Brand Spotlight: Hella Awkward

This week we got deep in conversation and had the pleasure of speaking with an entrepreneur changing the game..literally! Brittane Rowe, co-founder of the innovative card game encouraging us to get Hella Awkward and develop meaningful connections, sat down with us to discuss how a television show inspired the genius behind Hella Awkward.

There’s a really amazing buzz around your brand story.  So tell us how this idea came to you and where did you get the inspiration from? 

Yeah, it was really an amazing experience working with my brother, Brandon, and his partner, Jane. We just got really inspired by the TV show Insecure. It's one of our favorite shows and we would watch every episode and talk afterwards. We discovered amazing conversations that we were having surrounding being multicultural millennials, living in a big city, navigating love and relationships and work. And obviously during a trying time like quarantine, we wanted to just create a tool to help people reconnect and deepen their relationships.

And so Hella Awkward was born and we spent all of quarantine working on it and developing questions into a list of 140 thought provoking questions across four different categories. We felt it would spark, amazing conversation, help you just strengthen your bonds and deepen your relationships. So, it was really fun for us to work together, virtually, on this and just build it as a family. 

Yeah. So tell us who did you have in mind for this game? Like what type of person or people, what are they doing? Is it a dinner party? Is it the holidays? Where do you see this game showing up in people's homes and in their lives? 

We made this for us and people like us, so it's really for multicultural people who really need the time and the space to just reconnect. So, it's people who are going on their first dates. I've used it a lot in my early dating experiences. It's amazing. You get those early questions out of the way really fast. And then, of course, my brother and Jane having that relationship that they were building upon. So, it's great for those long-term relationships.  For people who just need that extra push to dive deeper and build those bonds together.

And then of course, girls night! I've played it on virtual wine nights. I've had my friends over and we do dinner parties, and we bring the Hella Awkward game out. So, it's just great. Whenever you need that boost to help you with your conversation. If there's a lull in conversation and you need to just pull out a card, or if you want to have a fun game night with drinks. It's just really perfect and ideal for all of those situations. 

I love this idea. And I'm so glad you mentioned four categories. What are the categories that the game touches on?

Yeah, so we are talking real talk, dating, sex and relationships. We break it down into those four different sections. You can either choose one category to stick to, or you can pick and choose throughout all four of the different categories. So, there's 140 questions total so you really have a long range of conversation that you can get into, which is why I really love Hella Awkward, because you never know where the conversation's going to go.

And depending on who you're playing with, it can kind of spark different thoughts or different experiences or different things that you've been through. Somebody can say something that you say, “Oh, wow. I didn't think about it that way.” So, it just re-energizes the conversation and keeps things flowing.

What are some of your favorite questions in the game? 

I think my favorite category is “Real Talk” because it’s that opener that kind of releases those inhibitions when people are afraid to dive deep, this is a good place to start. And one of my favorite questions is “What was your spiritual background as a child? And how does it impact your life today?” I love this question. 

And I wonder too, since it's real talk, it's probably not always positive memories or positive experiences. Have you heard that from people that it's helped them? 

Yeah, absolutely. I've heard people talk about how it helps them process some of their experiences in their childhood. Me and my brother, we also had a difficult childhood as well. And so, this has helped us a lot to kind of process some of those memories as well. We’ve even had feedback from couples who have said, “We were having our time in our relationship, and this opened up conversation and now we're in counseling and going to couple's therapy.” 

So, it really is the most amazing tool to really help you just process and just sit in yourself and be able to get vulnerable and really think about some of those memories and some of those experiences that you've had and just being able to share. That’s really all it's about. Just share who you are, be comfortable in who you are and just live in that. And, I think that when we do that, we learn that we're all so much more alike than we are different. We all are so much more connected and it just brings those moments of just bonding and deepening relationships with folks that you maybe didn't have a chance to do that with before.

This is so good. On behalf of everyone who gets this game, thank you for thinking about connection again and finding ways to bring us back because we're living in a time that feels very divisive and very disconnected from each other. We all are human at the end of the day. And the more we talk and connect to each other, the more we can bond and connect. So thank you for creating this, and welcome to Flourysh!