In my blog, among other subjects, I usually talk about how to sell more in your ecommerce, how to generate trust in your brand and product, how to define the business model of your startup, what steps to take to create your startup with higher success guarantees, how to reach financial freedom, how to turn your enterprise from being a good enterprise into an outstanding enterprise, etc. The approach is always business to generate more money. Because we all work for money, right?
The origin of the idea
Well, it doesn’t seem so. A few months ago a good friend of mine presented me his project and asked me if I would be able to get on board and help him. We would work a lot and we would earn nothing….Tempting, eh?
After carefully listening to his idea, I accepted, without a doubt. The fundamental reason for doing it was the heart of the matter. José Luis, emeritus psychologist (retired), wanted to continue helping more people to get over depression, fight against anxiety and anguish and to rebuild their lives. The fact of being retired doesn’t take away his desire to keep helping others.
It’s vocational. Helping others is what he has been doing his whole professional life as a psychologist and, despite being retired, he still believes he can keep doing it.
As he is retired and has his pension, José Luis never charges any patient who wishes to be treated. As he doesn’t get paid, he is sure he can reach far more people that don’t go to the psychologist because they just can’t afford to get the help they need.
The fact is that even though he is already helping people with problems this way, he felt he could do even more, reach more people, help more people and to get that he had change his means of communication. He had to use the internet. The word-of-mouth wasn’t enough. And that’s when he came to me.
Online office and blog
In a format closely aligned with leanstartup, we have already launched psicologiaparticipativa.com where José Luis Arias writes weekly articles in which he answers his patient’s most frequent questions: what are the symptoms of anxiety, how can depression be detected, how to identify and test automatic thoughts, etc. Aside from sharing this knowledge, anybody is welcome to get in touch with him through a contact form and start talking directly to him, in absolute privacy and confidentiality, about his or her concern.
This page is specially thought for those who don’t dare going anywhere to ask for help, whether because of embarrassment or because they don’t want anybody to know they need expert assistance. For them and for those who do want help but can’t afford it, this is your site.
At this point we are glad to be able to say that, even though we haven’t been online for too long, the little dissemination we got through friends and family is already giving results. And since the benefit of this project will be measured by the people we are getting to help, we are pleased to announce that we all are a little bit richer than we were a few months ago. The first contact forms are starting to arrive…
Once we launched the web and, as every possible help is too little to reach and help more people in a disinterested way, I convinced my partners in Flat101 to sponsor this project as an enterprise during 6 months and to help it disseminate. They liked the initiative so from January to June of this year, from Flat 101 we will work improving the blog’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization), managing social networks and taking any action that could improve the visibility and recognition of the site.
If you are interested in seeing what José Luis is doing through psicologiaparticipativa.com, tell your family and friends about it and share it through social networks so it can reach all the people that might need help. Add your grain of sand and contribute in the diffusion of this altruistic project.
At Flat101, we liked the initiative so much that in a few months we will start choosing a new project to support in the second half of 2015. Do you have a non-profitable project with a clear disinterested help orientation? Yours could be the next supported project. If you are interested in the initiative, get in touch with me.
The legacy of José Luis, his book
UPDATE 2021: José Luis was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) in 2019 and has been forced to close his much-loved page. José Luis’s friends have compiled the articles on his blog, which have helped so many people, and we have created a book. Buying this book helps two people: the one who reads it (it can be you or give it to someone else) and José Luis, since he will be able to afford the help that he begins to need in his day to day life.