Ep. 120 - Overcoming Prenatal Depression, Taking Maternity Leave as a CEO and Revolutionizing Menstrual Health and Period Products with Lauren Schulte Wang, Founder & CEO of The Flex Co.

 
 

Lauren Schulte Wang is the Founder and CEO of The Flex Co. She coined the term ‘menstrual disc’ in 2016 and created a new category in period care. Today, Flex is the #1 selling, sustainable period care company in America and is aiming to transform the lives of people with periods and offer period freedom

Lauren is also the mom of a toddler, but expecting a second child in a few months.

In this episode Lauren and I chatted about….

  • Her battle with prenatal depression with her first child

  • The way she coped with prenatal depression and prevented postpartum depression

  • All things menstrual health - yeast infections, periods, vaginal microbiomes and menstrual discs

  • Cashing out her 401K and joining Y Combinator

  • How she pitched investors in a creative way to gain funding

  • How she scaled her company as a CEO while on maternity leave

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Ep. 120 - Lauren Schulte Wang Transcript

[00:00:00] Stephanie: Welcome back to Mommy's on a Call today. I'm excited to bring to you Lauren Wang. Lauren is the founder and CEO of the Flex company. She coined the term menstrual disc in 2016 and created a new category in period care. Today Flex is the number one selling sustainable period care company in America, and is aiming to transform the lives of people with periods and offer period freedom.

Lauren is also the mom of a little toddler, but also expecting a second child in just a few months. Welcome Lauren.

[00:01:24] Lauren: Hi Stephanie. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:01:27] Stephanie: Excited to have you. I wanted to kick this off with asking, what is your biggest mom win of the week?

[00:01:33] Lauren: Oh boy,

I have fed my child breakfast and dinner every night. So far this week. That's a win. Where can sometimes take me away from.

[00:01:45] Stephanie: That is hard. Do you like to cook or are you into some of the like meals? Cause she's a toddler. So, you know, is she a picky eater? Mine are terrible eaters.

[00:01:54] Lauren: So yeah, no, for the most part, thankfully she's not a picky eater.

She has her days I saw this week has been especially good. And that's why dinner popped in my mind. Yes. I love to cook. I cook a lot of vegetarian food. I'm not formerly a vegetarian, I, you know, reformed vegetarian, but I think being pregnant, I have a real meat aversion. So I have just been cooking a ton of vegetarian food.

Anyway, as a result, my daughter also doesn't really love meat that much, I think. Cause she had just, hasn't had a lot of it in her life, but I saw this, I think it was feeding littles. Do you follow that?

And this week, she posted that thing where she is like, kids get overwhelmed at my husband's training so we served family style, like all these big dishes on the table. And she was saying that kids get overwhelmed by that. So it's better to just give them one thing at a time. So I was giving her like one piece of tofu by one piece of tofu by one piece of tofu. And she ended up eating an entire block of tofu and some broccoli, and then she had an orange for dessert.

I was like, wow, this child. I really, that was my mom win of the week,

[00:02:59] Stephanie: Wow. So you figured her, like you fed her like one little thing at a time. I haven't seen that yet on feeding levels. So I feel like I always give my kids like a plate of food and there's like so many different things and they'll only eat one thing on it.

[00:03:11] Lauren: Yes exactly. That's what she's been doing recently. And this thing was like only give them one at a time. And instead of just even giving her, cause I tried first giving her just one category at the time. She's this weird thing where like, she'll eat all the elements of a salad, but she doesn't like the salad to be mixed.

So I'm like, okay, you were just getting. The leaf of the salad

[00:03:31] Stephanie: deconstructed salad,

[00:03:33] Lauren: and then she just eats it so quickly. And then she was like more and more, you know, and her baby sign language, but yeah, we'll see how long it lasts. But so far for every meal it's worked really well.

[00:03:43] Stephanie: And how has this pregnancy going for you versus your first one?

[00:03:46] Lauren: So much better. Honestly, the first one was a trip. I mean, we both had COVID babies. So my first was born July, 2020. So I was about six months pregnant when the world shut down. And I don't know if it was COVID or just my hormones, probably a combination. I was, I really had terrible depression like, oh wow.

The worst depression got very into meditation as a result, which was helpful. But my normal outlet for stress and for depression is exercise. And like, we couldn't, if people weren't even going outside during, we weren't even taking walks,

[00:04:21] Stephanie: you were like, you need to mask well running or anything like that.

[00:04:25] Lauren: It was really weird.

So eventually when they opened things up and we were allowed to take walks, I would take walks, but I gained 85 pounds.

[00:04:32] Stephanie: Whoa. So was the depression during your pregnancy or during postpartum?

[00:04:37] Lauren: During my pregnancy, which I had never even heard of. I didn't even know. I thought it was alone until Brittany Spears recently posted about,

[00:04:45] Stephanie: I didn't really know about, I mean, like I just learned about pre-menstrual depression, like PMDD, I didn't even know there was pre pregnancy or prenatal depression too, oh my goodness.

And so you were saying your outlet was usually exercise. Do you do that often like now, too, as an outlet or have you like adapted to different things now and especially being pregnant again. How do you manage that?

[00:05:08] Lauren: Well, I found that I have to exercise because if they don't, I get really depressed. It's just part of like my chemical nature, I guess.

[00:05:15] Stephanie: How did you know that you had depression when you were pregnant, were you diagnosed? Were you like, , something's really off?

[00:05:24] Lauren: Yeah. I struggled with depression when I was much, much younger. Haven't had that significant of issues in the last, I don't know, 10 years, thankfully, but I knew I was depressed when I started feeling suicidal.

Like that was just not. Me. It's nothing. It's nothing like me. And I remember I would call my best friend and I, and she was like, there's only really one friend that I felt comfortable with talking to about it because it felt almost shameful. Like I have this life that I'm growing inside of me and I'm helping the baby is healthy.

I shouldn't feel this way, but I just did, and I didn't feel like it was really related to the events in the world. It just felt like this really illogical thing. And I looked in the mirror every day and I felt like I didn't recognize my own face. And I struggled with eating disorders when I was younger.

So I don't know if there was something about that, but okay. When I feel depressed, it goes into this like body dysmorphia place, which I know a lot of people struggle with this the first time you become pregnant, because there there's so many changes that your body and their dose, but I do really think it was hormonal.

So this, it wasn't diagnosed. But also at the time they were barely letting us go to the doctor. Right.

[00:06:38] Stephanie: Everything was like, tele-health. I almost had to do my six week postpartum appointment, which I had a C-section via zoom. And they said, there's no way. Something hurts. Like you need to physically touch me and look at my like incision cause I think it's infected. I'm not doing this over zoom. So I completely feel you like, it was hard enough to get an appointment.

[00:06:58] Lauren: Right? Yeah. It was a weird time. And I would go in with like my burning man gas mask and like ski gloves like a motorcycle mask with the skull on it. It's very scary. It's like this huge pregnant lady with this Burning Man mask on and these giant ski gloves cause we thought gloves at the time were really important. We didn't know, we didn't know how COVID spreading

[00:07:23] Stephanie: and when you're pregnant and you are concerned about everything and you don't have to answer this question, but you mentioned you gained 85 pounds and you had struggled with eating disorders in the past.

How, I guess, did you cope with all of that? How did you figure out meditation was the way to go or, , I guess there's a lot of women out there who might not even know how to start in this process. Like they might be feeling these things, but they don't know how to get help or they don't even know.

I mean, any advice or I'm curious about what your journey was like.

[00:07:55] Lauren: Yeah, I followed a thread. I had a friend that did meditation with this guy in person pre COVID and he was just talking about how much this person changed his life. And he started drinking a lot less after work as a result because he found that after work to distress, he would go and have a cocktail. And one cocktail turned into three cocktails and he wasn't an alcoholic, but it was like his way of de-stressing. I related a lot to that because I enjoy having a drink at the end of the day after work, especially after a really hard day. I love a glass of wine.

And while I was pregnant, I certainly was not doing that. I had, I had no outlet. I went from having like something that I did as a ritual, to having nothing. And for some reason it triggered in my mind like, oh yeah, like my friend was talking about this and I asked him and it turned out that the meditation teacher had enough people reach out to him that he offered a zoom class, which he had never done before.

And again, then zoom classes became a really big thing during COVID, but I decided it was worth a shot. And I remember the first couple of classes when we would meditate, I would just cry and cry and it just like, it moved something inside of me. So I felt like I went kind of being lost in the sea and this like wave of emotion after emotion and.

Having nowhere to grasp and nothing to hold on to, to at least having a ritual. And that ritual became kind of like a, like a stable force in my life. And I could kind of just then put one foot in front of the other.

But I really felt in that pregnancy that. Like the old me died. And I think part of what was so sad as I was grieving, like, oh, I'm never going to be myself again. The old me is gone forever, but then after the baby came and I was still worried about postpartum.

[00:09:42] Stephanie: Yeah.

[00:09:43] Lauren: Being that depressed, I was like, oh no, I'm going to have horrible postpone too. But in a lot of ways, I felt like I was reborn in it and it wasn't instantly, it was over the course of a year. I slowly crawled my way out of it. And I slowly found my way back to myself and then I realized. I am not a new me. I'm the same me. I'm just like this

[00:10:08] Stephanie: proved like it's Lauren 2.0 or three point now. Right? Well, I actually had a couple of questions on that. So one, you said , you know, you were afraid of postpartum depression besides meditation was that the thing you relied on to make sure that you didn't go into postpartum or like, how did you prevent yourself and then going into this pregnancy also knowing you had prenatal depression, what have you been doing to make sure that you check the boxes on like, okay. I'm okay. Today, any sort of other things, or has it just been meditation?

[00:10:41] Lauren: Yeah, I think everyone has to find their own thing. Like whatever it is for you is like what you gotta do. So finding some kind of ritual, asking for help telling people in your life, what you're going through. For me, it was one friend and my husband, and that was it.

And I would tell my friend even more than I would tell my husband, but my husband really encouraged me. And thankfully we can afford to do this to re-engage with the therapist. And I did that. I like reached out to my old therapist who I hadn't talked to in years, started working with him again. I also engaged with the coach who was an integrative coach, who is a woman who really helps women go through different types of life phases.

So for me, I wanted both of those resources. And again, Like I'm privileged enough to be able to afford those things, but there's lots of different, more affordable like ways to get that type of support.

But for me, that was what I did the therapist and the coach and having that accountability and those check-ins with people allowed me to kind of forced me to take time for myself and I was so busy with the baby and so busy running a company and going back to work that helped me find my way through.

And then I think on a personal side, you know, I couldn't go right back to exercise right away because of my stitches didn't heal properly and like all this other stuff. But eventually when I could, I started taking small baby steps, you know, taking walks and then that turned into going to the gym and then that turned into running and going to the gym or hiking.

And I just found that if I told my husband 20 minutes a day, like give me 20 minutes a day. And that 20 minutes started with my meditation. And some days it didn't feel like meditating and I just sat there for 20. And then I said, okay, I need an hour every day. And no matter what, I always took that hour and I'd force myself to do whatever I wanted in the night, but no matter what it was sacred and it was mine.

And that is how I got back into exercise. And I lost the 85 pounds, but it wasn't about like, just losing weight. It was, I did it because it made me. Mentally feels so much better.

[00:12:48] Stephanie: That's incredible. And by the way, major props for asking and for setting that boundary of having an hour in a day, because I know that's a problem.

Like a lot of moms, it's hard for us. Like, you know, you're working, you're doing all these things and to take that time for yourself, I hate the term self-care I don't really use it anymore. But to acknowledge that you needed to focus on your mental health is amazing.

So what does your ritual look like on the day to day now? And like Do you do this in the morning? Like how do you set up your day to make sure you have that sacred space for that ritual? And then, where's your kid during that time?

[00:13:22] Lauren: Yeah, that's that's I mean, that's the million dollar question. Well, I mean, I think for working moms or for stay at home moms finding the same time every day is absolutely critical because you have the rest of your day full of other stuff that's going to get in the way. That time. And it also found it was easier for me to ask my partner, Hey, this is the time of it. That was my time. And this is your time to be with the baby. And for us, that was the morning, no matter what in the morning, like we know what time he has to start work. We know what time I have to start where we know what time roughly the baby wakes up.

And it just meant that we went to bed earlier every night. And we started our day earlier every day. And then for me, no matter what, it's the same hour every day. I can fill that with whatever I want.

[00:14:06] Stephanie: And how are you preparing for baby number two? Because this changes a lot. It's more of a divide and conquer.

It's like you take one kid, I have the other, you know, what is your current childcare setup look like? And how are you able to have the space , to work? And like, what is your roles that you and your partner play?

[00:14:25] Lauren: Yeah. Well, interestingly, my partner and I had very different views. On hiring people to help us do things before the baby came.

So he was very opposed to having anyone come and help us clean the house for like deep cleaning, even opposed to anyone helping really anything, except for, you know, he's like very handy. He can fix live things himself.

So before the baby came, we had many, many conversations about mental load and grocery ordering, Amazon ordering, which then turned into alright, like we've made the life decisions that we've made like we both want to work. I want to have this type of job. You want to have that type of job. And what does that then look like for our family and how are we splitting up the responsibilities?

And he decided to, and he was able to change his work schedule so that he takes Mondays off for the most part to be with our daughter.

And then on the other weekdays, we have a nanny and when she is old enough, we'll put her into school. But right now she has a nanny. And again, that's very privileged as well we can afford to do, but we made that conscious decision and I made the conscious decision that for me, I wanted to run this company and be the CEO of this company and spend that time and therefore, Um, we just, something had to give, I can't be like the full-time mom and everything else.

That is going to continue. I think once this second baby is born, we'll wait three months until they can get most of their vaccinations. And then we'll put our other daughter in school and we'll keep the same nanny for the second baby. But it also meant that, you know, we got a house cleaner to come once a week now, which has made a huge difference for me, because then I'm not feeling stressed out about the linens and the dirty, like the shower and I dunno, I'm like my family is Germans. I'm like a clean freak. I really like things to be clean, but it makes me more productive at work and it needs to be a better mom because it means that I have fun and enjoy cooking dinner for my daughter every night.

[00:16:33] Stephanie: Well, so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. Talk about that. So, , you had a company, you were the CEO, you were the founder before you were mom.

So. How did that transition go? You know, a lot of us, we have all these ambitions, I know you were in Y Combinator back in 2016, and, you know, you had this successful marketing career. You started this company and I won't really go into the nitty gritty of starting the company, but then you find out you're pregnant and you're going to become a mom.

And I know you just said , things changed for you a lot. You're not the same you, but you are just like a better version.

So, walk me through how you felt, what decisions did you have to make to make sure that, , when you had your kid, were you like, I do want to go back to work or were you like, oh, no questioning things, you know?

So a lot of moms either become a mom and then start a different type of company because their entire life shifts, but you kept the same company and you built it even bigger.

So how did you do that as a new mom?

[00:17:32] Lauren: Well, I appreciate the question. I think the most important thing for me was giving myself permission to figure things out as I went and knowing that, however I felt before having a child might feel very differently after having a child.

Similar to starting a company. I felt very strongly before starting the company that I would always want to be the CEO. And I wouldn't want to hire an outside person. Other people start a company knowing they don't want to be a CEO moving forward. But I would say for me, I gave myself permission to, Hey, if I, it turns out I'm not cut out for the CEO thing and someone else would be better doing that than me. I want to do what's ever in service of the mission and vision of this business.

In a lot of ways. I think of my company because of the size and scale that it is, it is my first baby. It is. And I knew I would see how I felt after my daughter was born. And I felt very strongly that I wanted to take those three months to heal and to get better for me.

So that'd be set up to be a better CEO and be a better mom. And I took those three months.

[00:18:35] Stephanie: How did you set your company up then while you were gone? And then are you going to do the same thing or did you learn a lot of lessons after your first maternity leave to apply to your next maternity leave? Upcoming?

[00:18:44] Lauren: Oh girl, that could be a whole 10 episode podcast. I. Set it up. I put someone who had been working with me for, I guess at the time, maybe like three years, he's now been working with me for five years in charge of the company. So I did select someone to be in charge. There's someone who's going to be in charge of this time.

As well, I think what I learned was to put the appropriate systems in place internally that maybe weren't necessarily there before, because we're just at a different size and scale. So HR, legal, finance processes. Which sounds really boring, but you know, I came back from maternity leave last time and the team have doubled in size and I'm like, whoa, okay.

[00:19:29] Stephanie: That's incredible. Because some people leave and you know, they're getting emails while they're laying in the hospital bed. Like in labor, I think, you know, our mutual friend, Jesse Draper. I remember her saying she was literally answering emails in a hospital bed. And so it's interesting to hear, you were able to step away and then come back and your company is like double.

[00:19:49] Lauren: Yeah. It, I think really have some really amazing people that were from me and with me, but yeah, I think it was important for me to take that time. And this time I'm looking at the mistakes that I think I made that were controllable in terms of like systems and processes have all those emotions. Like up and running.

Not right before I go on leave, but. Yeah, starting in January going on leaving August September. But yeah, I think, I think knowing that like having that coach and therapist also in place was really integral to me having clarity to understand what I wanted to do. At the time it was coming back to the office and having that ritual every morning of exercise has helped me during this pregnancy helped me postpartum, but I've just kept it up. And I don't exercise the same intensity that I did before, but it's helped keep me very clear and centered and grounded to make the decisions I need to make between now and my leave again.

[00:20:49] Stephanie: That's great. So now I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about your company, because it pertains to basically the moms who listen to this podcast, which is all on menstrual health.

And, you developed this menstrual disc, which is incredible. Tell me about your story on just, w how did you end up here? You know, why, why periods and, what are some of the things we should be looking out for right now? Like, why is this such an important topic?

[00:21:14] Lauren: Uh, most people aren't, I would say actually from the time that it changed a lot more people are aware that there's many options for a period that there's more options for periods in 2015, it was really tampons or pads. Cups weren't really a known thing although cups were invented in the 1930s, tampons were invented in the 1920s. Pads with adhesive not too long after that.

We have been using these products that our grandmothers abused. If you look at every other product category in the world, there's been so much innovation.

So many, I can't think of the same thing maybe we're all wearing clothes. Like our grandmother's also work clothes, not the same style, but I was getting infections for 15 years. I was getting yeast infections and BV following every. Period. I would get a yeast infection and I very frequently got BV. And I learned that you

[00:22:03] Stephanie: were probably taking a ton of antibiotics too

[00:22:06] Lauren: taking so much medicine.

I was spending close to a hundred dollars a month for like all the different Vagisil products.

[00:22:16] Stephanie: That's just uncomfortable ruins your gut health, like all sorts of things.

[00:22:21] Lauren: Yeah, it wasn't fun. And once I, and I had tried everything, you know, I became that's when I first became a vegetarian in my early twenties, I started drinking kombucha switch to like all clean, natural cleaning products and soaps and everything, nothing worked from, from my yeast infections.

But I learned that they were being caused from my tampons and pads from a nurse practitioner. And it kind of sent me on this multi-year quest to try different period products. I had tried a menstrual cup. I found it to be really uncomfortable and painful. And again, this is back in 2015, there was not one brand of menstrual cup in the US.

We now sell more products than they do with this kind of crazy,

[00:23:01] Stephanie: I might've tried theirs and I could not fit it. They're really difficult. They're really hard learning curve.

[00:23:11] Lauren: Yeah. And you know, the menstrual disc is a concept that I think is very interesting because you can wear it for 12 hours. We're the only company that makes both disposable and reusable discs cause we have the patent and as you said, I coined the term. So disposable discs you can wear for up to 12 hours and then you can dispose of it at the end of the day, a lot of people do it in the shower, but you can change it in public. You don't have to worry about taking out and convincing it and putting it in a back-end.

However, if you are working from home or you're a stay at home mom, and you want a fully reusable product, we also have a fully reusable menstrual desk and people love discs because it doesn't sit inside of your vaginal canal, like a tampon or a cup. And so you really can't feel it, which sounds like voodoo I feel like I can feel everything in my vagina, Lauren I promise, this one, it's like, it's like magic. You shouldn't be able to feel it. If it's in, if it's in properly, you can't feel it.

[00:24:08] Stephanie: My biggest fear is attempting to take it out. Like what's that? I think my biggest fear is attempting to take. Yeah,

[00:24:16] Lauren: I know, taking it out as something that people get freaked out by, but I say, when you're learning how to use it, do it in the shower. That's when I changed mine. There's a learning curve for it.

The same way as there is for using a tampon or a pad, you just don't remember what that learning curve is like, because we've been using them for so long.

[00:24:32] Stephanie: So why is it I guess, safer, like cleaner, healthier, you know, something is still stuck up there and all of that. How exactly, or. Does it work or like, why is it better? I guess?

[00:24:45] Lauren: Yeah. Well, first of all, cotton is an organic product, which means that bacteria can grow in it and it can host bacteria that can grow and multiply. And then if you have the type of bacteria that causes TSS, which is rare, but can be deadly, you are basically giving an environment where that bacteria can grow and thrive.

Obviously, if you're using tampons as directed, you shouldn't get TSS. So I'm not saying that if you use tampons, They're bad or anything like that. For some people, it can really disrupt your pH because blood is more alkaline. And so you have this like blood soaked tampons sitting against the walls of your vaginal canal that can throw off your pH.

It also absorbs. We talk about like our gut and our microbiome and all this stuff all the time, I guess. So cotton is doing, it's absorbing all of that good stuff that your body works so hard to create every month. You have a lot of immunity in your vagina actually. Pretty amazing. It's self-cleaning it fights off infections on its own.

It's pretty well set. So when you use something like an I should say, like, not all disks and cups are created equal. I would be very careful about where they're made and make sure that they're FDA registered. Some brands say that they're made in the USA and they're actually not the fancy they're FDA registered.

They're actually not. So just be thoughtful and careful about especially a smaller brand and you don't need to buy a Flex product, but I think just knowing where your products come from is really important. Similar to if I were buying a tampon, I would buy a really big buy. I would buy like the biggest brand that there is, because those manufacturers are well-known, they're making millions of products and they probably have very safe standards.

Our products are made in Canada or in California. I did that on purpose. I wanted to be able to see the facility, see the clean room, know the people know exactly how it's run. Um, we have transparency throughout our entire supply chain and our products are made out of 100% medical grade body safe materials.

They undergo very rigorous testing and we use the same materials that are used in all different types of medical devices. So it's not just being used on our specific product, just like, is that really safe or,

[00:27:01] Stephanie: yeah, because if you think about you're like, Hmm, my putting that in for like 12 hours, you know, sitting in there, is it releasing chemicals?

Is it that.

[00:27:09] Lauren: But if there's all different types of products that are made in the same materials that are used and catheters and other things that are designed to stay inside of the body for even longer than that is what gave me a lot of confidence. And obviously starting the company after getting infections.

Safety was number one on my list.

[00:27:29] Stephanie: I thought it's interesting. I didn't realize when you said like cotton absorbs some of the microbiome, I just interviewed the founder of Seed and she was talking about, you know, vaginal swabbing. Cause she's just had a baby. And so like a big important part of when you have your baby.

Unfortunately, I had three C-sections. Is that when your baby passes through the vaginal, the birth canal there, it gets a lot of that microbiome. So I didn't even think of how like a tampon. Removing that too, because it's like taking that out. So

[00:28:01] Lauren: no, no shame, you know, they're totally fine. But there are, you know, newer things that I think, you know, most people aren't switching to tampons or switching away from tampons because they're getting infections like me, most people like wearing disks because you can't feel it. Like that's just, frankly it.

Oh, my gosh. I never knew that my period just wouldn't be a thing. And in the middle of the day, you can just pee and empties itself out. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to change it. You just keep walking around hands-free you only have to take it out. Twice a day, right? Your period is then a non-issue it reduces cramps and over 60% of our users. And

[00:28:41] Stephanie: how does it reduce cramps? I'm just scared. ,

[00:28:43] Lauren: yeah, so people tell us that their cramps are reduced and we believe why there's two reasons. One, because it's not sitting inside the vaginal canal. So like your vagina. It's got naturally shaped like a tampon. And so the vaginal walls are getting distended or pushed apart.

When you have a hard cotton object in there, tampons ones aren't exactly, really like soft and flexible. But the other thing is it creates a plug. So when you're menstruating, your uterus is contracting and you're shedding the lining and that can create air and gas. And so. Plug right there. You're not allowing it to kind of naturally escape.

So if you are a tampon user and you have a day where you have really bad cramps, try switching to a pad and it will take a couple hours, but you'll be surprised at the relief that you will find by doing that.

[00:29:33] Stephanie: Interesting. I think you've like officially convinced me. I've just been more afraid of like actually putting it in and taking it out.

I'm not going to lie.

[00:29:41] Lauren: You're not alone. Everyone is even our friend, Jessie Draper was very, she started using Flex right after she had her first child, because she said that her periods completely change. And I said, well, you can try this. It's worth a shot. And I was little baby entrepreneur at the time we had just started the company and she was like, okay.

She called me. She was like, oh my God, I didn't want to use it, but

[00:30:07] Stephanie: I have to try it because as I mentioned, I got pregnant with my third at 11 months. So I was still breastfeeding. I hadn't had a period. So I only had since 2014, when I got pregnant with my first, I had only had my period three times. In that would have been six years, basically.

So I didn't know what a period was. So when I finally got it back after the third kid, just in 2021, so actually almost went seven years with only three periods. It was like being a teenager again. It was unreal, terrible, like leaking through ultras in maybe 30 minutes. Like, I didn't even understand this.

So I tried the cup, but I like. Too hard, like all of this stuff. And then I got two yeast infections. So I think you've sold me on doing this for my own, personal health and holistic side too. It's yes. I've just been terrified, but I will try it, but

[00:31:04] Lauren: we have people like real people. So when the company very first started, people would text me to ask me how to use it.

It's like, because if you learn to use a tampon and you have your friend or your mom, or your sister or whoever, like on the other side of the bathroom door. And so people would text me on the toilet, like, is it in if you're going to get wise, I can't find help

[00:31:24] Stephanie: me. I'm going to end up in the ER, being like, I need to remove this.

I don't

[00:31:27] Lauren: know how no. So we have real humans based in the U S that are available seven days a week, almost the whole entire day. I mean, I think over 12 hours a day, You can text them in real time. I'll help you. You can call them, you get a real person on the phone. You can email them if you prefer. But I find the texts like a faster phone or texts is like a little bit faster to get help.

And yeah, they're called flex birds and that's

[00:31:52] Stephanie: cool.

[00:31:53] Lauren: So they can help you to the new, no, it's not going to get lost and no, it's not going to get stuck.

[00:31:58] Stephanie: Okay. I have a little more faith now. I'm actually curious since you started this, you know, before this was a trend, I'm curious, how did you pitch Y Combinator were you.

When you were going into this, I know you really believed in it, but just having this idea of, I want to help period health and menstrual health. I feel like walking into a room of dudes, it's kind of overwhelming. How did you, start that? WHAT was your journey to get there?

And, , how did you go forward? Cause there are women out there who might have ideas or even moms who like, are like, I want to start this, but then , eh, I don't know if anyone wants to talk about this. No one talks about their periods. At least they didn't about six to seven years ago.

[00:32:36] Lauren: Yeah, they did not. Six to seven years ago. I had Google alerts set up and the only things that showed up were like, People getting their doctoral thesis or something, even like a women's college knowing exactly the word period in Cosmo had an editorial rule where they weren't even allowed to write about periods at Cosmo.

Yes. Wow. You know, Y Combinator is really special in that they were the very, very first check that we received. And I had self-funded as in God, the company, as far as I could tell, I was pretty much out of money. And I personally like almost went bankrupt with it. That's a longer story, but they were really special in that they understood that this is a really big problem and it was a really interesting business opportunity.

Any investor like that, that's a venture investor wants to know that what you're building could be. You know is a multi-billion dollar market that you're looking to disrupt that there's real innovation and that you're the right person to do it in short form that's what they're looking for.

For other investors post Y Combinator. And I think once I had the Y Combinator kind of stamp of approval, it opened up a ton of different doors for me and for the company. Um, and they're incredible for that, but there were a lot of people who had said no to me. And I haven't gotten that was maybe, maybe a thousand no's, but several hundred at least.

And I learned that when in any sales deal, even if you're like, I dunno, you have a B2B SAS company, it doesn't matter what the application is. Whether you're trying to sell a venture investor or you're trying to sell software to the head of HR, you got to get people nodding, you walk in the room, you've got to get them nodding.

If you walk in a room full of people who don't have. And you start talking about periods. They, their eyes glaze over. They can't relate to that. Not only that, but they're probably like eww whatever they, they,

[00:34:29] Stephanie: they don't have hardly want to touch and feel the product.

[00:34:32] Lauren: Yeah. They're not like that interested .

So I had to find a way to get them nodding. And I would, I found this tactic where like our pro, so you can use our product during sex to have MES rate oral or penetrative sex. So. And helps block odor and I've know that this is one of the benefits of the menstrual disc. So I, you know, after hearing so many nos started asking men, do you enjoy male investors?

Do you enjoy having sex with women?

Has any woman ever rejected you because she was on her period? Nods from all across. No one has any heterosexual, man never said no to that question. They're all like, oh yeah. And then instantly you, and then I have a product that solves that night. Oh my God. That's that?

And then you're like, oh, in this space, hasn't been innovated and? Over a hundred years and it's a multi-billion dollar market and then you're on your roll.

[00:35:33] Stephanie: Right? I think he was like, wow, this can help me have sex any time.

[00:35:40] Lauren: So you just got to find like, whatever that is and who just knowing your target audience and being empathetic to them and not going in from a place of judgment. Like, gosh, these men think periods are gross. They're not woke or like, whatever. Like you got to get over myself. Like they're looking for a great business opportunity.

I need to be able to show them that this is something for them. And this is all. Yeah.

[00:36:05] Stephanie: That is amazing. And so I'm going to rewind, and I know we don't have to talk about it. Cause you said it's going to be a long story, but how did you self-fund this? And were you still working at the time when you joined?

Like even, I mean, to this day, to any entrepreneur, like any mom looking to maybe start a business, they're like, whoa, how am I going to fund this? Or they do have a career. Do you do a side hustle? You know? So what did that look like for you? Luckily you didn't have a family yet. So you weren't fully responsible for a little human by how did you go about funding this?

Because R&D is also a big thing. Like this isn't a little product, , it requires capital

[00:36:41] Lauren: if required. Yeah. It definitely required more capitals. And I had given. Too. And had I realized that I actually needed at the time, I probably never would've gotten it off the ground but I was very passionate about it.

I was really terrified of failure. I think like a lot of people are, and I think I was always waiting for that perfect moment to know when to start it or when to quit my job. And I would tell everyone about my idea and people were really encouraging and then I'd hit roadblock after roadblock. And then finally decided to shelve the idea of.

But I, I eventually got the courage to start the company. Someone had asked me to be the CEO of the company. He was starting and he knew about my idea for Flex. And I think it took that as like the 10th person to be like, yes, you can do it. You know, do you finally say, you know what, no I'm going to do this.

And I did start it as a side hustle. And then I found that work was just too, my job was so demanding. My full-time job was so demanding and I felt if I really wanted to give this thing a shot, I needed to go before all the way.

And I quit my full-time job. I cashed out my 401k which I had started working at IBM when I was 19. 10 out of 10 don't recommend cashing out your ear, 401k face. I don't know. Maybe if you have a terminal illness and it really, really need it. I don't know, but it was a bad bad decision. The woman on the other line of Vanguard was like, begging me not to please, please don't do this.

I need, I need the cash. I got a consulting job and I just, I put, I put my apartment on Airbnb and I almost got evicted because my landlord found out about it. It was, it was a lot of really bad financial decisions.

And then I was pretty much out of money at the point that I met Y Combinator. And they offered me the check. And I said, you know, thank you so much, but I actually can't take this because I'm out of money and I need to go back to work. And they said, well, how much money does the company have? I'm like, you don't understand. The company is me. Like that is my bank account. My personal bank account has $0 and I need to see, you know, I need to find a job.

And they said, well, you have six weeks to decide. I'm sure. You'll figure something out. And I met another investor and they said, how much do you need? And I said, I need 200 K to get my first 10,000 pre-orders because that's what I, that that was the best information I had at the time. That's how much I thought it would cost.

And they. They ended up saying yes. And then I was kind of in business from here. Yeah.

[00:39:14] Stephanie: Ooh. Well, I was going to say now that's a big learning lesson. Oh, wow. , would you ever suggest anyone cashing out their 401k?

[00:39:23] Lauren: No, like I said, unless you have like a terminal illness or like there's some kind of like your family member had a terminal illness and you had no way, like, I can think of like an extreme, but to start a business.

No, I would not recommend it. And I would say for most businesses, there are ways that you could hack your way to grow their hack, your way to any investor and even for yourself, because if you want to know that what you're spending your time and that's also an investment or what other people's money you're spending that on, that you're going to get a return for that.

So whatever way that you can find to get momentum or to get traction is really critical.

[00:40:00] Stephanie: Well, to wrap things up, I wanted to ask, I know you said your identity shifted a little, what do you think is your superpower that you gained once you became a mom that makes you better at either business or life?

[00:40:13] Lauren: I think, you know, it's so hard to kind of decouple becoming a mom and COVID

[00:40:20] Stephanie: True, but you're also on your second journey into motherhood.

[00:40:24] Lauren: Um, my second journey, I think the biggest lesson I've had in the last two years is this is my life. Like, this is it. This is your life. This is every day. You only have one of these and you gotta like make it what you want because it is what it is, you know?

And I think that that mindset that, that has been really my theme for this year is this is your life. It has made me accept things a lot more. Not feel as anxious about the future. Not good on the, what if kind of course, there's some of that with business planning, you got to do what if scenario planning, but it's helped me to kind of be very present and take each day and soak in all those little moments with the little one, because you like only get so few.

And so many people are like, oh, it doesn't it go by so quickly. And in a lot of ways it does go by quickly. But another way is I feel like I really have like soaked in all the like babyness and that, and then I hope that I can do that with the other memories in my life as

[00:41:26] Stephanie: well. Yeah. Well, you're going to have a new baby to soak that in and maybe more in the future. You never know.

[00:41:32] Lauren: I, I mean, I don't,

[00:41:34] Stephanie: I guess the baby fever, you get it in the first eight weeks and you're like, oh my goodness, what did I get myself into? And then it passes and you're like, I want to hold like mine's 27 months. And I look at her and she's the little human. Yeah. I just want to hold the baby again.

And my husband's like, hold one of our friend's babies.

[00:41:52] Lauren: I'm the oldest of five. So I will agree with your husband that four is a lot.

[00:41:59] Stephanie: I didn't realize you were the oldest of five. Wow. Well, well, thank you so much for joining. Where can we find you online.

[00:42:06] Lauren: Yeah, you can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. If you use Facebook at flex, it's just F L E X, and you can find my Instagram handle there and you can find us on Tik TOK, weird flex, but, okay.

[00:42:22] Stephanie: I love it. Thank you so much for joining today.

[00:42:25] Lauren: Thank you so much, Stephanie,

[00:42:27] Stephanie: thank you so much for listening to this episode of mommy's on a call. Your support means the absolute world. To me. You can find the show notes for this episode and other goodies over at mommy's on a call.com. And if you enjoyed this episode or have gotten value from the podcast, I would be so grateful if you could head on over to apple podcasts and leave a rating and review so that we can reach unempower.

All over the world together. Thank you so much again, mommy pod, and I will see you here next time.

Business & Career, Podcast, Physical WellnessStephanie Uchima-CarneyComment