(light upbeat music)
April Koh: I think that this past year was a turning point
for my leadership, to be honest with you.
And I found that my superpower was actually vulnerability.
Sam Bernstein: Interesting.
Koh: And not just vulnerability about my mental health journey,
but also vulnerability about leading the company.
Sam: Like what's happening in the company.
Sam: Yeah, totally. April: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: You're going to have really hard days obviously.
April: Yeah.
Sam: And I think if you don't foundationally really love
the thing that you're driving towards
and you wake up every day to work on,
it can be really hard to get through those days.
April: And so I think we have to remember to be grateful.
Take a pause. (light upbeat music)
Sam: My name is Sam Bernstein.
I'm the founder and CEO of Table22.
We help restaurants around the country
launch subscription offerings online.
One of the most motivating and fun parts of the job
is to be able to come in and see our restaurants
and be in the space that they created,
and really kind of feel their brand and the experience
that they're wanting to provide for guests.
Being here in person, seeing it come to life,
really kind of grounds you and why we do what we do.
I'm really excited to spend time today
with April from Spring Health.
I'm a big admirer of hers and of her company,
and what she's built.
Obviously, they're working on a really different problem,
a very worthwhile one.
But I think just as a leader
and as a young founder, as she is as well,
there are some universal experiences there.
April: I'm April Koh, CEO and founder of Spring Health.
We are a mental-health company based in New York.
I started the company after struggling
with my own mental health for over a decade.
I'm thankful that I found something
that ultimately worked for me.
But looking back on my journey,
I was just so struck by how much random guessing there was.
And so I partnered with the world's leading expert
on computational psychiatry
to use data to transform mental healthcare
and get each person what they need from the start.
I love meeting founders
at different stages of their journey.
And I love that Sam is at an earlier stage with Table22.
I kind of want to be reminded of some of the challenges
that maybe he's facing now, and some of the mindset
that he's carrying with him right now.
April: Hey, Sam. Sam: Hey, April.
How you doing?
April: Good, how are you?
Sam: Good, this is going to be fun.
April: I'm so excited to catch up about the business.
Sam: Yeah, likewise. April: Awesome.
Before we do that,
we should probably have some coffee, right?
Sam: I think we've got to have a coffee.
April: Well, this is a new machine.
And it can do basically anything.
So I think I'm going to have a macchiato.
What about you?
Sam: I think I'll take an Americano.
April: All right, here we go.
(light upbeat music)
April: Cheers. Sam: Cheers.
April: I've been looking forward to this conversation
because you have such a different business
from Spring Health with Table22.
But in so many ways, we're similar in kind of how
the pandemic has affected each of our businesses.
And so, I'd love to hear
how everything's been for you.
Sam: So it's only been 13 months,
but it's been a total whirlwind.
And obviously, I think we have a bunch of questions
to answer related to what comes next,
and what's the world going to look like,
and how are restaurants either going to kind of continue on
with everything that they've created and developed
during the last kind of crazy period that we've been in.
Or, you know, what are they going to snap back to,
and what are consumers going to want?
But mental health obviously is something
that is very different from food and restaurants,
but something that feels like it also took on
a lot of importance during the pandemic.
Talk about how you're feeling
and how that's changed the trajectory that you guys were on.
April: It's been so bittersweet
because the collective mental health of the world I think
has been tanking or tanked during the pandemic.
And people were so stressed and anxious and burned out.
And there was a clear need for our services.
But it was bittersweet in that it was our opportunity
to rise to the occasion and make such an incredible impact
in such a strange time.
Sam: Obviously, it's been super interesting
being a leader during this period of time.
We haven't had our teams in the office.
We've been tackling problems that are super topical.
I obviously have some tips and tricks
that I feel like I picked up,
but I would love to hear
how you feel like your leadership style
has developed over the last, I don't know,
year or even prior to that.
April: I think that this past year was a turning point
for my leadership, to be honest with you.
When I started the business,
I obviously was passionate about mental health
because it was so personal to me.
Sam: Yeah.
April: I didn't necessarily tell people about my personal story.
And I just told people I was super passionate about it,
and there was this disconnect.
And over the past year with everything going on
and everyone's anxiety levels going through the roof
and the stigma starting to go away around mental health,
I started to really open up about my own journey.
And I found that my superpower was actually vulnerability.
And not just vulnerability about my mental-health journey,
but also vulnerability about leading the company.
Sam: Like what's happening in the company.
Sam: Yeah, totally. April: Yeah, exactly.
April: What about you?
How has your leadership style changed?
Sam: It's funny you mentioned vulnerability
because I have this incredible board member
that we've had for some time,
and he has this great thing that he likes to talk about,
which is, there are two ways to be strong.
You can be strong like this,
or you can be strong like this.
And strong like this
is a very defensive kind of posture and it's closed off.
And strong like this is, you know,
I can handle the burden, and I'm here to lead the team,
and everyone can sort of stand on my shoulders.
April: I feel like people think that the founder life
is glamorous and it's all fun all the time.
Sam: Yeah.
April: Or they think maybe the opposite,
where it's just so overwhelmingly stressful.
Sam: Yeah.
April: And I feel like caring too much is, or caring a lot
is a blessing and a curse, right?
Like, yeah, we care so deeply about fixing mental healthcare
and giving people access to high quality care.
And because we care so much,
it's sometimes really stressful.
And on this founder journey,
everything just feels really personal sometimes.
Sam: Totally. April: Yeah.
But how have you been taking breaks
and taking care of your wellness, even through all this?
Sam: Yeah, I think I do a decent job in the absolute.
And I think one of the things I've observed over time
is the highs get less high and the lows get less low.
April: Yeah.
Sam: And then over time as just as you're more experienced
and you have more reps,
things don't shake your world in the way that they used to.
But I think you do have to have
those kind of micro level day-to-day things where
you know to just sneak out for a couple of minutes.
Or you know you need to go to a good meal.
Or you know you need to take a day off, or whatever it is.
April: What you were saying really resonates.
I think you do need other centers of gravity.
You need real relationships in your life to ground you.
And I have encouraged people on my team
to take mental-health days, and I take mental-health days.
And I make it public.
I tell the entire team.
I announce it.
And on those days, I just putt around, you know?
And I just like make myself some coffee in the morning,
just walk around the block,
just have a relaxing, slower day.
Because it can be so, again, chaotic, overwhelming.
We're just, we're moving at such a fast pace.
But sometimes I just need to take a step back
and realize that, as you said, this is a dream job.
I am working on something that matters so much to me,
that saves and changes lives daily.
And so I think we have to remember to be grateful.
Take a pause.
(light upbeat music)