Manifest Wellness
Manifest Wellness is a men’s counselling company that redefines the way guys think about their emotional well-being. The company was conceived, named, designed, launched and marketed by Frank, and we continue to be partners in the business. The idea for the business came from the realization that men cannot relate to mental health services as they are currently presented. As a result, they suffer from issues like addiction, anger, anxiety, depression and other limiting conditions. They’re even killing themselves at four times the rate of women. We decided to do something about it. Check it out at Manifest.Me
The Challenge
Men typically don’t think that talking can be medicine. They often misdiagnose mental health issues as physical issues or ignore them completely. They don’t know how counselling works and are skeptical that it even does (work). They are concerned that they’ll be identified as mentally ill and also that they’ll have to commit to a life of therapy. Instead, they often white-knuckle ride it out and develop anti-social and self-defeating behaviours in an attempt to cope. So, how do you get guys to think differently about it? We researched the issue and came up with an idea.
The Insight
Men often feel that counselling is not relevant to them and bypass the idea completely. Most guys submit to the concept of counselling only when a spouse or family member strongly recommends it. Research showed that guys were more inclined to notice messages about mental strength rather than mental health. They respond well to notions of increasing function and productivity, fulfilling potential, improving performance, goal setting and coaching. We decided that for guys to consider it, we’d need to reinvent how it gets done and how we talk about it.
The Solution
We determined that by merging the best parts of personal development, professional coaching and talk therapy (counselling), we could create a service that helps guys overcome obstacles by developing their mental agility. We enlisted the help of program directors and professional coaches to develop an eight stage framework that’s based on well-established coaching systems. We heavily customized the framework to fit our criteria (mutually agreed upon goals, predictable timeline, defined inputs, benchmarking, accountability and more). Having designed the service and delivery system, we then named the company, created a brand identity, built the website, created video content for launch and hired the counsellors. We run the marketing for the company and hold the project dear to our hearts.
