following, like, I ran them on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I would update Mondays for Wednesday. And accountability was my North Star. And so it became very clear. I built a bunch of tests for accountability, including like products, classes. After, everyone's like, I would love to learn about optimism after work. That sounds amazing after a bad day. Like how many people really want to log on to zoom, at the time, this is COVID, and do that? And so I basically built five product tests. One of them was also a bot. I hired this really talented woman to help me with that. And I built five of these tests, and three of them people paid for, and one of them had this tech component, and it was like I couldn't ignore it. People thought it was the coolest thing ever. People are talking about ChatGPT-4 now, we had, you know, we're talking about ChatGPT-3 back then. We'd built this bot using a bunch of no-code tools, but what was really clear was that people who went through that bot test, we called it Cory, because the model was confidence, optimism, resilience and energy. CORE, so COR-E. Cory, the text coach, people wanted to know that a human was there. I mean, they didn't know that I was personally monitoring this thing, you know, 24/7, with this amazing consultant that I had. So I basically ended up realizing that there was this like, really interesting thing to explore when it comes to behavior change, where again, you're gonna hear me say this a lot, it's usually not 'or.' It's not like I'm a tech person or a human person. People actually might need a little bit of both to do this in an ongoing way every day in the same way that you do physical fitness. Sometimes you need a personal trainer, sometimes you want a class, sometimes you need yoga with Adriene via YouTube, you know, like, oftentimes, we need another person there. And then once we're fit, we're good doing it on our own.

Callan Harrington  20:50

So if I'm playing that back real quick, what I'm hearing is that when you were doing this, people were really excited, people really liked the class. But what was keeping you up at night was, that's great, we've done this class, class is over, and then essentially, you revert back to the mean. I've got this increase, I feel good about this, but now I'm back to my old habits. And what's keeping you up was, if I'm going to be successful in my grand mission, then I need to make sure that they're continuing to do this and to continue to stay elevated. Is that correct?

Lissy Alden  21:23

That's correct.

Callan Harrington  21:23

And the key to that was this accountability piece. One of the things- okay, I want to dive into this, what do these surveys look like? This is something that I personally want to do as well. And where does somebody even start on this? Like, if somebody's like, you know, I know surveys- actually, I'm gonna make it as broad, I'll use myself as kind of the guinea pig here.

Lissy Alden  21:42

Please.

Callan Harrington  21:43

One of the things that I want to do, I run a services business and I want to move more, I want to get more productize services. And surveys are a great way to do this. And I'm big believer in customer interviews as well. But I don't know as much on the survey side. Where would I even begin?

Lissy Alden  21:59

Yeah, I love surveys, because there's like a whole like science behind it. And I've been doing this for years and years. And I always think one of the hardest parts about starting a business is your grand vision is never where you start. And so you have like no choice, but to listen to the truth of where you are, which you kind of know in your bones, which is like, okay, yes, this isn't a perfect product. But the coolest part about your customer is that they will tell you exactly what you need to know, quite quickly. And there's three questions I've always included in every survey. The first, this is not sexy, people: what are one to three things that you really enjoyed about this experience, or this product, or this service? And people tell you, and it's like that number, the numerical ask, is really helpful. Because it's not this like overwhelming, like, what went well? It's like, one to three things, and people will tell you more if there are more for them. The second: one to three things that you would improve, optimize, or you didn't learn from, in this experience. Now, a lot of people will skip to the second question, because they're like, oh, the first one, cool, cool, cool. I always say one of the worst things you can do, especially as an early company with an early product is break the things that people like. And so like we used to give away gifts, and I kept expecting that to show up in the one to three things that people loved, and it never did. Right? So like Paul Graham says, do things that don't scale. Like what was fascinating to me was the thing that people kept asking for were like, the technical nudges, right? Like it was all accountability based. And so those themes that come up, so one to three things that are great, one to three things you would optimize, anything else? And believe it or not, people will tell you if there is anything else. And like, those three questions alone, if you only ask those, you ask an N, they say, you know, according to like the normal curve, Gaussian distribution is like the N of thirty. So asking thirty people this will give you something statistically significant. But in startup land, like they talk about the number five to ten max. Like you ask five people this and you'll get some pretty powerful thoughts.

Callan Harrington  23:56

That makes total sense. That's super easy to follow. I think the one that I probably wouldn't have done is being that specific, the one or three things you like. And this might be a fork in the road question here, but if not, I'll bring us right back. One of the things I'm super curious about is, especially with all the research that you've done is, you mentioned the one to three things that that you really liked, which is essentially what are the strengths of this program? Do you have any research that- or is there anything on here on maximizing one either a person's strengths or the company's strengths, versus trying to improve weaknesses? For my whole career, I have tried to improve weaknesses, tried to build new skills as opposed to making strengths superpowers. And for the first time ever, I'm going through exercises right now to actually understand what are my strengths, and then really maximizing my time on here, but you're probably one of the rare people I can ask this question to that would have objective research on that. Is there anything on that?

Lissy Alden  25:02

Yeah. So, you know, anecdotally I had an old boss, and he used to say, you need to bring your weaknesses to a coping place and then bring your strengths to superpowers. And I love that. There's not research that I've come across that says that you should focus on only one or the other. Like even just thinking about isolating variables for that would probably be pretty hard. But there is a lot of work done specifically within performance coaching and the research around coaching, that you should focus on your strengths. So you've got like StrengthsFinder, which is a Gallup, I'm pretty sure it's related to Gallup, and then you've got VIA, which is also another strength finder. And the bigger picture, this is if you're in a customer service job, and you are not good at working with customers, that's a problem. Like you saying, I'm gonna maximize my Excel skills in this case, not probably too important. But I think what is really, really interesting is that when you think about high performance, and I love sports as an analogy, making sure that you're really, really working with an athlete to their highest potential means using the skills that they have to build upon. And so again, there's less research I can cite, and more a couple different organizations I can point to specifically within performance science that say, that is a good thing to do. But I will say it's not with the exclusion of also making sure that your weaknesses are not gaping holes, we'll say.

Callan Harrington  26:28

Yeah, and how I've kind of heard that described is, focus on the weaknesses that unlock your strengths to become superpowers. I love the quote that you had mentioned around this, and I totally agree on like strengths finders, and even Enneagram or Myers Briggs and things like that. Not that I don't think that there's some validity to them, but those are tricky. I just don't know that you're gonna get my biggest strength in like fifteen, twenty minutes, right? Filling something out. One of the exercises I'm going through right now is called the Reflected Best Self Exercise. It's through the University of Michigan, which three days before the Ohio State Michigan game, I can't even believe I'm bringing this up.  But essentially, you send this out to your friends, colleagues, people who spend a lot of time with you. And they send back stories where they felt you were at your best self, and what strengths, what characteristics were involved in that. And to move more into that, okay, here's where I'm operating at my absolute best, because it's so hard for a person to say, oh, these are what my strengths are. That's really tricky to find- really tricky for me to find out, I should say. But totally switching gears here. I knew it pull us off on track there. But I loved what you said around that. Here's something that I'm curious about, as you're building MYNDY, in some of the research that I did, you pull a lot from the creative space with The Artist's Way and The Creative Act, and I love the quote that you had mentioned on Stephen King's On Writing, how do you balance the feeling, the gut feeling I should go in this direction to build this business, versus the objectivity of the surveys and the data that's coming in?

Lissy Alden  27:06

(laughs) There's this amazing quote, I think my dad said it, but it's not, I don't think from him, it's like "trust but verify." And I think like one of the hardest parts about building a product like this is like I don't have, this isn't like a 5% better on top of something else. Like there is nothing like this to really copy. And I feel like I have these like really clear gut feelings, about like these big picture things that need to happen. But when we actually think about how to bring these things to life, what's amazing is that that gut usually brings out what I always say like the first draft of this thing, but your customers and this feedback, and this data can really be powerful to help you shape it. What I did, too early on, was originally you go out, and if you're in a space where your consumer is well informed, like, for example, the snack space, one of my favorite places for innovation, Cheez-It is still coming up with like 12,000 different kinds of Cheez-It, bless them, they're puffs now. It's like crazy, like, who would have thunk it? Anyway. So you think about the consumer, they're super well informed, they're snacking every day. And you ask them, what kind of snacks would you like? What's missing in your snack routine? They're gonna be able to tell you like exactly what's up, and that information, those surveys are going to be really meaningful. But for me, when I asked people early days, like what do you want, it was kind of that like classic Henry Ford quote of like, you know, if you ask people what they want, they say a faster horse, as opposed to ask for a car. It was like more content, more videos, more libraries. And I was like, that can't be true because YouTube is sick. It has like democratized information on the internet in the way that many people need to learn it. But like, how do I make this happen? And so the real thing for me is, I can trust my gut as a first pass, knowing that what we're building is new, and then I use data and information to help inform the evolution of that thing. But early days, my gut told me the data was wrong, which is that the world didn't need another YouTube. And so that's where I was like, okay, something's missing. Let me sit with this. Let's hear what they said. And let's create something completely different. And that's what we did. So it's toggling between those two things all the time.

Callan Harrington  30:18

I think that's such an interesting way of looking at it as a first draft. Because I struggle with it. And like, how much validation do I do? Versus, do I get the answers from my prospects and customers? Or do I follow my gut on- because one of the things I always think about is, you're not going to create something truly groundbreaking by either asking people what they want, or trying to copy something that's already out there. It's just not going to happen. It has to come from within, in my opinion. I'm not saying anything grou- every person that's ever talked about creativity ever is where I pulled that from. You know, one of the things that I'd love to kind of pivot to a bit is, you mentioned that you are building something that's not sexy in a sexy industry. What does that mean to you?

Lissy Alden  31:07

Yeah. There is so much operationally that goes on behind the scenes to bring the current product that we have to market, which is this personal training for your mind product. I've said this now multiple times, that usually when it comes to solving a complicated problem, it's not about either-or thinking, which is also like one of our thinking traps. It's not either make it easy to build, or it's hard. It's like you kind of need a combination of things. And so why I say it's not sexy is because we have to do a lot of work on the back end, a lot of testing, looking at a lot of user feedback. We're constantly playing with how much human touch is too much, before people feel smothered, right? No one needs another person watching over them, making sure that they do something that they know they need to do. How much isn't enough? So operationally, from a business perspective, it's not very sexy on the back end to model this stuff. And to make sure that we're doing this in a way that's not just servicing our customers, but also affordable as a business. And then the second piece is, we are doing something like we are building our next iteration. So we're about to fundraise to build our like a SaaS product, which is really exciting. Our customers are asking for it, which is where we wanted to get. But in this space, a lot of times there's this like need, everyone always asks me like, where's your app? Like, where's this easy solution that I can download and use right now. And there are beautiful apps out there that many people have downloaded. But the issue is, again, that's the container, that's not the problem we're solving. And so what's really hard, and I say it's like complicated, is because the solution itself, I wish I could say I have an app or go online and like buy this product. Like we have a personal training program. It's delivered via SMS and a web app. So we do have an app of sorts. We will eventually have an app coming up very shortly. But it's not sexy, because what we're doing is a technical service. Right now we've got human meets technology. And I wish I could whip out like a silver bullet kind of solution for folks. But for right now, yeah, we're helping people do things in a slightly different way. And yeah, on the back end, it's a challenge.

Callan Harrington  33:10

It's the expectation versus reality of building a startup just in general, where-

Lissy Alden  33:16

Totally.

Callan Harrington  33:16

It sounds great. It sounds like it's gonna be a ton of fun. But it's a grind.  It's a total grind. And there's-

Lissy Alden  33:22

(laughs) That's a sound bite for you, by the way. I love that.

Callan Harrington  33:26

Oh, it is though. It's like, there's always going to be some fire. And it honestly gets back, it ties back to your original story. And I think that's what it is. It's going to feel like the end of the world in the moment. I feel like it's even amplified in startups in general. But it's ten times more amplified when you're a founder, because it's like, oh, well, I guess I gotta get a job, which sounds like the worst thing in the world. And then give it a week or two. It's like, oh, that was nothing. You know, it's like, oh, it's a blip on the radar. Next time it comes around, you built the callus up to be able to handle it. And you're on your way. So I think that's super interesting. One of the things, based on something that you had mentioned, and I've heard you said this a few times, you've talked about, you're going after the problem, you're essentially doing that. Like I mean, what I've all heard on this is you're building a category, and you've got like the playbook to the book, Play Bigger, to the tee. If anybody hasn't read that book or unfamiliar, Play Bigger is about building a category, and how the category leaders are the ones that are going to sweep up all of the profits. How are you going about building this category?

Lissy Alden  34:33

So, I love that question. It's huge. I'm going to try to take a bite at it first. I have to read that book, by the way. I haven't read it, which sounds incredibly important for me.

Callan Harrington  34:42

Here's what I'll say. You're already doing it. I mean, it's attacking the problem. It's attacking the problem, evangelizing the problem, and as a result, you're building now the category around this problem. You're not trying to disrupt all the other apps and everything else that are out there. This is the category, if it does that in the process, so be it. But you're solving this problem that has not been solved.

Lissy Alden  35:03

That's exactly what we're doing. And I think a lot of people ask, like, how do you think about that? Especially when they see we've got this like, great slide. Like I said, we're about to start fundraising that really breaks out the space and why we're different. And a big part of it is exactly that. It's this laser focus on the actual problem we're solving, which is in between, and this was, again, a problem I'm solving for myself, it's like, in between therapy and going to the gym, like, how do I manage my stress? Like, what are the things that I can do every day, when I fall into those periods of feeling like negative or rumination or feeling like exhausted? You know, when you start using language like: I can't, I won't, I'm too busy, I wish I could, you know, like this kind of space. And one is laser focus on the problem, just like you said. And the second is getting really, really clear on the use case for the user, which again, is like another fraction of that. But for us, like we are building- people always say like, well, what will you do if you don't run MYNDY, and I was like, I will work at Starbucks, or Dunkin' is my favorite, so I'll work at Dunkin' to fund this business, like this is my life's work. So what I've realized is that a lot of times, we keep trying to solve for only one point in the user journey. And this amazing product advisor I had early days, sent me this article from McKinsey, that was basically like the key issue in healthcare right now is that we keep having the user try to solve their own problem with all these different solutions on the market, but they don't know what they need. And so we kind of have this place where we're like spending a lot of money without necessarily going problem first. And so step one was like, what's the problem we're solving, right? Which is: stress exhaustion, burnout, as a precursor to mental health issues. So we call these mental wellness issues. The second is like, what's the user journey look like? And which point on that journey are we solving for? Because we can't solve for the entire thing, like, step one for us was helping people like get out of this spot, right, which is why we have one-to-one stuff. And then the third thing is like, research, like, I did research that sits at the fundamental root of this actual model before I started, but now it's about sharing that information, not just for us and for our members, but for the category, to help create it, right. When people read the white paper we're gonna put out in the new year, it's like, oh, now I know. Okay, this is like a new space. I think I could play here too. And I always say like, our job isn't to be the only company on the planet who's doing this, because there's a lot of people who need help. And in the same way, with fitness, you know, there's different brands and different strokes for different folks. It's like, the same is true here. Like I see there being different solutions for different types of people with different types of stress. But I think it's really about problem, use case, and then getting really clear on the research, and helping to like share that with the space so that people can get clear on again, problem and use case. And so then you can kind of keep chipping away at that. I will say though, you didn't ask this, like on an emotional plane, it's challenging to do this. Like I keep saying like, it would be easier if we could plug in and we- you know, I've looked at all these markets, especially in our you know, looking at our TAM, and like, instead, like, can we fit into one of these other categories? Because it would just be easier to market, to sell. And like our answer right now is no. And that may change in the future. But it's really hard. (laughs) It just is.

Callan Harrington  38:13

(laughs) I can empathize with you on this 100%. When you're building this, and this is just something that I'm just picking up on hearing from you, you're very exact, you have the process down for all of this. How do you turn that process into action? How do you execute on this?

Lissy Alden  38:34

Yeah, so I'm going to talk about two different periods of execution. One is when you know what you're doing, and the other parts are periods of what, I was seeing someone a while ago, and he called it concertainty. It's confident uncertainty. And I think they're two different points. Like every founder, every human on the planet can relate to this. It's like sometimes you know what you're doing, and it's hard to do, but you just have to show up and do it. The other times are when you're not sure what to do. And so I'll talk about the first and then the second. So I think the big thing, when you're sure about what you're doing, is really making sure that you're clear on both the goal and the amount of time you're going to spend on that goal. And here's the key, it's not that you need to like hit the target by the end of that every time. It's about getting really clear on whether or not you did. And then what's next. So like I said, when I first started this business, it was a series of like, okay, I'm gonna spend a month or three months building this class, and then I'm going to spend six months on the research. Oh, now it needs to be seven. Okay, now I'm going to spend four months on classes and see what's there. And so to me, it was always: and what am I trying to learn at the end of that period? And at the end of every period, I've had this goal. And again, the question wasn't- even like when I said I built five product tests about accountability, I ended up having three things people paid for, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna pick one of those that I'm most excited to build first. And so I think it's just this like cycle of, you know, the build, measure, learn. The Lean Startup book, it's like in my bones, it's like the like, okay, build something, measure it, and figure out what you learned. The build part, the thing that's missing is pick something to make and the timeline in which you want to make it, then measure how it did, and then learn. And then when you're going through a period of concertainty, meaning confident uncertainty, it's really about doing that in like a laser way. And the time and the learning goal matters more than the outcome. So I'm gonna give myself three weeks. And by the end of those three weeks, I am trying to learn this thing, because you don't know what you're creating. And so then it's really about the question that you're trying to answer. Because you don't know the answer.

Callan Harrington  40:36

Yeah, it gets back to your first draft and validation to the tee. And in addition to that, I think the other big theme that I've heard throughout this whole episode, and in particular, the big thing that I heard and what you just said was, it sounds like you are ruthlessly prioritizing. Is that accurate?

Lissy Alden  40:54

Depends on the day. Depends who you talk to. I think like one of our product people, we just put this in our newsletters, had this amazing quote by someone very famous, like, step one is to make a plan and then you don't follow the plan. It's like, the point is, if you think about like building a company as a journey, and you've got the top of the mountain, that you're constantly every day, you're kind of like walking up this mountain, people think it's a straight line. And I wish I could tell you that all of my plans led me that my learning goal was the right goal. Sometimes, I accidentally pointed myself down the mountain and walked the wrong direction. And then it's about taking a deep breath and figuring out okay, what's this next patch that I'm going to tackle? What are the next set of switchbacks. And I feel like that metaphor is amazing, because you tend to weave your way up a mountain, because that steep track, I mean, it's not possible. If you think about a lot of like a very steep mountain, you fall off. So I will say, as I kept doing, which is probably annoying to some of you, but it's like, it's not this like, or. Like you're laser focused, or you can't do it, because I definitely have ADHD tendencies, and get really excited as a founder about certain things, but it's this constant coming back to the goal, and giving everyone on my team permission to remind us of that. And then constantly saying, are we closer every day to where we know we're supposed to be, not only for us and our investors, but most importantly for our members.

Callan Harrington  42:19

I love that. I think that's excellent. Because yeah, it's hard to say. Every day changes, right? And the things rapidly change, and fires come up, and opportunities come up, and everything else. But I loved all this. This, in particular, this first draft and validate is going to stick with me, it's already something I want to write down. The last question I have for you is, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Lissy Alden  42:48

So I always say that my twenties were a total roller coaster. And so I would go back to my self upon, let's call it six months into my first job, and I would say a couple of things. And they come from other people, so I'm like bringing in my favorite advice here accidentally. The first is enjoy the ride. You know, like there's this famous spiritual quote, like this stuff isn't happening to you, it's happening for you. And like, I think my dad has like such a good energy around this stuff. And so I'd say enjoy the ride, because like so much of this stuff will help build, as you said earlier, those calluses that like just create, like a stronger version and even better version of you. So that's the first. The second we'll give a shout out to my mom, also one of my like, major forms and humans of inspiration. She always used to say to me, be kind to yourself, which felt like really intangible, in a way, to me. But I realized, you know, I went through I worked with a coach, and we realized I had this like really tough cheerleader in my head. She wasn't like mean or loud. She was just kind of tough. And I think I'm a really motivated person, I always have been, I'm really excited. And I think this like "be kind to yourself" or like find the right kind of voice in your head that you really enjoy speaking to. Like that matters, because you have a choice. And so like I have adopted a much kinder voice in my head, that's still motivated and excited, but like isn't constantly pushing me to do things or be different, if that makes sense. And then I think the last thing I'd say is like, and it's less of what I'd say and it's more of what I do. I'm really crystal clear on what matters to me in terms of my values. And your values I describe as like the behaviors or the things that, when you're having your best day, best conversations, best interactions, are there. I wish I knew what those were earlier, because all the rubs in my twenties, around the environments I was in that I shouldn't have been or, you know, relationships, or difficult conversations I had, that were really really difficult, it was because I didn't know that my values during those times had been challenged and didn't have the words for it. And so I think it's probably those three things: so enjoy the ride, be kind to yourself, and know what matters to you, your values. Like know what you value at the deepest level, and then use those things to really guide your relationships, conversations, and job choices.

Callan Harrington  45:10

You could pretty much drop the mic after that one. Yeah, I don't even know if I have anything to add to that, outside of all those things are going to be so critical if you're gonna start a business, because it's going to test you. Even if you love what you're doing more than anything else in the world, it will test you, no question. So I love those. Lissy, this has been excellent. I had such a fun time on this. I appreciate you coming on the show today.

Lissy Alden  45:32

Thank you so much for having me and for your beautiful questions.

Callan Harrington  45:35

Best response I could've had all day.

Lissy Alden  45:39

Love it.

Callan Harrington  45:39

Love it.  I hope you enjoyed Lissy and I's conversation. Using your gut to create the first draft, and using data to validate it is one of my favorite things I've heard in a while. If you want to learn more about Lissy, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.