Val Selby [00:00:06]:

Hey, this is Val Selby and after over 20 years online, I can track where my mindset has blocked me. If procrastination, impostor syndrome and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz, then Val Full Volume is here to help you see choices you are making. Get ready to use your expertise to collaborate like a pro as you create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best life. Let's get to it! 

Val Selby [00:00:36]:
Alright, everyone. I am so happy that you are here, and I have a guest with me again today. And so many of you are female entrepreneurs on my list. Obviously, that's gonna be who I'm attracting because that's what I am, what I've been for decades now. And health is such a big issue. I mean, a huge issue. And I know if you've been on my newsletter list, I've been talking about it a lot lately, very lately, and previously in the past, but even more lately, I've been trying to be more open. So it's really timely, as usual, I have Bethany Corbin on here, and we're gonna talk about who knows with health because your project I am excited to help you get more people knowing about your project. So, Bethany, thank you for being here, and let everybody know what you are doing.

Bethany Corbin [00:01:32]:
Hey, Val. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here. Yeah. And really excited for the progress that we're making in women's health care. I'm an attorney by background and it's interesting because women's health care had not taken off when I went to law school. So this wasn't anything I went in thinking I was going to dedicate my career to. But after having my own women's health issue, I realized that there had been so few advancements when it came to women's health research and the digital solutions that were available for women's health care, that I wanted to dedicate my career to helping women entrepreneurs get their products to market faster so that we could revolutionize this space.

Bethany Corbin [00:02:12]:
So I have the first law firm in the US that's dedicated to helping women's health founders. And I'm also the CEO and cofounder of FEM Innovation, which is really working to bring together the entire women's health ecosystem under one roof so that we can add clinical legitimacy to the women's digital health products that are out there. So that's what I'm working on.

Val Selby [00:02:33]:
And I love it as somebody who's gone through so many - I mean and that's the thing with entrepreneurs. I know. See, here we here the squirrels already are going in my head. As entrepreneurs, so many of us have health issues. And that is one major reason why we wanna work from home.

Bethany Corbin [00:02:52]:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it's interesting, right, because I work in the femtech, which I know is a a new term for a lot of people. It means the female health technology field. And in that field, I can tell you most of the entrepreneurs are creating solutions because of the health problems that they experienced, and they're doing so remotely from their home so that others don't have to go through the same thing they experienced.

Val Selby [00:03:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I still get it. My husband a few years ago because, like you said, the tech is so far behind, and I suffered from severe Endometriosis for 17 years before I had my full hysterectomy. And it seemed like 2 years after that, all of a sudden, here came the commercials and the talk about it, and my husband even one day said, holy crap, where was this when you were going through all of that pain? And I'm like, I know, right?

Bethany Corbin [00:03:42]:
Right. Nobody was talking about women's health care 4 or 5 years ago even. It's now come to the forefront as something that is gaining more and more attention for a couple of different reasons, but it's really people like us, Val, who have had these experiences, who are talking about it, that are really helping to break down the stigmas and the barriers open these conversations and get tools out there.

Val Selby [00:04:04]:
Yes. Because, ladies, it's really hard. If you are in an issue, you know how hard it is. For one, sometimes it's a little embarrassing because, like you have said in your bio, we're not supposed to be talking about this. That's the way we were taught. You don't talk about poop. You don't talk about your period.

Bethany Corbin [00:04:25]:
And it's so ingrained in us too, right? That even a lot of people that I talk to feel embarrassed about having these discussions even with their OB GYN and their doctors because of how ingrained it is.

Val Selby [00:04:36]:
Yeah. And I do know, and, obviously, you know as well, and the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it.

Bethany Corbin [00:04:43]: 
Absolutely. 

Val Selby [00:04:44]:
And the more women I here come to me with issues and all of that, and I love that. It's not a burden. I love it because, I mean, we just need to talk.

Bethany Corbin [00:04:54]:
Absolutely. It was interesting. When I got diagnosed with my women's health issue, it was very unexpected for me, and it came up on an annual routine annual physical exam, I wasn't really having a ton of symptoms. And as with most women, I had chalked up my symptoms to, "oh, I'm just getting older, right, or maybe I'm getting fatter." And you try and create an excuse for it, but really, I had never really heard of my condition. I had fibroids and after I went, I researched, 80% of women are gonna have them, and yet I hadn't known. Nobody talked to me about it. It was all kept very secret and quiet.

Bethany Corbin [00:05:27]:
And that was just shocking to me that we aren't having these conversations about conditions that affect so many women out there.

Val Selby [00:05:33]:
Right. Oh, I I had no idea. I mean, thankfully, I haven't had that issue, But it's something to talk to my daughter about to make sure she knows, right?

Bethany Corbin [00:05:43]:
I mean, I can guarantee you if 80% of men had tumors on their reproductive organs, people would be talking about it. Like, there would be a pill. And yet today, we're in a situation where hysterectomy is still the only cure. Nobody's talking about it. And even when it is talked about, the people who speak about it typically downplay it because it's so common. They say, oh, I know somebody who had that. You'll be fine. And it's just, to me, so curious how downplayed it is.

Bethany Corbin [00:06:08]:
Like, these are actual tumors on reproductive organs. It's just like people don't care.

Val Selby [00:06:13]:
Right. Or like you said, we downplay it because I can remember I downplayed my hysterectomy. I mean, I had everything taken out. And I'm like, oh, no. I'll bump back up. Everybody, that's what women do. We have surgery, and we bump back up. And I didn't.

Val Selby [00:06:27]:
I mean, I was down. I didn't have any complications, but it wiped me out for weeks and weeks. And I'm like, this is a major surgery.

Bethany Corbin [00:06:36]:
And it's done way too commonly for women. That's like the solution, right? Oh, we don't know what's causing this. Let's take out the organs.

Val Selby [00:06:42]:
Yeah. Exactly. Which, I mean, after searching through I don't wanna put words into what you're doing, but after looking through FEM Innovation, is that part of what you guys are doing, is there any more education into it?

Bethany Corbin [00:06:55]:
Exactly. So with FEM Innovation, we are really focused on uniting, as I mentioned, the ecosystem of women's health care because right now it's so siloed and people aren't talking to each other. And we do believe that there's a significant promise for women's health care using digital technology and the digital tools that are out there. But it's interesting, right, because if you look at the digital tools out there for women today, it's mainly things like your period tracking apps or your infertility apps or wearables for menopause, that's been pretty new lately, right? But it's those types of things still focusing on reproductive organs. And the interesting thing is most of the time, clinicians are actually not involved in the creation of these products. And we have a huge gap between clinicians being able to use that data for your care plan, right?

Bethany Corbin [00:07:43]:
And for a long term women's health research and the tech companies who are creating this that can and have used out proven scientific methodologies for tracking women's health care. And that's a huge concern to us. So part of what we're focused on is really uniting clinicians with the tech founders building these products so that we can, A, not only get clinically accurate products that can be used and incorporated into the patient care plan, but also, B, making sure that we are driving innovation in women's health beyond just reproductive organs into other spaces where women might have different experiences. For instance, their symptoms for cardiac arrest are different than men. How they handle and metabolize drugs is vastly different. And so we really wanna push beyond just this conflation of women's health with reproductive health. And some of the products that we're seeing come on the market and that we're working with are just incredible. They're very innovative in this space.

Bethany Corbin [00:08:39]:
They're trying to help women. For instance, there are some tools on the market that would use AI through a device to help women with their regular self breast exams, to analyze the tissue and let you know if there's changes. Some of the other companies that we're seeing come on the market, they're in clinical research phases right now, but a blood test for ovarian cancer. Those are the things that get me really excited and the founders that we really enjoy working with.

Val Selby [00:09:02]:
Yeah. Definitely. And, yeah, because so much of that tech is there. It's just not skewed towards our direction yet.

Bethany Corbin [00:09:10]:
Exactly. Especially with COVID, when we had this huge proliferation of digital health, that's really when femtech started to take off because we had things like the Apple Watch and Fitbit, etcetera, that had shown that this was an economically viable model for health care. And then we were able to apply that to women's health. But it's fascinating to me how little funding goes to women's health research. Right now, it's about somewhere between 2 to 4 percent of total research and development funding is for women's health.

Val Selby [00:09:39]:
That's even worse than I expected.

Bethany Corbin [00:09:41]:
It is. So lush.

Val Selby [00:09:41]:
Oh my gosh.

Bethany Corbin [00:09:44]:
And it's so interesting because there have been studies that were commissioned that showed even if we increase the amount of money that went to women's healthcare by this small percentage, it would actually put billions of dollars back into the economy and yet, we're still underfunded so drastically.

Val Selby [00:10:01]:
Yeah. And It's so strange. And I guess part of it might be because this is just as women what we're used to, right? So it's taking the conversations and deciding to move forward like you and your partners have done and bringing it to the obvious of that number, of the 2 percent. Because, I mean, we know that it's underfunded, but that's, like, ridiculous.

Bethany Corbin [00:10:28]:
It is. And part of it goes to the fact that we still have a male dominated venture capital landscape. And studies have shown that if there is a female on the venture capital team, then the team is much more likely to invest in a female founder. But without a female on the venture capital team, a lot of times, what these companies have to do is they have to go pitch to all male team and an all male team of investor. And typically, they have to give, like, a Sex Education 101 and Health 101 class to the male VCs to get them to even understand the female body and why this is an issue before they can even go into their pitch for their product. And what we often hear is that the males are like, well, I don't understand this. How does it impact me? And then they try to be down funding them.

Val Selby [00:11:12]:
Right, because all they're looking at is bottom line if they can't understand.

Bethany Corbin [00:11:16]:
And it's fascinating because if you actually look at the statistics, women founders deliver, oh my gosh, I can't even remember the exact. Is it like 35, I wanna say, 35 times. I can't remember the exact statistic, but they deliver much higher returns on investment than all male founding teams. So from a business case, right, it makes sense to invest in female founders, yet we are still viewed as philanthropic and charitable cases for investment.

Val Selby [00:11:43]:
Right. It'll be changing. It'll continue to change, right?

Bethany Corbin [00:11:47]:
We are on the right path.

Val Selby [00:11:48]:
It has to start, and that's just the thing. It's the conversations have to start, the supporting everybody else. The women on it, all of that just has to start somewhere, and we can't look at the fact that we're so far behind because we're like, okay, it's getting better. It's getting better.

Bethany Corbin [00:12:07]:
Exactly. Like, at least now we have a term for it, right? I mean, before 2016, we didn't even have the term femtech to be talking about women's digital health solutions. So at least we've made it that far.

Val Selby [00:12:17]:
Yeah. No kidding. So I wanted to I know you brought up a question, and I definitely wanted to hit it because it's something I'm kinda going through. So you had mentioned that we could talk about how entrepreneurs can navigate health challenges and use those experiences to find purpose. 

Bethany Corbin [00:12:33]:
Oh, absolutely. I love this topic.

Val Selby [00:12:36]:
Yeah. And I definitely love this topic because, yeah, I've been very vocal about my years of weirdness, and I actually have just decided, okay, I'm going to own the fact that I have really high anxiety and we're gonna do something about it.

Bethany Corbin [00:12:53]:
I mean, who doesn't these days, honestly?

Val Selby [00:12:55]:
But that's one of the things I leaned into. It's like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Maybe people don't have this high of anxiety as I do, you know? I stopped poo pooing it. So how can they use these health challenges that so many of us are having to find their purpose.

Bethany Corbin [00:13:13]:
Yeah. And it obviously varies depending on the type of health challenge you have and what you're looking for. So for me, I can kinda give you some background and and how I did it and some tips and tricks that I have seen work for others too. For me, I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I was, well, I thought I was quite happy in my big law job in Washington, DC, right, making my 6 figures and working for Large health care corporations. And as I mentioned, right, whenever I had my women's health issue very unexpectedly, I got thrust into having to navigate the fear and the anxiety that came with really not knowing. I got thrust into the MRIs the emergency OB GYN appointments to figure out what was going on. I had a tumor that made me the equivalent of 6 months pregnant.

Bethany Corbin [00:13:56]:
It became very difficult for me to function with that knowledge and still be a high performer at the job I had. And part of reason for that, obviously, navigating my own health journey, right, dealing with all of the appointments, etcetera, but it suddenly put life into perspective for me that if I'm going to be struggling with this disease and this illness, there's high chance of recurrence, etcetera, unless you have a full hysterectomy. Is this what I wanna be doing with my life? Do I want to be sitting here helping large healthcare corporations? Or is there a different purpose out there for me that will make me feel more fulfilled with the time that I have? And so that was kind of a a light bulb moment for me. And I'm one of those people who I I handle anxiety by doing research, really researching every single angle of of what's out there for a condition. And so I did that research, and I got so angry that we were this far behind in women's health care research. And for me, right, I had always been interested in health care system. I wanted to be a doctor, but I was terrible at math and science. And so I thought, what difference can I make, right? This is my experience that I've had.

Bethany Corbin [00:15:04]:
I don't want anybody else to have to go through this. I should not have to undergo a surgery that's longer than a heart transplant to get these tumors out because we're not advanced enough on women's health care research to have better solutions. So what can I do? And for me, what I ended up deciding was I was gonna channel the fear, the anxiety, the experience that I had and try to make it so that other women would not have to go through this in the future, that I could leave a small footprint behind on the journey towards better women's health care. And so I actually ended up leaving my big law job. I went and I worked at a smaller firm that did digital health innovation, and I focused on building a practice in women's healthcare. But as I did that, I saw more and more gaps in the way women's healthcare was run. And that really, to me, that research, the continuing to learn about the pain points that founders were having in this area, that was something that I thought, okay, this is where I can align my experience, my skills as a lawyer with helping founders get products to market faster. So my tips and tricks are, especially if you're dealing with a health issue, embrace the fear that comes with it.

Bethany Corbin [00:16:14]:
I didn't do that at first. And so I tried to just lock it out and work through my job, etcetera. And it wasn't helpful to anyone. So I would set aside time each day to kind of embrace whatever I was feeling, the fear, the frustration, the anger, and I would say, what can I learn from this that I can take and make a small difference in the world? And I would do that every single day and kinda built towards finding my area in femtech. And then the other thing that I did was I talked with my bosses at that point in time and I said, you know what? This is what I need. In order to be able to continue to work here, I need to have a remote environment. I need to have x, y, z breaks.

Bethany Corbin [00:16:54]:
I need to focus on my health and my mental health. And if you're not willing to do that, I need to find another place that's going to be a fit for me from that perspective because my health is of utmost importance.

Val Selby [00:17:04]:
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. It brings me back so much. That was why I quit being a personal trainer was because I was canceling. My periods were so heavy for 3 to 4 days, and I was canceling 3 to 4 days. And that's not conducive to helping your glenitis. And it was just it was so miserable that I finally got to the point, like you said, of, you know what? This isn't working.

Val Selby [00:17:28]:
What else can I do? So I moved online a lot more at that time and started talking about health stuff, fitness stuff online at that time, just changing directions so that my my mental health was a little bit better. I'm not hating myself because here I am canceling again and these people have paid.

Bethany Corbin [00:17:46]:
And that's what I see so many female founders doing and just women in general, right? They blame themselves for whatever is happening with their bodies, right? And the fact that they had to cancel and they feel like they're letting people down. And for me, it was all about embracing my illness as a superpower, to be honest. This was part of me. This was something that was going to changed my life. And I had the power to use it to change it in a trajectory that I wanted to go rather than having to continually feel bad that I was missing meetings or unable to attend an event, and that put me in a situation where I was feeling bad about myself. 

Bethany Corbin [00:18:21]:
I learned to say, okay, this is part of me. This is my superpower, and I'm gonna find a way to use it to my advantage in a way that's gonna be conducive not only for me, but for clients that I serve in the future.

Val Selby [00:18:31]:
And boy, have you. Boy, have you taken it to, like, way, way up there in the levels. But one thing, listeners, I want you to pay attention to is same thing that we talked about with the kids when they went to college. It's like, just because this is the direction that you thought you were going doesn't mean that's going to be exactly where you end up. It's just you were getting the education In different ways to lead you to right here where you're supposed to be.

Bethany Corbin [00:19:03]:
It's funny because even if you had asked me when I was having my women's health issue, what I would be doing 3 years from then, I would never have said I will be an entrepreneur who's bringing the ecosystem of women's health together. 

Val Selby [00:19:13]:
Hey. You were trying to get better so you can go back to your regular life, right?

Bethany Corbin [00:19:17]:
Exactly. Exactly. It's not something where, like, all of a sudden you have an illness and you say, great, I found my life's purpose now.

Val Selby [00:19:23]:
Right?

Bethany Corbin [00:19:24]:
You know, I feel like even whenever I was going through it, I felt like I should have that light bulb moment, and I didn't. And it's funny. I was like, my light bulb moment is I'm now gonna write a Travel blog. I'm gonna prioritize my life and do that, right? That lasted, like, 6 weeks. So it's okay to not know yet what your illness is trying to teach you or where it's trying to push you to go. But the thing you have to do is just look at it with an open mind and make space for it because eventually it will lead you to the right path. It's just gonna take time for you to figure out exactly what that might look like.

Val Selby [00:19:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of the time, it's talking to people because I'm sure - I wait. Not sure. I'm kind of assuming that maybe this direction wasn't quite what you were doing until you started talking to some people and other women are going, oh, yeah. I I'm on board with that.

Bethany Corbin [00:20:13]:
Exactly. I switched law firms and I was going about my daily business and we would turn away so many founders because they didn't have enough money to hire us for legal services. And one of the things I saw is they would continue to come back to us maybe a year or two later and we'd say, great, here's 10 things you did wrong in the interim. It's gonna cost you more money. And that was actually one of my first light bulb moments when I thought, huh, there's not enough resources out here for female founders, especially early stage female founders. That's kind of the first gap. And then when I started to look into more of the femtech field after my diagnosis, I started to see, okay, we're focused solely on reproductive health.

Bethany Corbin [00:20:53]:
We, A, need to move past that, but, B, why are there so many apps that are using outdated methodologies? And so it was kind of by talking to people, by using experiences in my work that I started to see all these different gaps. And when we put it together, it was just that nobody in this ecosystem was talking to anybody and nobody had brought everybody under one roof. And we thought this is a way where we can make a difference.

Val Selby [00:21:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Oh, I love it. So I noticed, of course, on the website, you are launching in January?

Bethany Corbin [00:21:27]:
We are. So our platform goes live in January. We're so excited about it. Our podcast has been out there for months now, and we've been doing beta testing and that type of thing. But, yeah, January 17th is our launch date.

Val Selby [00:21:40]:
Oh my gosh. So what can people expect with the platform launch?

Bethany Corbin [00:21:46]:
Yes. So we are launching we're calling it our Fem Innovator community. We're prioritizing women who are trying to do health care solutions focused on women's health and female founders because we want you to get access to the resources and the connections you need. So when we launch, we'll have a community. Right now, we're gonna be using Circle for our community where people can join, they get access to expertly created guides, document bundles that they need to get their business off the ground, coaching and 1 on 1 group - 1 on 1 sessions and group coaching, office hours, courses. And then there'll also be a space where we can introduce clinicians to founders, scientists to founders that they can network together, explore ways in which they can partner together. And then one of our key features is we wanna get these products out to the community. And so we are looking to make health care partnerships with larger health care organizations and clinics across the nation where we can help them source the solutions that they're looking for.

Bethany Corbin [00:22:46]:
So for instance, let's say that there's a hospital that wants to have an endometriosis app that's linked to its EMR. We can help them source that through our founders, allow them to apply, and get those partnerships faster. So our whole goal is really to unite everyone on this platform. And we offer really hands on service where we interview everyone before they come on our platform so that we can learn their pain points, so that we can help them get the connections and the resources that they need. And then we're there throughout the process to really help them get their products out to the market faster.

Val Selby [00:23:19]:
Love it. So connection is my superpower, my zone of genius. I just finally found that out. But this year, it was like one of those things going, of course, that's it. Duh. Yeah. So this is 100% that gets me excited because that's what you are all about is connecting all of the parts and all of the people.

Bethany Corbin [00:23:41]:
We are. Exactly. And we'll, of course, have some fun things on the platform too. We'll have some area specific events that will be going on, virtual events that people can come and take part in, a wellness event on Saturdays for founders, book clubs, all the fun stuff as well in addition to the work stuff because we do feel, especially because there are so many female founders in women's health that they forget to take care of their own health sometimes. And so we wanna make sure that we're giving them the space where they can be part of not only a community for their business, but a community for their whole self.

Val Selby [00:24:12]:
Nice. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I have a new PA and, yeah, in December when I see her again, definitely gonna pass this on and to every other one of the doctors and others that I know and non doctors because, I mean, you never know who knows who.

Bethany Corbin [00:24:29]:
Oh, thank you, Val. We would love that. We are so excited for the launch and really can't wait to make this a reality because we feel like if we can expedite these connections and these partnerships, we can make a meaningful change in women's health care that otherwise might take several years to happen.

Val Selby [00:24:45]:
Right. I mean, yeah, the ripples you are gonna make are just huge. So is there anything else that you would like to leave the listeners with?

Bethany Corbin [00:24:54]:
Well, I would just say if you're in entrepreneurship or you're considering entrepreneurship, one of the hardest things is to take the leap or to scale your business to that next level. I think as women, we're oftentimes told we can't do it or we aren't gonna be successful. And I know there are so many fears that chat away in our head that make us second guess ourselves. And I was there. I experienced all of that. And I would just say, we're all here for you, but making that leap will be one of the most fulfilling things you do or scaling your business to that next level, and you absolutely have the power to do that. And if you need somebody to cheer you on and believe in you, let me know because I will be there on the sidelines being a cheerleader for you.

Val Selby [00:25:38]:
Fabulous. And let's also pay attention to the fact that Bethany said, acknowledge that it's your superpower. Because you don't know how it could be changing things for the positive going forward. So I love it. Thank you so much, Bethany. And, yeah, I can't wait to get this shared and start talking to more people I know because it's not gonna be just the women. There's gonna be plenty of men that are gonna be on board with sharing this and getting out there because, I mean, they know a lot of women in their lives that are dealing with stuff.

Bethany Corbin [00:26:10]:
Exactly. We need more men advocates in this space. It's so funny because men hear fem tag and they say, oh, can I be part of that? Is that just women? We need male buy in on this a 100% to make this change.

Val Selby [00:26:23]:
Yeah. And to make it quicker. 

Bethany Corbin [00:26:25]:
Exactly. Yes. 

Val Selby [00:26:23]:
To make it to make it even even quicker. So awesome. Oh my gosh. We - yeah, we could keep going on and on. But thank you so much, Bethany, for not just being here with me, but for also getting this going, it's super important. I mean, 100% important to me because of all the health issues that I have had. So I love that you are doing this and kicking it off, and I can't wait to help support you in it.

Bethany Corbin [00:26:48]:
Thank you so much, Val.