We could all benefit from having someone to guide us through daily struggles—whether they’re related to a career choice, relationship problems, stress, anxiety, or anything else—but it can be super costly to get the help you need, and even harder to get it exactly when you need it. Thankfully, Jonathan Friedman, co-founder and president of The Journal That Talks Back, is one step ahead of us: he helped develop The Journal That Talks Back in the hopes of providing young professionals with an affordable and accessible coaching service to help them develop healthy relationships and manage stress, among other things.
You may be asking yourself how does this super awesome resource work? Well, dear reader, it’s as easy as can be: first, you’ll have a quick intake call that will help match you with the perfect coach and ensure that coaching (as opposed to therapy or counselling, for example) is the best option for you. Next, you’ll be able to access your coach (once The Journal That Talks Back launches on October 4th—put it in your calendar now so you don’t miss out!) and start journaling whenever you’d like. Your certified coach will then read your entries and respond to them to provide insight and support. Continue this cycle as many times as you’d like; your journal is accessible to you whenever you need it, and your coach will respond to each one of your journal entries with feedback you can incorporate into your day-to-day life.
HC: What inspired you to start The Journal That Talks Back?
Jonathan: “I used to work as a child youth counselor (with young adults who had a diagnosis of autism and young children who had experienced traumatic events), and one of the main things I’d do was work with those individuals on communication skills. Fast forward a few years, and I started doing some marketing for my stepmom, who has been running a coaching company for the last 20 years. When COVID started, we realized there are a lot of young people who could benefit from coaching, but a lot of the systems that are in place for coaching, counselling, and therapy are very expensive and out of reach for young professionals and students, so we wanted to find a way to fill that gap. We realized that there’s a lot of research showing the benefit of text-based counselling and coaching, and we wanted to create something a little more in-depth that combined the mood, stress, and sleep tracking components that a lot of us love in apps as well as a journal and a coach who reads and responds to each one of your journal entries. So, it’s kind of a mismatch of text-based coaching (using real people, not AI), tracking, and The Journal That Talks Back. Also, one of the things I noticed when I was younger and going for CBT was that there’d be a gap between my therapy sessions and when I’d actually need help, so we really wanted to make sure that this service is available for people when they need it.”
HC: How did you choose the pricing ($200/month) for this coaching?
Jonathan: “We figured out how many hours each coach would need, on average, in their reading and responding to journals; some people journal several times a day, and others just like having the option to journal when they need to. So, we based it on that, and we looked at other services and noticed that they’re often $300–400 or more a month, so we decided $200 a month was fair. Also, $5 from each month of the service goes towards supporting people who couldn’t otherwise afford it through our pay-it-forward fund, so we’re also going after sponsorships and things like that to help offset the costs for these individuals.”
“Additionally, in the goal of making the journal as accessible as possible, and because accessibility is always changing as we learn more about what people need and how we can make the Internet and services more accessible, we’re working with an accessibility plug-in that can better collaborate with screen readers to help anyone who has a visual impairment or anyone who needs the screen reader to help them focus. We also have a dark mode option on the website, which changes the colours on the screen to help anybody’s needs be met; that’s the other benefit of having this service be digital: there’s an anonymous component, should you choose as a client. Having all these extra tools, we’re trying to go as far and wide as we can.”
HC: Are there any restrictions (for example, age, location, etc.) to who can access coaching through The Journal That Talks Back?
Jonathan: “We are an 18+ service; we would eventually love to work with younger people, but we wanted to start with a smaller target to test the service out and make sure everything we’re doing is 100% the right thing. We didn’t want to come out of the gate going into elementary or middle schools because there’s a lot that goes along with that as well. Our target is university students and the young professionals group (20–30 years old), although anyone over 18 can use the service. We’ve actually talked to some individuals over 30 who have expressed interest. We try to be as inclusive as possible.”
“We’re not trying to compete with any other services, and we understand that each kind of service could benefit individuals in their own way. For that reason, we have an intake call before we bring people into the service to make sure they’re a good fit for us in the scope of coaching, and we refer out to other service providers if we believe an individual is better fit for their service. We’re just a piece of the puzzle.”
HC: How did you come up with The Journal That Talks Back’s logo?
Jonathan: “We had a very different logo originally (it was very professional-looking and didn’t match the rest of our website); we all brainstormed and landed on an idea that was similar to Pac Man, and since we wanted something that spoke more to our brand (and not to PacMan since we didn’t want Atari to come after us) I eventually sat out on my patio and started sketching. I remembered this concept of the Johari window, which is a window they teach you about in psychology classes where each quadrant of the window is about a different relationship: top left is information that’s known to everyone involved; another quadrant is only known to the individual (a secret); another quadrant is what’s known to the other party (the coach), but not the individual; there’s a quadrant of things that are unknown to both parties. That’s where journaling is special: it can unlock things that are hidden away and bring them to the surface. So, we took this idea of a window and the Pac Man character figures and it’s a never-ending circle, a never-ending feedback loop. This concept is very true of coaching; there’s continuous growth.”
What are you waiting for? Schedule your intake call now on The Journal That Talks Back’s website and give them a follow on Instagram to see important daily reminders!
Note: responses have been formatted for the purposes of this story.