Mental health has gone from taboo to hot topic in the last few years. But Kendall Bird, co-founder of the mental wellness network Frame, believes we still need help accessing and destigmatizing therapy.

Frame was born from Kendall’s frustrations with trying to find a therapist who really understood her, and her friend and co-founder Sage Grazer’s frustrations as a therapist struggling to find clients.

The two joined forces and created a platform that connects people who want therapy with a therapist who suits them. On Frame, clients are matched with a shortlist of therapists based on a short survey. They interview as many as they want and then decide who’s the best match. They can also schedule and pay for their sessions on the platform, and even hold HIPAA-compliant video sessions on it, too.

Frame launched in California in April 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic increased the number of people in need of remotely accessible mental health support. The platform is free for therapy seekers, while therapists pay a monthly subscription for tools that help them support existing clients as well as finding new ones.

Kendall firmly believes that therapy can benefit everyone, whether they’ve been diagnosed with a mental health condition, are struggling with a specific circumstance or want to work on themselves.

“A lot of people go to therapy for a specific reason, and they stay in therapy because they realize it's just helpful in so many aspects of your life.”

Prentice’s Challenger Takeaway👉 So many entrepreneurs I speak with didn’t start with an MBA and a business plan. Consistently, something that makes challenger brands challenger brands is a heavy dose of innocent naivety at the founder level. This is where broken models get fixed.

👉 Kendall saw a need in the marketplace - a lack of options - so she created a better way and chased it with restless passion.

👉 There’s a lesson to be learned here even if you work at a larger company: make space for craziness, invest in free-thinking, and embrace failure. This is how the world changes.

Featured Challenger👧 Name: Kendall Bird

⚙️ How she challenges: Kendall is the co-founder and CEO of Frame, a platform that connects people with therapists and makes booking, holding, and paying for therapy sessions easy for both parties.

🧠 Company: Frame

💎 Noteworthy: Before founding Frame, Kendall worked in marketing for Snapchat and Google. It was the stress of the former’s IPO that pushed her to find a new therapist and made her realize how unnecessarily challenging it was, even for a self-described therapy superfan.

🔍 Where to find Kendall: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

🔍 Where to find Frame: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Challenger Wisdom 💡 A life-changing experience“I started therapy when I was 15 years old. I found out that I was dyslexic and I was having really bad confidence issues. I thought I was going to be a failure in life. My parents suggested I talk to a child psychologist and it really helped me build my confidence. It meant therapy was normalized to me at a very young age, and ever since then, I’ve felt like why wouldn't I keep going?”

💡 Not your grandma’s therapy“I think there are preconceived notions about therapy because it’s been portrayed in the media and passed down from generations before us as something that is a last resort: it's only for people with severe mental illnesses. We're breaking the stigma, but historically people have thought, ‘Something must be wrong with me if I'm talking to someone.’”

💡 Demystifying the therapist’s office“One reason that people are resistant to trying therapy is that it's hard to understand what therapy is about. It's an intangible thing. People are like, ‘What happens in a therapy session? Are they mean to you? Is there magic voodoo that's going on?’ That's one of the things we're trying to tackle with our platform: One of our services is educating people about the different types of therapists and what happens in therapy.”

💡 Moving therapy into the 21st century“The whole experience of trying therapy can feel very antiquated — you're writing checks, you have to call them and leave a voicemail. We've made that process easier. You answer 10 questions and get six matches. You schedule through our platform, you do the video session through our platform and then you pay through our platform. We wanted to make it a completely seamless experience.”

💡 Not just for the 1%“People think, ‘I'll never be able to afford therapy if I don't have insurance.’ It's really hard for a doctor to say, ‘We'll just do a mammogram for you,’ because there are machines involved that cost thousands of dollars. But therapy is different so they can be flexible on rates. And when you are able to pay out of pocket and you work with them, a lot of times they will come down on their rates to work on a deal at a price point that makes sense for you.”

💡 Coping with COVID means moving online“Most therapists were not comfortable doing telehealth prior to COVID, and so it's actually forced therapists of all experience levels and ages to adopt technology in a way that they weren't necessarily planning for. We've had a really interesting makeup of therapists on the platform with different levels of experience because of this shift towards telehealth in the global pandemic.”

💡 The search for the one (therapist)“Don't give up on therapy: the right therapist is out there. There is a chemistry thing, and it's not about did they go to the fanciest school and do they have celebrities as clients or something like that. It's about who do you feel most comfortable with and who do you connect with, and who's helping you feel better?”

Top quotes from the episode Kendall Bird

Quote #1

“Awareness about mental health has never been higher, but there's still a disconnect with therapy. Americans don't understand what therapy is and how it benefits them, so they're not even considering it as an option.”

Quote #2

“I'm therapy's biggest fan so I'm willing to put in that work to find the right therapist, but most people must just give up after the first weird experience.”

Quote #3

“It's not just about getting people connected to therapists, it's about helping them find the right fit. We've built a unique algorithm and experience for clients, so they can not only get in front of the right types of therapists, but also have the power to make the final decision about who they feel most comfortable talking to.”

Quote #4
“If you have been to therapy, share your stories about specific instances where therapy's helped, because it helps people wrap their heads around why they could go and how it could help them.”