Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Pierce & Bianca Bee.
Our mission at Mentally Fit is to ‘Bridge the Gap’ in mental health, making it affordable, accessible and relatable for people worldwide.
We started this company due to our own experiences in mental health growing up and wanting others like us to have more access to support, resources and education.
Bianca grew up in the church in Florida, where she received most of her mental health support.
Dan, who struggled with addiction, and mental illness from a young age, saw his first therapist by age 11 and started attending addiction treatment programs at age 15.
The first Mentally Fit community was started in 2019 when Dan, who had been living in New York City, started the first group on Facebook as a way to give back to others in need of support and to honor his therapist, who had died an unexpected sudden death.
The group offered peer support and brought in a variety of mental health experts to give live educational talks and interviews in the community to help members get free support.
The first Mentally Fit group grew from a few people to a few hundred people, to a few thousand in just a few months; it grew to the point that Dan and Bianca, who became friends over their shared love of community building and entrepreneurship, decided they would quit their current jobs to focus full time on the budding community.
As Dan and Bianca ran the community, they noticed that therapists — those who provide mental health support — were posting regularly, seeking support for their personal and professional lives. That’s when the pair decided that they could push their mission forward in the most impactful way by supporting the therapists first, which led them to start the first ‘therapists only group’, the Therapist Toolbox.
That group took off, growing from 0 to 20,000 members in just a few weeks. Today, their groups contain 100,000+ therapists and 30,000+ everyday people — and the communities are growing by hundreds (sometimes thousands) of new members daily.
Dan and Bianca realized that in order to serve their members fully, they needed to scale their services through technology. They started working with experienced tech industry leaders to build out an app, which is due to launch in May.
The new app will bring together all of their members in a private, HIPAA-secure environment and allow therapists, as well as everyday people to access the support they need to thrive.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Of course not!
Our biggest struggle, like many people today, has been burnout and fatigue. The pandemic and latest U.S. election caused many people to experience a state of burnout and our team was no exception.
We pulled through by prioritizing our own self-care and seeking outside help when needed. If you’re in the business of helping people, it is essential that you practice your own self-care, so you can show up at your best for others.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Mentally Fit is a health-tech company on a mission to make mental health more accessible, affordable and relatable.
We are taking a provider-first approach to the future of mental health. We believe that if we can support therapists to do great work, we can truly fulfill our mission in an even more impactful way and improve access to the best possible care.
We are proud to have created one of the fastest growing ‘mental health positive’ communities in the world, with over 130,000 members who share support and resources in our online groups.
What makes us different is that we put community first, so we are in constant communication with the people we serve and are able to support them with exactly what they need when they need it.
We’re excited for the launch of our platform, the Mentally Fit app which will be launching this summer.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
The quality that is most important to our success is resiliency, which is defined as having “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://joinmentallyfit.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinmf/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joinmentallyfit/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MentallyFit
