Why Mental Training Matters More Than You Think (w/ MyMentalPal Founder: Nima Yani)

In this episode, I sit down with Nima Yani, founder of myMentalPal, to explore the connection between mental health, discipline, and performance—and how learning to work with your mind can completely shift how you move through life.

Nima shares his journey from growing up in Iran to moving to the U.S. to pursue basketball, and how that experience led him to discover something many of us overlook: you can train your body all day, but if your mind isn’t supported, performance will eventually break down.

We talk about:

•  The relationship between mental health and performance
•  Why discipline isn’t just about willpower 
•  How mindfulness and meditation can be used as practical tools—not just concepts 
•  The gap between learning and actually applying what you learn
•  And how small, consistent shifts can change your trajectory over time 

We also dive into the creation of myMental Pal—a mental training app that blends personal development, habit building, and mindfulness by turning books into guided meditation experiences.

This conversation goes beyond surface-level self-improvement. It’s about understanding how your brain works, how your nervous system responds to stress and change, and how to build habits that actually support you—especially if you’ve struggled with consistency, focus, or follow-through.

We also explore:

•  Why human-led mental health tools still matter in the age of AI 
•  The importance of trauma-informed design
•  And how to create a more sustainable relationship with growth 

If you’re interested in self-development, ADHD, habit formation, mindfulness, mental clarity, or performance optimization, this episode will give you a different way to think about it.

Connect with Nima Yani / My Mental Pal
 Download the app and explore more through: https://mymentalpal.com/

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Beyond the Mind
 00:29 Meet Nima Yani: Founder of My Mental Pal
 02:01 From Iran to the U.S.: Pursuing Basketball Dreams
 03:17 Discovering Meditation Through Performance
 05:10 Small Tweaks, Big Results: Lessons from Sports
 07:06 Discipline and Decision-Making
 11:21 Adapting to a New Country and Culture
 13:04 Building Mental Barriers and Focus
 14:59 Designing for the User: Building My Mental Pal
 18:08 Mental Health, Mindfulness, and Product Design
 22:02 Why Human-Led Teaching Matters in the Age of AI
 24:04 Micro-Learning Through Meditation
 26:07 Building Daily Habits and Consistency
 32:26 Trauma, Boundaries, and Mental Health
 37:08 Book-Based Meditation and Learning
 40:11 Balancing Mind and Body
 43:00 Building a Team and Scaling the Vision
 45:39 How to Get Started with My Mental Pal
 46:48 Closing Thoughts

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm so excited to have you here on the Beyond the Mind podcast. Neeman Yastani is here to join us. He's the founder of My Mental Pal, the app. And I'm so excited to have him share his story because it's it's so unique, but so relatable, and you know, really comes from some topics that we cover on Beyond the Mind from just a different perspective and a different line. So, Nima, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and then we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Okay, appreciate appreciate it, SC and excited for this podcast. I can start off with kind of giving you a high-level introduction of My Mental Powell, and then we can go from there.

unknown 0:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

My mental pal is a mental training tool, and it's a way to learn through med practice of meditation. And what we do is that we turn really great books like Atomic Habits, OSHA, Hour of Habits, and all these really amazing books into meditation practices. And the goal is that you know we we see meditation as a place where you can learn and absorb information, and then you can take it throughout your day, basically. And that's kind of the goal that we have is uh if you take can take control over your mind, then you can take control over your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I love that. And I know you and I got to chat a little bit earlier about your journey into mental health and mindfulness, and it comes from your upbringing and your journey to the US. Can you give us a little bit of background on I guess your journey into mindfulness?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah, I'll I'll start off my journey into mindfulness. Would you like me to start with the journey of coming to US and then diving into mindfulness? Yeah. Yeah, tell us about a better connection with the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, I guess. Well, I guess I'll spell the context that I know uh your background has to do with performance, and coming to mindfulness is tied to performance and a certain passion of yours that brought you to the US. So I would I would love for our audience to be able to hear your story.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Growing up, I I was a lot into sports and athletic uh body contact activities, and basketball was my favorite sport, and I used to play it almost night and day growing up. And I did grow up in Iran as well. And uh I decided to move to US to be an athlete, and that was really my passion growing up is to be a professional sports athlete. And when I moved here, I was, you know, just me moving here, faced a lot of challenges during the move to US. But during that phase of practicing sports and everything, mental health was a a major challenge of mine. As I was practicing multiple times a day, my body performance was increasing, but my mind performance was decreasing. And when I got into college, I started yoga. And then yoga at the end of each class, we started we ended with meditation. And I found that meditation piece was the most powerful part of the whole session, was that stillness part. And and in my world where there's a lot of contact, stillness was the key factor to being a next level athlete in college. So that's when I when I transitioned into entrepreneurship and then starting my company. It was not originally my mental pal, but it uh then kind of transitioned into the my mental pal and being a mental training tool with meditation.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So I'm really fascinated with the fact that you knew yourself so well that you knew you wanted to play basketball and take on a big risk, like come to a different country to invest in something that you were passionate about, especially growing up in a country where like that's not the traditional path, you know. And I often find that it's a lot of us struggle with knowing what we want and have but outside of what the systems around us want for us. So, how how do you think you know that so well? Like, was do you think that that was an early connection to your body and how basketball felt, or where did that like knowing come from that this path can be an option for you?

SPEAKER_02 4:08

It started early on when well, I I I'm also an A-grade student. So all my my grades were always A's. I usually didn't have B's as much. So I was really good in education and and studying and everything. I was very disciplined. I think that was my main key thing. My parents didn't usually force me to either work out or study or do anything, it was just basically make me making a lot of decisions. So part of it is you know, making a lot of mistakes and then learning through the mistakes of how to do things right, and that builds discipline. And I I really fell in love with basketball when when you can make mistakes really quickly and then learn from them and then come back, you know, in five minutes and do something better. So it's a basketball that I see as a continuous self-growth uh sport that you can continuously grow throughout it and become better, either in your physical ability or your mental ability or your strategy. And it's really amazing how it kind of plays out in not just sports, but in real life mentality as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

That's super fascinating. I can't connect the dots until you just said something here, but uh I want to ask because when I was learning about trauma work and I would say like interpersonal dynamics and communication, you know, my coach Dennis, who uh I'm so appreciative, so I end up talking about him a lot on my podcast. But you know, uh he was my communication coach, but he often referenced sports. I think he'd use baseball and analogy, but sports as making like small, like sometimes very minute tweaks and like refinement can make all the difference in terms of long-term strategy. Um can you dive a little bit more into that? I feel like you probably have a better sense of how that fits in with mental health. Um, because I've never I actually never connected it to sports, but I I refer to that analogy a lot, even though I don't play sports, but I get it, you know, I get that that's like the precision that sometimes you need to look at tackling something for like true impact. Yeah, I guess just where the dots connect.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah, all the sports are have this thing in common where if you are able to make small tweaks, you either win the game or you win, you know, if you make a lot of game-winning decisions and you win a championship. That that translates into outside of being an athlete too, or outside of sports context, if you make a lot of good decisions outside of sports and relationship and school and life, then you end up being in a much better place in a year, in five years, and ten years. All the small steps eventually add up to you know larger context. And the the key difference in all of these decision making is not really your body, but it's your mind. And that's what the separates a um two athletes from one another, is basically their minds are in a different place, even though one might be stronger or weaker. That mental ability is really what um separates people from one another.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

So discipline in particular.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, discipline, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Wow, okay. Fascinating. So I'm curious, how did you use that that discipline in learning to navigate change? Because as part of this path, I mean, that's remarkable that you you had a like the flexibility to evaluate how you're using discipline in your, you know, like educational, more intellectual life. You said you're getting straight, you know, good A's and B's, and I mean great grades, right? So there was nothing wrong there. But then there was this connection to sports. I don't even know how to ask the question because it's such a foreign thing, because a lot of us are stuck in our heads, right? Like, we really, if we are intellectuals, we we live up here, we tend to be like detached almost from like using our bodies and understanding how they are like contributing to our performance. But you had a good view of both of them, it sounds like. And I'm curious, like, what does that feel like if something is driving you more towards like that physical aspect than the intellectual one? Like, how would you choose that? Because on paper, the intellectual route probably made more sense to anybody just on paper, you know, on a path.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah, I do understand that. Why take the the physical, you know, route where people are are you know trying to make decisions with their bodies in an arena or sport than to make an intellectual career, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah, and you know, I'm sorry, I should preface that I'm I'm really making an assumption here, just from what I know, in like a country like like India, where I would just go visit, it's like uh like if if you are getting those grades on paper, the path that you take is almost like predestined, you know, and you wouldn't even be considering a different path than something like sports, you know, it just seems like there's more of a expect a social expectation on the table. And so, yeah, that's where I'm getting really interested of like you had a self-knowing that there was something that was coming in more of this physical discipline that was an investment. And I'm just curious what that words for it if you just knew it from experiencing both.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

It's a lot to follow your gut feeling, but you know, when you're younger, your decision makings are also your parents as well. So when you do have good grades, you have a lot more leadway with your parents. They know you're making good decisions, and now you're top students, you're good in sports, then they kind of allow you to make a decision what's best for you at that point. In in the United States, schools were actually a lot easier coming here. In Iran, schools were challenging. We had we had a lot more curriculum classes and discipline in the school, I would say. US. In US, I uh it was almost like I didn't have to study to get grades. It was very, very, I would say, easy the curriculum that it was here. So I had a lot more time to focus on being an athlete and um working out at 4 a.m., 7 a.m. 4 p.m. and then going tonight and then thinking about sports and then waking up and doing it again. Then I went to school, but it was so easy that I just didn't have to spend time doing much of the work because I was just much more ahead of other students there. So I spend that time being the best athlete I could be.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Oh, this is fascinating. Okay, I'm I'm getting it now. This is really fascinating. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about how, yeah, just your mindset when you moved at a young age to a different country. And you know, it's it seems to me like you kind of when I, you know, a lot of Beyond the Mind focuses on what's invisible around us, because a lot of us, you know, can see things like very pretty linearly, but sometimes often miss the invisible like social intelligence, the moving between worlds, like the you know, physical and mental, like a lot of that stuff, but you seem to have had a more solid like footing in it, and you're knowing I'm just kind of curious how did you use that your thinking and your thought process when you were adapting to a new country and just kind of thinking long-term while trying to understand things like social dynamics that are confusing at any age, let alone in high school.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah, I would say it was very challenging. The first actually for a few years in US was extremely challenging because it was in a lot of you know, no family, no nothing. A new language. I spoke Farsi and in Iran, in US, I speak English, new people. Initially, I had a lot of trust in people. Um, and that trust level, because then if I was in my own country, everyone I was interacting with were family, and we had a lot of family circles. So coming here, that family circle was you know non-existent. And I had that thought process that you know you could trust everyone like family, but you you meet people and they oftentimes disappoint. So you learn to build you know mental barriers. Uh, a lot of times, you know, people that come to US uh they do get into drugs or other problems because they tend to trust people as well. Um, so I I because I was disciplined early on, I had my own discipline. I usually did not go to parties, I was not a party person at all. I was just you know super focused on one thing, come here, be the best athlete, avoid everything else. So I had that mindset kind of you know coming before before coming to US. So my goals were already set. When I came here, it was just all about execution. And anything that did not align with it, I was just kind of you know avoiding all the parties, trucks, you know, everything else that was deterring from the main goal that you know I set out to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Oh my gosh, so impressive. There's I don't know if you know this, but there's a a meme about uh ADHDs, you know, I think you might, because uh I know we've talked before about how a lot of folks with ADHD really resonate with your app and find a lot of benefit with it, that you already have a lot of users with ADHD in-depth research in that area, but I just know how I've connected with your app that there's an ADHD connection. And we struggle with discipline so much that this meme says, like, uh, you know, it's funny that you think you can tell me what to do. Like, I can't even tell me what to do. You know, I can't even stick with the the plan that I make for for myself because there's this internal rebelliousness, you know, against I mean, it's against your own discipline, even that you want for yourself, right? So it's uh I should say somebody investing in learning discipline now, it's quite challenging but quite beneficial. And so I I love that you came to it from such a like holistic knowing. And then like applying that and understanding like how that was impacting your physical performance versus your mental performance. Um targeted, like you are a very you were you you uh like develop yourself thinking about performance, and so now I'm better understanding how this is felt fed into development of my mental pal. So I would love to dive a little bit more into that if if that sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Um that sounds good. And do do you want to touch base on the ADHD part? Yeah, yeah, it's hard to, you know, with people that do have ADHD, it's hard to tell, you know, from an app perspective, hey, do this, do that, do this. We we solve that actually. Instead of us give you telling, for example, someone what to do, when someone downloads our app, we ask them, what do you want to do? And here's the options that you have. And then we'll just remind you every day that you have to, these are the things you committed to doing, basically. It's basically that you make the decision and the commitment and the roadmap to select. We just keep you accountable on it.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Thank you for that. I'm I'm actually gonna ask it you the question from a different angle now because companies that build products struggle with thinking about the customer and how they're approaching the product. And you just showed how you thought about a customer mindset that uh is radically different than the way that you would naturally build. So clearly you've built a product that has deep customer research like done in mind. Uh you know the problem space as a founder, but you didn't build it for you. How did you know to do that in your how did you because and I ask it because uh, you know, I was a product manager for my previous tenure in tech. And so this is a big challenge of when you're building is getting really clear on who you're building for, knowing that they are not you, right? And really understanding them and their needs. And a lot of companies really struggle with this aspect alone. So, as somebody who didn't come from tech and didn't work off of a framework, how did you know to do that? Like, how did you know that people were just at the new, that their needs were like early enough?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

I'll first, you know, touch base on what's already out there for other people. So there's Calm app and Headspace. Calm, you know, you download the app and it doesn't give you any direction, what to do, where to start, what's your roadmap. It's basically a library of content. Um but they have really nice content, but there's no plan for someone to do anything or any kind of reward for doing something. So that immediately is that's that's the biggest player in the market, Calm app. That just leaves a huge gap for someone like us to now think more deeper from a customer perspective. I myself was a coach too, and a trainer, and I worked one-on-one with a lot of people that I helped them with their physical training, health, and nutrition. So I I have that experience of working one-on-one close with people and understanding what they need and what they don't need. And basically, the our our product and our service as someone comes on board, it's basically we have a mascot called Zen, and Zen starts off being your coach. And Zen asks you a lot of questions. Hey, where do you want to focus? What's your goal? Based off your focus and growth areas, here's the books that we recommend, the book meditations. And then you select the books that you like, and then that becomes your roadmap. And we educate more on what's the benefits of doing this, why you should do it, and we'll remind you as well to come back and practice.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Oh, I should love that.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

So you really thought about like individual needs and then how to make them more scalable, yeah, by allowing preferences and one-on-one relationships and turn it into a product, and how can you scale it to now millions of users basically? And that's through our our mascot Zen, which you know acts as a coach as you come into the app to coach you every day and practice with you and nudge you and celebrate also your wins too. So if you practice you know every day, Zen would celebrate your accomplishments of you know, seven-day streaks, 30-day practices, or 100 days.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

You know, we'll just swap that third topic to second to third since yeah, I I I I find like your design and research approach behind my mental pal to be really fascinating and really important for the time that we're in because like your background tells me you clearly have invested in understanding the brain and body connection. And obviously, given your background and what you shared with me, like performance and how those play together for better performance is top of mind. And and we have industries that don't you know understand uh that individual needs do differ around this, and so the need to meet somebody where they are, but also provide options for growth. It's it's a really critical and part of like any app that I would say definitely touches on mental health, right? Because there's a lot of sensitivity about how you move somebody forward to help them make progress in an area where I mean, just like physical injury, you don't want to get injured in the progress. And with mental health, you don't want to cause burnout or overexertion or like misunderstanding of a skill that creates more harm. So the thoughtfulness that I think I'd like to dive into that thoughtfulness a little bit more because you talked about um just understanding that each person is individual. But can you tell me a little bit more about um like the broader types of research that you've done? Um, because I know you've done research on neurodiversities. Um and that's what I'd like to understand more, because I don't think that the thoughtfulness behind those user needs are um, I mean, the the question be the concern behind the question is that right now when we're able to do software development really fast in an age of AI, it's really easy to develop first and then launch and almost skip the most critical step, which is the non-tech parts, right? So it's the understanding of the users' needs and then thinking thoughtfully through the design on behalf of them to protect them and how they um grow, you know, as a customer. And that like customer-first mindset throughout the whole process is a is a huge risk in a time of AI where development and launch is so quick and easy. So yeah, I'd love to invest more into like the research that you've done in that like upfront thought process and why that's so important when you think about like brain and body and like optimizing it, you know, for holistic health and improvement.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

I'll I'll circle back on what you said, launch early. I'm I'm really for that actually. Launch early, see what works, fail quick, and iterate fast. And that's what we've we've been doing for a long time. We did launch, we we've been launching, you know, versions that do not support initially from our you know early versions. They were not as polished, they were not as thought through, and the customer will always tell us that we're wrong. Yeah, so uh I would say the research is continuous. It's it doesn't happen that you have to spend time on just researching and then launching a product, then you you lose the you lose that gap that you can launch something. Uh as we're researching and we're building at the same time, we launch versions every month. We're iterating constantly for the last three years. And we've we've done so much, you know, try and fail, trial and fail, not just on the development side, but also on the content quality, the teachers, the steps that a user has before a class, after a class. So we've thought about every step of the customer journey, uh, including the content, which is the most important thing. Uh, we've spent years just finding and making strategic partnerships with mindfulness teachers and psychologists to teach these content. And that's where we think AI doesn't play in, actually. We we believe AI should not teach the content of the classes because it requires a lot of creativity. And I believe creativity should not be taught by the AI to humans. Humans should you know create that part of it and teach. To other arguments. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Sorry. I was just like, yes, it's a lot of creativity. I say that because when I did my yoga teacher training and understood the complexity that it takes to teach even a single yoga class or single meditation, it is a lot of like designing a full experience that is like invisible.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

So like so important. Go further into that. Like, what if what were you finding? Like from feedback to like knowing you had to invest more into like the full experience.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Initially, we were just a meditation app like Calm, but but we we tr changed our positioning and we are a mental training platform.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

And we train through meditation. That's one of the tools we use to train the mind is meditation. And to build a mental training platform, it's basically the same as physical training. It requires daily practice, it requires daily reminder. It requires what happens if you miss a day. And it's a continuous practice. You see results in six months, in a year, in two years, uh, and your you know mental training uh progress. Uh, it's not a platform where you come in and take a class for anxiety or stress or sleep. We're all about training the mind to become smarter, wiser, and growing that personal development. So that requires a lot of knowledge and what goes into the actual content of each class and uh who teaches them. And it would be just super easy to grab a script off of Chat GPT and plug it in AI and just make hundreds of classes. And it could probably do the job, but it it would not have that edge and creativity and imperfection that's needed in a in a class. AI will give you a super perfect script, but it won't give you that that that uh creative touch that a human has. And that's where that handoff from human to human happens the best. Um and the content that we create, they all start off with a lot of education instead of a a meditation class that starts off, hey, let's breathe in and relax, it starts off with you know teaching you. And uh since we are a book-based meditation, which we call also micro-learning meditation, uh basically micro-learning meditation is learning big ideas in a short period of time, and that's how we create all our content is in a meditation class on our platform, you learn about the concepts of really great books. For example, taking atomic habits, each each book is divided into seven days. Each day you come and practice one day, and we talk about one topic each of those seven days, and it starts off more like an audiobook and then transition into meditation, and then you learn and meditate and you take it into your real life. It's basically the gap between a book and actual, you know, real life executions, kind of the meditation part that you kind of need to now. Now that you meditated on it, you're excited. Now go and execute, go practice habit stacking now.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Yeah, it your app is really unique that way. I what I would at the book that I'm listening to now, I think Becoming Superhuman by Joe Dispenza, like when I was listening to the meditation, which and they're only 15-minute meditation, so amazingly doable, like in the morning. Um, and I think that flow feeds into just what we're talking about, like the thoughtfulness of like getting somebody to learn it and then put it into action quickly. Because it seemed just like that. Like it started off with like an audiobook or like a book, like a book deep dive on a topic, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Audiobook basically, and you first, you know, you're you you need education on the topic and the concept, and then you meditate on it, and then you reflect the teacher guides you through that whole process and you learn, and then our teachers give you one key takeaway that you can have into your real life, and that's basically our micro learning concept that you can meditate on great concepts and practice it then in your real life.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

I'd love to dive into that part because as you're learning these concepts, especially because you come from a performance background, and uh I don't like I'm always thinking from your I wonder if like if I came from a perform, if I came from more of like a balanced background, you know, would I see meditation as like like the first little touch point of mind and body like talking together for just like building a connection, you know, like step one before you could go to like mastering performance in like both your you know physical performance in life and your I don't know, maybe like more tactical goals. So can you help me like understand? I guess if we if we're starting this today with my mental pal. And like I know in terms of discipline, a lot of us struggle with like an imbalance of where we're disciplined. Like we might be really um disciplined in our, you know, work work, uh, but not as disciplined in at home or not as disciplined in our fit fitness routine. So I'd love to talk about like kind of yeah, what does that lose user journey like look like for you is like being able to use my mental pal as the like a foundational tool, like daily tool to enhance performance more holistically in your life.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Yeah. So number one thing is to make the tool super accessible and and make it easy to get into your class. So you don't want any kind of barriers to start a class or any kind of blocker. So we make it super easy to you know start a class every day. All our content are 15 minutes. You don't you know how much time you're expecting to put in. That expectation creates habit. And we set daily reminders. A user gets a member gets multiple reminders a day if you don't practice.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Emails will come, you know, everywhere, you know, where we can to get that one class a day from you so that you're you're on top of that training. And then touching on the mind and body connection, that that's a foundation of all meditation practice. All meditations have a mind, basically, a meditation is a practice of the mind to connect it to the body. Now, how much more can we add to a meditation becomes the education side that becomes us, you know, teaching in a meditation class. And all our teachers uh and all our classes help with that mind and body connection. That core practice is what we also teach. And our teachers are have have done a really great job with doing that, and they all have backgrounds and uh they're all mental health specialists, mindfulness coaches, they're all they some of them have career coaches, they've been in stressful jobs, they have those experience hands-on, what people face and their challenges. So they know how to guide a person from in a class that's either struggling with something or is coming here for a challenge that they've been facing, they know how to get someone paying attention in a class, basically.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

I love the statement you made earlier where it's like a handoff from human to human. And I'm having a hard time asking a question, but I'll tell you what I'm experiencing is like since since learning that your teachers are like actual teachers that do have like extensive experience and background and have been interviewed extensively before becoming teachers on your platform, you know, I know in the experience I can it helps me better listen to the meditations as like a student, you know, rather than listening to it as a meditation, as just a guided meditation to help me get out of a busy mind invitation. So that to me is like, okay, this is the difference of what it feels like for me of using my mental pal versus calm. You know, it does feel more like an invitation to learn more mindfully, you know, and put things into practice. And so yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know the question that I'm asking, it's almost like how did how how how did you know that that was such a critical step for the effectiveness, or how how have you guys been able to measure the effectiveness that that has? Because I imagine it's it's significant, but like when I first uh for many, for many of us who are so loud in our heads, it takes a long time to even just get to that skill to mindfully listen well, you know. So I guess yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more into like why that part was so important, and especially like that seems to me like something that's really irreplaceable in the time of AI, right? Um bring that connection there. So if you could speak to that a little.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah. So the closest platform that it comes to having content that's done by other people than the teacher is Calm. Calm app, their classes are are their their teeth role, they don't really have teachers, they're all actors and actresses, reading scripts made by other people, basically. So they have the biggest disconnection between actual mindfulness and actual meditation. And we saw that as also a huge gap in the market where great teachers uh do not have either the platform or the voice to talk about their mindfulness practice or teach it. So that's one thing that we really took into account when when we started interviewing teachers is you know, seeing how well they can teach and seeing their own struggles as well. And we provide teachers structures to create a class, but we don't create the classes. The teacher does, they have the best experience. We give them guardrails and feedback, but eventually the class is theirs to teach. And no other uh app does it the way we do. And we we spend a lot of time on the content side, making sure each class is pitch for pitch, teaching content, practicing mindfulness, uh, on the books concepts, and then having one clear takeaway. We can't measure how successful it is compared to, let's say, an AI class because we just don't have AI content, but we have people that love the content, and that just you know gives the right signal that we're doing the right things if people are coming in and practicing and coming back the next day. That means that we've done our job with creating something that's truly amazing.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

That's wonderful. And and how did you know that understanding trauma was an important part of the experience? You know, I know uh I know even in the yoga and meditation world, you know, there's a like like subject matter expertise can be built just in trauma. And so I guess how did you know to that that part was important to bring in for the you know user's benefit?

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Yeah, and that's a really great topic. Trauma plays a really direct, almost direct connection with mindfulness and overcoming trauma. And everybody faces trauma on different levels, including myself, trauma of either loneliness, trauma of you know, grief, trauma of different areas in life, people have um different amounts of trauma that they have. And knowing that myself as an athlete, as a trainer working with people, trauma is usually the one of the biggest block blockers to creating new habits because you're basically holding on to something else. So the sooner someone can let go of something, they can grab something else. So our our thought process in building the product is how soon can we can we have someone disconnect from something so that we can give them something more valuable in their future or current, present, they they can hold on to more. Um the platform design, you know, make the design as beautiful as possible, um, make it most fun so that someone wants to come back every day and practice. And then the teachers, we have um trauma specialists, we have teachers that have um been through challenges and they understand it. So as soon as you know the content can be effective, then um we've done the job of you know helping someone release um problems from their you know past and taking control of their present and future.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

That's I mean, that to me, coming from uh the tech industry where this like level of knowledge about like the human needs, um usually they kind of live in two separate worlds, right? So I find it this so important and fascinating that um here you've built a tech product that really understands this human element. Um, because I'm not sure if if everyone knows, like I I had to learn this going through my own yoga teacher training, but the work that you're talking about, I mean, these are like uh I have my 200 hour and my 300-hour, you know, trainings, but the work on how to communicate to be trauma informed. Um not even the not just the words you say, but how much you guide somebody versus invite somebody, you know, like there are such, there's such like detailed thoughtfulness that goes into creating a safe like practice, you know, that that I mean, and the the effectiveness of it comes to allow like you have yourself to have that vulnerable like space and exposure and then to have the space to work through it. But I guess I want to call out how unique this is because even when you're doing something that's trauma informed, it does take this level of thoughtfulness, like a yoga class that is just maybe I would say a yoga class without thinking about trauma. And I know I took a class that I was loving, and then there was a song that played, and it was a song that had to had this theme of school violence for like with any, you know, any parent that's in a yoga class and then a song comes on about school violence. Like I was so like triggered when it came on because I was so in the moment, I was so listening to the words, it had a really like a negative, like a jarring effect, you know. And so that's just a sickful example of like how when you don't understand the needs behind like like trauma and the impact of mind and body to create a safe space and to enable forward progress, it can impact your experience without you ever knowing why. And so that's where I just see this amazing benefit to your users at a time when you know, uh without understanding these nuanced things that I don't think AI is ever going to be able to understand it because to understand trauma and how it affects you, you have to teach each individual to understand it in themselves, right? So AI will never be able to craft that specific class for you. But like what your platform does is teach it in a way that um many people can benefit from it. And I love how you called out it's like it's conscious of not bringing in past so that you can really, or it's more of like removing the barriers from the past, as you said it, right? To to help them work quicker.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah, and and we we have categories on that content, and that's basically we've created a lot of content just for boundaries, trauma, and uh and this whole category. We have categories on, let's say, productivity and self-growth and other ones, which is less trauma related, but our relationship category, we have relationship with self, which has which we have books that dive into more of these topics. And two of the books that we have are Set Boundaries and Find Peace by uh forgot the author's name, Nedra.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Oh, yeah, to one to oh that book is amazing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Yeah, we we have that one, and this is a seven-day practice, so it it it's not like you come and just take it and and now you go out and you're done. So we we try to hold the member for seven days to finish this, so it creates a more of a habit cycle of it. So that creates a lot of you know back and forth with us and the member that we come back tomorrow. We'll teach you one more thing about this book. Come back the next day, learn one more thing. So we don't cram all the book into one practice. We have another book which is great, Adult Children of Immature Parents by Lindsay. Yeah, that one is also another book that we have, which talks about relationships, you know, with family, self, and boundaries. And and uh, these two are taught by a psychologist and on our platform, which she's done a really great job. Her name is Jordan, um, with teaching these concepts from the book. Uh, and that really helps members, you know, find ways that they can either set boundaries, find their trauma, let go and connect with their present and focus on the future that's coming, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I I love it. And I had told you offline that in my short recap of after using your app, like the first thing I said to a friend who's a fellow book lover is oh my gosh, this book is like meditation for or this app is like meditation for book lovers. It's um the joy of getting on there and seeing like a library of books to choose from. So the the question that I know would come up um us book lovers, as it's already come up with me, is when we're in the app and we're like, oh my gosh, I want a meditation on this book. Like, how can we send you our requests for what books we think are amazing to consider for you know focus work?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

That is a good feedback. It's a good good thought. We should add a area in our app to send us to your favorite book requests. But the the most common way is in our in our settings page, okay. A an option feedback to CEO, which sends me a direct email. I get a lot of requests from people about books they like to see as meditations. So we we often see a lot of requests from different books. One was a man's search for meaning, which is the most common one we're getting recently, and we're working on that one.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Oh, I love oh, that's cool. I haven't read the book, so I'll look forward to it. I would love to know like you you started my mental pal uh or you started your journey into meditation because you had gotten to this point where you realized you were doing really well and disciplined with your physical performance and then wanted to work on your mental performance. And I'm curious what that journey like evolved into as you like worked on your mental skills. Like, how did how did they uh how do you, as somebody who has had balance, like been able to like keep the balance iterating between mind and body? Because many of us, and I speaks for myself included, it's like no mind, you've worked on yourself for like decades. Let's now focus on body for you know, it's like been big chunks of being them being separate and learning to incorporate more of a healthy balance between the two. So have you found that a relationship has changed in just your investment in more of like the mental training aspects of this work?

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Well, to get balance, you must first lose balance. So I've I've also invested time in being off balance. So I've invested time in, you know, doom scrolling or you know, doing things I personally wouldn't want to do, so that I know how it is. So I have a different perspective of it. That you know gives me a mindfulness view of, you know, now this perspective is different. I also work with, you know, as I worked as a trainer, so I I talk to a lot of people and and I have kind of direct communication, how people feel when they are in different situations, different mindsets, different relationships. That just you know helps give a holistic view of all multiple views and making the best decisions of making a product that is impactful. But talking on on the journey between the sports and a and building the product, basically in college as as my career in athletics and sports came to a close, I I was also an entrepreneur. I I was also the a cum la day of my class, the top student. Yeah, and and I honestly I didn't put too much effort into it. I was just, you know, doing it. I was just, I don't know, maybe I'm smarter, I don't know. But uh school wasn't challenging that much for me. As I was an athlete, I I was studying entrepreneurship and then I got introduced to yoga, and meditation was a big piece of it, and I used it every day before I was practicing my sports athletes and getting into training sessions or after training sessions. That meditation piece was a huge game changer for me, and it made my performance increase a lot. And diving into it more, I started with you know building the first version myself and then started building a team. And then building a team at challenges took years to build a solid core group of people that are amazing, and and that kind of led into building my mantle pal from a group of amazing team members and meeting amazing coaches uh that teach the classes as well. And then now we're just in the last phase of now working with influencers in the same space and communicating our product to the world.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

I'm glad we're kind of closing on that team element because people behind the product is gonna be even more so critical, obviously, in the future, right? When we I think when we are able to have like uh mass development, you know, the thought behind it and the ability, like you said, even without it being an upfront investment, like being able to iterate with improving things, not just for like revenue potential, but for like true impact is going to be more like so important in the the next or the current chapter moving forward of AI. Um, yeah, I would love to know like what are the best ways for our audience to be able to like try out my mental pal and connect with just understanding what you're building and more about your team, you know, connecting with the teachers, like what are the best social media platforms and you know what's What's up ahead, you know, so our team can can try out your or our audience can try out your app and also connect more with my mental pal and and what you're building.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

I'll first you know give a huge thank you to if if my team ever watches this, this a huge thank you to my team because they're the most amazing core group of people that I've met, and they're all incredibly talented. It is challenged challenging to build a product like this, and you meet people and they often leave the team because they don't see the vision or they don't have the work ethic. So the early-on challenges of building a team is very hard. I would say it's the more most hardest part of building any company. First, you need to build, you know, have a vision of the product, you know, what you want to build, and you need to find people that you know join you on that vision. And you need to find the right people to join you, and that becomes really critical. Moving past all of that, then it's working with teachers, and we spent a lot of time just finding these uh incredible teachers that we have on our platform. I've worked one-on-one with all of them to create the content uh just to you know make everything pitch perfect. And then lastly, is you know, where you could you know find these teachers on our platform or their social media. All of them have a profile on our app. So if you go to their profile, we built a description about them. There's links to their profiles you could go follow. Some of them even actually most of them even offer one-on-one coaching. If you ever enjoy the content of these teachers, then you could just you know go and take a one-on-one lesson with them if you prefer as well. And lastly, how to get started. All you have to do is just download my mental pal and we'll take care of the rest. And our onboarding, we'll work with you and a few questions, a few quick questions, find what your goals are, your favorite books, build a roadmap, give you a plan that you can start your first day. And hopefully it's a long, amazing journey.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Oh, I love that. Well, I gotta say, I've been using my mental pal for about a month now, and I've really been enjoying it. I've really been enjoying it a lot. And there's some books that uh I never gotten to. Uh the first one, there was Hart Cole, and uh, I know I like his work, but I just uh didn't connect with the audiobook that I had tried earlier. So I enjoyed getting a little bit of a preview through my mental pal of like the topic and the theory away from like his actual book because I think it it did help put it back on the like four-later shelf, you know. So I'm really loving, I'm loving the experience. And I'm so excited for our audience to be able to try it and to have gotten a chance to get to know you. So thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, I'm just I'm looking forward to connecting with you more and being able to share more of like my experience using my mental pal.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Thank you, Estee and it's very nice to be on your podcast and I'm hoping it will reach a lot of people and help a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Awesome.