A site to help people who hear voices (and the incredible story behind it)

Jan 06 2009

What would you risk for something you really believed in?

Emily Capps and I have been working together for nearly four years. She’s a fantastically talented copywriter and I’ve hired her many times. I’ve done work for her as well as she hired Zero-G to redo her web site back in 2007.

Over lunch a few months ago, she told me that she was working on a side project, a web site that was very important to her. Emily said that as a kid, she was bullied by her classmates to the point that she started hearing voices — and they didn’t stop for 14 years. Emily thought it was important to tell her story openly and honestly so she might help prevent someone else from having to go through what she went through.

But people she talked to were skeptical about her project, particularly from the point of view that it may negatively impact her business as a copywriter and creative consultant. After all, she would be publicly exposing her past issues with depression and auditory hallucinations to to the world — an audience that includes people she works with or potentially may work for. She was torn about it, especially since she felt that publishing under a pen name or using a web nickname or handle wouldn’t be fair to the audience she was trying to help. She didn’t want to seem ashamed of her past problems or give the impression that she was hiding from them. It wouldn’t send the right message.

In the end, Emily chose to do the courageous thing (which was, in some ways more courageous than writing the site in the first place). When her new site, Just One Pepsi, launched it did include her real name and even a photograph.

Funny but back in high school when I got my first AOL account (which was many years before we all realized how annoying AOL was), the fascinating and intriguing thing about it was that everyone was pretty much anonymous out there. You didn’t have to give anyone your real name, you could be whoever you wanted… But now our entire lives are online. Massive databases have been built for the sole purpose of figuring out where I went to high school and if that Erik Wolf is the same Erik Wolf who then attended college at Emory. Our entire lives are online and for better or worse, true anonymity is a difficult thing to come by online or anywhere else.

There’s an expectation now that if you visit a web site that there is going to be a real person behind it and that you can “get to know” that person through their work online. Emily knew that if she was going to be true to what she wanted to accomplish with the site that she would have to do the brave thing, take a risk and show visitors who she was.

And by the way, Emily remains a fantastically talented writer and her Just One Pepsi site is a testament to that. The site clearly displays her talent, passion and creativity and tells an incredible story.

The moral of all this? Besides the lessons of Emily’s struggles and ultimate perseverance, the lessons to everyone should be that if you are passionate about something — whether it’s a good cause, a business venture or just about anything in life — you may need to take a significant risk on its behalf. And if it’s not worth the risk, what’s the point anyway?