Ashley Sumner, CEO of Quilt, joins Cheddar News to discuss her wellness platform and 'Crying is Cool' initiative.

Between Bells

Quilt CEO Ashley Sumner Talks About Why 'Crying is Cool'

Welcome back to Between Bells, aiming to be a new kind of social wellness space to connect, share and learn with others. Audio wellness platform quilt is hoping to offer help in more ways than journaling or meditation could alone with a community. The company is focused on creating an atmosphere similar to being at a friend's home or backyard, having open conversations about anything and everything. And given the current state of leading world events or personal issues, people may be struggling with behind closed doors, a space to talk freely. Could make all the difference to these community members joining us now to talk more about this, Ashley Sumner, the ceo of quilts, thanks so much for joining us. We know in 2021 6.5 million minutes were spent on quilt and it just really highlights, I think how many people need a proper outlet to talk and kind of air out some of these feelings that they're having. So what makes quilt unique as a wellness platform space right now? Hi, thank you for having me. Um what makes us unique is the fact that we are a social platform. You know, we're a collaborative social space, so you're not going through anything alone, you're coming together and you're having conversations about the things that you're going through or on things that are on your mind just to hang out and just to create together. Um most of the things that we do in the wellness world are done alone. Like you said, journaling, meditating, walking, bathing, all of these things which can absolutely help, but if at the core of not feeling good is loneliness and not being, you know, with other people in order to feel better, we need to come together and be in a positive uplifting space to do that. Yeah, it's such a good point and for those who maybe aren't familiar with the platform, can you kind of walk us through what the user experience is like on quilt? Yeah, of course. So like I said, it's a collaborative experience. Any type of content that is created is created together so people can start live conversations or audio only so you don't have to, you know, dress up or look a certain way or worry about where you are. Um you can be in live conversations. Things like people might pull tarot cards might hang out on their lunch break, might hang out on a Wednesday evening doing like a happy hour or a wind down Wednesday nights definitely are, are really fun on quilt and then we also just launched a new feature, kind of a first of its kind feature that we call gems which essentially crystallizes the Aha moments that take place in these live conversations and allow them to be content that somebody can consume if they just weren't there, maybe they had a meeting and they couldn't be there. So there's always a place to consume guidance and inspiration on wealth. I really love this concept because I think oftentimes we go to platforms like social media to connect with people just to be met with things that could potentially trigger mental health issues or feelings of anxiety and other tensions. So this is really important. Um, and I want to switch gears to something you recently started this initiative called crying is cool. What was the reason? Like what inspired you and why do you think this is really important right now? Gosh, yeah, thank you for asking. It's crying is cool, has become kind of the nomenclature for the culture at quilt. Um you know, crying has been seen as this negative thing as a weakness, this thing that we do in hiding this shameful act, something that's cool, however, is something you want people to see something you're open about, something you want to post about. Um, and until very recently crying was not something, any form of expression and feeling really wasn't something we were comfortable doing together and I think most people still aren't comfortable doing together and on quilt, that's it's different. It's this cultural experience that whether you want to cry or you wanna laugh, you want to be silly, you want to be goofy that it is a space for expression. So we have launched this, it's not really a campaign, it's this ongoing effort, this mission to inspire people to express their feelings with each other, that's really the root of human connection and we have some awesome partnerships coming up over the next few months where we've partnered with physical products, just to get the message out even further. Yeah, you mentioned these partnerships, how exactly are you removing that stigma of showing emotion and crying, especially when it comes to the corporate environment? Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. I have a, I have a couple of course stories personally where I was like in a meeting at previous companies and then left and cried in the bathroom stall and I remember feeling like that's not what I want. I don't want that experience for myself and for other people and by building a brand that stands for this, whether it's with swag or physical products or, you know, we have like daily crying rooms or giggle rooms that take place on quotes that the community leads. It's just about normalizing it. It's a word we've heard so many times over the past couple of years and ultimately I want to optimize for it, but if we can allow for a culture to not see it as a negative thing, then we can do it more in the open. Um, and that's why we're doing this, that's why we're partnering, that's why we're talking about it here because the more we do it, the more we post about it, the more we talk about it, the less of a thing it is and hopefully it does become, you know who, yeah, really important work you're doing. That's Ashley Sumner, the ceo of quill. Thanks so much for joining us.