Tampa, FL – For the Founder and CEO of Cope Notes, May’s status as both National Mental Health Awareness Month and National Military Appreciation Month brings two of his worlds together. Mental health is central to Johnny Crowder’s startup, but it was the perspective of military veterans that sparked the pivotal decision he made when creating the company.
“My original plan was to make an app. If you’re going to go digital, everyone was saying to make it an app,” recalled Crowder. A military veteran and family friend told him otherwise and with bludgeoning truth. “He basically said ‘I’m gonna stop you right there because doing it that way is going to fail,’” said Crowder. The military veteran didn’t stop there, pointing out “the big flaws” he saw in the entrepreneur’s premise. “I hadn’t launched Cope Notes yet, so I was all ears,” said Crowder.
What happened next would set Crowder on the path that’s led to 2.3 million texts exchanged to date and a reach in 97 countries. Just this month, Axios digital media called his Cope Notes “The Text Best Thing” during its 2023 coverage of National Mental Health Awareness Month. They are results that may have been different had it not been for the talk with the Navy veteran more than five years earlier.
“He said ‘First, the fact that you’re requiring personal information from people is going to keep me and many of my peers from using your Cope Notes,” said Crowder, recounting the discussion on APPS that followed. “When you download an app, Apple or Google, for example, gains access to certain information. Those are in the Terms and Conditions section that no one reads, but it’s in there. Using any app requires you to enter personal information associated with your device,” explained Crowder. “He’s the one who made me realize this privacy aspect was way more important than I had realized.”
Moving forward with that new perspective, the entrepreneur changed course, making his mental health resource a series of daily text messages so that users could be 100% anonymous. No smartphone required. Each Cope Notes text includes positive psychology prompts reviewed by clinicians and other psychology experts and originate with real people, not a “chat bot”. No two subscribers ever receive the same text at the same time.
“Being smartphone dependent means, you’re leaving out so many people,” said Crowder. “When this military veteran told me there are lots of people without smart phones, I thought to myself, ‘No there’s not. Everybody has a smartphone!’ When I did the research, though, I found out that 11% of the U.S. population uses non-smart cell phones. These are tens of millions of Americans. When we tell them to just use a telehealth resource or download a mental health app, they can’t. Our answer to them is ‘Oh, well?’” That’s not an answer that sat well with Crowder.
Another key ingredient to Cope Notes is the randomized timing of the messages - deliberate unpredictable timing to interrupt negative thought patterns. How? Crowder says the answer is in the neurology of the human brain. “Let’s consider the military theme here and say It’s a lot like guerilla warfare on negative thoughts. If the negative thoughts know that at twelve noon every day you’ll get a Cope Notes text, you can start to tune it out. It happens because of something called habituation. Just like, right now, if we don’t make a sound for five seconds, you’ll start to hear the A/C. You’ll hear someone typing on their computer keyboard. Our brains had habituated to that stimulus to the point we had stopped noticing them. Our brains tuned them out to conserve energy, and habituation keeps our focus from being interrupted. But the job of Cope Notes IS to interrupt,” emphasized Crowder. “We are professional thought pattern interrupters! We can do that by surprising people, catching them off guard.”
What happens when you interrupt the brain? “The coolest thing happens! The brain gets frustrated and confused,” explained Crowder, who has a psychology degree from the University of Central Florida and has been researching the neuroscience of the brain for years. “In your brain when you think thoughts over and over again, the synapses associated with that thought grow closer together to save energy. When we interrupt that thought pattern, the synapses associated with that thought – for lack of a better term – get frustrated and grow further apart. That’s when other synapses, ones associated with positive thoughts, have an opportunity to grow closer together.” The closer the synapses in your brain, the more likely the new thought is repeated. Experts at the University of South Florida, who’ve also looked at the effects of Crowder’s Cope Notes, say the spiraling effects of anxiety and depression are hindered in this new neurological reality where positive thoughts are the ones being replicated.
The Chamber member and Certified Recovery Peer Specialist is based out of Tampa and travels the country as a public speaker, advocate, and subject expert on mental wellness. Cope Notes officially launched in 2018 and now serves individual subscribers, as well as universities, public school systems and businesses in various industries. Crowder is seeing more employers adding Cope Notes subscriptions to employee wellness initiatives and enhancements to traditional employe assistance programs (EAP). “You’d be surprised at the variety of industries we serve – from construction to sports teams to middle schools and executive leadership groups,” explained Crowder. “I’ve spoken to employers who’ve said they don’t know how to help employees feel more connected, more focused, or better equipped to cope with the challenges of what they’re going through - the stress and anxiety of high-pressure work. They want to do something, but they don’t have a massive budget,” explained Crowder. “I’ll ask ‘What do you think would move the needle more: a raise of 7 cents per hour for everyone in your workforce or making this resource available to them to boost their emotional intelligence, boost their focus and coping skills, reduce depression and stress?’”
“Give your employees a resource that’s proven to change their brain,” said the suicide and abuse survivor who built Cope Notes on neuroscience to fight depression, anxiety and more. “We’ve had people change their entire lives based on one 160-character text message that came to their phone at the right time,” concludes Crowder.
On this National Mental Health Awareness Month, and every day, we salute all our Tampa Bay Chamber members engaged in this important public health arena. Please note: In the Tampa Bay region, the 2-1-1 hotline serves as an emergency resource 365 days of the year, 24/7. All calls are confidential.
