Innovating EMDR Therapy with Online Solutions | Yanick and Benjamin of bilateralstimulation.io

We got this email from like one therapist and she told us like she just got like a new client and the client was like a firefighter and just lost his vision in like an emergency, basically cannot come to her office. And the only thing that he can do for the bilateral stimulation is like the tactiles with the buses because lost his vision, like everything else doesn't work. And she was like, literally the only way I can treat this person right now and this person urgently needs treatment is with like these buzzers. But I know they're like not on the market. Like you cannot buy them. Like you just got like this one prototype. Is there any way you can send me like one more device? And I mean, as mentioned, we didn't have a manufacturer, like nothing. We're like, okay, we're just going to build one more prototype, soldering stuff together. And then there was around the Christmas time, just shipped it out before the holidays. And then this therapist was able to treat this client who urgently needed treatment. And you know, at that point this is really like, as you can imagine, like a huge motivator. Like you don't even think about like money or like also the many hours that you spend in the office or whatsoever. It's really just this impact that you have, like in this one case is just like, was fast, like really, really amazing.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community and in your life. Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur podcast. We are here to talk about innovation in the mental health space and entrepreneurs who are stepping out of the box to find creative solutions today. I am so happy to have the founders of Bilateral Stimulation IO with me today. Benjamin Feehauser, who is the managing director, and Janik Steinbeck, who's in charge of technology and product. Welcome.

Glad to be here.

Hi. Thanks.

Hey, it's great to have you. So let's talk a little bit about what you do. The name of your company, Bilateral Stimulation IO, might be confusing for some people that aren't, especially in the EMDR world. So can you talk a little bit about what it is that you do?

So, in short, we help therapists do EMDR therapy online. For those of you who might be not yet familiar with emdr, it's a method of trauma therapy that is used for ptsd, depression, anxiety, a variety of other disorders and uses something called bilateral stimulation. Stimulation Left and right there is visual bilateral stimulation, auditory bilateral stimulation, tactile bilateral stimulation. And traditionally, therapists have been doing this in person, sometimes with the use of devices. And we bring these devices online, so we help them do EMDR therapy over the Internet.

Amazing. You explained that very well. So how did you get here? I mean, I think, and you can start back as long as you want to, but I know neither of you are mental health therapists, correct? So somehow here you are, though, designing a product for mental health therapists. How did that all happen?

Yeah, that's quite an interesting story, actually. So Benjamin and I, we known each other for. For quite a long time. Eight or nine years now. We both worked in technology startups. Benjamin on the business side, me on the technology side. I was working as a software engineer when I was patient of emdr. So I was a. I was a client, and I really benefited from EMDR therapy. A And at the end of it, I brought up the idea to my former therapist of, hey, what if you do this online? You know, what if you have a video chat with your client and then you do the bilateral simulation over the Internet? And he was saying, oh, that sounds very cool, but nobody's doing therapy online, Yannick. Nobody needs that. And then I said, okay, fair enough. And then sometime later, Covid comes, and my former therapist emails me and asks me, hey, remember this thing that you pitched me? I could actually really use this now. So I built the original version of the software for him. First weekend of lockdown, the start of COVID And I thought, it's just going to be a little Covid project, you know, that's going to be used by, like, three people, and Covid's going to be over in like, three weeks. But it came out very differently. Like, it went viral very early during COVID because all these EMDR therapists, they needed something to do their therapy online. And the tool that I built was free and simple and kind of was the right product at the right moment in time, and then started growing very rapidly. And I remember a week after I put it online, the site went down because it had a lot of traffic. And I didn't really prepare for that because I didn't think it would be a big deal. And then I started getting all kinds of emails from therapists in the US And Uganda and India who were using it and who had feature requests. So it started becoming this side project. I was still working a regular job as a software engineer. And eventually it organically grew to around 5,000 therapists. And that's when I said, okay, I should focus on this full time. I quit my job. Benjamin joined. I've kind of been drip feeding Benjamin, like the news of what's happening with this tool. And I was like, hey, look, I think there's something happening here. Then, yeah, when it hit 5,000 therapists, he jumped in also. And then that's kind of where the second chapter started.

I love the organic origin of that. And yeah, I mean, I remember hearing about it very early on too. It was in all kinds of social groups and people like, how, how do we do EMDR online? From my side, I'm an EMDR trainer and I was literally halfway in between an EMDR basic training. And it was like, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? Can I even do this online? Can I even train people online? And so people were just grasping for whatever kinds of things that we could find to do that. So I love that organic growth. But I still think that was such a big leap for both of you to say, this is where we're going to quit our jobs and invest in. So can you talk a little bit about that decision making process?

Yeah, it's true.

Maybe.

Benji, do you want to.

Yeah, yeah. It was definitely a little bit crazy at the beginning. So I think as Yannick mentioned, so Yannick is originally from Switzerland, I'm originally from Austria. And we actually both met in the US like ages ago when we did our exchange semester. And ever since then, like we did it at USC in Los Angeles and then already back then we joined the entrepreneurship club there and we said like, the two of us, we would be like a really good, good match for like starting a company at some point. And then we both ended up in Berlin, which is kind of like the startup capital of Europe, and then worked in all these different technology companies. And as Janik mentioned, and one day he comes around and he's like, yeah, built this tool from a former therapist and now it already has like hundreds and thousands of users and it's for emdr. And I was like, okay, what is emdr? I've never heard of it, right? And then, then this crazy journey began of like, I think not even a day later, we're like sitting in Yannick's living room and like he gave me like the download. And I think a day later I was already in a call with like a group practice that wanted to have like kind of like a personal onboarding or like webinar of how to use the tool. Then really, I think what we also learned from our previous jobs and what helped us a lot with bilateral stimulation that I always, the two of us, we've always like as mentioned, working in the technology area. And FAZ was always important to build the tools that we developed together with like the users. And I think on, on the day we didn't even decide yet that we're going to start a company. So basically we're just like sitting together and starting to, to, to work on like further developing the tool. And then the one thing that we really did is like jumping on calls with. I think it was pretty fast, like hundreds of therapists. I think it didn't take long until I, I had a, like, both Janik and I had calls with like more than a hundred therapists and then getting all the feedback from, from them. Right. Like at the beginning it was like some, some, some minor things. And there's like this, this one anecdote where like one therapist told Janik that she always used the auditory and then she heard it herself because at the beginning there was no mute button for the therapist. And she did it like eight hours a day and it drove her crazy. And then the next day there was like a mute button for, for the therapist. And like, kind of a lot of those features developed this way. And we really tried to really learn more from the people who use the tool on a daily basis. And then that was also the point when we decided to work in the remote buzzers because we got like so much feedback from, from therapists that they needed a way to do like tactile online as well. And like a lot of people back then did the, did the butterfly. Right. But then it didn't work for all the therapists. And then we got the feedback that they want to have the buzzers. And that's when we said like, okay, we've never built a hardware product before, but let's do that if people need it. And then we jumped on this amazing.

Yeah. And it seems like you're just kind of in this constant growing and evolving. And for people that aren't familiar with emdr, it uses this bilateral stimulation that you heard Janik mention. And the butterfly hug was like an alternating tapping version of that. That for a long time as therapists we were like, that's all we can offer tactilely online because it's really hard to use sort of any kind of. We call them buzzies or buzzers that pulse back and forth when you an online session. So you have figured out that piece. And I know that having the therapist be able to stop that and start. That is really, really helpful and maybe

a word of encouragement for anybody who is thinking about starting their own entrepreneurial thing. But it's not sure if they have all the knowledge yet that they need. When we started with the, with the Buzzers, which is an electronic hardware product, we never did electronics before. I literally the first week when we started doing it, I went on YouTube and I started watching tutorials of the difference between voltage and current. And Benji and me really came at this hardware topic, the hardware part of our business, as complete newbies. And we just had to learn on our feet. We had to be very humble, we had to talk to people who were farther along and knew more and learn from them. Eventually we're able to build our own little prototypes of these handheld devices and then bring these prototypes to a crowdfunding campaign and then from there to production. So definitely was a long journey, definitely lots of ups and downs there. But at the end we were like, wow, okay, we actually, we actually did it. And I think like, even people, you know, who never built maybe a software product and want to have an idea, I think there are tools out there right now for you to make things easier to get started with. You know, kind of, you don't need to actually fully know how to program to build a simple software product nowadays.

That is kind of mind blowing to me as you say that, because as a therapist that has zero software technology training, that is mind boggling that you jumped into something so new that you didn't feel like you had that background in and just did that. And what's coming up for me then, and I'm curious your thoughts about this is so what makes a successful entrepreneur, because maybe it isn't necessarily having mastery in whatever it is that you're doing.

I actually have some opinions on that. I think, I think it's certainly an ability to learn quickly what you need to learn. Because you're always wearing like a million different hats, right? Like today you're doing some like technical product thing, tomorrow you're doing some sales marketing thing. The day after you're doing some legal tax thing. And you kind of need to be able to context switch and suck up a lot of knowledge very quickly and kind of prioritize what's important because you always have so much flying at you. You need to be able to operate at like different zoom levels. So sometimes maybe you get a contract and it's very important that you really, you know, zoom in and spend a lot of time and understand it in detail and sometimes you might have a lot of information and you just need to act fast and you need to operate at a much higher zoom level. I think lastly, if you, if you are active, like in a technology space, be it software or hardware, I think it always helps to learn more on the technology side. You know, like, you can definitely get started even with a software product without knowing programming. And there's a lot of tools that allow you to build simple websites, even mobile apps without programming. But the more technical knowledge you can gain, and there's good online courses for that, the more, the more it will help you manage the process. Like, that's something that we learned also on the electronic side, like, we were by no means electrical engineers, but I think we by now know enough to manage the process, you know, of electrical engineers doing the actual designs and then prototyping and the testing. So you definitely need to be kind

of eager to learn and maybe adding to that, I think one thing that we learned was really important for us was also like, that we were really convinced of the idea and we didn't get disencouraged by a lot of people who told us that this wouldn't work out, to give you one example. So we built this all without any investors. Basically, we built this with our own money and we didn't have a lot of money because we were still young when we started the company. And at the beginning, especially when we wanted to build this electronic device, when we talked to like the first people, manufacturers, we felt like, okay, maybe, you know, we can do it together with them. The first answers that we always got was like, yeah, this is going to be super expensive. You need like half a million US Dollars, a lot of investment. And like, we by no means had any of that money by that time now. And I think a lot of, a lot of people, they, you know, they would have stopped there and they would have gotten maybe disencouraged. And for us it was like, okay, we need to do it with like, let's say 5%, the sum that like the other person tells you that you need, then we need to find a way to do it. And sometimes you have to be like a little bit scrappy, and sometimes you just like really have to negotiate and sometimes you have to find like new ways to do some stuff. But, like, the one thing is really fast, it was like not to stop and then also not to get like disencuraged by like, I think you always will meet a lot of people who will tell you that it won't work out. And you just need the willpower to get through that.

And I think part of that is, like, you need to be almost a bit overly optimistic. Like, I think a lot of things, especially maybe the hardware side of things. We didn't do it because we thought it was easy. No, we didn't do it because it was easy. We did it because we thought it was easy.

Definitely I'm relating to that. Yeah.

Underestimated. But then maybe this initial underestimation is necessary because otherwise you wouldn't even start. Like, if you would know in advance, okay, building this hardware product is going to take us a year of basically doing nothing else, then maybe we would have not started. But then once you're in, and especially like you get this customer poll, you get people telling you they, they want it and like, they almost pull it out of you. You know, that's another thing, right? Like, you really want to be spending your time on something that people really want that solves a real problem because that will pull you in the right direction.

Yeah, I love that. So, I mean, I'm almost hearing, like, that's the why, right? There's a motivation beyond just the tasks of it or the barriers that helps you kind of decide to get scrappy and get creative and hurdle those things. I'm thinking about vision too. Like, as I. I'm hearing your story, I'm thinking about, okay, you met in LA and you had this idea all the way back there of, like, hey, it would be really cool if we started a business together. Right? I'm a big fan of, you know, putting those things out into the universe and that. It seems like that's a pretty powerful thing. So what was it about the two of you, like, at that very early moment that was like, hey, we would be good at having a business together.

I think we both respected each other a lot. Like, we both thought, okay, here's like a very smart, thoughtful person that I could really imagine working with together because we were like both students and we kind of saw each other work in a certain context and we said, okay, there is kind of some respect there and some trust already, right? Like, I think it's starting a company together, it's a bit like marrying, you know, like, you spend a lot of time together and you probably see each other more than your significant other and you want to be really sure you're doing it with somebody that, you know, you trust. And it was good that we had this chance to date a little bit before we marry. You know, we did the exchange together. And then even when we started working on Bilateral together, we kept the commitment a bit more loose in the beginning and then tightened it over time. Right? And if you can do that and really choose your co founders to be people that you really trust and respect, I think that helps you a lot through the. For the ups and for the downs. Right? Because we certainly had downs and we certainly had moments where we're like, oh, no, this is not going to work out. And then you really want to kind of stick together like glue, right. And come out of the down together.

I think, as Janik mentioned, like, the. That the part of. That we knew each other for, like, so long and we had, like, also, you know, many, like, interesting, let's say, discussions besides, like, business stuff was, like, really helpful. And I think what really, for me was like, let's say the last missing piece. When we started, when we first started to work on this together for the first couple of months even, we basically, we just went ahead and we didn't even, you know, like, for us, the first discussion was not like, okay, how are we gonna split the shares of the company later? Or how are we gonna. How much salary are we gonna pay to. To whom? Because, like, Yannick had the original idea, I trained a little bit later and like, all these things, but it was just like, okay, people need these buzzers. Let's work on this and let's see how it goes. And like, the worst that could happen is we basically wasted, exclamation mark. Like, let's say two or three months. Because then at the end, nothing came out of it. And I think both of us, we never even talked about. We were like, that's totally worth it. Like, we. We learned something in these two to three months. Even if there's like, no, no company for the two of us coming out of this, right? And then we just, like, worked on it and it. I think, I mean, after, like, very short amount of time, it was clear, like, it totally makes sense and work together really well. But only then we started to, you know, discuss, let's say, the serious things. And what I, in my previous life often saw with, like, some people is like, for them, like, the first discussion point is like, but, like, I'm going to own the IP or I want to have, like, more shares of the company than you and those kind of things. And I think this is always a very bad starting point. This is something that you can discuss a little bit down, down the road, right? Like, if. If you cannot properly work together and if you cannot like support each other and those kind of things, you don't even have to talk about like who is going to own which share of the company or who's going to get which salary.

Ah, yeah, yeah. And I'm hearing in that very mission focused. Right like it was about providing what therapists were needing at that moment with the huge switch. And I can certainly attest to as a therapist and having a practice myself, like it was intense how the switch happened and right. We first thought it was just for a few weeks which was no big deal but then when it became oh this is longer than a few weeks, suddenly it's completely switching how we work. And there was that huge need. And so to me you're also saying the two of you were mission minded about what you were doing, not trying to figure out how the business all makes sense and have this perfect business plan and all of those things.

Yeah, 100%. And I think here what really kept us going from, from the beginning and, and is still kind of the motivator until today is like the interactions that we have with therapists and, and also clients and like the feedback that we get. For me I have this one, one like story that I, that I always like to remember of where especially as we mentioned right now a couple of times like building this, this hardware product was, was very tough for us. And it was like then I think like two years ago we built the first prototypes completely ourselves basically in the office at the night when there were like no other people were like soldering stuff together because it was like a normal distance office, it was like not a workshop and we had to do it during the night so that the other people you know, don't, don't see like how we like soldering electronics together and stuff like that. And then we, and it was around Christmas, it was around Christmas time back then. And so we shipped like the first devices and like people starting to use them and like even then we didn't know if this is actually going to become a product. Right. Because we took one step after the other and we first wanted to see if it works and first wanted to see if it works for a couple of people and then what the feedback is and then iterate and everything. And then very soon after we shipped like this first it was really just like a few devices and people started to use them. We got this email from like one therapist that we've been in touch with already for some time and she told us like she just got like a new client and the Client was like a firefighter and just lost his vision in like an emergency, basically cannot come to her office. And the only thing that he can do for the bilateral stimulation is like the tactiles with the buses because vision, like everything else doesn't work. And she was like, literally the only way I can treat this person right now and this person urgently needs treatment is with like these buzzers. But I know they're like not on the market. Like you cannot buy them. Like just so, like it just got like this one prototype. Is there any way you can send me like one more device? And I mean, as mentioned, we didn't have a manufacturer, like nothing.

You were like, okay, that's more midnight at the office with the software.

We're like, okay, we're just going to build one more prototype solder stuff together. And then there was, around the Christmas time, just shipped it out before the holidays. And then this therapist was able to treat this, this client who urgently need needed treatment. And you know, at that point this is really like, as you can imagine, like a huge motivator. Like you, you don't even think about like money or like also the many hours that you spend in the office or whatsoever. It's really just this impact that you have, like in this, this one case is just like, was fast, like really, really amazing.

That is inspiring. And what is that like for the two of you? I mean, the software industry, the business industry is so different, I feel like, than the mental health space. And I'm hearing you both share stories about how your work makes an impact on people and their treatment. What has that shift been like for you and how does it feel to be in this industry instead?

I think the cool thing is whatever we build now, like the business success correlates with a real impact on people's lives, right? Like, the software is used by therapists to help their clients and whatever we do to help these therapists helps the clients as well. Right? So it's super nice. Like Benji and me, we worked in all kinds of different businesses before where maybe sometimes you weren't so sure. Okay, the product that we're doing, is it, you know, making any kind of difference? And I think when you build a business in mental health, you really have the opportunity to have a very impactful business, right. That makes a meaningful difference. And I think that's super, super motivating. And I think there's a lot of people who go to work every day, even entrepreneurs and who are like, what am I doing this all for? You know, and I think in. When you build in mental health, you always have like a pretty good answer to that.

Also, one thing that Janik and I learned, and that is fast, like true with the, with the mental health community, whenever you start a business, no matter in which area. Right. You gonna spend a lot of time with your clients. And with that, I think it's important that you select an industry where you like your clients and if you like to spend time with your clients. And for us, we didn't know that at the beginning, but we very quickly learned working with therapists was also fast. Something we really liked, just like kind of how they speak with us and like how the interactions are and how grateful they were. And then we attended all these conferences and we got to know more and more therapists. And I would say now some. Some of the therapists that we have been in touch with at the beginning already, that we now call them our friends. And I think that's. That's something that we also learned along the way. You want to build a business in an area where you like spending time with the people. And I think that's not always the case. Right. And I think that for some people, not always the case. And so that's something I would definitely think about when I started business.

Yeah. And for some people, let's be honest, working with therapists might not be a good match.

100%.

We can be like deep divers, right. Talking about feelings, all those things. So you got to tolerate a little bit of that, for sure. Yeah. I mean, and that's how I met you all, was at a conference. Right. And just to say that we are happy, our training institute is an ambassador with bilateral stimulation IO because their product is so helpful and because we've been able to use that a lot with our clients. So I really appreciate what you all are doing. Any last thing that you want people to know about being a mental health entrepreneur. Creativity, your story, your product, anything else that you want to put out there.

If you personally feel an entrepreneurial urge, I think a great place is not to think about what is the most grandiose idea I can come up with, but to look at your own life and the problems that you have and the problems that people around you have, and think about how you can solve these problems, right? Like bottom up, think about what you have around you, what your personal experience is, and then there's always going to be something there, you know, like if you walk around with an open mind and an entrepreneurial mind just for your own life, you will see so many things that you're like, oh, I think there's a problem there and I think there is a business that could solve that problem and I can build that business. So I think once you start to adopt that mindset, you will spot ideas everywhere just in your personal life.

I love that.

For me it was Carrie at the beginning, right. Quitting my job, starting this. Although there was already some, some foundation. And I think, I think it's carry for everyone. Rachel, I'm sure it was Carrie for you at the beginning.

Yes.

So I still think if you feel the urge to, to do something, just do it. There's like, let's be honest, there's going to be like a lot of hard times, but you don't want to be the person who regrets to never have tried it in like 30 years or something like that. The worst thing that can happen is you lose a little bit of money. You maybe lose, you don't even lose time, right. Because you're always going to learn something along the way. So even if it does work out in the end and you spend like a year on it, I'm sure you, you made like a lot of experiences that will help you along your life. And if possible, I think I would always do it together with like a second person. Like for us that really helped that we did it together. I think we had this phases where we left the office and then one of us was like down because something didn't work and then the other one was like, it's not going to be, you know, it's going to work out, don't worry about it. And the next day it was like the other way around. The other person was a little bit down and the other person was like optimistic. So. So we always cheered each other up and I think doing something like that with like another person or maybe more than one person just makes it more fun along along the way.

I like that. I, I do think that team approach is critical to ride all of the ups and downs in the whole journey for sure. Amazing. Well, I can vouch for the fact that Benjamin and Janik have an amazing product. If you are an EMDR therapist or know an EMDR therapist, I highly recommend bilateralstimulation IO and we will have link you want to learn more about their stories on their website. If you want to reach out to them or connect in any way, I can attest to the fact that they are amazing humans doing great things. So thank you both for being here.

Thank you so much, Rachel for joining us.

Rachel,