The Sales Evangelist (2s):
Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today we'll be breaking down how cutting edge app experiences unlock human potential. To drop these value bombs, I brought Ariel Poler into EOFire Studios. Internet, entrepreneur, mentor, and investor, Ariel is passionate about human augmentation and mental health. He and Stanford psychiatrist Dr Davis Spiegel co-founded self-hypnosis app, Reveri to make affordable care available to the masses. And Today. we will be talking about innovation and mutual value. A huge problem with apps these days. How to leverage the power of community to drive growth and so much more. And A big thank you for sponsoring. Today's episode goes to Ariel and our sponsors, Sales Evangelist hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales. Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist , wherever you get your podcasts.

NetSuite (1m 21s):
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0 (1m 41s):
Ariel say What's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 49s):
I think most people think that to be successful you need to have a, a vision and a plan and a great idea. And often successful people sort of describe their success in that context, but in my experience, it's a lot of revisionist history. I think that to be successful, you just gotta put one foot in front of the other and make a little bit of progress one little bit at a time and work hard to help people around you be passionate about something and often that with that little bit of luck gets you there. Boom

0 (2m 22s):
In fire, Nation, we're talking about How cutting edge app experiences can unlock human potential literally and figuratively. Ariel, you have a passion for human augmentation and mental health as well. Tell us how this passion has developed over the years.

1 (2m 39s):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it started with my passion for science fiction and reading all sort of the crazy things that, that that would could happen. And so I started exploring from a technological standpoint, well, what is more short term and what's more viable? And I started looking at haptics and exoskeletons and helping and getting involved with some companies that do that. But then serendipitously, I met Dr. David Spiegel and what really struck me when I met him was that with, you know, with hypnosis, which is the fo the area that he has focused on for decades without the need for a lot of technology, without the need for science fiction, hardware, anything like that, he was making so many people's lives so much better.

1 (3m 27s):
And so that sort of like made me take a twist and go towards the things we could do now more accessible with the technology we already have to, to help people around us.

0 (3m 37s):
Well, this passion, it did lead you to co-found the self hypnosis app Reverie with Ari chatted about Stanford psychiatrist Dr. David Spiegel. Let's talk about how this partnership came about and kind of go deep here because the reason why I think this is an interesting question, Ariel, is a lot of our listeners here today have ideas and they know that they, they find the right partner or co-founder that doors can open, things can go forward, and ideas can happen in a very progressive way. So kind of give us the strategy you use to make this happen. And in any, you know, pieces of feedback or thoughts or advice you can give along the way.

1 (4m 17s):
Absolutely, and and I do agree, it was really interesting. So I met David at this conference and when he first told me about hypnosis, my initial reaction was like, yeah, hypnosis. I had the same stigma that I think associated with hypnosis that most people have. But then he started telling me about the great things he was doing and he's an incredible individual. So I was just blown away. And I think one of the key aspects of what led us to, to create Reveri and everything that we've done is he asked me for help. He said, Ariel, you are a techie. Can you help me try to take what I've done in at Stanford Hospital and maybe build an app and help more people? And my reaction wasn't like, I've seen many other people go like, hold on a second, how are we gonna do this?

1 (4m 59s):
What's in there for me? What are the equity? I said, sure, I'll help you. And for I think over a year I just started helping David informally and because I wanted to be helpful to him because I thought he was doing something good and coding, getting my son to help. And for a while it was just very informal. And that's something that I've done many times in, in my career professionally when I've ended up working with amazing entrepreneurs and amazing companies. It's just informally start trying to be helpful and see where it goes. Sometimes it doesn't lead anywhere and sometimes it does. And what we found was also, I mean, the other thing I should say is that I also wasn't sure if this was gonna be feasible. Can we really take David and put him in an app?

1 (5m 41s):
So help him put an app, run a clinical trial, and the results were great and it's like, oh wow, okay, let's do another trial. So we started with smoking session, then we did chronic pain, good results. Okay, let's take it to the next level. It was a very natural and incremental approach to validation, making sure we're working well together, little while little taking the project to the next phase until we finally realized, okay, this is just really powerful, really good, we have to scale it. And that's when we started looking at let's build a build team and let's raise a little bit of money and, and, and build a company. So yeah, it was, it was a great combination of having the world's foremost expert on the clinical use of hypnosis, the clinician.

1 (6m 29s):
But David had zero experience in business on technology and then the fact that we connected at a personal level and I brought the, my experience building Silicon Valley companies, technology and finance, and the two things sort of like just jelled,

0 (6m 43s):
Fire Nation, you can take away a lot from this process. Be a person of value. Like I love that quote by Albert Einstein. Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value. And I made a lot of mistakes in my life chasing success, trying to become a person of success, only being focused on success, but not really being a person of value. Not just providing value to the world in a consumable way. So how can you do that for other people, for somebody that it would really make sense for you to do that for provide value. Now let's talk about Reveri. How is this innovation and mutual value that we're talking about right now? At the very core, the very heart of Reveri,

1 (7m 27s):
All this form of Western psychotherapy, it's been around for the longest time, but historically it's been limited because there are few people that can do it. And A, few people have that, that can do it. Well now what we have been able to do is to take what David does and package it in an app and, and in a way that anybody with a smartphone, Android, iOS, anywhere in the world can benefit from. And it's, it only takes us 10 minutes. It's crazy. We have people who after 10 minutes stop smoking or as it finally get to sleep, well after years of not sleeping well or controlling their pain.

1 (8m 13s):
So taking something that wasn't scalable because David is just one person in, you know, a single session at Stanford Hospital with him or with any other, the clinician costs hundreds of dollars. Being able to take that and putting it inside a mobile app and then distributed that so that you can Try it for FREE and if it works, you know, keep using it. It has been just super powerful

0 (8m 39s):
Fire Nation. It is powerful when innovation in mutual value are combined. And I love the results that they're already seeing with an app like Reveri. And there's a lot more to talk about on this topic and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024 Fire Nation. New one is here and that means new goals, more growth in upgrading your day-to-Day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads. Let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year. The new Hubspot sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps. It's built to help you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease.

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0 (12m 12s):
Ariel. A huge problem with apps these days are that they cause both confusion and overwhelm because there are just too many choices and it drives people nuts. You actually take another approach. You believe that with the right user experience, the users can achieve their goals and solve their problems. How did you do this with Reveri? How did you implement this thought process?

1 (12m 38s):
Yeah, absolutely. The goal was not, oh, let's have the app with the most thousand whistles or the most content, or it was, can we recreate the experience of somebody, Dr. Peel's office, but with an nap? And when you go to Dr to David's office, he's not showing you lots of choices and and overwhelming you. He's just saying, okay, what, what do you need help with? And you might say, you know, I'm having chronic pain or I'm having anxiety, or I, I want to quit vaping. So he is, okay, well let me hold your hand and guide you through it. So that's what we try to replicate, ask upfront the users, what do you need help with? And then one, once they tell us, try to as much as possible, hold their hands and just have sessions.

1 (13m 23s):
Keep them short because, you know, people are busy and so on. And also attention spans are short. Let's keep it short, but powerful and meaningful. And indeed what what we're seeing is that over 80% of our users, and in some exercises, over 90% of our users are reporting that a single 10, 12 minute session significantly lowers their anxiety or gets them to crave smoking or alcohol or vaping less. So that simplicity and that immediacy of results is something that we have found to be particularly powerful. You don't have to do this for weeks or months and for hours to, to to, to get the benefit.

1 (14m 5s):
And you don't have to kind of like answer very long questionnaires or spend lots of time digging, but you go in there, you tell us what, what you need help with, and we already have an exercise. The key is that that exercise, even though it's very simple and short, is a result of decades of David's experience. And, and I'm sure you've often heard that to do something long, sometimes it's easy to do something short, to write a short compelling story. That's the hard part. And that's where David's experience come in, in, in, in making it simple, easy and, and effective. So

0 (14m 38s):
What would be one piece of advice for our listeners who maybe are running a different business, you know, maybe they have an app, maybe they have a, a process, a funnel, and they know that they're just offering too many choices. They're, they're creating confusion, overwhelm, et cetera. What's one piece of advice you would give to Fire Nation

1 (14m 58s):
Rather than force the user to make a choice? You, the app or you as a developer should make an educated guess of what is it that the user wants to do and propose that to the user. Now give them an out, obviously you don't wanna keep them locked into something, but if you do that over time you get better and better suggesting something that works for users and it's okay if it doesn't work and the users correct it, users appreciate that you're trying to solve the problem that you're trying to simplify their life as opposed to that you're putting the the work on them. So take ownership of understanding, trying to understand, doing your best effort at providing to the user what you believe they're gonna want.

0 (15m 44s):
Leveraging, the power of community can be such an incredible opportunity when it's done right. So talk about some of the ways that you've leveraged the power of community to drive growth within Reveri.

1 (15m 58s):
The most rewarding part of this project is just the amazing feedback we get from our community. So many people that just have so much benefit. And there I, I can think of at least a couple of ways. One is that we get feedback that says, oh my God, you helped me so much with this or that condition, what about this other condition? I have a phobia flying or I'm, I know people who are trying to quit vaping. Or most recently we were getting a lot of feedback of saying, you know, I need to, I need help dealing with grief. So listening to our community. Ha. And so what we've done is listen to the community and then we David develop exercises and solutions to address what the community wants.

1 (16m 40s):
So rather than we say, Hey, here's what we think is useful, let the community, once you have it, tell us what is it that they need. There's also been just support among the community, the testimonials I think to make people feel that they're not alone, that other people have the same issue. And that also in terms of the numbers and of people that we help, that gives reassurance to people, wait a minute, this is, I'm not alone, this works. And other people are evidence of that.

0 (17m 11s):
Now, user feedback, I mean it is critical to improve experiences within your app. I actually call it the curse of knowledge. 'cause like when you've created something, you just know the thing, you assume that other people know that thing. So you always need to bring new people to a device, to an app, to a product, to a service, watch them go through it on their own. Talk to them what was confusing, what was easy, what did you like, what didn't you like? How are you doing this with Reveri and what can we learn from your success? And maybe any failures you've had,

1 (17m 44s):
Couldn't agree more. You constantly have to be seeing how your app or your software works. And I mean, we're doing it in every dimension we can from getting experts in the industry. So I, so I think that that's also something very helpful when you have people who've been there, done that they've learned over years of working with other apps. So for example, one of our board members used to head product at Headspace, so he learned a lot. And so we're trying to capture that. We're trying to do service of our users, focus groups of our users, talking with people like, you know, organizations like Apple and Google getting their, their feedback.

1 (18m 25s):
So consolidating as much as possible. You know, an early failure was a very first, I don't know if failure is the right word, but definitely limitation. Our very first app was done using Amazon Elixir because it was all voice and we, if we figure, okay, that's a great way to start, it was simple, yet the infrastructure just was not there to help us package it and make it seamless for the user. Each exercise had to be separate skill. It was hard to track users over time and we, we probably stuck with it a little too long until we realized, no, we need to build an app, build it from scratch, build it natively so that we can provide the absolute best, best experience with which, which is we're aiming to do.

1 (19m 12s):
But as you say, this is a never ending effort. Just this morning we were in a meeting where we got amazing feedback on oh nice little things that we might have missed about the way the UI is presented, but some choices where there might be a little too much text. So constantly getting feedback and, and iterated and improving and doing AV testing. That's the other thing I would say. You try, sometimes it's not intuitive, sometimes it's not clear exactly what's gonna work best. So you put more than one option on the table on the app and you, and you measure what's, what's being received better by the users.

0 (19m 45s):
And sometimes honestly those little tiny tweaks can have such huge ramifications on the positive absolutely or negative side if you do it wrong. So it's so key. Ariel, you've given us so much today, what would you say is the one key takeaway that you would really want our listeners to get from our conversation? Today,

1 (20m 4s):
We are on a mission to help, we believe hundreds of millions of people with this incredible technique. So I think the one ask I have is, you know, any of your listeners, either them or know people who could use a little bit of help with, with, with, with anxiety, could use a little bit of help with eating better or, or with dealing with a, a pain or any of these other things to, I would encourage 'em to give Reveri a try because it's just, I mean people constantly, we just get people so surprised and so in, in a positive way about, oh my God, why was this the last time, that last thing that I try, why did I have to try so many things before this, such a powerful and easy thing to do.

1 (20m 53s):
So yeah, I, we hope that people discover this and, and, and can benefit from it and you know, we already have tens of tens of people who are doing it, but we leave hundreds of millions to benefit. So that would be my, my my most important is to help us share this amazing tool with the world.

0 (21m 11s):
And if Fire Nation wanted to learn more from you, connect with you, if they wanted to get a call to action from you about your product, your service reverie, what would that be?

1 (21m 21s):
There's a website which is at Reveri.com. There, there is the app which is available as Reveri both on the App store and on the Google store. And then we are also on all the social networks, whether it's as I am and you know, on LinkedIn, on on Twitter, on Instagram, et cetera.

0 (21m 42s):
Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with AP and JLD today. So keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit EOFire.com, type Ariel, A-R-I-E-L and the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Ariel, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that we salute you brother and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (22m 9s):
Thank you. It was a pleasure.

The Sales Evangelist (22m 11s):
Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors in Ariel for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17 step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillments. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, the Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuck. The Common Path to Uncommon success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit Uncommonsuccessbook.com and I'll catch you there. Or on the flip side, Sales Evangelist Hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales. Right now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts.

NetSuite (23m 17s):
It's time to check out NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system, streamlining, accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more. Right now, Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist designed to give you consistently excellent performance absolutely free at NetSuite.com/fire. That's NetSuite.com/fire.