We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lissy Alden. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lissy below.

Lissy , appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

We work to make it easy to feel better, fast! Right now, there are so many mental health and wellness tools on the market, that it can be confusing, overwhelming, and downright frustrating to figure out what to use and when. So we’ve worked hard to bring together the best research in the world—from neuroscience, psychology (positive, performance, goal-setting), physiology (wellness, health, fitness), and beyond—into one daily Mental Fitness routine that helps you boost focus, energy, mood, and productivity in just 10 minutes a day. This increase in Mental Fitness makes it easier for you to do more with less time, ask for that raise, manage your emotions at work/home, and find the good in each day.

In the same way you go to the gym to work on your body on a regular basis to build wellness, the same goes for your mind—you can’t go on a single retreat or read a book and expect to feel better, you have to put in the work! We’re focused on helping our members build long-term Mental Fitness habits that stick—so our model, plans, accountability teams and progress tracker are all built with this in mind.

We’ve been testing for 4 years and one of the biggest “aha” moment for us is that most people don’t think about their mind at all! We always joke that because it sits behind your eyes, we forget it’s there. By merely paying attention to it, even for just a few minutes a day, it can be a huge unlock in focus, energy, and productivity. So our members now know that working on your mind is not a sign of weakness, but strength. Athletes work on their bodies, “mathletes”—or anyone who uses their brain on a daily basis—work on their minds.

We are working to forever change the relationship between people and the way that they think about—and treat—their Mental Fitness each and every day.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I eagerly entered the business world, working with global companies like J.P. Morgan, American Express, and General Assembly to build and strengthen their operations, culture, and workforce. However, I was struck by how my training as an “academic athlete” didn’t seamlessly apply to the corporate arena. I realized my struggles—aka being in a constant state of stress, overwhelm, exhaustion, and burnout—mirrored those of the employees at the organizations I was hired to help. It was then that I set out to figure out how to work on my mind, so that it works better for me (and the people around me).

Today, the proprietary, research-backed, and quantitative Mental Fitness framework that I built is taught at institutions and companies including MIT and Google. While I was excited about the teaching work, the thing that haunted me was the consistent feedback that people loved learning “the how” of Mental Fitness, but they kept asking where my “gym” was, or a place to support the follow-through and practice of it each day. So I started running product tests, raised money, and have set out to find a way to build accountability and support into everything we do. While knowing how to work on your mind is one thing, actually doing it is quite another.

So we’ve been working tirelessly to build something that is actually do-able, engaging, holistic, effective…and even fun.

Today, MYNDY is a tool to help everyone achieve their personal best. There is nothing else like it on the market and I’m so proud and excited about the upcoming launch of our Mental Fitness iOS app that will make Mental Fitness workouts accessible to even the busiest of minds.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The lesson I had to unlearn is that all advice is good advice. I used to think that more experienced people know more about how to run my business than I do. When I first started building the company, I was like a sponge, working to find experts and gathering everyone and anyone’s opinion thinking I had “everything” to learn. This became especially true during the fundraising process where people would tell me all of their concerns with my business, or their vision for what they think MYNDY should be. While this information can be helpful to hear, it began to drown out my own voice, story, and plan. I realized that I, and only I, have this vision for what my business will be and that all of the information and advice I received is simply a data point. The most valuable lesson I walked away with was to follow my gut and trust my vision (which becomes increasingly clear over time), as it’s the only thing I never regret paying attention to.

As a founder, you and only you can see the vision you’re moving towards and truly know what it takes to bring that to life. I love getting advice from people and it’s been a crucial backbone to how I build the business, but I no longer let it drown out my own voice unless I, and my gut, are on board with it too.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I was super nervous when I left my full-time job to start MYNDY because I was used to health insurance and a regular salary! To make myself feel more comfortable in exploring the idea, I immediately began consulting for approximately 50% of my time with my old employer. Then, when I had everything set up for the business and a slightly stronger conviction that this idea was something unique (I was teaching on the concept), I stopped consulting and used my savings for 6-8 months while doing research on the MYNDY Model. I then started teaching this model to groups and organizations, but still utilized much of my savings until I decided to raise an angel round of funding. This was quite a scary journey as I didn’t raise until 2 years into the business. While it took me a few weeks to raise, it took a 2.5 challenging months to put the materials together—there was so much to learn! Entrepreneurs don’t talk about money a lot but it’s an incredibly important part of the story, and one that I still have to constantly manage….but it’s worth it. I love what I do!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myndy.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myndy.co/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myndy/posts/?feedView=all
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MYNDY_MentalFitness/videos

Image Credits

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