Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / The woman who invented the world’s first flushable pregnancy test shares her deepest learnings, with Lia’s Founder Bethany Edwards

Transcript

The woman who invented the world’s first flushable pregnancy test shares her deepest learnings, with Lia’s Founder Bethany Edwards · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Bethany Edwards for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Are you ready to have your mind blown? I hope so. Today I'm joined by the founder and inventor of the world's first flushable pregnancy test, Bethany Edwards. Bethany Edwards.
• 0:28
  Leah is an earth-friendly healthcare company on a mission to revolutionize reproductive health through the development of innovative products. The company's first product, which came to market just a couple of months ago, is the FDA-cleared Leah pregnancy test, which is changing the historically wasteful product into a plastic-free, flushable, biodegradable form.
• 0:51
  Bethany is brilliant, to say the least. This episode is also brilliant. You are going to learn a bunch of cool stuff, and that's pretty much all I really need to say on the matter. Just kidding. We're covering some key insights into the timeline that it takes to develop an idea like this that doesn't actually exist in the world. Spoiler alert, it's about a six to nine year journey. Yeah.
• 1:14
  and the kind of money you actually need to fund the research and development piece of the puzzle. There are so many insights and I've been raving about her ever since to anyone that will listen, so I'm sure you're going to love this episode. And while I've got you here, let me update you on all the things. As you may or may not know, our YouTube channel is up and running. We have also entered the TikTok space. And as always, you can find us on all the channels
• 1:45
  And if you love this episode as much as I do, and you're wondering what the best way to support the show is, it's by sharing it with a woman in your network who would benefit from listening or by posting on social media. I love a cute story.
• 1:59
  And if we're not connected personally yet on Instagram, you can find me at Doon Roisin, which is D-O-O-N-E-R-O-I-S-I-N. I love to chat in the DMs, so please pop by because I would love to meet you and learn about what you're up to. That's a lot of info. So as always, you can find everything in the show notes. Let's jump into this episode. This is Bethany for Female Startup Club. Bethany, hi, hello. Welcome to the show.
• 2:29
  Hi, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I am so excited to be here chatting with you, inventors slash genius slash all the things. I'm just so excited. Can you start by introducing yourself and telling us what your business is? Sure. I am Bethany Edwards and I am the co-founder and CEO of Leah Diagnostics.
• 2:53
  And we have the first FDA cleared 100% biodegradable plastic free pregnancy test. Game changer. And we're really, yeah, yes, yes. We like to think of it as a game changer as well. You know, we're really, really excited about the ability to be able to create sustainable products in women's health. And this is our first major forte into that. And we're really excited about the launch and release of it.
• 3:20
  Oh, gosh, I've been reading all the press and I'm just blown away. I'm super excited to get in and understand, you know, all the things around R&D, research and development, funding, how the launch has gone, what's next. But just a simple question to start. What is behind the name Leah? I love this question. So it was very purposeful that we chose something that sounded different.
• 3:47
  that wasn't clinical. We wanted to be really welcoming. Leah is bearer of good news in Greek. It's the last three letters in family in Spanish. It's short, it's memorable, wanted it to sound like your aunt or your best friend or somebody that you could really confide in. So very purposeful in the name. You know, prior to
• 4:09
  working on the research for Leah, I spent about 10 years in advertising and marketing. So I have this kind of interesting creative turn technical founder. And the brand piece has always been something that I've been really passionate about, as well as the product innovation and the technical aspects and the material science innovation piece of it as well. So yeah, I mean, the name was very purposeful.
• 4:35
  And we just we really wanted it to be different than what was than what was out there. I mean, part of this is about starting a conversation that's more open and more honest in the pregnancy test space. And making sure that it was a name and bringing this human element to it was really important. And that's that's where the name comes from.
• 4:56
  Genius. Did you actually come up with that yourself or did you work with a partner agency who kind of came back to you with ideas based on a brief? No, I came up with that myself. Oh, look at you! Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're amazing! It was presented as Leah all the way back.
• 5:22
  during my research while I was at university. So we came up with it then and presented it as Leah all the way back then from the very early days. The logo has much improved since whenever, whenever I first presented it, we did have some help on getting the logo to the place that it's at now. So there was an agency that was involved in that, but I'm.
• 5:47
  The color green was very purposeful also. You know, obviously it has the ability to present sustainability, but, you know, everybody else in the space, it's pink, purple, and blue. We walk down the aisle and it's just those colors and a lot of, you know, happy babies on some of the boxes. And, you know, even the packaging design has been very intentional.
• 6:13
  making it all green. We got a little expletive on it. I'll show it to you. Yeah, let's see it. We're getting into this already in the beginning. I wasn't planning this already. Love this for the YouTube vibe. For anyone listening, you should check this out on YouTube. So this is, do you see it? Oh, I love that. It's just a little like expletive that's on there. And then the only place that it says pregnancy test is on this little tear tab.
• 6:41
  Very discreet. Exactly. You tear the tear top off and it says, you got this. All right. Ser it into there. Cute. And then it's PC flush. And over 99% accurate, 0% plastic, 100% your business. And really taking advantage of just kind of different colors, different messaging in the space. We feel it's just really important in...
• 7:07
  in really making a statement and opening up this dialogue in a very antiquated category that has continued to look one way, not only from the products themselves, you know, they've been the same stiff plastic stick for over 30 years. So that means that
• 7:25
  You know, if you were born in the 1980s, your mom's plastic pregnancy test is absolutely still in a landfill somewhere. Yeah, I'll let that sink in just for a minute. Isn't that kind of wild? That's so wild. That's so gross. Yeah. So it's over like two million pounds of plastic. Oh, my God. Yeah.
• 7:48
  Just in the U.S. from pregnancy tests. So 2 million pounds of plastic waste in the U.S. from pregnancy tests, which is enough to stretch from here to the International Space Station and back about seven times. Yeah, lovely. That's very pleasant. Yeah, good stuff, right? It's great for the planet. Yeah. Oh, my God. Great.
• 8:10
  I want to go back to where your entrepreneurial story actually began and what got you thinking about this and that light bulb moment of going in and disrupting this industry that hasn't had any innovation in the last 30 years. Great question. You know, the very initial inspiration came from a quote from Richard Fry. He was speaking on behalf of the Industrial Design
• 8:39
  had this quote that basically said something like, we shouldn't be designing products to be recycled. We should be designing them in a way that they can be completely disposable. And this idea of just temporality and the ability to use new materials that allow products to go right back into nature or to actually be biodegradable, right? So this idea of temporality
• 9:03
  And the fact that single-use diagnostics, like plastic pregnancy tests, are only used for a few minutes, but everything that they're made out of, plastics, glass fibers, nitrocellulose, none of these things biodegrade. And so there's a tension point between the product life cycle and the materials that are being used. And so that was the first, very first insight piece. And it really kind of struck me to design in that kind of context. And really then it becomes about
• 9:33
  selectively choosing materials then that can meet the criteria piece around being able to be biodegradable.
• 9:44
  And the other big, big piece was recognizing that, again, there have been no innovation in this category for over 30 years, and that there's an unmet need around privacy. Over 92% of women value privacy whenever they're taking a pregnancy test, regardless of whether they're hopeful negatives or hopeful positives. And so what could we do with new materials that would allow the product to be more environmentally
• 10:14
  add and provide privacy values. And so that really got us into this idea of let's design with paper, not plastic. And if we can be really smart about the materials that we're choosing, that will allow us to design a test that is also flushable, which provides a
• 10:38
  the additional level of privacy so that nobody's seeing these tests in the trash. You know, we spoke with hundreds of women, one-on-one interviews and surveys. And, you know, the lengths that people sometimes go to to dispose of these and dispose of them in private ways is really, you know, really interesting. I mean, people talking about wrapping them in tinfoil and disposing them in public dumpsters.
• 11:08
  You name it, right? And again, it's for a variety of reasons. There are people who are also struggling to get pregnant and seeing a bunch of pregnancy tests pile up in the trash is a heart-wrenching reminder of that. And so to create something that provides this added benefit of privacy also allows more sustainability and is able to be plastic-free
• 11:37
  really gets into a unique, true new, newness. I mean, it's truly innovative in terms of, in terms of the product. Mm.
• 11:48
  Absolutely. Gosh, it's so cool. I'm in awe of what you're doing for women and just for the category overall. I want to ask you though, just to go one layer deeper when you were having this, you know, you saw the quote, you were kind of having these thoughts, but what was the actual aha moment when you were like, it's going to be a pregnancy test? Like that's where we're starting. You cut out a little bit in that question, but I think you were asking
• 12:16
  What was the aha moment as it relates specifically to pregnancy tests? Was that sort of what you were asking? Yeah. Yeah. So there's the understanding and inspiration around temporality and using new materials. The other really big piece is just the simple fact that, you know, I've always kind of felt that
• 12:42
  the relationship between a woman and her health was sacred and private, and there shouldn't be any shame in that context, especially when it comes to reproductive health. So, you know, who hasn't hidden some of these in, in, in the trash before and the ability to provide women with a solution there is just really empowering.
• 13:08
  So, I mean, you know, the other piece of the why there was, look, I was really inspired by the material science piece of this and the ability to eliminate plastic, but also what it meant from just female empowerment and a standpoint on making such a statement on such an object that, you know, elicits so much conversation and it sits at such a unique intersection of,
• 13:37
  of women's health and of, it's, it's, it's just a, it's a very powerful object. And that was a piece of this. It was also just really, really potent to be able to shake that up and make a statement and offer something different in the space and try to also provide a product that would allow people to,
• 14:02
  not shy away from testing, right? I mean, I think there's that too. There's people who wait to take pregnancy tests or don't want to take them because of just the shame of purchasing them, the concerns around somebody finding them in the disposal process. And so the ability to really change that up and serve as a solution that provides this kind of,
• 14:31
  It's just an empowerment back to women, right? Like you get to share, you know, share your news, share your joy, share your relief or keep it private, right? I mean, I think that's a really powerful piece of this. And so we really zeroed in on pregnancy tests to be able to tackle that first. Got it. And so when you've kind of landed on pregnancy tests,
• 14:58
  how do you actually start developing that product? Like, who is the first person you turn to outside of, well, I guess, you know, there's a lot of research on the internet and this kind of thing, but like, what is actually the next step to inventing this product that totally doesn't exist and seems like a really huge challenge to tackle? Yeah, it was a challenge to tackle, first of all. You know, I think also I was so inspired.
• 15:27
  By wanting to do it and make it a reality, this idea of being able to take an idea and make it a tangible reality was just such a powerful driver. I think in general, curiosity is a really powerful, motivating tool. And so some of it was just the sheer, boy, we really want to solve this and we want to make this a reality that pushed it along and kept it going.
• 15:58
  searching for that information and connecting, you know, dots in different ways. So honestly, you know, there was a lot of academic journals that I read, you know, not having been a, you know, material scientist prior to working on this, I had to gain all of that knowledge and kind of gain it really quickly. And so a lot of it involved learning by doing.
• 16:27
  and reading a lot, a lot of, a lot of academic journals in the space, you know, was inspired originally also by like George Whitesides and what he was doing with paper microfluidics and reading patents and knowing that if we were going to
• 16:48
  truly deliver on a product that was water dispersible and biodegradable that we would have to work within a really small subset of materials. So it would either need to be plant-based, mineral-based, or protein-based. And those things would be what would need to be part of the solution. Otherwise, you're not going to meet some of those other criteria pieces.
• 17:11
  in terms of making it biodegradable and water dispersible. So a lot of reading. And then, you know, I often talk sometimes when people ask me a little bit about this. I think the entrepreneurship journey is a little, I think of it a little bit like this video game that I used to play whenever I was a kid. It's called King's Quest.
• 17:34
  And you had to go around and talk to a person and they would give you advice or they would give you a little trinket that you would then use to solve another problem and you'd work your way through the game. And to be honest, I mean, it was a lot of that, especially in the early days.
• 17:54
  Follow the breadcrumbs. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we, we went around and entered it into every business plan and pitch competition that we could find. And I was able to cobble together enough winnings and money from that to put it all back into product development work. And you kind of increased your network. Right. And we got into a dream and accelerator program and that put us in contact with people and, you know,
• 18:20
  Then we contacted somebody who made a piece of equipment that we knew was kind of relevant, and that got us to a chemist. It's weird and serendipitous a little bit when you look back at it, but I think it all stemmed from just the strong, strong desire to make this a reality. And knowing that we had early proof of concept work too, right? I mean, we knew that the antibodies could work on this substrate. We knew that there was enough on...
• 18:49
  early proof of concept work there that they kind of showed progress enough to kind of continue to push through it but there was a lot of unique development work and trying to then um you know take it from like a looks like model you know works like model and put them together uh that was that was a lot more challenging than maybe um than maybe we even realized in the early days uh and then you know
• 19:18
  lots of learning from there. I mean, for sure. That's so interesting. I have a few questions following on from a few things you've said. First of all, what year are we talking here? Like, is this back in 2015 when you actually kind of created the company? Yeah. Yeah. It's a long time ago, like six years we're talking. Yeah. And it was at that point, it was like, I mean, literally think like a sketch on a piece of paper.
• 19:47
  like kind of thing. Yeah, it's a concept. It's an idea. Exactly. I had this like terrible looks like prototype that I would go around and do, you know, pitches with or whatever, right? It was very much idea stage. You know, we had early proof of concept work, but it was kind of a sketch on a piece of paper. You know, later, I realized that, you know, it typically takes med devices six to nine years to go from concept to commercialization.
• 20:18
  That's very, very typical. Yeah. And so we trended kind of right on that, you know, in retrospect. And so, you know, there's the initial kind of concept work. Then there's the initial development work.
• 20:33
  Then there's having the regulatory aspect and getting it through the FDA. And then there's manufacturing and design for manufacturing and how do you scale that? So there's all these kind of like very distinct chunks along the way. And when you're making a product that's never existed before. So our intellectual property is really strong because nobody makes diagnostic tests like this. But that also means
• 21:00
  Nobody makes diagnostic tests like this. So that means we had to create it. And that meant like every aspect of it. That meant designing a custom, developing and designing a custom way to dispense the chemistry onto our substrate because all existing methods of doing it are designed to work on plastic. So they don't work on ours. That meant, you know,
• 21:29
  developing this coding. And it required myself, my co-founder, mixing random things together in our kitchens, like stirring them around and baking things in our oven. So people don't often think about that. It wasn't like just making a shampoo or something, right? There's great things that you can do there with new formulations, but you can plug into existing manufacturing chains and existing supply chains.
• 21:59
  With what we've done here, none of the supply chain is really the same, except for some of the chemistry. And none of these manufacturing processes existed. It's involved custom equipment. The early prototypes, we were like cranking them out with like hand embossers that I had originally bought to emboss my wedding invitations, right? So you can think about that like,
• 22:28
  That's very scrappy. Yeah, very scrappy. It's a long tail on development. You got like your basic research and your applied research and then like kind of cutting over that chasm of into commercialization. Do you think if you had have like known that it was going to be six years, in hindsight, would you have done it? You know, I would have done things a lot differently. I will say that.
• 22:56
  I would have raised money differently. But at the same time, you know, I think about this a lot. At the same time, like, I was a first-time entrepreneur, right? I mean, with an idea, right? And a relatively complex idea. You know, I don't know if
• 23:15
  we would have been able to go out day one and raise $5 million, right? Because we didn't have a track record. So we had to do it in small bits and, and prove ourselves along the way. But that continually, you know, made that harder because you're splitting time between, you know, doing development work and raising money and, you know, building the marketing, like, you know, our marketing assets have all really,
• 23:45
  primarily been built in-house, our own photography, the packaging design we designed, right? So a lot of different moving pieces. But yeah, I mean, had I known that day one, we would have planned a little bit differently. I think there's early optimism in thinking that things are going to move fast. And when you're creating stuff from scratch like this, it's just there's a lot to do.
• 24:16
  And, you know, I also think if I would have told some of the very early investors, like, hey, this is going to take six years, like, is that exciting? I'm not sure. So, you know, it's definitely lessons learned on it. But I don't know if even having known that information in the beginning, we could have planned a little bit differently, I think, for sure.
• 24:44
  but I don't know if we would have been able to necessarily solve all of those things because I'm not sure we would have really had all of the resources from day one. I just have two more questions kind of linked to this early phase before we sort of jump in towards more recent years and working into the marketing part of this talk. The first question is when you were going to these pitch competitions with this, you know,
• 25:12
  out there idea, this sketch on a piece of paper, was it overwhelmingly positive and easy to get people on board? Or were people like, what the hell is this? This is not possible. What was the reaction and sentiment of the idea? Yeah, I think a lot of people could understand it pretty easily. And it
• 25:34
  Having had some of the marketing backgrounds, I also think I was able to find a way to talk about it in a very simplistic way, which I do think is important. So to be able to be like, we have a flushable biodegradable pregnancy test, right? Like just like snappy, quick.
• 25:54
  Like people are like, oh, flushable. Okay, I get it. Why does that not exist, right? So I do think people were able to, for the most part, wrap their heads around the concept pretty quickly. The thing that we would sometimes run into is, well, why does somebody want that, right? And so that would be when then you would kind of explain some of the privacy stuff as rationale for,
• 26:24
  for the flushable element or I mean, you know, to be honest too, I think one of my pitches in the early days started with like a montage of video or photos from like people finding pregnancy tests in the trash, right? So it's this idea of like, you won't find our tests in the trash.
• 26:47
  And the fact that it has been such a plot of so many sitcoms and movies, like people finding pregnancy tests in the trash. So that people could, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the trash. Exactly. So people could wrap their heads around that like pretty quickly. I think then the next, the next piece was just kind of, how is it going to be made? Right. But from a, from a concept standpoint, I think,
• 27:14
  for the most part, people were able to understand it pretty easily. And part of it was also in the way that we were describing it. We were able to just quickly be like, look, it's flushable, it's biodegradable, 0% plastic. Easy language. Yeah, easy language. Yeah, absolutely. And during that time,
• 27:38
  All up, what was the kind of, you said you were winning this money from competitions and pitches and that kind of thing. How much money pre-investment did you need to put into R&D to paint the picture of like, what are the costs involved in this? Yeah, I mean, the bulk of, you know, prior to this year, really the bulk of all of the money really went to R&D and, you know, G&A.
• 28:07
  We weren't investing much in marketing. The other piece of it is the expenses on intellectual property. So something like this really does need some of the intellectual property protection. And so the expenses that come with that are also notable. So that was another big piece of it. Yeah, I mean, it was majority of the funds that we received.
• 28:36
  over the past five years have really gone mostly to R&D. And then, yeah, I mean, headcount and just some general operating expenses. But it's definitely been the bulk of the spend and it's had to be, right? I mean, if we didn't have a product, you know, that was a big piece of it. And it's involved everything from, you know, what I was mentioning before, kind of the material side
• 29:06
  and developing those proprietary coatings and then learning to scale them to large industrial equipment, right? Like in the early days, we were just like putting the coatings on, on these like little 12 by 12 sheets of paper and then like cutting them out. And now we're doing like 60 wide rolls, you know, like huge rolls. But that's a lot of learning. There's a lot of learning that goes into that. You know, one of the things that I talk about is plastics have proliferated
• 29:36
  because they're now cheap and reliable. But we forget that the first plastic Bakelite was invented like 115 years ago. So there's 115 years of learnings in the plastic industry on how to do that manufacturing cheap, reliable, and iterative and make all of those improvements. And so when you're using new materials that
• 30:04
  are completely disrupting the manufacturing and the supply chain in these industries, you're taking on that burden of, of that learning and that, that R and D work in that investment that comes from basically learning new recipes in some ways, right? And in some ways this is like learning new recipes and new techniques of
• 30:29
  And I think people sometimes forget that. So there's this interesting kind of tension point between scalability and sustainability. And that's why when you're breaking the mold and completely disrupting these manufacturing and supply chains, it does really require a lot of R&D.
• 30:52
  to really get it to commercialization and to get it through, you know, if there's regulatory involved, but to also then get it to a point of scale because, you know, that's where mass disruption really starts to occur because you've got diffusion of innovation then at that point. So, yeah, I mean, anything on the material side, I mean, I do think it's the next industrial revolution, but it is a large chunk of investment in R&D.
• 31:22
  Yeah, because it sounds like, I mean, I'm guessing it's ballpark, like hundreds of thousands, if not a few million that it would have taken in terms of pitch competitions and those, you know, early stage things that you were doing to get checks into the business. But my thought is that when you do those pitch competitions, it's like you get $10,000 here or $5,000 here and it just seems like
• 31:50
  a really big feat because I know when you raised institutional funding I think that was more recently like in the last year or so but I'm kind of wanting to know like how much does it cost ballpark to like do something like this and it doesn't need to be like specifics but like what are we talking about here
• 32:11
  Yeah. So in the early days with the pitch winnings, right? I mean, I think we would have brought in a non-dilutive in pitch winnings. And in getting into the Dreamit Accelerator, that came with a stipend. We also had some small grants. It was probably...
• 32:33
  200, 300,000, somewhere in that ballpark over the course of a couple years. So, you know, probably it was like 50K here and then 100. And I mean, in the early days, probably got up to close to 200 to 300K. And I mean, all of that, though, went back into initial product development. So myself and my co-founder weren't taking salaries initially, which was really hard. I
• 33:04
  And that, yeah, and that was just enough to get us to kind of the early proof of concept work to the point where, like, it was enough to really take to angels and get investment for the next piece of it. Got it. Yeah, but I mean, that was kind of what we had to do, right? I mean. Yeah, it's a lot of money. Like, you've got to, you've got to hustle to make that happen.
• 33:30
  I want to kind of move into more recent times, you know, coming up to the end of last year. This year you launched in March. What has been the launch plan and what has the reaction been like? Yeah. Did I even show you this product yet? Let's see the product. Let's see the product. You showed me the packaging. I want to see the product. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So this is what it looks like. Let's give her some love. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:57
  Super thin. Oh my God. It's so small. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is a negative result. So it works like existing tests where there's just one line for a negative and then two lines for a positive. Right. And then my co-founder did an amazing job with this whole like perimeter seal design. So I'm not sure if you can quite see it, but it's sort of inspired by like coffee filters and.
• 34:25
  The fibers pierce into themselves just with force. So it's not held together with glue. That allows additional access points for the water. And then there's also additional perforations on the back that have been designed to allow it to break down too. And then it pretty easily, you can tear it apart here afterwards if you...
• 34:52
  if you want to do that. I'm just showing you the inside of it because it's kind of fun. And this is the assay diagnostic component. Again, all paper-based, no plastic. And then these, it's basically three pieces at that point. So we've really engineered it to be as few pieces as possible and have these kind of, like I said, unique perforations that are embedded throughout that allow the test to,
• 35:21
  to separate a lot more easily. And this is one of my favorite parts. This is what's left of Aaliyah test after eight weeks in soil. No way. Shut up. That is crazy. It's like dirt. It's just dirt. And so by 10 weeks, then we meet the 100% biodegradability claim and we've beaten organic cotton. So yeah.
• 35:51
  I just, I love showing this. It's one of, makes me very proud. That is so cool. Yes, totally. Wow. Holy moly. So that. You deserve a clap. Thank you. We can have a more informed conversation now that you've seen what the product actually looks like.
• 36:13
  Absolutely. So I was wondering to know about, you know, in the lead up to the launch, what was happening and since the launch, which was in March, what the reaction has been or what the impact has been, you know, in this first month. So, you know, one of the biggest things, and I talked about this a little bit before, was
• 36:36
  So that was one of the big things that we did leading up to launch, obviously, and being able to secure that partnership with them. They do global distribution for a variety of lateral flow diagnostic tests. So securing that partnership was pretty critical. And that really kind of set us up for some of the launch issues.
• 36:58
  We are still scaling some of that manufacturing. And so we've been really strategic about doing launch in a way that allows us to try to keep up with the scale on the manufacturing process.
• 37:11
  So, you know, we've done it somewhat quietly. We wanted to get things up and running, get kind of all the kinks kind of worked out a little bit. We've we've invested some in marketing, but we haven't invested an extreme amount because we're really trying to match the contract manufacturers ramp with our marketing. So that's been.
• 37:31
  It's been interesting and kind of strategic to really kind of align both of those up simultaneously. And there's been some great, great press and great buzz. So, I mean, you know, in the first... I mean, the press has been wild. Yeah. In the first 48 hours, we had 120 million press impressions.
• 37:59
  We had a TikTok video receive over 4 million views. So there's been some nice, solid stuff. There's been some wins there. Yeah, there's been some wins there for sure.
• 38:13
  You know, we are lining up and gearing up for expansion of distribution. So moving beyond just our own website onto specialty online wholesalers. We also have some conversations with retailers in the works. But again, I mean, some of this is really strategically mapping, mapping everything up with the supply chain, the manufacturing.
• 38:38
  and making sure that there's a nice consistent ramp there and that we're able to really scale with our CM together. Does that mean that the plan is very much in the future to be, you know, anywhere and everywhere a woman would look to buy a pregnancy test, you know, in all of the places, all the retail places?
• 39:00
  in addition to D2C. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the goal with this has always been, you know, to be able to get this product into the hands of as many women as possible, right? Because there is a real mission here. There's a mission around, you know, the plastic piece of this, but there's also a mission around the empowerment on the female side of this as well. So, you know, there's benefits,
• 39:25
  There's absolutely benefits for this product in developing countries. There's where there's concerns around waste and also concerns around privacy. I mean, absolutely. I mean, in the U.S., only represents about a third of the global pregnancy test market. So there's a lot of other pregnancy tests being sold in places other than the U.S.
• 39:54
  It's interestingly been one of the folks who 12% of the people that are trying to purchase the Leah pregnancy test and they put it in their cart are from Australia. We're getting a lot of emails from people. The good old Aussies. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:11
  Love that. It's great. Yeah, so the international demand, I think, is one of the things that really shocked me since launch. Like, we're not doing PR, you know, beyond the U.S., really, right? So there's some kind of very interesting organicness that is happening ex-U.S. And, yeah, I mean, we're seeing...
• 40:36
  12% of people that are trying to purchase are from Australia. 11.5% are from Canada. So there's some really interesting stuff there that, you know, I knew there was international demand, but I didn't expect it to some of this level. And so that's been something that's been really, really interesting to see.
• 40:58
  Yeah, exactly. Yep. Absolutely. So outside of the retail expansion piece, what does the future look like for Leah? Is it more products? Is it building the team? Is it global expansion? Or is it all of those things and more? All of those things and more, right? I mean...
• 41:21
  Distribution is obviously very important and very critical. So that's one of the big things. We do need more folks on the team. I mean, the inherentness of scale is that you need more people, right? So that's absolutely part of it for sure. Distribution is definitely critical. We will need to receive some additional regulatory clearances to go outside of the U.S. So we do need to receive those to be able to go ex-U.S.
• 41:51
  And I mean, I think the other thing on the XUS distribution is probably finding some decent partners there. At a certain point, some of that stuff is easier if you've got somebody who knows the market and you can kind of plug in as opposed to really trying to learn that all on your own. So those are some of the pretty big key things. Exciting. Very exciting.
• 42:16
  What is your key piece of advice for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business? I know this is kind of cliche, but to just do it right, to just start, the action is so important. And the momentum piece is really, really critical. You know, if you don't make any of those steps, nothing happens, right? So I mean, I would say,
• 42:43
  start talking to people about the idea, you know, do some informal surveys with folks, and make efforts to kind of make things happen. You know, I do think that we're at a very unique point in time where not only are more women much better positioned in society in the sense that, like,
• 43:10
  There's a lot more women scientists. There's a lot more female designers and entrepreneurs. And it's a unique period in time for women. But it's also, you know, e-commerce and the web has changed, changed the ability for people to start businesses. You know, crowdfunding has changed things. You know, even when we started, Leah, that wasn't as much of a prominent kind of thing.
• 43:39
  But there are becoming a lot more resources where even if you don't have access to family money, which I think, to be candid, entrepreneurship, that's part of part of the struggle. If you can't find funding, you know, that's obviously just inherently a big, big challenge of it. But there are starting to be so many more things that you can do quickly and easily and kind of cheaply now.
• 44:03
  with CTC, with e-commerce, with the world of crowdfunding, with the world now of, you know, even equity crowdfunding is pretty interesting now with everyday people being able to invest in companies. So it's really changing kind of what you can do these days as opposed to what was achievable, you know, 10 years ago.
• 44:28
  And networking, you know, has always been big. So, you know, I would just sometimes show up at events because you never know who you're going to meet or who's going to introduce you to the next person that might matter. And there's, you know, the pandemic has changed things with that for sure right now. But there's that stuff is starting to open back up. There's great maker spaces. I think there's some really, really powerful resources that are emerging.
• 44:59
  to just make an effort to try it, to try to do it. Take the step. I love that. At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions and some of them we may have already covered already, but we just breeze through it anyway so that in a few years' time when I have hundreds of women who have been on the show, I can look back and pull out any trends and any insights and kind of those interesting data points. So question number one is what's your why? Why do you do what you do?
• 45:30
  I spoke a little bit about this, but I do this to really inspire other female entrepreneurs and also offer women a product that they haven't had before. This idea of STEM and STEAM really means a lot to me. I grew up in rural PA in a small town.
• 45:55
  My dad built bridges for a living and he built our house into a countryside hill. So I was always kind of surrounded by this, like science, math, art. My mom was like a crafter. And so I'm, I really do this to inspire other, other women to take the leap into to really push forward on some of the STEM and STEAM stuff. And,
• 46:22
  And I have a passion, obviously, for inspiring anybody in more smaller rural communities. I love that. Sounds like a really beautiful upbringing. I actually also grew up in the bush, in a mountain. I love it! We should have talked about that. Me too. One stoplight, it was crazy. Yeah.
• 46:48
  Yeah, my road was a dirt road. My road was a dirt road, too. Oh, I love that, love that. I won't get us into this too much, but I do have it on my desk. This is the house that I grew up in. Shut up. That's so cool. It's like a green roof, right? And, you know, I talk about it sometimes growing up like that, and you probably feel sort of similar. I mean, I think that there's such strong ties to nature, which are also really interesting. But even...
• 47:17
  even in the ability as a child to be able to sled right off my roof. Like I learned early, early on that like common conventions could be broken and the world holds a little bit of a special regard for those who kind of change the status quo. So is that, I think that's just ingrained in me and that's also probably my biggest driving why. I think there's a lot of freedom in that kind of upbringing. And I think,
• 47:44
  I don't know, for me, I really cherish that I had this weird, unique upbringing that I
• 47:50
  you know, isn't the norm kind of thing, I guess, among my circle of people now. And so, yeah, I feel like I can relate. But moving on to question number two, let me keep going. All right. All right. I could spend all day on that one. Me too. We'll have to do a follow up episode. What is the number one marketing moment you'd say that's made the business pop so far? There's two that kind of come to mind. One was the
• 48:18
  I was really being strategic in lining up some awards with the announcement of our FDA clearance. So I knew kind of right about when we were going to have or were expected to have our FDA clearance. And so I looked for events and awards that we could enter around that time frame because I wanted to try to line up that announcement really well. So we were able to fortunately be able to get on stage at TechCrunch in Berlin. And I announced that FDA clearance live on an international stage.
• 48:48
  We ended up winning and that drove like 320 million press impressions in four weeks. And it absolutely helped lead us to be able to secure funding. So that was absolutely critical for us. So just the ability to kind of be strategic about lining up awards and kind of doing some of the timing around like larger announcements. So that really changed some of the trajectory for us in being able to get insecure funding.
• 49:19
  packaging, right? So the fact that we have such a unique and different packaging, we've won awards for that as well. And I also think that it has the ability to have a little bit of virality to it because it's just so different and it's so unique.
• 49:37
  Those are the two things being strategic about the packaging design and making it look like, you know, kind of eye candy. And even the photography that we take for the product, we've tried to make pregnancy tests look like eye candy. So those those two things, but the timing on announcements with awards was a big deal for us. That's really clever.
• 50:01
  Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or subscribing to or listening to at the moment that others would benefit from knowing about? I'm a big fan of podcasts. So there's a lot of stuff that I listen to there. Audiobooks, academic journals, if I really want to like nerd out a little bit.
• 50:24
  Nature has like great stuff and often covers some of the material science stuff that I'm like super, super into because I think it's the wave of the future. And patents. So I spoke a little bit about this before, but like oddly enough, like you can learn a lot from creating patents, especially once you get the hang of the way patents.
• 50:49
  the format of patents work because to get a patent, you have to be able to actually share the art of, and the steps of how to do something. And so it's almost like reading a recipe. So. Where do you go to read a patent? Oh, you can do Google patents. Google patents. It's great. Free patents online. Google patents. Oh yeah. Yeah. Get onto this. I'm going to come back to you on what I learned. Yes.
• 51:19
  That's so cool. So if there's a product that you're really interested in how the technology or something is working or you want to learn a little bit more about a specific type of technology, yeah, Google Patents. Nice. Going to look into that. Yeah, we learned about certain materials to use from reading patents. Wow, cool. I'm conscious of the time, so I'm going to breeze on. I feel like we could talk forever. I'm having such a great time.
• 51:46
  Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? Oh, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. I have to have coffee. Ditto. Yes. Coffee and a little time in the morning, I think, is something I really, really value. And then recently, because it has been pretty stressful, some of the evenings I'm starting to try to turn my phone on, like do not disturb.
• 52:16
  just to be able to really try to unwind a little bit later in the evenings. Yes, super important. I need to do that. Question number five is, if you only had $1,000 left in the business bank account, where would you spend it? Okay, this is a tough one. So a couple of different answers I have on this one or thoughts I have on it. Inherently, I automatically think like something that would bring in more money
• 52:45
  which would either be promotion of the product or a networking event that, you know, there's potential funding at. So those are the two that I think of first. But then I would also say the third one would also potentially just be like, or splurge on a team outing, right? Like if it's either go, either turn it into more money or, you know, splurge on a team outing. Yeah.
• 53:11
  go out with a bang. I like it. I like it. Lol. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan? Yeah. I had a great mentor who used to just say like, you know, take a breather, have a drink and move on. Right. So I think to summarize it, it's just kind of like reflect, regroup and keep going. I mean, that's,
• 53:40
  As an entrepreneur, that's about the deal, right? You're just, you're kind of always trying to adjust to the change. That's the only thing that's almost, you know, inherent in everything and keep going. Amazing.
• 53:57
  Bethany, thank you so much. I am just so grateful that I got to talk to you and obviously obsessed with what you're doing. Love it. So cool. You're a Wonder Woman. Thank you so much for being on the show. Dude, thank you. This has been such fun. So really a pleasure being here and chatting with you today. I really appreciate it.
• 54:23
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 54:48
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 55:10
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 55:27
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 55:52
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 56:14
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show, and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.