Mandy Teefey

Well, this is going to be awkward.

We're about to talk about your mother right in front of you.

Good, because I clearly cannot stand her.

So that's a good thing.

Oh, God.

And now that is a mommy-daddy relationship that's strained, shall we say.

listen i know how i feel about complicated mother-daughter relationships i am obsessed i am i can't get enough i know that you love them this for me the article that we're talking about today turned into like a weird like i just didn't think that i would like be so enticed by it and just so it's so cinematic like i'm i want the movie

I know.

A little, a little.

So we're going to get into it today, but it involves her mum.

It involves an Anna Delvey-esque fake young girl boss.

I love

oh God.

So because this involves Selena Gomez's mother quite significantly, and I think has a lot to do with the relationship between them.

I'm just going to give a brief little, just the gist of, her mum and their background together.

I didn't know a lot of this stuff.

This feels like a very annoying distraction ahead of their upcoming IPO.

Speaking of lawsuits, two investor entities are suing Selena Gomez, her mother, Mandy Teefy, and the mental health platform they co-founded in 2021, Wondermine, seeking to recover more than $1 million.

To be honest, I didn't even know they had a mental health startup.

I went to the website, and it seems more like a blog, podcast, newsletter.

Yeah.

But what's making headlines recently is the mental health business Selena launched with her mother and her former manager, Mandy Teefey, and a young entrepreneur named Daniela Pearson.

And this venture was called Wondermind.

It was a digital media platform and lifestyle company focused on mental illness and breaking the stigma around mental health.

Interesting.

But on August 14th, news leaked that five investors who financially backed Wondermind were suing Selena Gomez in a bid to recover around 1.2 million USD that they claim were invested in the startup as well as costs and damages.

Yeah, so according to the BBC, the lawsuit claims that Selena and Mandy had failed to meet even its most basic obligations, such as timely paying its employees and vendors.

and falsely represented their financial position.

She makes music, as well as being the owner and founder of Rare Beauty, her first celebrity wellness beauty brand.

However, in 2021, Gomez endeavored on a new entrepreneurial journey alongside her mother Mandy Teefey, whom she enlisted as her new startup Wondermind's co-founder.

Wondermind was intended to be a multi-format media hub hosting mental health related podcasts, TV shows, and films.

Basically, it was supposed to be a little app with a bunch of mental fitness tools.

So I started looking at Jessi Lee Ward and Belle Gibson and then Jessica Ainscough.

So she's the one that Belle Gibson wanted to be like.

These people had cancer or claimed to have cancer, right? And it's one thing if you decide for yourself that you don't want to go the traditional chemotherapy route.

It's another thing when you tell your followers, your hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, "This is what I'm doing every day, and therefore you should do it," because people are looking up to you.

Federal lawsuit for destroying people's lives.

"According to a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday, Ms. Gomez co-founded Wondermind, a mental health and wellness platform, with her mother Mandy Teefey," should've been dentist, so your Teefey's, [laughs] "who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, in 2021 to make mental health content more accessible, but investors" start a Substack.

Yeah.

First of all.

... and how much it was, like, her mom's idea.

Her pushing, right.

And then Selena's like, "Yeah, I'll throw my face on it, Mom-

Sure

Like, do we need to sexy it up?

And what do these three women, if we're trying to go for WebMD, what does a, a world-famous pop star/actress, newsletter entrepreneur, and pop star's mum, what credentials do they have to build the next WebMD? Do you get me?

No, completely, and I think in many cases some people would argue, well, having personal experience in the thing you're talking about is really helpful, and I would agree with that to some level.

But I think what often you'll see in these businesses is you'll have, like, one person with personal experience, another person with, like, the expertise, the other person with the business expertise.

So they...

Email Mandy Teefey, and they say, hey, in light of all this new information, we're going to go ahead and ask for a recall.

She never really responds to them.

This kind of keeps going back and back.

But go, and there's a little bell, like a bell emoji, and it'll say, "Remind me." And then do that for like five or six friends.

How about that? Tell a friend, tell a mother, a father, a sister, a brother.

It's called "The Family Plan" because it's all about going to the beach with my parents.

It's all about my family, the, the whole special.

Because if it's not scathing, it kinda ruins...

It's the, it's a little bit boy who cried wolf.

"Selena Gomez's lawyer didn't mince words in his response to the lawsuit against the singer and her mother, Mandy Teefey, regarding their mental health company, Wondermind." I did not know they had a mental health company.

Mental health company? That, to me, you...