Start-up of the week: MyMoodandMe

Our start-up of the week is MyMoodandMe, an online service set up by a team of healthcare professionals that is designed to improve your mental and physical health.

“We offer a structured programme over three core areas – Move, Nourish and Inspire – and also one-on-ones through our video-conferencing system and live interactive webinars,” explained Richard Murphy, CEO and co-founder of MyMoodandMe.

‘Corporate well-being is a growing market worldwide and in the US alone there is $15bn being invested in corporate wellbeing this year’
^{– RICHARD MURPHY, MYMOODANDME}

“We also offer workshops and seminars as part of corporate well-being programmes.”

The market

MyMoodandMe is primarily targeting two areas: the corporate sector and pharmacies with online stores.

“Corporate well-being is a growing market worldwide and in the US alone there is $15bn being invested in corporate well-being this year.

“Pharmacies are trying to be more innovative and to do this they need to bring in additional products and services to make them stand out.

“We also target the direct customer, however, most of our efforts will be on the first two mentioned.”

The founders

Murphy worked as a quantity surveyor and project manager in the construction industry in Melbourne for five years.

“I started to re-educate myself over there as a personal trainer and brought what I learned to Ireland 18 months ago.

“Since then I have built up a client base of over 60 people a week and found there was a niche to bring health professionals together on an online platform.

“My co-founder Nicole Paulie has a background as a psychologist and has developed our Inspire programme over a 12-month period.”

The technology

Users log in, go through a two-minute registration process and, from there, are brought to their personalised dashboard.

There they see their customised six-month programme broken into weeks.

‘Our business-to-customer marketing is starting to pay off too as there is an increase in our uptake every week’
^{– RICHARD MURPHY, MYMOODANDME}

“Each week contains various tasks for them to complete, [which can include] exercise, cooking demonstrations for them to follow or guided meditations,” Murphy said.

“There is gamification  features included, such as a reward system when tasks are completed. Additional to that we have two services. The first being an option of one-to-ones through our custom-built video-conferencing system, and the other being MyMoodandMe TV, which is live interactive webinars that are held once per week with our healthcare professionals but also guest speakers.”

Murphy said that the ultimate goal is to be the one-stop-shop for people who want to improve their wellbeing, to bring in a further range of healthcare professionals that specialise in various areas and for MyMoodandMe to be the No 1 collaboration of healthcare professionals in a digital context.

“We conducted a soft launch and are in negotiations with two corporate companies and one pharmacy.

“Our business-to-customer marketing is starting to pay off too as there is an increase in our uptake every week.”

Mindfulness about meetings

Murphy said one of the struggles of starting up was identifying who to listen to and who not to.

“I made a mistake initially of trying to get as many meetings as possible to tell them of my idea and I was being dragged and pulled in every direction, you have to funnel these people and identify who to listen to. “

He sees the start-up scene in Ireland going from strength-to-strength and the supports available, whether it is financial of mentorship, growing.

“At least 80pc of start-ups don’t avail of the supports that are available to them.

“MyMoodandMe won the Wexford Young Entrepreneur Competition last year and are part of the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers Phase 2 Programme – the support gained from these two programmes has been exceptional.

His advice to start-ups is to identify their tribe. “Find people who are in a similar space to you and who you aspire to be and reach out to them.”