When AI Becomes Your Therapist — Nina Westbrook Sounds the Alarm

Nina Westbrook is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, entrepreneur, and Founder of Nebbi app.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, what are the KPIs that show you that
this thing is working or is not working well.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Number One, we have a lot of founding members and
people who are who are willing to take a chance
and pay a lot of money to join this experience
and be a part of our growth and our app

(00:30):
from the start. And I think that people's investment in
understanding not only in the app, but their investment in themselves.
People want to feel better, People are searching for tools,
and people are looking for different things that they can
do to help to improve their lives. And I think
that through our testing process and through the amount of

(00:55):
people that are showing up and wanting to be a
part of our journey without even having seen the app yet,
I think that's a really big indicator that we are
that this is something that people are really seeking seeking.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, it appears to me that this is like a
one time payment is can you can you talk about
how your business model is and if it's a one
time payment, like how why did you choose that overlight
subscriptions and talk to me about what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
So this this is a great question because it kind
of ties into this whole idea of collaboration. It's not
a one time payment. It's a one time payment for
founding members and lifetime access. And that was a pre
launch promotion that we thought that we thought would be
best for us because we do want to get our

(01:48):
users feedback before we go to the masses. We do
want to collect that data. For us, data is gold,
and we want people who are genuinely invested in their
experience in Nebby to give us the data and the
feedback and the surveys. And you know, if you were
to interview one of our founding members, they probably are

(02:12):
tired of us by now because the amount of feedback
we're gathering from their experience of being early users on
the app is helping us to improve the app already
before it's even gotten out to everyone else. So I
think that that So that explains the founding members. The
app is definitely going to be a subscription model. It's

(02:34):
thirteen ninety nine a month or a one time or
an annual payment, so it's of ninety nine dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, that's good. That's good. I'm curious, like how did
you learn to lead, like cause you know, coming from
you know, kind of like a science psychology, y'all know,
you can explain like the background, the more medical kind
of back ground. And then now you're in this chief

(03:05):
you know, role do your business if you build business before, So.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I don't want to build, but I don't get used
to it.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So how would you do it?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I'm how did I what?

Speaker 1 (03:18):
How did you learn to lead people and lead an enterprise?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know? So that's a really great and interesting question.
I don't see it as leading, Like I'm such a
collaborator anyone who you spoke to, anyone who's ever worked
with me. I think I know enough to know that
I don't know everything, and that I if I'm going
to be able to be the best or if anything

(03:47):
that I'm working on is going to be the best
that it could possibly be, that means that there are
going to be that I can't do it by myself, right.
Like I said, I'm not a tech This is my
first tech venture and I know nothing about tech, or

(04:07):
at least I know a little now. But I know
that putting the right people who share similar values in
place to build our team together, I think that's really
important and I think it's a part of leadership is
knowing how to build a team that will work well together.

(04:29):
And you know, like I said, I come from a
sports family. I'm also a single, a sister to three
brothers and no sisters, So I feel like I've been
kind of leading and bossing my brothers around since I
stepped on this earth, you know. And so not only that,

(04:51):
but I come from a background playing sports and being
a part of a team and working towards a goal
and try to and sacrificing things and utilizing what the
best of everyone and trying to pull out the best
of everyone in order to achieve one goal. And I
think that, like, there's so many different things in my

(05:15):
life and my past and my history that attribute to
who I am and my approach to leading the team
that we have now. But at the end of the day,
I think that when people feel hurt and appreciate it,
then they're going to give you their best foot forward.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
There's a stat that came out a couple of weeks ago,
and I said, twenty eight percent of people are using
AI or have used AI for therapy. At first, I
want to get like your initial reaction to that, and
then talk about what implications that could have.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh my gosh, when I first saw that, I wasn't surprised,
but I was a little appalled. No, I think that
fortunately for mental health clinicians, I just don't believe that that.
I believe that as a human we have the best

(06:14):
opportunity to understand ourselves. And I think that the implications
about using chat GPT or AI for as a form
of therapy. There's no hippa in chat GPT, right, So
anything that you put any information that you share into

(06:37):
the world or into those programs or that technology is
there for the grabbing. And I think that in order
to that's one of the beautiful things about the therapeutic
experience is that you know that it's a trusted environment.
And unfortunately, I don't believe that AI has gotten to

(07:01):
the point where it is a trusted environment. I recently
saw Sam sam oh I should know this that yes,
I should know this as a tech entrepreneur. I saw
him having a conversation about how dangerous it is to
use AI as your therapist, and he obviously we know

(07:25):
who he is. And so I think that there's the
it lacks the human the human touch number one, and
I think that it doesn't have the security and the
safety net around it quite yet. That doesn't mean it
won't happen in the future, but today it's it's not
necessarily a safe place. And also again we're talking about

(07:51):
the values and the information of the people who are
providing that technology, and we don't know there's no way
to know what information that AI is giving you and
shooting back out you, shooting it back out to you
because there's no person behind it, and the person you

(08:12):
think or it feels that you feel might be behind
it is not necessarily that's not a real thing.