Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Mette Dyhrberg, founder, and CEO of Mymee, located in New York, NY, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Mymee helps people with autoimmune diseases and COVID long haul to feel better by identifying the dietary and environmental triggers behind their symptoms. Certified health coaches meet virtually with clients in one-on-one sessions to understand their medical history and goals and create a tailored plan to alleviate symptoms. Plans include assessing, confirming, and avoiding potential symptom triggers, nutritional support, supplement recommendations, and symptom management strategies.
Simultaneously, Mymee clients log factors from their day-to-day lives in the Mymee app, like meals, water intake, symptoms, and sleep. This self-tracked data allows Mymee health coaches to begin to make connections between flare-ups and their potential causes. This is important because the precise set of triggers contributing to flare-ups can be wide and varied and often very different in each person’s case.
Systemic and neurological autoimmune conditions like lupus, RA, and now, long COVID are characterized by debilitating symptoms that come and go, taking a major toll on the quality of life. Our clients have often struggled for quite some time with symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, headache, and digestive issues, among others. Not all of our clients have been diagnosed with autoimmunity, which can take, on average, over four years to diagnose. Our Care Team has helped even the most complex cases, including clients who had nearly given up on the possibility of getting their lives back to normal.
Success can look and feel so different for people who have completed the Mymee program. This makes sense – no two people experience the same autoimmune condition the same way. Feeling better has meant being able to play with grandkids, tie their shoes, open a water bottle, return to work, or run a 5K. Autoimmunity is personal, and Mymee helps people meet their unique wellness markers. Autoimmunity can affect anyone. However, it is notable that nearly 80% of people with an autoimmune disease are women.
Tell us about yourself
I am a digital health innovator and serial entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience building startups. I am an economist that became a diagnostician by entering the functional medicine arena after attempting to tackle my own debilitating chronic health issues.
I received my first autoimmune diagnosis at 14. I battled a constantly evolving set of symptoms and treatments until finally taking matters into my own hands to “hack my health” and successfully enter remission. Using an Excel spreadsheet, I systematically identified and tested potential correlations between my symptoms and various diet and lifestyle factors to find her disease triggers.
My success with this method became the basis for founding Mymee. My experience inspired me to help others. Now, I am continuously motivated by the relief that Mymee and its health coaches bring daily to those seeking personalized solutions to their autoimmunity and COVID long-haul struggles.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
This started out as a personal journey, but I am immensely grateful that we have been able to help so many people reclaim their health from autoimmune diseases.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Healthcare is an industry that requires clinical proof. In order to collaborate with esteemed universities and payers, you need to already have significant proof points — and not least patience — to be able to collaborate with these institutions on clinical validation of your protocol.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Sometimes the best ideas come from outside your industry: Bringing in ideas from analogous fields turns out to be a potential source of radical innovation.
- Your company is only as extraordinary as your people: Every company is all about the people, whether that is employees, clients and/or outside partners.
- Re-imagine consumer engagement: Clients want to be understood—and you meet their high expectations by personalizing experiences for every customer.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.mymee.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/mymeehealth
https://www.facebook.com/mettedyhrberg
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mymeehealth/
https://www.instagram.com/metamette/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/mymeehealth
https://twitter.com/metamette
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mymee/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mettedyhrberg/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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