Nisha Lehmann with Confidential Conversations

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the high velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with confidential conversations. Ms.. Nisha Lehmann How are you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:00:37] I’m great, thanks for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:00:39] Stone Oh, I have really been looking forward to this discussion and I think the topic of the day, the broad stroke is, is mental health. But maybe share with our listeners a little bit about mission purpose. What are you out there trying to do for people.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:00:57] Trying to save the world? No. Well, kind of. Basically, this app stemmed from a very dark period in my own life. I think anyone that has struggled with mental health issues can relate to feeling alone, isolated, feeling like you have no place to turn. And and even if you do want to talk to someone about your problems, you know, the closest people to you, they can’t sympathize or understand you the right way or the same way because they’re not experiencing what you’re experiencing. And I think the realization, the kind of aha moment came for me when I really needed to connect with people who were going through the same thing, who are going through depression or anxiety or grief or whatever it is, right? Because those people, you already have a baseline for the conversation. You don’t have to explain or justify or try to wish your feelings away or something. I mean, when talking to people that are experiencing what you’re experiencing, you can be more raw, be more authentic, and I think get get more concrete steps in terms of help. And so what I really wanted to accomplish with this app was to be able to facilitate online support groups that are completely anonymous, because that for me was incredibly important. I still, unfortunately, really believe in the stigma around mental health. I think it’s there for a lot of mental health issues, although it’s it’s dying down for some.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:02:30] But I think it’s it’s it’s a big inhibitor in talking about mental health. And so having a place where you can go that, you know, is a safe space that is completely anonymous, that it’s private. Now, we cannot nor will we ever collect PII data about our customers or about our users, because this is this is your own it’s your own private issue. And we absolutely respect that. But being able to connect with others who are experiencing the same thing you are and hopefully be able to walk away a little bit more educated a little bit more, or at least having a bit of the pressure relieved on you that you’ve at least talked to someone, You’ve gotten some ideas, maybe some routines, things to try that a therapist would never be able to tell you, because it’s not as if every therapist has gone through what you’re going through as well. So I think I think there’s an incredible potential for success in this space. And honestly, the goal for me was to create it for others like me who were struggling at that time, who were struggling and continue to struggle, I would say, with with mental health related issues in a in a small effort or small steps toward recovery.

Stone Payton: [00:03:39] So have you observed any interesting dynamics or shifts with with regard to pre and post pandemic?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:03:50] For sure, I think the pandemic well, I don’t have to say this. Probably the pandemic did a number on all of us, right? Yeah, I think isolation and loneliness were never really classified as mental health issues until after the pandemic. But of course, if you can’t leave your house or you have to distance from people, that really impacts your ability to be social, your ability to really connect with others. So for sure, pre, pre and post pandemic, you saw a lot of issues related to work, specifically burnout, stress, panic attacks, high anxiety. I mean, but that was probably existing pre-pandemic as well. But you really saw it come to a head post-pandemic when people started leaving their jobs in the great resignation. They were not going to tolerate the work life balance. They were not going to go back to how things were, you know, and if it means making less money, but being able to shut off your computer at five and spend time with your family or spend time working on your passion projects, that became more important. And I think that’s an incredible step for people and for employers to also learn that actually mental health is is is a real issue when it comes to employees in the workforce. Beyond that, I think. There are a number of mental health issues that really came to the forefront. You know, grief. It’s it’s I mean, I never thought of it myself as a mental health issue. For me, it’s it’s something that you will experience at some point in your life.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:05:15] Everyone will experience grief because at some point you will lose someone close to you. And you know, what does that feel like and how can you cope with that and how differently people cope with That is what I found so interesting. But that’s a big one post-pandemic, because of course we all know someone who we either lost someone ourselves in the COVID pandemic or we know someone who experienced loss during the COVID pandemic. So, I mean, it wasn’t a small number of people that died during this pandemic. So, I mean, I think grief was a really big one as well. And also the ability to shut off the the ability to be able to have addictions that are completely unorthodox now in addiction to your screen, addiction to mobile phones, addiction to social media, and the kind of also the meanings and the stigma that comes around being attached to the number of followers you have, the number of likes you get on a particular post. I think all of these are only going to proliferate in the future. And so I think it’s just we have to be cognizant and mindful of the fact that social media is a platform, but it’s not an integral really part of our lives and we need to be able to turn it off and live our lives. And so I think maybe those would be some of the takeaways. Pre post.

Stone Payton: [00:06:30] Yeah, well said. You mentioned employers and awareness. Are there some actions employers, mid-level managers inside larger organizations can take or or things that they should be reading or keeping in in mind to to help this?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:06:51] I’m so glad you brought this up. It was it’s such a fantastic segway. So I actually just wrote a piece of thought leadership specifically about this, about what employers can do when it comes to mental health, what they should be doing. A lot of studies have been released specifically on the ROI of investing into your, investing into mental health, investing into resources for mental health. I think the biggest thing that managers or people in in, let’s say, positions of power can do is try to stem cultural cultural shift in the organization, because that actually has a very, very low monetary cost. But if you can make the workplace a safe place for people to be able to talk about what they’re feeling without feeling like there’s retribution to that action, I know I know a lot of people in large and large consulting firms, in large enterprises, they feel like they can’t talk about mental health because if their manager finds out that they have depression or if their manager finds out that they are struggling with something, then they think it will impact negatively their career. And so being able to really foster a work environment that is that where it’s okay to talk about these things and where managers can kind of recognize when when one of their employees or when one of their team members is is going through a mental health problem, I think is also a huge a huge step in the right direction. So if you want to know more information about this, please visit the website config convos and you’ll find some thought leadership there on some ideas about this.

Stone Payton: [00:08:25] So this app you were describing, I’m operating under the impression that it provides anonymity, but the structure in I’d like to get that validated, but the structure is like these peer led kind of it’s sort of a peer to peer thing isn’t it.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:08:41] Exactly. Yeah. It’s peer led online support groups. Exactly. And it’s an interesting point you bring up because, you know, these discussions are not really facilitated by any moderator or, you know, anyone else. One, because we want to protect the privacy of the people in the group for sure. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to have a moderator that isn’t experiencing the same things that you are just listening to the conversation. But we wanted it to be a bit more free flowing as well because it can be difficult to talk through these things. And I think if there’s a moderator pushing you to talk about these things, the conversation becomes kind of fake. It becomes a bit superficial. People have to be able to on their own terms as they become comfortable with the dynamic of the group, as they become comfortable within within their the frame of their own mental health issue, or as they become become more aware or they recognize and aware they are on the mental health spectrum, they need to be able to talk about these things on their own. And I know for sure being a bit more introverted myself, it was very hard for me to do this. And the first many in the first couple of sessions, I was just listening. I was just listening to what other people were experiencing, what other people were going through, smiling and nodding and trying to kind of be brave to talk about this myself, because it can be a huge step for people. Who really come in a way, come clean, write, admit that they have a problem and talk about it out loud with others. It’s it’s a big step and it can’t be pushed or forced in any way. And so we want people to get there on their own terms. And that’s why we kind of wanted the conversation to be a bit more free flowing and unstructured. And from there, you know, we take into consideration what we do with that in the next steps.

Stone Payton: [00:10:28] So it’s one thing to build an app, clearly another to get a critical mass of people utilizing it in returning their learning back to the organization so you can continue to improve and and enhance it. How did you crack that code?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:10:47] It’s a work in progress. It’s definitely not complete for sure, and I think we don’t really have that many users. And I will say very bluntly from the beginning, you know, the goal of launching this app was not to have 5 million users or even 500,000 users. This app is designed for the people who need it. It’s designed for people who want to explore on their own terms, their own mental health, or they can’t afford a therapist for whatever reason. And they want to still get proactive about doing something in terms of their mental health. And so I think it’s not for everyone to be sure, but the people that use it, I believe, find value in it because they’re using it for their own intents and purposes. And they’re they’re exchanging with each other. They’re trying to learn from each other. And whatever learnings we can get because we cannot be involved with every single group, right? So we can only take the learnings from the groups that we’re actually in because we designed this selfishly, we designed this app also for us for, for the like for, for me and my team. We, we needed this outlet ourselves too, because we, we all found ourselves kind of struggling with mental health issues around the same time. And so we can bring feedback about app performance and how to improve things and how to make this more fruitful for our users. And we’ve already gotten a lot of really good ideas and suggestions from users that just interact directly with us through the website or through through the app itself. But I think there’s a lot more to do.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:12:30] I mean, what I will say about the app is that it’s pretty barebones. It’s not very fancy. It’s much more substance over style, I would say. So the UX is it definitely can be improved. I would say it’s definitely not perfect, but the point of this app was to get it out there as soon as possible. So we had to do a lot of prioritization in terms of figuring out what functionality did we really like was must have in the app and what could wait. And so for us being able to facilitate the conversations, being able to do it in a way that’s private, being able to make the app accessible and affordable to those people who simply can’t afford a therapist or professional help, those are really the key drivers to get this out the door. And, you know, we take we take what we can and we definitely want to do a lot more with it. So be looking out for the next version of this where we integrate, we integrate some multimedia, There’s some incredible games that we’re that we’re thinking about, including into a like a digital library, because I think we I also truly believe that games are the future when it comes to mental health treatment and mental health sourcing. So being able to really experience an immersive and immersive multimedia content that where the avatar actually struggles with a mental health issue, but it’s not some kind of caricature of the mental health issue. That for me is really the next step in terms of trying to make this a bit more progressive and a bit more intuitive for our users.

Stone Payton: [00:14:04] Well, and I think you’re up to the task because you’re in UX design by your daydream, right?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:14:11] Yeah, Yeah, exactly. That’s that’s what I do every day. Yep. So, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely, I mean, shame on me that the UX is not brilliant on the first go around. But like I said, we were in a rush. And if you want the UK to be very, very, very good, then it takes a long time to get that right. And my, my clients and myself will tell you that it’s a it takes a while to do this and there’s always improvements and iterations that come later. So I think the beautiful thing about app development is that you can iterate on it so you can get out one kind of almost proof of concept out the door and then build on it and improve things and add features granularly rather than having to have a full blown new app that’s completely redesigned or something. So that’s, that’s the strategy that we’re using and hopefully you’ll see some changes coming up with it.

Stone Payton: [00:15:02] I’m an entrepreneur. So many of our listeners and our clients at Business RadioX are entrepreneurs. Do you find that there are mental health? I don’t know what the right word is issues, topics, dynamics that are unique or more prevalent in the entrepreneurial community. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:15:28] That’s an interesting question. I don’t know if it’s specific to entrepreneurs, but there’s definitely a subset of mental health issues that are specific to high stress jobs. What what people don’t often think about is having financial duress, which I think every entrepreneur has experienced at some point that has incredible ramifications on your mental health, you know, because you’re constantly having to deal with the pressures of. I want to follow this dream and I want to be able to give back something. But I also need to pay the bills. You know, I’ve got I’ve got financial obligations in my house to my family, to my kids, whatever. And that can cause a lot of stress, which, of course, is a well-established mental health issue. So there are definitely a few that I can think of that that definitely lean more toward the entrepreneurial space. You know, I mean, I don’t want to make light of this too much, but also, you know, VC funding and things like that typically goes more to men than it does to women in this space as well. And so I think there’s an inherent gender bias that exists in the entrepreneurial space as well, where where if you’re competing directly with a man and you have the same idea, it’s unlikely that you would get funded simply because of your your sex. And so there’s also these things to take into consideration as well. No, specifically for women entrepreneurs, I think that’s why there are so many organizations specifically devoted to promoting female entrepreneurship, because this is a recognized problem, and I hope it’s changing given all of the the movements we’ve had within, you know, female, you know, female rights and pay parity for women and things like this. But I hope it’s moving in the right direction and I hope this becomes a thing of the past soon.

Stone Payton: [00:17:20] Now, am I remembering my notes correctly that you have a radio show of your own, don’t you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:17:27] I don’t know. That’s not me. Okay, I don’t. I don’t have time for a radio show and maintenance.

Stone Payton: [00:17:36] See me after class. We’ll get you set up.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:17:38] So. Fantastic. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think it would be an interesting. I mean, the number of people that have said, you know, you should do a podcast of your own. It’s more than a handful, but. What? What people don’t tell you is how time consuming it is. It is an incredible I mean, I think you, you and your team, they do an amazing job because the amount of research that goes into these episodes and being able to ask tailored questions specifically around particular topics, it’s not easy. And yeah, between between a full time job and the app and other things. No, there hasn’t been enough time to to add a podcast on top of that, but maybe one day in the future.

Stone Payton: [00:18:18] Yeah, maybe. And I will tell you, it’s a lot of fun. And for me personally, there’s there’s just so much I don’t know, the questions come pretty easily so maybe fun is the that’s okay.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:18:32] So maybe then it is right for me because I don’t know that much either. So maybe then it’s okay.

Stone Payton: [00:18:39] So in your career and in in this pursuit, have you had the benefit of a mentor or to to help you navigate some of this terrain, or is it pretty much been been you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:18:55] Well, in terms of the app development itself and just generally in my career, yes, I think it’s incredibly important that women help other women, especially in the tech field, because there’s it’s sounds so cliche to say it, but it’s still true. There are so few of us actually working in the tech field and trying to do things in the digital space. That mentorship becomes incredibly important. And one of the things I actually am thinking about is to is, you know, what what impact does this have on your mental health, people who have mentors versus the people who don’t? Hmm. But in the mental health space, it’s hard it’s hard to find this. You know, it’s hard to find. I mean, I’m thinking about the equivalent of like a sponsor or something like this. I think it’s I think it’s hard to find it because so many people are just kind of unsure about where they sit when it comes to having good mental health versus poor mental health. And it’s what I think people need to realize is, is that it’s not binary. It’s a spectrum. You know, you can have you can be in the 3% of individuals that have absolutely no mental health problem. But that’s pretty rare. Everyone is struggling with something and it’s okay to struggle with something. The problem is when that struggle kind of overtakes you and then you can’t get the help that you need for whatever reason. Whether that help is a therapist or an online support group or whatever it might be. Right. And so honestly, the point of this app was really just to give people another option. I think in the mental health space specifically, it’s it’s really kind of binary. It’s like you have a mental health problem or you don’t.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:20:33] And if you do, you see a therapist and that’s really it. And if you can’t afford a therapist or you, there isn’t one you know that you like or it’s not the right thing for you. There aren’t really a lot of other options other than to ignore the mental health problem. And we all know what happens when you do that. So hopefully this app will just allow people another choice where they say, okay, well, maybe I’m fine now, but maybe one day, you know, I may need to talk to someone and not a professional, but just someone like me, someone struggling with with issues like me. And I think it’s particularly important when you talk about Gen Z and you talk about Gen Alpha and the next generation’s right, because they’re going to be struggling with mental health issues that we, you and me, cannot understand. You know, the cyberbullying, the cache, the gaslighting, the catfishing, you know, these things that are relatively new, I would say. I mean, to Gen Xers like myself, but they need to be able to have an outlet to speak with others like them, because if they if my kid comes to me one day and, you know, tells me that he’s struggling with this, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to help him properly, but I know if this app is on his phone, at least he’s talking to someone. It doesn’t have to be me necessarily, but I would take some comfort in knowing that, okay, he’s talking to other people who get him, who he can relate to, who’s going through the same thing. So, you know, maybe that’s already a step in the right direction.

Stone Payton: [00:21:58] All right. Let’s make sure that our listeners can get their hands on this app and leave them with any other coordinates that you would like to leave them with or want them to be able to follow your work, connect with you, and get access to to this app.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:22:11] Okay. Well, the app is called Confidential Conversations. You will find it on the App Store on Google Play. It does cost. A little something to download it. So at the moment it’s paid simply because we didn’t want ads in the app. That was really the big fear on our end, because you’re already talking about a vulnerable population. And then suddenly if you throw ads in there, it’s it’s not the model that we were looking for. So you do have to pay a little something for it. And I’m sorry, there is a small barrier to entry. Probably in the next version we’ll we’ll try to make it for free because the point of this app is that it really should be accessible and affordable for everyone. You can visit our website that was confit convos. There’s thought leadership there. There are a couple of other podcasts that have I had the privilege of doing as well, so feel free to check them out. And our social media handle is at config convos where on Twitter. We’re on Pinterest, we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram. You can pretty much find us on your favorite social media. Feel free to follow us. We’re always posting things that we think will be useful. Other podcasts that are talking about mental health or thought leadership within mental health, or no new research that’s coming out in particular areas. So please follow us and feel free to learn and reach out directly To me. It would be great to hear from from some of the people struggling with mental health issues if this app has helped you or not. Right? Both of them, it would be great to get some feedback just so we know whether we’re in the right direction or whether we really do need to do a complete overhaul.

Stone Payton: [00:23:43] Well, Nisha, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you so much for investing the time and the and the energy and thank you for the work. This is important work and we sincerely appreciate you.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:23:59] Well, thank you so much. And I really hope that the app is is going to help people that that was the whole purpose going in because it helped. It helped me. And if it helped me, maybe it can it can help others. And that’s really my contribution to humanity. I guess so. But thank you. Stone It was it was a great conversation.

Stone Payton: [00:24:20] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Nisha Leamon with confidential conversations and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.