Future of Fertility_Shelley Bailey: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Future of Fertility_Shelley Bailey: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Abby Mercado:
Hi, I'm Abby Mercado, an IVF mom, former VC investor, and CEO of Rescripted. Welcome to The Future of Fertility, a podcast dedicated to shining a light on the entrepreneurs and innovators who are changing the face of family building. With billions in funding over the past few years, we'll introduce you to the people, the ideas, and the businesses that are changing the fertility industry and in turn, millions of people's lives. The future of fertility is bright. Now let's get into it!

Abby Mercado:
Shelley Bailey is the founder and CEO of Famlee, Famlee. Familee is the most comprehensive FDA-approved, FSA/HCA-covered full service digital fertility solution for women looking to balance their hormones for whole body health and to prepare their bodies for baby. Hence this podcast, I love scoping out companies doing cool things in the fertility space. I met Shelley and Famlee on LinkedIn. I hope it's okay to share this with our listeners, Shelley, but the moment I knew you were a total badass was 5 minutes into our first zoom with one another when you started breastfeeding your new baby, who is now six months old. So with that, Shelley, I would love to welcome you to the Future of Fertility podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today!

Shelley Bailey:
Oh, absolutely. Good afternoon and thanks for having me!

Abby Mercado:
Awesome. Well, let's, let's dive in. I would love to just hear all about you as a person. What did you do before Famlee? And I would love for you to share just one fun fact that few people know.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, absolutely. So my background is not in reproductive health at all. My background is actually in specialty pharmacy. So my previous career was that I owned a specialty pharmacy with my partner and we really focused on serving the needs of individuals living with HIV and hepatitis C. During the 20 years doing that, I was able to participate in serving different stakeholders through the federal 340b program. And just, I guess our tagline at our pharmacy was that we focused on serving underserved communities. And my, I guess we'll chat about a little bit later about my journey into Famlee, but again, I had a strong background in healthcare, but definitely not a background in fertility. I guess one fun fact about me is that I was a classical bassoonist, so I went to or started off my journey as a young adult in, in music and had a full music scholarship as a classical bassoonist.

Abby Mercado:
Oh my goodness. That is super fun. I like, how did you get into playing bassoon?

Shelley Bailey:
I got into playing bassoon because nobody was doing it .... and my band. Director was like, hey, do you want to learn a new instrument? I had previously played a flute and tenor saxophone, and I think I was just like looking for a way to be different and unique. And since no one else at the school did it, it was like, well, heck, I get to be like the best bassoonist, like right away because no one else is doing that.

Abby Mercado:
That is absolutely amazing. I need to go go back and brush up on maybe I need a reminder on what exactly a bassoon is. So we're here to talk about reproductive health. I don't know much as much as I probably should about classical music, but thank you for your service to the arts.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, no problem. I, I just transitioned to business school because I knew how hard of a career musicians have, so I decided that I'd probably take a little easier route in life by choosing something that might be a little bit more in alignment with my skill sets.

Abby Mercado:
Totally. That's super interesting. So, so how did you get so you mentioned you went to business school, so how did you like how did you get into specialty pharmacy? How did you like, did you buy a pharmacy? How did you know how to do that? Tell us all the things.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, well, and I mean, obviously I could chat about the Famlee founding story later, but the, my just personal career path journey into pharmacy was that my grandparents owned a little mom and pop pharmacy in the community that we grew up in. And so my grandparents, like, had this rule that all their grandkids could start working at the pharmacy as long as they could see over the counter to like, count money back to people. But I'm only five two, so I started later working at their pharmacy, I would like jump to like see people and, but that's that's actually how I got started in pharmacy was just growing up in the industry from my grandparents.

Abby Mercado:
What about it? Obviously at Rescripted we have a digital pharmacy, as you know, and as our listeners know, and I find that pharmacy is such a family oriented business. Do you know why that is?

Shelley Bailey:
I think it's because, you know, back in the day when there was like a little community pharmacy on every block, they're so ingrained into the community and it also is so demanding on someone's professional and personal life that there's really almost not a lot of boundaries for those owners. They work seven days a week because they need to be there for the families when they're sick and when they really need them most. And so most pharmacy owners really end up integrating their children or grandchildren into the family business because it was always this like all hands on deck type of service to the community. And I'm still pretty involved with like the National Community Pharmacists Association and things, but you'll definitely see like second and third generation pharmacy owners because of that journey. My journey into the pharmacy that we eventually sold to a division of CVS was just that it was a different independent pharmacy than the one my grandparents owned. But as a 16 year old, I already like came, came with years of experience in pharmacy. So when I was looking for a summer job, they didn't have to spend as much time training me since I had already kind of learned the ropes.

Abby Mercado:
So interesting and so awesome. And I heard you you mentioned that you focused on HIV-AIDS and the population who suffers from this horrible disease. I, knowing, knowing what I know about the the healthcare industry and the pharmaceutical industry as it relates to HIV-AIDS, I bet that you saw some just interesting progress as it relates to the treatments associated with HIV-AIDS kind of during your tenure as a specialty pharmacy? I don't know. I just pulled that out of my ass. But anything to say about that that might be interesting to our audience?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, no, I have lots of observations because I did spend 20 years in that space. I mean, specifically related to HIV-AIDS kind of started off, my career started off when the drugs were like they were okay by that time, there were things that were effective, they were exceptionally toxic and people still didn't have, I guess, quite as much hope related to like there was a lot of unknowns related to what their long term health would be. And so what's what's cool is in 2018, I guess when I ended my work in HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C, people were more concerned about like what drug interactions with HIV meds for, you know, for heart disease and things. So there was actually other conditions like in co-morbidities that would really get to someone because now they're in their sixties or seventies and it wasn't more the HIV aids, it was more just other conditions that everyone else in the population experiences due to aging. So like, that was really cool to see that those types of challenges become what people are focused on and not like what treatments are as effective. What's actually even more compelling is the hepatitis C space, because when I got started because like 20% of people with HIV also have hepatitis C, there was very little treatment available at all for people with hepatitis C, And so the drugs like interferon would make people exceptionally sick and didn't have very good outcomes related to cures. And so what's really cool about hep C is when the like the new blockbuster drugs came out for hep C, I think like 2015, 2016 were the first ones, these were cures. And so when you think of like medications, most medications that are sold at pharmacies are really treatment for different conditions. I mean, sure, if you get an antibiotic, maybe you could say that cured whatever bacterial infection you had. But with hep C, it's really awesome that there's now cures that are oral tablets for people to take for 60 or 90 days. So that was something just throughout my career that was really cool to be able to watch and see the impact on people's lives.

Abby Mercado:
That's awesome. So needless to say, you're addicted to healthcare for all the right reasons. You know, you probably saw this community just totally, totally changed. And their outlook on life totally change because all of a sudden they saw a cure versus just the treatment, so that's awesome. Well, so all of this said, thank you for walking us through your background and letting letting me ask you some fun follow up questions. I would love to now dive into Famlee and hear the founding story and kind of the moment that you knew that you had to take the leap into creating this business.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, absolutely. So as I had alluded to, we sold the pharmacy in early 2018 and great little fun fact when we sold to a division of CVS, they kept all of our staff and kept the pharmacy going, so that was really important to myself and my partner. But I had thought that I was going to take a little bit of time off from working in the professional sense so that I could start a family and was my hope to kind of be home at least during the early years. And I thought, okay, when we're ready to have a baby, we'll just get pregnant. And I wasn't getting pregnant, I was already considered geriatric by then and went to my OB-GYN and she said, hey, Shelly, I think you should just go to IVF because you're getting old and you're not getting pregnant, so why don't you just go to IVF?

Abby Mercado:
And can we just take a moment to just hate on the term geriatric pregnancy? It's like you're 30 freaking 5. Like, can we, whoever's in charge of that term, if you're listening, please just change it.

Shelley Bailey:
It's a terrible term. The other term I don't like because I would see it when I would look at chart notes and things for the pharmacy, the other term I hate is well-nourished.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Shelley Bailey:
Like always write notes in someone's medical record. Well, this is a 35 year old well-nourished female, and I was like, oh, I'm really glad I'm like nice and well-nourished. So that's like another, it's another term that I think should go away. But, but anyway, so, you know, obviously it was good for someone to tell me like, hey, I think you should do something else because what you're doing isn't working. But I just kind of felt like, wow, well, maybe, maybe there's something we could do before we move to IUI or IVF. At the time, my husband and I were very open to IVF. Obviously, I'm still a big champion for people who are going through IVF and want to do anything we can to support them. But I kind of just decided to say, okay, I'm going to get a second opinion from a provider because that's obviously a huge commitment, as you know, of time and resources and stress. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to find another doctor and just see what they say. And so I personally found a more functional minded medical practitioner who was like, hey, Shelly, you worked 100 hours a week for like 20 years. Maybe, just maybe, your hormones are a little messed up because you work so much and people have stress for various reasons. Work is one of them, family's another. I mean, there's just stress impacts your hormones. And so the doctor was like, let's do some testing, let's figure out what's off. I guess the good news for me is that my hormones were all over the place and thankfully we were able to get them back into more acceptable levels using inexpensive over the counter medications. So not so, this is definitely not healthcare advice, I am not a healthcare provider, so this is just my own journey, but for me, I ended up taking a few different inexpensive generic meds for a period of 90 days. We decided to not try to conceive during that time because one of the meds I took was testosterone, and it's not indicated for people to use while they're trying to conceive. And once I took those meds, I was actually able, once I stopped, we decided to try to conceive and I was able to get pregnant the first month.

Abby Mercado:
Wow!

Shelley Bailey:
So, so that was obviously like fantastic, you know, small sample size, sample size of one.

Abby Mercado:
One.

Shelley Bailey:
And so not not statistically significant by any stretch of the imagination. But so obviously I was happy and I was able to have a healthy pregnancy. And so I started sending girlfriends to this doctor, more of the girlfriends actually were able to conceive naturally, but we're not able to maintain pregnancies.

Abby Mercado:
And so, so tell us, just, just wanted to jump in here. So, like, tell us what is a functional medicine doctor for the listener? Like, how did you find this person? How did you know to look for this person? Like, give us some background on that.

Shelley Bailey:
Wow. Well, I mean, now I could tell you all different things of how to do that. But back in the day, I knew a naturopath who was friends with my husband. And one of the conditions that she was specifically interested in treating and supporting was fertility. But when you think of like functional medicine, it's really trying to look at, like you, I'm sure functional medicine providers will hate this description. So from my perspective, the functional medicine providers are really trying to also look at all of you and your body is a complete system and not just like in the instance of like fertility, not just your reproductive hormones or, you know, if you had insulin problems or something, not just looking at factors for diabetes, but like your whole health and like why you're having the outcomes you're having, they take, they take more time typically than just like the regular OB-GYN or family practice person. And a lot of that's just because a lot of those providers don't take third parties. So they're able to spend more time with you because some charge cash as opposed to insurance. So I'm definitely not saying that traditional OB-GYNs or family medicine doctors don't do a good job because obviously many do. But there's also a little bit of a push in the medical community for everyone to always be practicing at top of licensure. So my OB-GYN that that sent me to IVF was not bad by any stretch, she just knows there's providers out there with more training in fertility and wanted to make sure I was optimizing the knowledge, skills, and abilities of a specialist. So, there, you know, there's a wide variety, but in general, the functional medicine providers are trying to look at more like you as a whole system and all the things from your nutrition to your medical history, you know, to your labs, to your sleep, all those types of things, they're trying to adjust all of it together as opposed to just looking at things in a more isolated fashion.

Abby Mercado:
Right, so that makes sense. So you were, you were sending all your girlfriends to this?

Shelley Bailey:
Yep. I was sending my girlfriends who were looking to get pregnant, especially ones who were struggling to stay pregnant, and they started getting pregnant and maintaining their pregnancies. And so that was obviously just really rewarding because, you know, they're my friends and everything. So the very end of 2020, I mean, like a few days before Christmas, I decided, okay, well, I think I'm going to jump back into healthcare. I, when I had owned the pharmacy, I was also lucky enough to be an advisor to some different companies. And one of them was a company called McKesson, which is a Fortune ten company that's a global distributor of medication. So I was able to lean on friends in the industry to help support and guide me through my own journey. And so the end of 2020, I decided, okay, let's see what we can do to really hop in and offer this scale and not just like the little referral network I had going hearing here at ...

Abby Mercado:
The Shelly's girlfriend's referral network.

Shelley Bailey:
Exactly. And so that's like, you know, I was just doing like one by one. But, you know, it's so rewarding to get ultrasound photos and pictures and things like that. I was like, okay, what could we do to make this type of access available at scale? And so that's, that's really the the journey of why we got started was just to be able to, you know, take a little time. We hear from, because we work with OB-GYNs that, you know, some do what we do and so that's awesome. Some do a little bit of what we do, but not everything. But, you know, our, the OB-GYNs that we do coordinate with, they're just like, hey, we're just happy, like you can help hold someone's hand through the journey of getting pregnant, but we're not losing them as a patient. And then we're also able to support them through their entire pregnancy and postpartum journey as well.

Abby Mercado:
Right? You're just kind of like giving them that, that boost that they need. It's so interesting to me that, you know, like, why, why is it that this isn't part of the OB-GYN's standard of care? Like, why is it varied?

Shelley Bailey:
I don't know. You know, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, I think some of it is, is also economics. I've heard from OB-GYNs that like there's not a lot of we have like the well woman visit that you might have, you know, a well person visit that you might have once a year. But there's not a lot of time allocated like just currently in the work workflow for the medical community, for fertility, it's like the standalone point solution, like island that's like okay, we'll refer you out if you want that kind of help. And, and I mean, I guess all of medicine is it's also, you know, people are, providers are, are supposed to know a little bit about a lot of things, right?

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. For sure.

Shelley Bailey:
They end up focusing on where they just personally are getting the most demand.

Abby Mercado:
Right. Yeah. That would make sense. So tell us give us kind of the 32 second to two minute spiel, what is Famlee? How would you, how should I describe Famlee to all my my girlfriends who are trying to get pregnant?

Shelley Bailey:
Absolutely. Well, Famlee is a 50 state digital fertility care and treatment solution. So we combine at home labs with fertility, telehealth with prescription drug delivery. And so we really consider ourselves like that second opinion or like step therapy for someone who might be considering IVF. It's like, hey, we're something that when you look at the lens of IUI and IVF or certainly very affordable relative to those costly endeavors. So it's like, hey, why don't you try something like what we're doing before you move to more invasive solutions?

Abby Mercado:
I love it. It's, it's, it seems so easy and so obvious.

Shelley Bailey:
Think about like that, like that digital, yeah, that digital second opinion. We all know we should get second opinions, but I mean, even for myself, for my own conditions or my children's conditions, I rarely get second opinions.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Shelley Bailey:
You're busy. It takes four months to see one doctor, you're not going to go get, you know, you're not going to wait another four months to see some other person, you're going to kind of go with what the first person tells you because access is so difficult right now.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Yeah. So when somebody, when you have a, when somebody enters the Famlee digital front door, like what's kind of this, what does this typical person look like? Are they trying to conceive or are they thinking about having a baby soon, but not yet. What's kind of the consumer who you guys see?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, it would be great if people were working with us preconception. What, I mean, and that's always been like a goal of ours. But what we really see as someone that's been trying to conceive at least six months or more, and I suspect in part that's because of our price point, we are just under 1,000 dollars. So a lot of people don't have an interest in paying for solutions at that price until they are struggling. So, so geographically, where people are located is interesting. I thought we would see a lot more people in like urban settings that are just, you know, busy and they might have care accessible, but, you know, it's hard to get in. But we're, we're actually finding, from a geographical perspective, that we are seeing a lot of people that live in rural areas, which is awesome because then we're able to offer care and treatment to people who really would struggle to get that otherwise. But typically it's someone who's been trying to conceive over six months. Some have done some of the basic reproductive hormone testing already, but most haven't had as thorough of labs done is what we do at Famlee. So something that people ask me all the time is like, hey, I already had my labs done, but, you know, and my doctor says, I'm fine. Well, the first question is what labs did you have done? You know, the second question is what day of the menstrual cycle did you do them? People tell me all the time they just went and did them when they had time in their work schedule. And that's definitely not optimal for, for fertility, on certain days of your menstrual cycle, you want to have your labs. And then third is like also what is like what, your doctor might have said they were you're fine. But if you, if your provider is not kind of really focused on fertility, they're just reading reports from the labs and say, oh, for a 35 year old, your hormones look fine. Well, the reality is might look fine for a 35 year old, but it doesn't mean for a 35 year old trying to conceive that.

Abby Mercado:
....

Shelley Bailey:
Right. And so it's a big educational lift when we talk to people is those are kind of the, the drill down questions that we end up kind of pulling from people. And oftentimes they haven't had the support from their providers to go that deep into things.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Interesting. So I saw on your website that you guys are, I mean, there's 13 hormones that you guys are testing for?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, right, Right. We're testing for 13 different hormones.

Abby Mercado:
And so I think a lot of a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are probably aware of some of the hormones that you guys might be testing for. What are some of the ones that we might not, we might not know some, some hormones that are being, that you guys are testing for that are not not as commonly tested for?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah. So you know, some of, I mean obviously everyone knows that estrogen, progesterone, testosterone type of thing. Some companies, where Famlee definitely, does but some companies test thyroid, some don't. But the parts that you kind of get into that we're really I guess unique is we're also testing for some inflammatory markers because we're trying to determine like, do you possibly have like Hashimoto's? We, a lot of what we see that is often totally unaddressed with people are their blood sugar hormones. So your hemoglobin one C and fasting insulin. And that's in part because even in the IVF community, some providers might test it, but many don't just because they're not in that like long term care and treatment, right? It's more about creating embryos, implanting them so there's a healthy pregnancy, but it's like long term health support isn't really part of that business model, right? So the blood sugar hormones, I'd say, is a big part of what makes us unique. And then what might even be considered like silly for some people is even, is even like vitamin D. Vitamin D does have a meaningful impact on fertility, but it's something that we hear all the time from people that once they supplement it with vitamin D, they were able to conceive. And again, I'm not suggesting to anyone here that just go buy vitamin D and you'll get pregnant, but it's often overlooked.

Abby Mercado:
I, as you can imagine, my Instagram algorithm is like very much targeting me as a fertility consumer because I'm the CEO of a fertility company and I keep getting targeted for like vitamin D supplements. So anyway, that's like, that's so funny that you say that maybe, maybe we should all be thinking a little bit more about vitamin D.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, I mean, most of us would benefit. I mean, people always ask like, well, how much should I take? And I mean, that's why lab testing is important, because it's important to know where you're at before you just start taking tons of supplements. I remember back from my HIV and hep C days, I was at a dinner with a drug manufacturer and it was an expensive HIV drug. But part of his discussion was also about vitamin D and just the impact on health. And someone like in the room said, well, how do I know if I need vitamin D? And he was like, if you live in a building with four walls and a roof, it's likely that you might need it.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I remember, so I started my career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch and like, we, we were in like, we lived in our cubicles, right? Like I was working 100 hours a week and we would all go to like our annual, our analyst class would go to our annual doctor's appointment, and all of us would be diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency. And we're like, yeah, no shit. ...? Yeah, that's funny.

Shelley Bailey:
.... practice, move your offices outside for your health, so that you can.

Abby Mercado:
I don't think that would have gone over very well with the managing directors. But we should, we should, you know, we should flip the narrative, who knows?

Shelley Bailey:
Well, and now with, with the remote, many people having the remote work, that's, I guess, a little bit more achievable. But.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Shelley Bailey:
I was talking to a pharmacist who's the director of, the medical director, I guess, at a big publicly traded company. And she, we were talking about fertility because her company offers a non-hormonal birth control option. And so like it's a cool product and we were talking about it, it changes the vaginal pH. Her and I were chatting and she was just sharing a little bit about her journey with me and she said after three IVF attempts, she on her own kind of found a different doctor to work with, and she all along had had just had low thyroid and low vitamin D.

Abby Mercado:
Gosh, ... We hear those stories all the time.

Shelley Bailey:
Now, the good news of the story is that she has two children and she's very grateful, but she was just like, gosh, I wish I had known something like, you know, first of all, your regular doctor could support you with that. But she's like, if not, I wish I'd known about Famlee before I started that journey. And I mean, I was talking to a gal, yesterday, who ironically, I went to high school with, but I didn't even know. I mean, she purchased Famlee and it was just funny that how small the world really is. And she was saying that she's on a waitlist at an IVF center here in Oregon, and the waitlist is currently 700 individuals long and she's.

Abby Mercado:
Stop

Shelley Bailey:
....

Abby Mercado:
Oh, gosh.

Shelley Bailey:
And she's like person like 630, you know, and it's awful. And so, you know, it's, that's, it's awful. And that's where we hope we kind of get in where you fit in. And so for people that are waiting on IVF waitlists and things, that's another reason that we're able to help fill in some gaps.

Abby Mercado:
Absolutely. Gosh, I have, you know, obviously, I know that the industry is so backed up, but I hadn't heard a statistic quite like that, that is insane.

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah. ... in Portland is not particularly rural. So think of it, you know, it's a, you know, think of if you lived in areas that truly are rural.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Shelley Bailey:
Access is, is a huge, huge issue and it sounds crazy but it's still from back when like March of 21 when IVF was on pause for a while as an elective procedure. I think the clinics are still just trying to catch up.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, sure. Well, so speaking of access, let's talk about the fact that you can serve patients in all 50 states. How did you pull that off? Like, isn't that hard?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, it is hard. And so given that I used to own a specialty pharmacy and I know what it's like to have risk with insurers and payers, I did know that building a legally compliant 50 state fertility telehealth network is not what we wanted to do for the first stage of launching. And so we have a great partnership with a provider that is able to provide the services to our members, and their training protocols are in alignment with everything that we were expecting from our providers. But that's the way, you know, when they talk about launching a business, you can, you know, buy, build or partner, and we're increasingly finding that making wise partnerships is the way to really get things going.

Abby Mercado:
Awesome.

Shelley Bailey:
And I think I probably interviewed 15 different companies, but found, found one that's a great fit for us because in 2021 there's a lot of people looking to do things in telehealth because of what was obviously going on. So but yeah, it's a, it's a it's a phenomenal partnership and it's been a great, great way to serve our customers.

Abby Mercado:
That's awesome. Partnerships are so critical in this healthcare industry maze. Also tell tell us a little bit about it, tell us about some of the risks that you've taken with this business and maybe tell us kind of .... on a risk that's maybe paid off.

Shelley Bailey:
I mean, I guess I would say just big picture, all the risks have paid off from my perspective because we're helping people get pregnant and we are helping people get pregnant who haven't been pregnant before. So we seem to attract some women who have PCOS, in part because they're not getting the care and treatment that they deserve from their OB-GYNs. And so like big picture speaking, I would say even if Famlee didn't exist in a month, you know that everything would have been worth it just to help support these families who are pregnant. But related to risk, I would say, there's the financial risk, right? Put my husband and my retirement savings on the line to do this. And so there's, I mean, just, I mean every entrepreneur's journey, money, money is part of it. And people don't always like to talk about money, but definitely financial risk. And then there's the, I think the other big risk and you might appreciate also as a working mother is the opportunity cost of the time with your children. And so, I don't want to be out there promoting hustle culture because I don't. In a perfect world, you know, there's, there's a, there's an amount of hustle that's good, but then there's hustle that just is all consuming. And when you have children, my big just personal struggle is, I mean, I would work five hours a day if I could, in part because, I mean, I'm very excited about the solutions Famlee currently brings to the table. And then once we're looking to bring, but when you have children, you can't do that. And so it is a huge risk for any entrepreneur is, that you're hoping what you're building succeeds and supports people, but in the event that it doesn't, you gave away a whole lot of time with your family.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Shelley Bailey:
And whereas if I had just a job in the healthcare sector somewhere, yes, of course there's always the opportunity cost of time, but you're bringing in a certain amount of income that you can rely on each month. And when you're in entrepreneurship mode, that's not always the case.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I'm sitting here in bare feet with my two cats sitting right here and my husband is picking up the kids from school and I've had a full, super productive day of work. And I know that you feel the same way. It's, yeah, I, I know, it's, it's, it's great to be a working mom who's also an entrepreneur.

Shelley Bailey:
Well, yeah. And when you, and when you talk about like having your cats in the office and like ...

Abby Mercado:
I'm the weird cat lady, people are like, what? Okay.

Shelley Bailey:
I am, I am too. And my cat, my cat joins my zooms in addition to my children. But last podcast I recorded with someone, I actually turned off the dryer so that I could do the podcast because it was the dryer was dying, it was really loud and our cat jumped in the dryer during my podcast and my husband shut the door and turned on the dryer, so.

Abby Mercado:
Oh no!

Shelley Bailey:
Another fun fact about Shelley, the cat survived and had to go the hospital for a few days.

Abby Mercado:
Oh my, gosh, Shelley! I, I'm so glad that your cat is okay. Holy moly.

Shelley Bailey:
Me too. It would definitely impact my family and.

Abby Mercado:
That's one risk that paid off. Got on a podcast with my cats.

Shelley Bailey:
Cat's fine.

Abby Mercado:
Oh, my god, that's crazy. So kind of a, you know, kind of similar, a question in a similar vein, so, I know that, you've already mentioned that one learning was serving people in rural areas, which is absolutely amazing. I know that so many founders across the healthcare and digital health startup space are trying to address rural communities, and I love that that was something that was unexpected for you. I also love that you're helping the the demographic that has PCOS. I know one in ten women has PCOS, it's a huge thing. My co-founder, Kristyn has PCOS, she suffers from it, it's just, it's just all sorts of tough. Are there any other key learnings about starting and building Famlee that you have?

Shelley Bailey:
Yeah, I mean, when I reflect, I mean it's, hindsight's always 2020, right? But I do feel and this would just be advice, I mean really for anyone looking to start any business is to really surround yourself with a community of people, and if you're in the beginning and you don't have a team, I mean, we're now, have a team that we talk to every day. You know, what I, what I wish I had done earlier on was asked more people for help, more entrepreneurs, more female entrepreneurs, even for dumb things like, hey, I want to hire a Salesforce programmer, What do you pay for Salesforce Force programmers? All sorts of silly little things that when you're launching a company you likely, you may not have experience with. I just wish I had surrounded myself with more of a community earlier that I could have really leaned on the support and experience from others, like some feedback about me that people always say is they're like, Shell you always tell us like everything you failed at, and, and I laugh because I do feel I've been able to achieve success in my career. So it's funny that people's take away from me is that I always focus on failures. But the reason why I share my failures is because I always want someone else to learn from it and be like, hey, I would like to save you from all these things that I did wrong so that you don't do it wrong in your journey. So just learning from others. I wish I had asked more and surrounding myself with more people who could have supported me because there's a lot of things I would have done different.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, well.

Shelley Bailey:
It would have done cheaper, right? That's, that's one of the real big things. You know, one thing my husband always chats with me about is he's like, look, you paid to learn, so you paid to get your PhD and launching a company.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, totally. Yes. 1,000%. And, you know, the thing about entrepreneurs is that they often become entrepreneurs after their first time venture, and this isn't your first venture, but it's a different venture than than what you would.

Shelley Bailey:
It's a different venture. I mean, I guess that's the other piece, and I don't know if you felt this way coming from investment banking, but I was lucky to grow my previous company to pretty significant revenues and sell it. But it had been an existing business that I bought into owning and so very different than starting something completely new. And, and so it's a very different journey. And I really probably came into my own journey with Famlee a little arrogant, thinking like, hey, I know how to run a successful business, so I'll be able to do this. But it's very different running one versus creating one and, and then running it. And then I guess the other challenge that's just been a, a great massive learning opportunity is starting a company in a space where you're don't start out as a subject matter expert. I'm a subject matter expert in specialty pharmacy all day, every day. And now I feel like I can be a subject matter expert in fertility for the lanes in which we operate in, but I didn't start out that way. And, so that's one or the other, I guess, points to consider when you're starting a business. But if you don't push yourself self, you don't grow. So if you always do things in lanes that you're comfortable in, you don't know, you'll never learn.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, couldn't agree more. That is sage advice and a great kind of look back on the things that you've done in your career. So as our time together becomes so close. I always like to ask this question, if you could rescript one thing about fertility, about the fertility industry, what would it be?

Shelley Bailey:
Guess if I could rescript one thing, it would almost be that there's no need for Famlee to exist at all. Like, I wish that everyone could get the kind of care and treatment that they need from their OB-GYNs. They're already going there for other reasons, and so it would just be great if OB-GYNs kind of consistently would be able to provide the type of care and treatment that we are able to provide at Famlee.

Abby Mercado:
That is a really good one. I wish the same thing about future care, about my daughter's care, let's just say that, she's three and I hope it's it's different when she's 25. So we'll see. Well, Shelley, this was absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. Where can folks find you if they would like to reach out?

Shelley Bailey:
Absolutely. So, first of all, I suggest anyone interested in support for fertility check out Famlee.com. That's F A M L E E.com. Otherwise, I can be reached personally at Shelley at Famlee.com. So S H E L L E Y@famlee.com.

Abby Mercado:
Yay! Well, thank you for that. Tell all your girlfriends about Famlee. Thank you again so much, Shelley. And I'm sure I will talk to you soon.

Shelley Bailey:
Sounds great.

Abby Mercado:
Thank you for tuning in to the Future Of Fertility. We hope you'll leave here feeling empowered about all of the exciting innovations taking place in the fertility space. If you liked today's episode, don't forget to click subscribe, and be sure to check out Dear (In)fertility, our popular podcast/advice column where we chat with experts about all things fertility and fertility and pregnancy loss. To learn more and to join our free Fertility Support Community, head to Rescripted.com.

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