Stepping up to Support Mental Health During the Pandemic

We talked to Corey Ferreira about how Declutter The Mind is an app that will teach you how to meditate, help you form the habit of regular practice, and expand your mind to the teachings of mindfulness, and this is what he had to say.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Corey Ferreira: My family is doing well. I have family in long-term care homes with an outbreak of the virus, but fortunately, they’ve stayed healthy.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Declutter The Mind?

Corey Ferreira: I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life, as well as someone who meditated every day for the past 15 years. A few years ago, when I watched my father battle cancer and eventually passed away, meditation helped me cope, manage, and deal with all the emotions I felt during that time. Eventually, I decided to share the benefits a meditation practice brought to my life with the rest of the world. I wanted to do it in a way that was secular and without the “woo-woo” that is often associated with meditation. It’s like going to the gym, but it works out your brain and builds your mindfulness muscle. I wanted to make meditation accessible and easy to benefit from as going to the gym to stay physically healthy.

How does Declutter The Mind innovate?

Corey Ferreira: We listen to our community. We genuinely want to create something that benefits people and that people want to use. The type of practices we make, content, and features we put into the app is informed by the community, how they use the app and their suggestions. Our goal isn’t to extract as much value from our community as other meditation apps that gamify the experience. We want to provide as much value as possible. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Corey Ferreira: When the pandemic began to shut down businesses and affect people’s mental health at the beginning of the year, we changed the topics and types of meditation practices we created in the app to serve people struggling during that time. A lot of our practices were around COVID-19 anxiety and worrying. We pivoted and leaned into that to ensure we could help as many people as possible with our guided meditation app.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Corey Ferreira: Early on during the pandemic, we decided to make most of our content free. The decision there was that we didn’t feel comfortable monetizing the content that would genuinely help people. Instead, our goal was to build our community’s size, build up their trust with us, and then eventually offer a subscription for members who wanted to and could afford to support us. So far, this is working out for us. We’ve grown our community and audience significantly in the past eight months, and that’s mostly due to our content being free, accessible, and easy to share. Word of mouth has helped us grow organically.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Corey Ferreira: Meditation, of course! I have a regular morning practice that I’ve stuck with for a long time. It’s a simple 20-minute mindfulness meditation practice first thing upon waking and before getting to work.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Corey Ferreira: There are many meditation apps out there. For us, we differentiate and plan to stay in the game by continuing to offer a secular, accessible, and affordable approach to learning how to meditate and maintaining a regular guided meditation practice—no gimmicks, no big celebrities, and also no watering down practices for more experienced meditation practitioners. 

Your final thoughts?

Corey Ferreira: We hope everyone can stay safe and happy during this pandemic. 

Your website?

https://declutterthemind.com/