Google sent a film crew to follow me around as part of their #WeArePlay initiative.
#WeArePlay celebrates the global community of people creating apps and games businesses on Google Play. Teams of all sizes – founded by coders since childhood or tech newbies, based in busy cities and smaller towns. Discover their stories and how they are improving lives, locally and around the world!
The video has over 2,000,000 views which is incredible! Thanks to Google for featuring me and my work with Rootd. Watch the video on YouTube here.
Video
Transcript
Ania Wysocka: When I was in my fourth year of university I experienced a panic attack, came completely out of the blue and the fear of it happening again gradually made my world smaller and smaller.
I didn’t feel that drive that I had beforehand. On top of struggling with panic attacks, my mom passed away and it was extremely difficult for me.
I was losing the parts of me then I know that my mom knew and loved at the time. I would carry around a bunch of materials and books that helped me feel better and I realized that this should be on my phone because my phone is always on me.
So I started Rootd for panic attack and anxiety relief just in my living room.
I didn’t take on any funding. It’s been a very personal and important journey for me and seeing how many more people it was helpful for helped to me continue to be brave and strong about what I was experiencing.
Rootd is now in over 150 countries with over 10 languages available in the app. It’s been downloaded by over 2.3 million people and has a 4.8 rating on Google Play.
It’s just so awesome to see that people have been able to take something that I created on my couch and they use it and they carry it with them every day compared to years ago.
Now I am back to saying yes, I’m doing all these things that I never thought I’d be able to do again. Taking some time to keep checking in on my own mental health.
Still very important to me and some things that I do are I go for runs. Ultramarathons have a lot of parallels when it comes to running a business.
You are in it for the long haul. You go through a ton of different moods and experiences throughout the journey. You go from thinking that you need to quit to pushing through that wall and having the best news for your business or the best energy for the next kilometer of your run.
I’d love for Rootd to continue to help people worldwide. I’d love to reach over 10 million downloads and keep doing this and keep letting people know that there are alternatives when they are struggle.