Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: We really excited about this next hour because we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about some things that are really important amid
Speaker 1: this pandemic. Carol and I know we've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to this conversation with Orn Frankie's co founder and chief
Speaker 1: executive officer of talk Space joining us on the phone
Speaker 1: from New Jersey and Orange. First of all, I hope
Speaker 1: you're well and uh, sort of coping as best you can,
Speaker 1: as we all are amid all of this. Thanks Jason,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. So I was understand what talk
Speaker 1: spaces and how you came to create it because you
Speaker 1: had a long career or a very successful career in
Speaker 1: the ad game, I believe, and you happened upon this
Speaker 1: through some personal experience. Tell us the story. So, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's true. I was in marketing and advertising for many
Speaker 1: years and I'm now repenting and paying for my scenes,
Speaker 1: I guess. And we started tough this because we just
Speaker 1: thought that psychotherapy was such a wonderful professional had so
Speaker 1: much edited value, and it was just a shame that
Speaker 1: so few people actually have access to it. So our
Speaker 1: mission from the day one world, can we actually open
Speaker 1: up access for everyone who wants to at least try
Speaker 1: talking to a therapist. It has helped both me and
Speaker 1: my co founder is also my wife my partner, tremendously
Speaker 1: in our lives and we thought, you know, the world
Speaker 1: has to be a better place if we could open
Speaker 1: this up for everyone. So that was a yeah. I
Speaker 1: would see the initial at the beginning in around twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is when I think about it, how
Speaker 1: great that you can open it up to maybe a
Speaker 1: world of people who might not reach out to go
Speaker 1: face to face with someone. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: sometimes that face to face is really really important. What
Speaker 1: how do you how do you kind of balance both
Speaker 1: of that? So both are great. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: to face to face therapy for many long years and
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. The truth of the matter is, in terms
Speaker 1: of just being practical, most people cannot afford all the
Speaker 1: money or the time to go and see someone face
Speaker 1: to face. The usage to face to face therapy in
Speaker 1: the United States is, let's say in a good year
Speaker 1: you have ten million people who actually go and do it,
Speaker 1: and they do it for just a few several sessions,
Speaker 1: not more than that. That means that there's a huge
Speaker 1: and immense gap between the I would take the numbers,
Speaker 1: the amount of people that actually could use help and
Speaker 1: need help in a clinical way, and the ones that
Speaker 1: are actually using that. So we're not trying to take
Speaker 1: away business from face to face. It's a wonderful take.
Speaker 1: But all those tens of millions that could use it
Speaker 1: as well but cannot afford it in so many ways,
Speaker 1: are welcome to try remote or virtual or online therapy,
Speaker 1: which is what we do. And so tell us about
Speaker 1: the technology, because you know, this is beyond what you
Speaker 1: have created. It is beyond just a situation where people
Speaker 1: can can do this remotely. There's some artificial intelligence built in,
Speaker 1: I believe, help us understand how that works. So you know,
Speaker 1: behavior health and psychotherapy and psychiatry are as I said before,
Speaker 1: wonderful professions, the very rich in theories that are kind
Speaker 1: of pouring data. Where you introduce an online, modern technology platform,
Speaker 1: the thing that you begin to do is you begin
Speaker 1: to aggregate and accumulate vast troves of data that can
Speaker 1: be used to learn and see patterns and then effectively
Speaker 1: and when someone uses our our technology or platform, they
Speaker 1: can do video, they can do audio, they can write
Speaker 1: to each other. It's their choice that we can analyze
Speaker 1: this and actually learn how the best treatment courses look like,
Speaker 1: what are the best lines of interventions that will apply
Speaker 1: to some kinds of conditions or accurities. When you have
Speaker 1: a large enough data set, you can do what's called
Speaker 1: very large scale regressions and begin to get, you know,
Speaker 1: a faint idea of what works better than other approaches.
Speaker 1: Because in all honestly, if you went to a therapist
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, you don't know how good they are. You
Speaker 1: don't know how many people they helped in the past,
Speaker 1: and more than anything else, you don't know if they're
Speaker 1: he or she is a good fit for you for
Speaker 1: your particular needs. You know, therapy is a little bit
Speaker 1: like dating. Well, and I want to talk more about
Speaker 1: the use of machine learning and AI and all of
Speaker 1: this in a moment, but I do wonder about the
Speaker 1: therapist that you use. What's the screening involved? UM tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that process. So we have
Speaker 1: close to five thousand therapists on the network in all
Speaker 1: fifty states, and because we have this this level of data,
Speaker 1: we can actually know who is a good fit and
Speaker 1: a great therapist that will deliver good clinical outcomes on
Speaker 1: this platform. Um, So I and tell you one thing
Speaker 1: that probably won't surprise you, but we found only two
Speaker 1: strong correlations, one stronger than the other towards what makes
Speaker 1: a really good therapist. So the first one, interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: is having around seven or eight minimal years of experience
Speaker 1: post supervision UM that's delivered significantly better clinical outcomes. So
Speaker 1: if you look at our network, they all qualified to
Speaker 1: this or every one average they have a tenure from
Speaker 1: nine to ten years. And the second one, Carol, won't
Speaker 1: surprise you at all, and it actually applies to most
Speaker 1: of our life, is that women are better ms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a segment later in the week about how
Speaker 1: leaders you know during crisis better women. I'm the only
Speaker 1: person who can see Carol during this show right now, Lauren,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you that she is giving her
Speaker 1: not surprised face uh, and her slightly UM. I want
Speaker 1: to say smug. I don't want to say smug, but
Speaker 1: certain face. Uh. You and I we should join their
Speaker 1: forces to our next start up, which is handling over
Speaker 1: handing over the world to women. So story in the
Speaker 1: magazine this week in Bloomberg Business Week magazine by Cynthia Coon's,
Speaker 1: our US healthcare reporter at Bloomberg News is about how,
Speaker 1: in the midst of the pandemic, more people are turning
Speaker 1: to online therapy to deal with anxiety, depression and relationship strife.
Speaker 1: And that includes turning to talk Space, which is where
Speaker 1: we get back to our guest or in Frank's co
Speaker 1: founder and CEO talk Space, joining us on the phone
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. First of all, I was curious orient,
Speaker 1: I mean, tell us or how much of your site
Speaker 1: um has gone up your app in terms of uh
Speaker 1: since we've been kind of since we've been in lockdown
Speaker 1: for the last two months. So it's changing every day.
Speaker 1: But we see at least a doubling of our traffic
Speaker 1: of people that are coming in and are looking for help.
Speaker 1: And we can see coming from two sources. One is,
Speaker 1: you know, beyond the pandemic that we talked about all day,
Speaker 1: there is a second I would say epidemic, which is
Speaker 1: one of mental health, which is trigored by by COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: So you see people that are the amounts of pain
Speaker 1: and suffering and and and really sad and heartbreaking stories
Speaker 1: that are out there has grown dramatically. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, you see I would say a second source
Speaker 1: of people that it's used to go to face to
Speaker 1: face therapy, but it's unfortunately not available right now, so
Speaker 1: they're looking for help elsewhere. But overall, we see more
Speaker 1: than a double lot of the people that are the
Speaker 1: people help with us? Or do you feel like this
Speaker 1: notion of going to therapy or or talking to someone
Speaker 1: is becoming more widely accepted and acceptable. Are we getting
Speaker 1: more comfortable talking about mental health? It's a great question, Jason,
Speaker 1: and and I don't want to be you know, give
Speaker 1: you a wishful thinking answer. I think I think stigma
Speaker 1: is improving, but it's not equally distributed. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: when we have a conversation with people that live in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: it's part of their early lives. It's not anything that's threatening.
Speaker 1: I think one of the interesting things that we learned
Speaker 1: over the last eight years is that actually remote care
Speaker 1: sometimes helps to alleviate stigma, because part of stigma is
Speaker 1: that very awkward I would say feeling or experience once
Speaker 1: you meet the therapist face to face for the first
Speaker 1: time at that point that in time here or share
Speaker 1: a complete stranger and sometimes it's very painful for you
Speaker 1: to talk about, well, whatever is troubling you. So there's
Speaker 1: a sense of awkwardness of being judged. That is part
Speaker 1: of steem myself. So some of the younger people, the
Speaker 1: millenniums a k a. Millenniums still much safer in writing
Speaker 1: the healths from Afar and we we see an interesting
Speaker 1: phenomena in which people begin to write to the therapy
Speaker 1: not a couple of months. They will once they trust
Speaker 1: him or her, they will do a live video session
Speaker 1: because now they're willing to expose themselves. Wow, that's real.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting sort of mixing, the mixing the media.
Speaker 1: In some ways, what I find fascinating for such a
Speaker 1: developed society, smart society, developed country, is that we don't
Speaker 1: really respect health, whether it's physical health or mental health.
Speaker 1: It's really kind of mind boggling for the amount of
Speaker 1: money that we spend out a lot of stuff. And
Speaker 1: I mean we might individually, but I think even the
Speaker 1: medical world doesn't necessarily appreciate or certain aspects of it
Speaker 1: um or in the importance of mental health, Like why
Speaker 1: isn't it why isn't it that we all go in
Speaker 1: every year for kind of a I don't know, you
Speaker 1: know that that's got to be part of our mental
Speaker 1: health checkout. Yeah, of course he was so right. And
Speaker 1: I've made to say, you know, argument to accomplish people
Speaker 1: in my past. But I really think that in here
Speaker 1: we have some hope and some positive change. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, much of healthcare is delivered by large employers
Speaker 1: in the United States, and I think it's a certain
Speaker 1: section of them really understand that and will prioritize mental health, animals, wellness, uh,
Speaker 1: just as much as they do any other form of healthcare.
Speaker 1: I think systematically, you know, the healthcare system or someone
Speaker 1: very wise once told me that the United States have
Speaker 1: the best medicine in the world and probably the world's
Speaker 1: healthcare system. I think the healthcare system is catching up
Speaker 1: to death as well. And I can tell you that
Speaker 1: we also operate enterprise, so business to business, and we
Speaker 1: have a We've had a huge growth of large payers
Speaker 1: that understands that they need to provide these kind of
Speaker 1: access and then started working with us in the last
Speaker 1: couple of months or as of a COVID nineteens. So
Speaker 1: I think we're actually making progress there and I don't
Speaker 1: know how long it will take, but I'm with that.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident that that it will be provided to Americans.
Speaker 1: We just have to do it. It just makes sense.
Speaker 1: You shared starts with us, and I just want to
Speaker 1: throw it out to our people that among the increase
Speaker 1: since everybody's been locked down, increasing clients with the chief
Speaker 1: complain of anxiety because of stress, because of an increasing depression,
Speaker 1: of increasing difficulties sleeping, and then a lot of them
Speaker 1: for couples therapy or just people coming almost coming because
Speaker 1: of relationship problems. Um So, it's been a variety of
Speaker 1: things that really have um created some troubles for people.
Speaker 1: What does it cost? I think that we are, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, we are facing a huge crisis that's
Speaker 1: going to hit us. You know, million people lost their jobs,
Speaker 1: are unemployed now, people are locked at home, sometimes a
Speaker 1: very small apartments with family members some times, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to tell you, with abusive family members. The
Speaker 1: amount of pain that is generated by that is something
Speaker 1: that's going to hit us very hard pretty soon. I think, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot of that. We're going
Speaker 1: to see more depths of despair also known as suicide
Speaker 1: um with the level not just the number of people
Speaker 1: that are approaching and not seeking out, also their acuity.
Speaker 1: So how hard it really hit them is mind boggling.
Speaker 1: That very is that picture out there, and I don't
Speaker 1: see that getting any better anytime soon without the economy
Speaker 1: is doing and how the general movie is doing. Right.
Speaker 1: I wish we had more time because there's I have
Speaker 1: like a million more questions. You'll have to come back
Speaker 1: and spend some time with this. Or In Frank, we
Speaker 1: really appreciate. Co founder CEO of Talk Space, joins on
Speaker 1: the phone from New Jersey. Check out the story by
Speaker 1: Cynthia Coon's in the latest edition of Business Week. It's
Speaker 1: excellent and gives you a sense of the scope of
Speaker 1: the problem out there that Orrine Frank is trying to
Speaker 1: tackle