Laura:What’s been the biggest surprise you’ve had as we’ve built Curable?
Erich: That it’s very hard still. It shouldn’t be this challenging to get the word out with the amount of people this reaches and the amount of lives it changes. We get emails all the time from people who say “I have carpal tunnel, nothing has worked for me, and just listening to the podcast alone has made me start to feel 50% better, and I haven’t felt any relief in a long time.” It just seems like everyone should have heard about this by now with how amazing it is. But it’s still hard. We’re running into that wall, which everyone who has tried to do this in the past has before. But the internet has changed things, so that’s helping us.
John: There have been a few surprises from my perspective.
One is that for every 10-15 stories we get saying “this is so amazing, my life has changed, I’m feeling so much better,” there will be someone who comes in through social media or the website and without even trying the app or listening to the message, they try to “dispel and debunk” the science behind the brain’s role in pain. I guess it feels a little like an accusation. Like we’re trying to trick people into buying our app so that we can make a lot of money.
Laura: Which we are not doing, on a personal level.
John: [laughing] Yes, that’s been established. But I guess that’s still a little surprising to me. I know that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world, so everybody is different. And we reach out directly to consumers, so we are exposed to all different types of opinions, and I respect that. But I’m still surprised that there is so much resistance, especially when folks haven’t even given it a chance.
Laura: When I see that, of course my first gut reaction is frustration, because I am one of the folks who is working so hard to try and get this information to people in a way that it resonates with them. But my second reaction is to just feel for how badly that person must be hurting. Their lives have been drastically altered by whatever it is they are going through. I’m sure that they are intensely shell shocked by how many doctors they have been to, how many failed treatments they have tried, and maybe even times where they have been lied to in the past. Is it fair for them to take that out on us? No, but we understand it.
