We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Just Me Podcast, Llc a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Just Me Podcast, LLC, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
The biggest risk that the three professionals of Just Me Podcast, LLC have taken is moving our passion, experience and talent from the ‘Idea Phase’ to a ‘Startup Business’. A business can take approximately 2-7 years before it becomes profitable. However, the reality of this timeframe does not truly become impactful until you’ve moved your business from an ‘Idea’ to a Startup, and you add another role to your list of responsibilities.
Not only are the three women of Just Me Podcast, LLC entrepreneurs, we are also daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, colleagues, employees, aunts, friends, wives and caregivers. With all the other permanent roles and responsibilities in our lives (prior to starting a business), a risky decision that the three women have done was add another responsibility to our plates–turn our passion, experience, and talents into a business venture.
Just Me Podcast, LLC, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Just Me Podcast, LLC is a minority-owned, woman-owned business dedicated to minimizing negative stigmas surrounding mental health, by increasing access to knowledge and promoting mental wellness. Just Me Podcast, LLC is the umbrella company that houses two mental wellness divisions: Just Me Therapy (Podcast) and (group) Mental Wellness Consulting Services.
Just Me Therapy (Podcast) is an audio/video platform (podcast), hosted by three women professionals, aimed at offering free education and insight to individuals facing financial barriers when accessing individualized behavioral health support. Barriers may include gaps in their health insurance plans, costly co-pays, or high deductibles. Our podcast provides valuable information, including opinions, advice, and recommendations, all intended for informational and educational purposes. By leveraging this powerful medium, we can reach a wide audience and provide support and guidance to those in need.
During the height of the COVID 19 pandemic we began noticing that community members were trying to access behavioral health therapy with health insurance plans that had costly stipulations to receiving standard therapy services. Costly stipulations include plans with high deductibles (a specific amount you pay prior to your health insurance will cover a specific service), plans that only covered the cost of services from ‘select’ providers/agencies, and/or costly co-pays (fees you pay at each visit).
We became exhausted with providing people with meek alternatives, so we created a behavioral health podcast, entitled: Just Me Therapy (Podcast). This platform offers educational and behavioral health insight to people who could not (and cannot) access counseling services due to costly stipulations within their health plans. The information, education and recommendations on this platform are intended to provide basic skills and knowledge around mental health and wellness. While this platform will never be able to replace the important role of individual counseling, it did (and still does) allow for people to: (1) find comfort (2) realize that they are not alone (3) and gain skills that would otherwise cost.
The (group) Mental Wellness Consulting Services division (operated by the same women who host the podcast) provides group mental health services to businesses, schools, communities, and organizations (secular and non-secular platforms). With a goal of promoting mental wellness through professional development programs, educational events, workshops/retreats, community development programs and community partnerships.
During the pandemic we also observed a drastic breakdown in effective communication, self-regulation, tolerance, problem-solving, empathy/compassion and other social-emotional skills. These concerns were highlighted by multiple social events/trends, including: (1) educator burnout/resignation (2) effects of racial and ethnic inequities (3) community violence (4) and deficits in workplace wellness. These events/trends became recurrent talking points amongst ourselves, our families, colleagues and clients. While we may not have all been in the same boat (metaphorically speaking), we were all in the same collective storm, and we all needed life-jackets (metaphorically speaking).
As a result, we began offering mental health workshops, trainings and presentations to schools, businesses, organizations and communities, with a focus around collective (group) healing, empowerment and resilience.
Our diverse experiences within healthcare systems, education systems, the military, divinity and program development equip us with qualifications to provide mental wellness trainings, presentations and professional development opportunities in locations where mental health and wellness is gaining more traction and being prioritized. This includes workplaces and educational institutions, where the trickle-down effects of COVID-19 and other societal events (ie. burnout/resignation, racial and ethnic inequities, etc.) have created large spikes in an array of mental wellness concerns (ie. anxiety, divisiveness, poor stress management, depression, grief/loss, compassion fatigue and feelings of hopelessness).
As minority women, a part of communities that have been historically marginalized by social, political, and economic systems, the passion of Just Me Podcast, LLC lies within our desire to uplift mental wellness by offering services that have been proven to be effective within black and brown communities. Services that include group work, communal storytelling and healing hubs (at barbershops/salons etc.) act as ways of: (1) humanizing fears/emotions/experiences that have been pacified, (2) creating safe spaces, (3) building connections and (4) teaching skills that support resilience, strength and healing. Historically, services and resources of this caliber have been smothered by the lack of financial resources (ie. lack of support from insurance companies, limited grant-funding, etc) and poor facilitator connection within the community. As a result, the owners of Just Me Podcast, LLC are working to ‘change the narrative’.
It has not been a smooth road, and we are still experiencing bumps along the way. Some of the struggles that we have encountered include: (1) miniscule funding sources (ie. small, limited grants) to produce effective services (2) systems that only work with ‘select’ businesses/educational institutions and (3) poor reimbursement for services that focus on mental wellness for groups.
Even though mental health and wellness is being propelled to the forefront of societal conversations, payer sources (ie. insurance companies, education systems, community initiatives) continue to conceptualize mental health and wellness as an individualized experience that a person must work through on their own. Businesses allocate funds for employee assistance programs but assume greater hesitancy around group mental wellness programs. Education systems allocate funds to increase individualized counseling to students during school hours but assume greater hesitancy around investing in group counseling for their students and educators (even though social skills amongst students and adults have drop between 2019 and 2022). Limited funding sources, payers and investors create miniscule options for services that have been proven effective for communities that have experienced collective trauma (ie. COVID-19) and communities of color.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Other than training/knowledge, it is helpful to understand yourself, your own values and your personal beliefs. Your morals and values serve as a compass for making business decisions, including finances, brand identity and much more.
When starting a business idea with more than one owner, it is helpful to understand your own morals, values and personal beliefs, as well as your business partners. By understanding your own morals, values and personal beliefs, you are able to make business decisions that align with you. By understanding your business partners’ morals, values and personal beliefs, you are able to understand and give empathy to business decisions that your partners align with.
While this may require some business coaching, team building and/or personal therapy, it can be quite helpful as your ideas grow and join together to produce one business.
As a multi-owner business, the women of Just Me Podcast, LLC have multiple morals, values and beliefs that impact decisions for the business. There are multiple inputs of moral reasoning that impact business decisions, and there are multiple inputs of personal beliefs. While this can allow for diversity, it also creates delays in decision making and stalled business ventures. By understanding your own morals, values and beliefs, cohesion and comprehension amongst business partners can occur a lot quicker.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that the women of Just Me Podcast, LLC had to unlearn is that business responsibilities only occur during traditional work hours. On the contrary, a startup business requires a lot more cultivation during the early stages as workflows are formed, prices/fees are negotiated, templates are drafted, and business partner cohesion is created. When embarking on this entrepreneurial adventure two years ago, my business partners and I were under the assumption that we would write out some ideas, outline basic goals/objectives and sell our services.
We soon realized that a business venture requires a lot more time, funds, adaptability, and patience. Within the first two years, we have learned that Startup businesses are NOT a 9-5pm gig. Flexible operation hours and communication correspondences are necessary for growing a young business. However, as we sacrifice with late nights, early mornings and minimal lunch breaks, we have also embraced the importance of entrepreneurial boundaries, especially with our other responsibilities operating in tandem.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/justmetherapy
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justmetherapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justmetherapy
- Other: Podbean: https://justmetherapy.podbean.com/