The DO Lectures - A Feel Good Story

Hi ,

The chances of you being born were slim.

Give or take, 1 to 400 trillion to one.

Your mum is right.

You're special.

The chances of an idea being born are also slim.

I don’t have an exact figure on that, but the odds are probably equally crazy.

Take this story as testimony to that...

Against all odds.

A mate (Gareth) in town kept texting to go for a drink with him.

But I was always doing family stuff or away on business.

In a year, we never met for a beer.

In the end, I said, let’s do breakfast.

And so, we did.

I remember him asking me:

"Have you ever been down in the dumps?"

I shared my story of when I had.

I could tell… something wasn’t quite right.

He said, if he was being honest, he hadn’t felt right for a while.

But he couldn’t say how long that was…

Hmmm.

So, I said:

"Why don’t you come to this event I am holding next week.

It’s called Breakthrough. The magic of sorting your sh*t out."

He said he would think about it.

On the morning of the event, he turned up.

And he came for the whole three days.

There was someone else there, who didn’t know why he was there.

His wife had bought him the ticket as a birthday present. And said:

"Here, this will be good for you."

So, he (Marco) flew in from America and ended up in a cowshed in West Wales.

He wore a weird hat and was a little shy.

The two of them started talking to each other.

And soon found common interests went beyond headwear.

One was an architect but had fallen out of love with it.

The other wanted to build a cookery/food/retreat in an old dilapidated olive grove.

After the three days, they both left.

But, interestingly, they stayed in touch.

This is where things get interesting.

Gareth, the Welsh architect, started to help Marco with his vision of his Italian dream food based retreat.

Just to help a friend.

Then Gareth shared his app idea for measuring your mood with colour.

He had used it to help him to measure how he was feeling.

And it had helped him at his low point. And, more than anything, he wanted to build the app to help others.

He told Marco that he had hit a wall trying to make it happen as an app.

Then, he showed it to Marco.

From the very first second, Marco loved it. 

He said he would build it.

Just to help a friend.

"My team can do that. That’s what we do."

At around the same time, Gareth asked me to come sea swimming with him.

I told him I didn’t like the cold. And I was a below average swimmer.

What followed was us going swimming most days for a year and half.

And so, each day, I would hear the progress on the app.

The pivotal decisions. 

What to name it?

What colours?

The wording to use to describe it.

How to price it?

And so on.

I have been at every iteration of its journey all whilst staring at the sea.

But what I really saw was two friends trying their best to help each other.

Will the app be successful?

Do you know my take? It already has been.

Best from the West,

David Hieatt

Co-founder.

P.S. Oh, big thank you to Gareth for pulling me out of the sea twice.

Backstory

Gareth, a Welsh architect and friend of the agency, first developed the idea while pursuing his own wellness path.

Gareth realised that he hadn’t felt right for a while – but he wasn’t sure for how long or how bad things had gotten.

He knew something needed to change.

So with a set of coloured pens and a calendar, he began to record his mood every day using colour.

Over weeks and months, this visual archive gave Gareth a new perspective.

By building this simple habit and recording his mood with colour, he was able to take charge of his well-being.

Along the way he found people who wanted to do the same. 

And that’s how Mood was born. Mood is a new mobile app that lets users track their moods with one tap a day and visualises it through colour.

When users download the app, they select a colour and set their daily reminder. When the reminder pops up, they tap their mood on a gradient colour scale. The lighter the mood, the lighter the shade. It only takes three seconds, and users don’t even need to open the app.

With each entry, the user’s “Mood stack” grows. Over time, it creates a picture that can be viewed by week, month, or year. Because Mood does not judge, prescribe, or explain, it allows the user to reflect on the mood stack’s meaning without any external judgment or pressure. 

As part of Mental Health Awareness Month, Mood launched on May 11, 2022. The app can be downloaded for both Apple and Android devices. And in keeping with Red & Co.’s values, for each download, one copy of Mood is donated to an organisation that helps people with their mental well-being. For those curious about more information, Mood’s website is moodapp.io or you can download the app here:

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