Announcer: 0:00

The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views express do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasly Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. Through its innovative work and the forward-focused forum, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journey, revealing the lessons they've learned and the stories behind their success. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a little fun. Now, let's dive in.

Marc Bernstein: 0:40

Good morning, America. How are you? Welcome to Founders Forum. It's a beautiful sunny day. Well, it's a sunny day. It's not really beautiful. It's really hot in Philadelphia. So it's the show wasn't called it's always hot in Philadelphia, but these days it is. Anyway, so we've got we're gonna have fun this morning. We have as our guest Lissy, who I'll introduce formally in a minute, and we also have Nicole Deary, who's been on the show before, and she's acting as co-host with me today. So welcome, Nicole.

Nicole Dery: 1:12

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Marc Bernstein: 1:13

And I'll formally introduce you both in a minute. And I'm going to I didn't we usually talk about the topic of the day, and I didn't prepare you for this, but I know you're both prepared for this one. Challenges in building a business. And the question is not what are they, the question is how do you handle challenges in general general? And we also we have some guests sitting with us too, Vera and Kuba, and Vera is going to be on the show soon, and they're considering a podcast of their own and they're hanging out with us, so good morning to both of you. But um there's they're we're all they're all everybody's laughing when I talk about challenges because we can all connect with it. So uh Nicole, I'll start with you. What's your reaction when you have challenges in business in as a in the as a general concept?

Nicole Dery: 2:01

Well, sometimes uh I'm taken by surprise by the character of those challenges. Um and I would say that one of the things that I've found to be most valuable in approaching dealing with them is remembering to connect to purpose. Um if I pay attention to the things that I really care about in the business and the reason why we exist, then I can usually navigate those challenges from a place of centeredness. Um yeah, that that helps me. And I have I have sticky notes.

Marc Bernstein: 2:37

Sticky notes help you with the challenges to do that.

Nicole Dery: 2:39

Sticky notes that remind me, you know, to I use those a lot too.

Marc Bernstein: 2:43

It's like deal with this. And I can just write it down. Lissy, how about you?

Lissy Alden: 2:48

Um I feel like when challenges used to show up, it was like a hair on fire, oh my gosh, you know, the the dog in a room that says I'm fine, but like really inside things are burning. And now it's like a hello old friend. Like we meet again. Um and yeah, I feel like we'll get into this. But after I've started building for a while, I feel like as a founder now, challenges are just part of the to-dos. Um and so I think a lot about um the size of the challenge um and like the impact on the people around me and financials. Um, and then I decide to panic or not.

Marc Bernstein: 3:26

Well, the this will all make a lot more sense when people understand what it is you do for a living. Uh I will just say, so Tom Knox was our guest on the prior show that we were live on the radio this morning, who's 84 years old, and I asked him about challenges. He goes, Well, I don't really have any. I said, What do you mean? He said, Well, some people choose to we didn't talk about this on the show, we talked about it offline. Some people choose to look at challenges as opportunities. That was his whole answer. And I have I have come to that after a lot of years of doing a lot of things that I I I get a moment, I'd say a moment of upset or panic, or not quite panic, I think it used to be panic, but moment of observation and then it shifts to, okay, you know that there's an opportunity here because you've been through this too many times. So sometimes experience helps you with that, right? Vera's shaking her head, yes, she gets that. So so anyway, so uh yeah, so but you know, look, without challenges, there aren't opportunities for one thing. And without experience, um, there's not really entrepreneurialism. You know, it comes with the territory. So so so there we are. So, real quick, I'm gonna introduce Nick Nicole again, who's founder and principal of Allelo Design, and she's a design strategist and founder of the company, a user experience and interaction design studio helping climate tech companies create digital products that drive positive impact. A really cool vision. And if you haven't listened to her show, please do because it was very interesting. And Lissy Alden, who is our guest today, is founder and CEO of MYNDY Mental Fitness. Now that I'm saying it correctly, it makes a lot of sense, and that's why she answered like she did before. And she is also she's a visionary CEO and of a pioneering company built to combat employee burnout from all angles through her revolutionary, I evolutionary too, organizational plus mental fitness model developed over a decade of research beginning in MIT. Recognizing burnout as a multifaceted challenge requiring systematic intervention, she has engineered an innovative platform that addresses psychological, physiological, and organizational factors simultaneously, creating resilient workforces and healthier corporate cultures. She specializes in empowering organizations to achieve their ambitious goals while maintaining employee well-being, creating high-performance cultures where teams and employees thrive. It's a lot, but because it's a lot. So welcome, Lissy. Great to have you here.

Lissy Alden: 6:12

Thanks for having me, Marc and Nicole.

Marc Bernstein: 6:14

Yeah. So tell us a little bit. Well, how did how did your journey in this direction start? I don't we could talk about obviously you were educated at MIT, you've had a a lot behind that. Um I know you had an interesting background growing up. I've I've through you, I've met your father. He was he, by the way, he was a he was a top executive at um Ford Motors and traveled all over the world and as did his family. So you have all that behind you. But what led you to um working with the mind and and um and the well-being of employees?

Lissy Alden: 6:50

Yeah, I mean, I think like a lot of founders, like when you personally face an issue that's so acute you can't not pay attention, um you kind of just have to start building if you can't find a solution. And so that's what happened. I started my first job at a bank in New York City. Um, I burned out. I call it identity burnout. Everyone's like, stop smiling, and they called me bubbles there. Uh so I was like, I gotta go somewhere where like my personality is like fundamentally appreciated.

Announcer: 7:15

Right.

Lissy Alden: 7:16

Um and so I looked all over New York City and ended up at an ed tech company that at the time was 40 people, really small. Uh we were one of the first coding boot camps, one of the first co-working spaces um in the city, and ended up um joining our corporate education team. So I was one of the founding members of that team, and we trained C-suite executives at American Express, the New York Times, um, NFL, you name it. Uh, we were traveling all over the world delivering this training, and I loved it. And that was my first time in experienced time when I loved the work so much and I still burned out. And this time it was physical burnout. It was 24-7 traveling, managing huge teams of people as a very young person. Um, yeah, and it was it was hard. Like I was going to the doctor trying to figure out why my stomach was hurting and where my headaches were coming from. Not a single doctor at the time asked me if I was stressed. Um, I was getting tested for CLA ac and I was like, please don't take bread away from me, you know, the whole thing. Um and then I eventually came to that work was like too stressful for me. Um and then I started talking very publicly to my friends about it at brunch and dinners, and everyone felt the same way. Like people just weren't feeling good at work.

Marc Bernstein: 8:24

And so just to be clear, this is not about hard work, because I know you worked real hard today, right? So let's explain that a little bit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Lissy Alden: 8:31

Yeah, no, I appreciate you stopping there. I mean, I think a lot of times, yeah, people talk about burnout when they're in a job that doesn't feel quite good. For me, I loved the work. Um, but it was really about this inability to turn off. Like I was, you know, working with my phone by my face until you know 10:30 p.m. because of our time differences with the team. Um I'd wake up uh ruminating, thinking about work before my alarm. Um, and you know, I'd skip a meal or I'd be running here and there. And um I joke, you know, as a food fanatic, you don't skip meals uh mentally, emotionally, physically uh without repercussions. Um and so for me it was really about overwork um and not having boundaries with my physical health.

Marc Bernstein: 9:13

Aaron Ross Powell And something that might have something to do with the corporate cultures you were in, I would think as well, right?

Lissy Alden: 9:18

Aaron Ross Powell Totally. I think what's interesting is that I always like to say that knowledge work, where you're working in front of a computer all day, is a funny thing because unlike a factory where you've got uh widgets maybe that you create, um and you've only got a certain amount of widgets that you can create in a day. Uh and you know that because the machine can only process so many, you've only got so many people to process that machine. Uh with knowledge work, you get an additional email or 16 emails a day. That's not configured into your workload. That's not configured into the priorities of the company. And so I always like to say, like, I happen to be at really, you know, fast-moving, dynamic organizations, but I always say that today most companies aren't measuring workload. And they have no idea when an employee talks about being overwhelmed where that's coming from. Like, is it the way that priorities are set? Is it the way the employee is showing up? Um and for me, it was kind of a little bit of everything.

Marc Bernstein: 10:14

So you st so you eventually started a company and we'll talk about that, but and maybe we'll need to address that afterwards, but I want to just put this question out there. There's you know, part of it is obviously addressing it with the employee and how they handle stress and how they handle workload, but the other issue is the workload, right? So I'm interested to see how you deal with that when you're working with corporations and their employees.

Lissy Alden: 10:40

Aaron Powell Yeah. So um I have a four-part model for organizational fitness. Um and the top of that model, the number one most important thing is clarifying expectations. And when I say that, a lot of people nod their head, just like you are now, Marc, and say, yeah, that makes total sense.

Marc Bernstein: 10:56

I'm nodding because I did see it before, and it and I and I remember thinking that really makes sense. You have to start there.

Lissy Alden: 11:01

Trevor Burrus, yeah, you gotta start there. And it and expectations aren't just about the goals and of a company, they're really about the priorities within those goals. So priority actually means one, what's the single most important thing a company is supposed to do and the employees within it are supposed to do. Um and then it's also about behaviors, which are the values or ways in which you're supposed to behave within the context of that company to achieve your goals. And when I think about this idea that most of us are overwhelmed today at work, a lot of times it's because companies themselves aren't structurally clear on those expectations, not just for the individual employee and their workload, but for the actual organization themselves. When was the last time you were in a boardroom or somewhere where someone just really quickly added something to your to-do list or flung out an email to someone because they didn't think that much about it? That's happening at scale. And when you think about teams as the key performance unit of an organization, um, if the company themselves has priorities and expectations, every team has priorities and expectations. And then individuals have those priorities and expectations for their jobs. All of a sudden, Amy Edmondson, the founder of Psychological Safety, she has a theory called teaming. Um, and she said that teams have moved from a noun to a verb. So now we're not just existing in a static environment with a bounded group of individuals on one goal. Now we're in a dynamic environment with multiple individuals working on multiple goals. All of a sudden, this very dynamic workplace with dynamic expectations and priorities and dynamic people can become really overwhelming. And without a system for tracking that and really managing it, um, a lot of the employee burnout is in fact a structural challenge.

Marc Bernstein: 12:37

So this whole concept of teaming, which is which is a verb now and is looked upon as a very positive thing, but not necessarily. Depends how it's handled.

Lissy Alden: 12:47

Aaron Powell I always like to say that teaming, like anything, it's it's it's kind of just the way we're operating now, whether we like it or not. The key is do you have systems and processes? And when I say systems, processes, or even like you know, elements of your culture, are your meetings aligned with that? If you know that everyone is no longer on one team, but they're on 10, like are we adjusting meeting cadences for that and the way that we communicate? The challenge is that most of us haven't. We've been using the same tools of organizations that we always have, which are you know, written communication, meetings, uh calls, and we haven't adjusted that. And so um I actually just wrote an article on this, but I think in the same way companies have become increasingly dynamic, so has technology. And this is where the conversations around AI come in, where a lot of people will say, well, AI is taking our jobs. Um I actually think it's creating, I always say technology is a faster form of change, and it's just further exacerbating this concept of teaming by creating a more dynamic form of the tools we use. And so all of a sudden, companies need to move faster, need to operate more flexibly, and the employees within them need the tools to do that too. And that's where right now we're definitely at an interesting time when it comes to organizational design dynamics and psychology.

Marc Bernstein: 14:03

So enter MYNDY, right? So let's talk about the founding of the company, how you got to that and what that was like.

Lissy Alden: 14:11

Yeah. So um I thought that I was solving the hard problem by going back to grad school and studying companies. So I went and built this research-backed quantitative model for organizational fitness to help companies understand the elements that they need to pay attention to in order to build a company that is as dynamic as it needs to be to keep up with all this stuff. Um but what I learned once I went and used this model within companies was that even when organizations are beautifully structured, the people within them didn't necessarily have the personal tools to act with a flexible or growth mindset to actually set the boundaries that they need to with their own leadership, to have difficult conversations about pushing back on priorities when they're overwhelmed. And so I ended up leaving the last company I was working for and starting MYNDY, which um started as an exploration of what I thought of as core management capabilities that leaders need today to be flexible and dynamic, um, but turned into a study of the brain and how the brain works when it's faced with challenge, when it's faced with change. And I ended up building a quantitative research-backed model to help people manage their mind, using the things that athletes use every day to keep their mindset sharp and their head in the game, especially when they, you know, miss a goal or miss a basket. And so now MYNDY again addresses both the systemic challenges and also the individual challenges we face when trying to adjust and adapt in our very wild universe.

Marc Bernstein: 15:38

So I was just thinking about this because it's it's adjusting the minds of it's got to be the adjusting the minds of management as well and the and and the leaders of the companies, correct?

Lissy Alden: 15:49

That's correct.

Marc Bernstein: 15:50

Right. So and as well as looking at the culture and as well as looking at workplace expectations, et cetera. Nicole, did you have anything you want to add?

Nicole Dery: 15:58

I do have a question. Is it sequential? Like, do you need to help the organization structure itself in such a way that it can enable the people within it to leverage these tools effectively first, or can it happen all at the same time?

Lissy Alden: 16:14

Good question. Um, it actually can happen all at the same time. And I think what's really interesting is that when I think about culture change, that really does need to be something that's driven by leadership. Um there's two theories. One is like bottom-up change, which is that the employees within the company change and therefore leadership is forced to make different decisions. Um but I have yet to see a really wonderful case study of that happening in a big way fast enough. Um so when it comes to culture change, I always like to say like the culture is really driven by leadership, which are individuals who have to change their mindset. And so this is where at the end of the day, um you can kind of attack both of these things at the same time, but you really do by giving employees the tools they need to manage their mindset, you can help them live a better day-to-day existence by helping leaders and organizations shift the way that they operate. You can change the way people feel over time, but I say that they can happen at the same time or one before the other. Um, but if you're looking at culture change, it does have to be with the organization.

Marc Bernstein: 17:17

Great question. With that, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back on Founders Forum.

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Marc Bernstein: 18:17

So we're back on Founders Forum and we're all bopping here in the studio to the music from the It sounded like the dating game or something.

Lissy Alden: 18:25

Uh it really did.

Marc Bernstein: 18:26

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, I think. Anyway, so uh we're back with Lissy Walden and Nicole Deary, who's um co-hosting with me. So let so you started the company and it's rife with challenges. I can tell that just from the because of the concept of the company itself. But what what are the ones that that that hit you the most?

Lissy Alden: 18:48

Yeah. Um I would say I'll list them and we can go into any of these that sound most interesting or most scary. Uh one is that I'm a solo founder. Um so I grew up as a twin and one of four kids. Um I always thought that I would be on a team of people forever. Um and for a lot of reasons, uh, that's a challenge because when I'm here in the studio, the business is not moving forward. And when I'm, you know, working on tech, we're not selling. And so yeah, there's a lot to do in with one person.

Marc Bernstein: 19:18

Hopefully the show helps your business move forward, though.

Lissy Alden: 19:21

Exactly. Absolutely. Um that's part of why we're here. And also connecting with friends is also helpful. Um another big challenge is that we're creating a new market. So when I first started the business, I was hoping that we were creating basically a five to twenty percent better solution um on what already existed. But the more research I did about the actual technology that we're building, which I'm happy to share more about, um, there's really nothing like this on the market. And now I spend a lot of time actually working with doctors and therapists in addition to my clients within companies. Um and yeah, no one's really seen anything like this. And so I like to think about the mental fitness revolution happening now, whereas the physical fitness revolution happened between the 70s and the 80s, uh, where you were working on your body and you were heart-jane fonda. Exactly. She made it cool. Exactly. And so we're hoping that MYNDY makes mental fitness cool. Um, but talking about something that doesn't exist is So you're like the Jane Fonda of the mental fitness.

Marc Bernstein: 20:15

Nicer words have never been spoken.

Lissy Alden: 20:17

Um I really appreciate that. Uh we love her. She's a total sorry about her. I do too.

Marc Bernstein: 20:23

She's amazing. She's an amazing woman. She is an amazing woman. Yeah.

Lissy Alden: 20:26

And I'd say the third biggest challenge is just that I am a non-technical founder building a technology product. And now I feel like incredibly confident six years later, uh, but only because I have a deep, dark trail of mistakes behind me and how this has come together.

Marc Bernstein: 20:45

And I think we're experiences you could call them.

Lissy Alden: 20:47

Trevor Burrus, Jr. We could totally call them experiences and learnings. And I think you know, we talk about in mental fitness post-traumatic growth, which is the growth that comes through these really difficult experiences. And I feel really strong as a result. Like I could literally do anything. If I can build something based on a platform I've never understood, uh then yeah, you can kind of do a whole lot of stuff. So but yeah, it's been a it's been a real challenge in finding partners to build, especially I call it like a black box where you can't read the code, you know, especially when there's an issue, you've got to figure out how to prioritize. And it's basically like learning a new language. Um, that's been a real challenge.

Marc Bernstein: 21:18

Aaron Ross Powell So just a quick observation. Usually I ask the people these questions about challenges and they like, hmm, I gotta think about it. But you but you are but you well, because you're you're studying what you're doing, as a even though you're doing it with corporations and employees, you're really kind of studying the the path of the entrepreneur as you're going too, because you're in observance of what's going on with you and the company in the in the same kind of uh paradigm as you'd be looking at at your clients.

Lissy Alden: 21:46

Aaron Powell Exactly. And I'm laughing because I listed three, but I literally have like another twenty five I could keep going all day. Aaron Powell I'm sure I'll spare you. But I do really I I take everything very seriously that we do, and I joke that I very much use my own. Work to work through all this stuff.

Marc Bernstein: 22:02

Aaron Ross Powell What strengths have you built? Because I'm sure there are many as a result of your experiences and your learnings.

Lissy Alden: 22:08

Yeah. I think a level of curiosity when like big issues come my way. Instead of approaching them with fear and panic, I really start asking questions because at least so far, like nothing's usually as bad as it seems. And kind of what you were hinting at earlier in the show. Almost everything that I mean, everything that's gone really wrong that felt really hard in the moment ended up being a blessing in hindsight.

Marc Bernstein: 22:31

So do you well let's talk about the technology a little bit because I want to make sure we get to that. Tell us about that. What what are you doing with the technology?

Lissy Alden: 22:40

Yeah, so um I always like to say that mental fitness is the practice of doing these research-backed exercises to work on your mind. And a lot of tools on the market now to help you practice long-term behaviors that build wellness in your mind are very siloed. So they work on one part of your mental fitness. It would kind of be like saying that yoga or mine is like, you know, the only form of physical fitness that you could do. Um, or you should work out your right bicep. And what I've built is a comprehensive model that pulls together all the things your brain needs in a day to feel good and then to build mental muscles, as we call them, or build resilience, confidence, optimism. And so the technology really helps you set up these daily mental fitness routines that last for just 10 minutes a day that pull together all the exercises you need. So they're what we call full mind workouts. So instead of saying you need to go to another 45-minute hour-long class to do this thing, you can do this from your bed, from your office, um, on your commute. And again, we're helping you build new neural pathways and new mental thought patterns repetitively over time so that you can build a new way of thinking.

Marc Bernstein: 23:44

Is this available to small business? Yeah, that's nice. It is?

Nicole Dery: 23:48

Yeah, it is. Okay.

Marc Bernstein: 23:50

We'll talk about that.

Nicole Dery: 23:51

I would love that.

Marc Bernstein: 23:52

Nicola.

Nicole Dery: 23:52

What are uh what are some of the differences and distinctions between what you're doing with MYNDY and other um what might be characterized as mental fitness apps out there, things that are focused on meditation or the enhancement of your ability to focus, for example. Yeah.

Lissy Alden: 24:10

So um I always like to say that uh I'll explain really quickly one part of the model, which is what we call stop slow go. These are the three mind movements your brain needs every day to feel good. Stop is the practice of resting and building awareness in your mind or recovery. So this is resting your mind. Mindfulness and meditation fall into this category. Slow is the practice of expanding your perspective. So this is about cross-training your mind or building new thought patterns or mental patterns over time. You can do this through creativity, cognitive behavioral therapy, journaling, but it's anything that gets your mind thinking in a new way.

Marc Bernstein: 24:38

Um that's a very important one from my perspective.

Lissy Alden: 24:41

It's so important. It's important for memory, longevity, but again, it's also just important if you want to think in a new way. Um, and then Go is the practice of making or recognizing progress, and we call this scoring. This is about allowing your brain to get that hidden dopamine it needs every day to feel good. Most of us focus on everything we haven't done as opposed to things that we have. And so this is about goal recognition. Um, and so a big part of what we do is we bring together all of the tools that you need to feel good every day. So I always like to say that a lot of people like HIT workouts because it pulls together a lot of different things. You're working out, you know, your cardio, you're working out your strength. Uh we are kind of like a hit workout for the brain where we're pulling together a lot of these exercises in short bursts so that you can build, again, strength, flexibility, and endurance fast. Um and so if you need to go deep on any of these movements, um, then you can go and kind of spend more time with one of these other tools.

Marc Bernstein: 25:32

Um let's we we could we could get into this a lot more. We could spend another hour on this easily. But let me ask you about your um your vision for the future, your three-year vision. Um, because I know you have one. And uh let's tell us about that.

Lissy Alden: 25:46

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, my goal is to really create the world's first gym for your mind. When I think about what's going on today, you've got amazing things out there to help people work on what we call mental fitness, again, which is building these new mental patterns. You can go on great retreats, you can go to see Tony Robbins, you can go to a yoga class, you could, you know, at the end of the day uh go to therapy. A lot of therapists help with a lot of these things. But we want to be your partner to be there every single day to do the actual reps that you need to build these new mental patterns. And right now, there's really nothing like this on the market. And so we want to be the brand that people point to and talk about. Um, if you think about like the actual vibe, we're Nike. So normally I'm wearing a backwards hat and a sweatshirt that says MYNDY is mental fitness. Uh it's tie-dye and it's fun. Uh when you think about the actual one-to-one in terms of gyms, uh, we're really looking to be more of like a soul cycle or an equinox. So this really great experience that people can't wait to spend time with because um, yeah, they like the people there, they like the vibe, and they feel stronger and better when they leave.

Marc Bernstein: 26:48

I am very interested in this because I do things like I do I am statements. I listen to a little recording of myself every day, I meditate, I do I talk about all this on the show. Um, but to have a system like that to do that would be unbelievable. Um real quick, we we're we're in our outro, but what book are you reading? Because I want to hear about your mind for a second and then we're out.

Lissy Alden: 27:10

Yeah, so I'm reading two books. Um, one is called Love Money, Money Loves Me.

Marc Bernstein: 27:15

Ah. Yeah. Oh, I gotta get that one.

Lissy Alden: 27:17

Yeah, everyone should read it. It's really fun. Um, and then the other book is a book on coding applications.

Marc Bernstein: 27:25

Gotcha. Okay. So there you go, the yin and the yang there. Exactly always. Very good. Well, thank you, Listy Alden, for being here. It's delightful. Nicole, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Shane, for your engineering. Thank you, Vera and Kuba, for sitting in with us, and thank you all for listening. We'll see you next week on Founders Forum.

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