H is for HabitAware: Stopping Unwanted Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors

Note: This post is part of an A to Z blogging challenge I’m participating in.

Aneela Idnani, who launched HabitAware with her husband Sameer Kumar.
Aneela Idnani, who launched HabitAware with her husband Sameer Kumar.

A few years ago, I launched a One Successful Mama series on my blog that highlighted businesses owned by women who are also moms. I’m thrilled to relaunch the series this month with a profile of Aneela Idnani, who, together with her husband Sameer Kumar, launched the company HabitAware.

HabitAware offers Keen, a smart bracelet to help people become aware of subconscious behaviors that are repetitive movements of the hands, focused on the body.  Called Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors, or BFRBs, the behaviors include hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting. Keen detects your behavior and vibrates when it senses your hand doing your unwanted gesture – making you aware and allowing you the opportunity to stop. Keen has helps people improve their lives through regrown hair, reduced sores, healthier nails and cuticles, and an overall improved lifestyle.

Aneela and Sameer live in Minneapolis with their two adorable boys, Miren (1) and Yash (4).

“Sameer & I both work together at HabitAware,” says Aneela. “Though our work lives are VERY hectic, we do our best to give our boys our full attention after school pick up and through til bedtime!”

Read our interview below to learn more about Aneela and HabitAware!

How long ago did you start your business? What led you to start it?
We’ve officially been selling our patented “habit tracking” bracelet, Keen by HabitAware, since April 2017. But we got our start in late 2013, when my husband, Sameer, caught me without eyebrows. I was getting ready in the morning and just didn’t get my makeup on in time. That day, I shared with him a 20-year secret: I pulled out my eyebrows and eyelashes because I had a hair pulling disorder, also known as trichotillomania. This is a compulsive disorder that leads a person to pull out their hair, against their will. Hair pulling, along with skin picking, nail biting, and other body focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) severely affect 30 million Americans. Many of us who have BFRBs don’t even know that these “habits” are mental health disorders. We hide these behaviors in shame because of the perception that they are a choice. They are not.

Sharing my secret with Sameer, allowed me to open up about my disorder for the first time. I let him in and in doing so found support. He did research to understand the issue. Then, one day, as we were sitting on the couch, I started pulling my eyebrows without realizing it. He gently caught my hand to help me stop, and I turned to him and said, “I wish I had something that notified me.” We did more research and found nothing like this existed, so we put together a team and then built our first Keen prototype. When it worked for me, we knew we had to continue working on it so we could share it with others.

HabitAware-TealSporty-1485x1485
The Keen smart bracelet by HabitAware

What types of services/products do you offer?
HabitAware makes Keen, a smart bracelet that brings awareness to unwanted behaviors, such as hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting. A user connects Keen to our mobile app and “records” their repetitive behavior onto the bracelet. When Keen senses a match to the wrist-based movement recorded, it vibrates gently, bringing the user into awareness and allowing them to have the presence of mind to make healthier choices (see photo below).

HabitAware-nailbiting

Describe your first few months getting started. What were your major challenges?
Although Sameer & I were technophiles and knew creating something like this was possible, we did not have the technical know-how to build Keen. Luckily, we were already active in the vibrant Minneapolis startup community and as I began sharing my idea with friends, we were connected to John & Kirk, two talented engineers who made it happen.

Our biggest challenge continues to be a lack of awareness and understanding of the disorders we help manage. In sharing my story and the stories of others with hair pulling, skin picking, or nail biting disorders, we are on a mission to raise awareness and to end the stigma!

What has surprised you the most about yourself when it comes to running your own business?
I’m most surprised quite simply that I’ve been able to do this–to take an idea and bring it to life. For most of my life, I allowed my anxiety and hair pulling disorder to pull me down. I would get in my own head and psych myself out of doing things I wanted to do because I thought, “I’m not good enough.” In high school, I quit saxophone and skipped basketball tryouts because I believed I wasn’t good enough. In my late 20s, I shied away from creative roles at ad agencies because I believed I wasn’t good enough. Today, those thoughts are history. Today, I am good enough. Good enough to invent, create, design, write, edit video, meet with investors, raise funding, and be a voice for those in the BFRB community?

How has owning your own business benefitted your family?
Running HabitAware with my hubby–and by association, sharing my hair pulling secret with him too–has brought us closer together.

Owning your own business doesn’t mean you can take time off, it just means you can shift around the time that you work. For example, I’m writing this at midnight! If I was still in “corporate America” I’d be on someone else’s timetable. Instead, I can prioritize my work around my life and vice versa. In fact, we’ve taken our kids to conferences and you’ll get no apologies from me for that. I want my kids to see what I do for a living–in the same way my parents brought me to their offices when I was growing up. My son is young, but he understands what “a habitaware” is and I am sure that in a few more years time, he will be exhibiting with me & explaining how Keen works to others.

Another cool benefit is that inventing Keen with the HabitAware team has shown my son that if he has a problem he can solve it with “an invention.” He regularly will identify issues around our house and community and rattle off a few ideas on how they can be solved. I am excited to see what he chooses to take to market!

What do you enjoy the most about owning your own business?
Our Keen family! I send our newsletter every Wednesday & every Wednesday, we get our fair share of unsubscribes. BUT every Wednesday, we also get 1-2 emails that warm our hearts & fill our eyes with tears. It’s knowing that we are truly helping people change their lives for the better, rebuild their confidence and helping them take control of these disorders that make all the late nights, the doubts, the mistakes, the risk, so WORTH IT.

What are your goals for the future?
Personally I hope to continue to be a voice for my BFRB family & others with mental health disorders. I want to work toward a day where mental health and physical health needs are met equally and where we aren’t judged for having something “wrong” with us. I want to dispel myths that mental health disorders are choices.

What advice do you have for women who may want to take the leap and own their own businesses?
There will never be a “good time.” Take the leap, but don’t quit your day job until you absolutely can afford to. When you have doubts – and you will have many – remind yourself that you are a role model to your children. If you want them to pursue their dreams in the future, they need to see from you that it is possible, albeit with hard work! If you aren’t having fun, it’s probably time to call it quits. And if that time comes, remember that quitting is not failing. It allows you to move on to bigger & better things that await.  

Keen is available on the HabitAware website at habitaware.com. You can connect with HabitAware on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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