Out of the Lab, Into Their Hands: Empowering Consumers with Proov | EP. #189 - The E-Comm Show

Episode Transcript
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Amy Beckley (00:03):
And I realized the big medical gap where there was
really no doctor to talk to. Andthis is such a common issue, and
I would see women, couples turnto IVF over and over when they
really didn't need it, or I feltlike they could have done other
things before going into IVF, sowe started offering basically
the solution.

Andrew Maff (01:14):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show. As usual. I'myour host, Andrew Maff, and
today Iam joined by the amazingAmy Beckley, who's the founder
and CEO over at Proov. Amy, howare you doing? You ready for a
good show?

Oh yeah, doing awesome. Now that I'm talking to
you, of course.

Thank you. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Very interesting product line.
Oddly enough, I've hadconversations about this like
dozens of times over the pastlike couple months. So very
excited to get into this andlearn a lot more about it, but I
always like to start these offkind of stereotypically and give
you the floor and just tell us alittle bit about your
background, how you got startedwith prove, and then we'll take
it from there.

Yeah, absolutely.
So my name is Amy, and I have aPhD in pharmacology, so I'm a
definite science nerd. Alwayslived in the lab, and really
want to know everything I couldknow about science and biology
and all that fun things. Andthen I got married and bought a
house and got a dog and wantedto start my family and realized
how little I knew about my ownbody. Even as a scientist, we

(02:12):
struggled to conceive for years.
We ended up having multiplemiscarriages, seven, to be
exact, went through two roundsof IVF, which is very expensive.
And come to find out that it wasvery, very simple hormone
imbalance, that if we have theright tools and education for

(02:36):
women for couples, that it couldhave saved so much so my first
child, two rounds of IVF,$40,000 my second child, $10
generic prescription, naturalintercourse. And that's like the
change. And so I was like,people need to know about this.
We need to, like, educate womenand provide tools to help people

(02:56):
understand because we're justnot taught this in school. There
is no good kind of doctor youcan go to to talk about this
kind of things. So I created acompany and provide diagnostics
to help women conceive, couplesconceive.

Beautiful the so the product line, is it mostly
on the testing side, or is it amix of like, because I know
that's on the testing side, butis it also on the Okay, here are
your results. So here's what youshould take kind of thing, like,
what's the I know there's onlythere's legalities behind what
you can do there, but what'sTell me a little about that?

Yeah, absolutely.
So I started the company yearsago. It was just a test. I'm
like, Oh, that's great. All weneed to do is test and they'll
find the issues. They'll go tothe doctors, the doctor will fix
it. And I realized the bigmedical gap where there was
really no doctor to talk to. Andthis is such a common issue, and
I would see women couples turnto IVF over and over when they

(03:52):
really didn't need it, or I feltlike they could have done other
things before going into IVF. Sowe started offering basically
the solution. So we work withdoctors who can prescribe
fertility medications based offof their test results. We also
have supplements. We realizethat the women are deficient in
this hormone calledprogesterone, and most women are

(04:13):
deficient. 50 to 60% of womenare deficient, especially when
you hit 35 and over, and that'skind of what we're seeing. Is
women are waiting longer toconceive because we're building
careers, building our bankaccounts, like, you know,
getting all the ducks in a rowlike, and then we're 35-36
before we're starting, you know,to build our family. And at that

(04:34):
point, your hormones aredeclining. And so what can we do
to help women, educate themabout this hormone, support this
hormone, and just help themboost their chance of
conceiving. So we have differentkind of supplements or medical
interventions depending on kindof which way they want to go.

Interesting, and so your background basically gave
you the skill set to startcreating these tests and then
taking them to market, I assume,

Yeah, yep.

Interesting. So what was it like? Obviously,
you've grown to a good sizeseven figure business. It's not
anything anyone's gonna laugh atanymore. It's a it's a good
position. You're like, what wasit like in the beginning?
Because it's not a common thing,that there wasn't a lot of
education around it, like youmentioned. And so if you're

(05:24):
bringing something new to themarket, and you've got to
educate the consumer on this,like, how did you do that? Was
there certain channels youleaned in on? Like, I know, and
correct me. I'm wrong. Thebusiness is, the business is
primarily e commerce, correct?

Yes, yeah, we're, like, almost 100% e commerce. We
sell at CVS and Walgreens, butthat's maybe like 3% three to 5%
of our sales. The rest is ecomm.
You know, I didn't know whathell I was doing. To be honest,
I'm the scientist that lived inKansas at the time, and had no
idea just that I wanted tocreate this solution. So I did

(05:56):
the only thing I knew how to do,which was to launch a
crowdfunding campaign where itwas like, here's what I want to
invent. If you give me the moneyto invent it, I will invent it
and give it to you. That wasbasically, you know, and I went
to Facebook groups where there'sthese communities of women
talking about troublesconceiving and tracking their
cycle and all this, this. And Ijust said, Hey, I have this

(06:18):
product. Do you want to, youknow, come fund it, buy it. And
that's kind of where we got ourinitial traction and our initial
funding to kind of launch ourprototypes. From there, we sold
on Amazon. It was just almostlike a out of the box solution,
where all you had to do is takeyour inventory, slap an FBA
label on it, stick it overthere, and you didn't have to

(06:40):
build a website. You didn't haveto think about SEO or anything.
It was like, kind of like a outof the box marketing platform,
so to speak. Yeah.

And so that's where you started, on the Amazon.
Sorry, started. Yeah, yeah.
Interesting. So what point? Oh,wow. So what? What point did you
realize? Like, okay, now weshould venture into doing our
own D2C side.

We did have a relationship with our consumer
on Amazon. And when you're doingsomething as personal as
fertility tracking and hormonetracking and as confusing as
this, and there's no education,you you want to build a
community. You want to build asupport system, and that's what
we were lacking. And people justgot frustrated because they

(07:27):
didn't understand the product.
And it was like, well, just cometo me, and I will tell you, and
we'll go through this. And then,you know, we started launching
or selling on our own website,and we were able to do that. We
were able to sell, you know,send them information and videos
and educational things throughemail. Eventually we launched
into an app. So the app nowreads the test records, it adds
additional information, and sowe've just been able to build a

(07:50):
better product and a betterconsumer experience by moving as
much of it as possible off ofAmazon and into our own D2C
site.

Do you do anything like, in terms of, I guess, like
community building and keepingconversation going amongst the
community like, I know,especially in scenarios like
this, like I had mentioned, Ihad a friend of mine, they went
years trying to conceive similarissues. I have. My wife's got a
couple friends that are havingthe same problem right now. My

(08:22):
sister's got a friend. Got afriend's got to, like, it's all
I feel like I've been told forthe past, like, several months,
and I know that they're all veryfrustrated. And, you know, it's
very expensive, to your point,to go through all those tests
and to go through IVF, and, youknow, sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't, you know,do it again, like it's a
process. And I can imagine howfrustrating is, which usually
means, like, there's a communitythat kind of wants to help each

(08:44):
other work through those thingsand give them insight into like,
Hey, here's what worked for meand things like that. Do you do
anything to kind of keep themall in one area?

Yeah, Yeah. We have a Facebook community where
people can go and, hey, this ismy test results. Or I have this
question or that question, andwe have employees in there that
are moderating and helpingsupport the product and answer
questions. So it's not like myquestion went off into nowhere
and nobody answered it. Butyeah, it's not something that
people normally want to talkabout. I mean, people feel very

(09:16):
ashamed at inability to conceivethat they don't want to talk to
the people that are closest tothem, as they would rather
confine in, or have a communitywhere people don't know who they
are, and they can kind of bemore more open about it. I think
the people that don't want to dothat, they tend to think like,

(09:39):
oh, I'm going to try by myself,and then I'm gonna go do IVF,
and that's like, the onlyoptions I have, and that's what
we kind of want to breakthrough. And so I love the fact
that your friends and family aretalking about this, that they're
telling you that they'restruggling. That's like this
first step, where it's like,first step is admitting you have
a problem, and then you can getresources and can. Community

(10:00):
support, because typical health,health insurance, health care,
just basically says try byyourself when you're at that
point of desperation, will drainyour bank account with this
thing called IVF. It is veryfrustrating when you know 50% of
couples that go to IVF don'tneed IVF. That's a crazy stat. I

(10:20):
mean, we're just, jeez, so manyother things that we can do

That's that is a crazy statistic, and that is
very sad, so also with that. Soone of the things that, I guess,
this kind of positions you in iskind of that more like, I guess,
you would refer to as a consumerhealthcare versus, like, your
traditional healthcare. Like, Iknow consumers are kind of
taking a lot more action thanthey used to years and years

(10:47):
ago. Is that kind of where yousee the industry going? How do
you what's your thoughts onthat?

Yeah, I mean, we're a medical device. We're FDA,
cleared, clear, waived. Like, wecould have gone straight to
doctors offices and been like,this is a medical test. Let's
get it, you know, billed underinsurance, all that stuff. But
the problem was, women don'thave access to those positions,
and it's like, how is this goingto move society forward? And so
we went the direct to consumerroute, which is consumer health

(11:13):
care. Now it's completely cashpay. Insurance doesn't cover it.
It's like, you have to pay forit yourself. And it's kind of a
hard thing to do, but I thinkthat's the right thing to do. I
mean, consumers have to beeducated about themselves in
order to get the righttreatment. It's not healthcare
anymore. It's consumer facinghealthcare. I mean, you see all

(11:37):
these GLP1s, you see that ro thehims and hers like people want
healthcare to come to them,they're paying out of pocket to
get a better, quicker servicethan basically going to a doctor
that they don't know what theirbackground is, their education,
what they would do, andpotentially being turned away or
put on a six month waiting listor being told, Hey, your only

(11:59):
option is IVF. People aren'tthey're not, like, settling for
stuff like that. They're like,No, I'm gonna figure it out
myself. I'm gonna advocate. AndI always say, you know, to have
the best healthcare experience,you've got to know yourself.
You've got to advocate. You'vegot to have knowledge. Because
if you go in there and you knownothing, you're relying on them

(12:20):
to tell you, and they might nothave had the right background
and education. I mean, there'sso much science and there's so
much stuff to learn. It's asingle human, right? We put so
much weight and pressure ondoctors, but they are humans.

Yeah, very good point. The one of the things I'm
interested in, because it'salways, it's my background, so
it's always what I end up askingquestions on the marketing side,
how do you market this? Whatchannels are you using? What's
the messaging? Because I knowit's a sensitive topic, so it's,
you know, those are always veryinteresting in terms of

(12:55):
messaging, like, what's what hasbeen that approach so far?

Yeah, so we use the big one. So we use Amazon,
Google meta, although not somuch meta anymore, because they
change their policies that weare not allowed to track
conversions on their platform.
So who does health care can'ttrack conversions and so, like,
we'll let you track clicks.
We're like, Okay,

Thanks, Zuck.

Yeah, yeah. But the messaging is really about, you
know, conception takes, youknow, a sperm and egg for them
to meet and then implant in theuterus in order to conceive. And
everybody's focusing on timing.
They're using their, you know,their period tracker apps.
They're using these fertilewindow monitors to time this
intercourse they're missing. Dothey even have eggs? Do their

(13:43):
hormones balance? Do they haveenough hormone to create that
good uterine lining to supportimplantation? Like there's all
this other stuff that's missing,that stuff that's missing, if we
can monitor and correct that foryou and optimize ovulation, that
would prevent you from having todo fertility treatments, and
that's kind of the messaging is,you know, did you know

(14:03):
implantation is required forpregnancy? You know, track more
than the fertile window. You'rethree times more likely to get
pregnant than for women, trackyour entire cycle, not just the
fertile window. And so we'rekind of letting women know that
it's not sufficient to justtrack when they're having
intercourse, but there's so manyother things they need to know
about to have that, like, youknow, that optimized chance of

(14:27):
conception?

Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of
education that goes into it,right? Like, there's a ton of
stuff we've already talked aboutso far, and you mentioned only a
little bit of your business isgoing into retail. Are you
thinking of leaning more intothe retail side, or do you think
that that level of education iskind of becoming a little bit of
a barrier to entry?

Yeah, so we so I think the education is a
barrier, and it's not a barrierto entry, it's a barrier to
product satisfaction. So we haveseveral products, and the one we
sell at retail, we only sell atretail. And so if they go into
retail and they pick up the boxlike they're learning everything
they can, you know, at theshelf, whatever's in the box,

(15:13):
whatever the app says, theystruggle through the testing
protocol. They don't understandit. They feel lost, and they
just are so, so confused,whereas, if they were to buy it
on our website or even onAmazon, you know, they read the
listing, they read the reviews,they read all this stuff,
they're more prepared to takethe test and know what it means

(15:34):
than the ones that just pickedit up off the store. So it's
just one of those products andit's just it takes a lot of
education, and you almost needthat education before you start
to use a product. Otherwise youdon't see the value or you don't
understand it, and then if youdon't understand the product,
then why would you ever buy itagain or find it helpful? So we

(15:56):
actually see E commerce as thebest channel for this product.

That makes sense, and that also explains why the
Amazon side was a little bit ofa struggle because of there's
only so much you can educate onthere as well. Are you still
available on Amazon?

Yes, yeah. I mean, I wish I could get off the
Amazon drug. But in the world offertility testing, everybody
will tell you they just want onecycle at a time, they are going
to get pregnant that month. AndI we really, really wish they
get pregnant that month, but ifnot, they're waiting until the
last possible moment to buysupplies for the next month. And

(16:32):
when you do that, then you needthe Prime shipping. So you need
it there in a couple days,because you're going to start
testing really, really soon thenext cycle. And so just the
Amazon fulfillment network hasbeen extremely helpful in
building the business. So wefind other ways around it. Our
testing requires the use of theapp, and so the app you have to

(16:53):
log in, we get you know. We caneducate you. We can show you our
Facebook community. We canconnect you with the Customer
Support Center, and so we'reable to kind of pick them up. Be
like, you're not here alone. Ifyou have any questions, we'll
get you through this. It's muchbetter than just, like, here's
some test strips that you takeinto your bathroom and like, you
throw away.

Yeah, interesting.
Have you looked at was itAmazon's MCF? And just let them
handle fulfillment foreverything, so that you can just
do two day shipping across theboard. I know sometimes, like
price points, it doesn't makesense.

So MCF is not the same thing as prime. MCF is more
like a 3PL in the pricing. Primeis its own beast. And you get,
actually get much faster. So MCFis just normal, three, five day.
And if you want, like, thefaster shipping you pay the
faster shipping, like you wouldat a 3PL.You don't get, like,

(17:47):
prime rates. And I don't knowwhy, the only thing I can think
of is that they offset the theFBA costs with the memberships
for the people ordering it aswell as you know, for the
pleasure of selling on Amazon,they get 15% of all my sales,
and so there's that extra, likeinflux of money coming in,

(18:08):
whereas, if you're selling onyour D2C site, you don't, they
don't see that extra revenue.

Yeah. Gotta love Amazon. Are you? Yeah, they did
tell me about it. They so toyour point, you know they're,
they think they're gonna getpregnant right away, if they
could awesome, but chances are,it's kind of an ongoing process
for a little while. What happenspost that, right? Like, are you,

(18:34):
is there anything I know youmentioned you have some
supplements, anything like that.
But Do you do anything to, like,increase the lifetime value of
that customer, or is it kind ofmore of like, Hey, we're here
for you during this time of yourlife. And then, you know, we're
glad we could help. Good luckwith your new kid.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we've been in the
fertility space for a long time,and we started to realize that
these hormone imbalances thatwere causing infertility are the
same hormone imbalances thatwomen have as they're going
through perimenopause, or ifthey have symptoms of PCOS or
endometriosis or anything else,as we kind of step back, we're

(19:12):
like, okay, there's this finiteperiod of time that women are
trying to conceive, which youknow they need us for. But how
do you grow a bigger businessand cater to more women, because
85% of women have a hormoneissue, heavy periods, painful
periods, PMS, endometriosis,PCOS, perimenopause, all these
things affect women, and it'shormone driven, and there's no

(19:36):
good way to understand yourhormones to help you find the
right solutions and have ahealthy period and feel your
best. And so we started, kindof, you know what? How else can
we provide this service towomen? And so we launched a test
called empower, and what it'sdesigned to do is for women over
the age of 35 they can monitorhormones every week and see how

(19:59):
they fluctuate. We map them towhat optimal hormones are and
what you know, what symptomsthey have, and we just educate
them like, Hey, you're havingthese hot flashes because you
have no estrogen. Hey, you'rewaking up at 3am and having
brain fog because yourprogesterone is in the toilet.
And this is just educationknowledge that they have where

(20:19):
they can say, Oh, I don't havethis and I have this symptom.
Now, what can I do? Maybe I wanthormone replacement. Maybe I
want supplements to help my bodymake more progesterone. And so
how do we kind of use this ideaof imbalanced hormones to create
a platform for all women tounderstand it? So that's kind of
where we're headed in thefuture.

And it's very cool.
I mean, if you think about overthe past, like, I don't know how
long, long been out now, butlike, over five years, like, you
get the wearable technology,which is now everyone's
monitoring a lot more abouttheir health than they used to.
Then you have, like, the otherend of the spectrum, which is,
like, your functional medicinedoctors that just have, they'll
test you for everything underthe sun and help you figure out
different nutritional things andall that fun stuff. So, like,

(21:02):
it's very interesting to see howto your point, like, consumer
healthcare is really leaning intowards, like, everyone's
getting more information andmaking their own decisions based
off of being able to run thesetests to figure out what's going
on, because healthcare is sowildly expensive.

I mean, we have to, I mean, the number of people
that have been like, gaslit orwent to the wrong doctor, didn't
have the right education, youknow, people are just tired of
feeling tired or not feelingwell, and so the only thing they
really have is, like, if I haveto advocate, I have to track it
myself, I have to kind of takethat step forward. Otherwise

(21:40):
it's just not gonna happen. I'mjust gonna feel crappy, and
people just don't want that.

Yeah. Amy, this was awesome and very enlightening.
Super appreciate it. I don'twant to take up any much more
time. I know you're super busy.
I'd love to give you the floorlet everyone know where they can
find out more about you, and, ofcourse, more about Proov.

Yeah, the best source of information is our
website. So it's proovtest.comP, R, O, O, V, test.com
definitely sign up for ouremails. You get a free e book,
either on the fertility side orthe perimenopause side. And then
we're also we're on Amazon.
We're in Walgreens, CVS, whichis the fertility kits. We're on
Facebook. Proov test. We have abig user group, even if you want

(22:23):
to learn about the products andask questions without actually
being a user yet, it's greatplace. We're on Instagram.
Pillars are educationempowerment. So always here to
support women. And we actuallyhave men, men stuff too. So we
came to this realization thatwomen are putting the blame on
themselves, and it's like, oh,it's always me, I'm the one that

(22:46):
has hormone issues, or I'm theone that has to control the
timing or whatever. And men werejust going off scot free,
untested, when 30% of the timeit's their problem, you know,
and something going on withthem. So we offer a hers and his
kit that includes a male testthat makes it, I dare to say,
fun to get your fertility test,because it's a little

(23:09):
microscope. You collect yoursample at home, put on this
little microscope. It shows youthis video of the the
littlesperm. Men love it. Theybecome more compliant because
they don't have to go to a dirtydoctor's office and do what you
know need to do to collect asample. They can stay at home.
They can watch this really coolvideo. And so it's just been a

(23:32):
game changer that men are comingto the table and getting tested
as well, because there's a lotof things men can do too.
There's supplements, there'smedications, low sperm. So
there's this thing calledSpermaggedon. I don't know if
you've heard about this, no, butby the by 2027, there's supposed
to be no more sperm in theworld. Projecting is because the

(23:54):
the sperm rates, theconcentrations, are decreasing
at such a large rate that theyfollow this all the way down to
zero, and it's like 2027 whichis no, sorry, 2047 2047 sorry.

Still!

Yeah, I mean, that's like 20 years from now.
It's like, yeah, and that'sscary, you know? It's just,
there's like microplastics,there's stress, there's older
men conceiving now, justpollution, there's vaping,
there's just all this bad stuff.
It's not good for our fertility.

Jeez. Crazy, crazy, crazy, Amy. Thank you so much
for joining us today. Reallyappreciate it. Of course,
everyone that tuned in, thankyou as well. Please make sure
you do the usual thing, ratereview, subscribe all that fun
stuff, on whichever podcastplatform you prefer, or head
over to the Ecomm show.com tocheck out all of our previous
episodes. But as usual, thankyou for joining us. See you all
next time. Have a good one!

Narrator (24:55):
Thank you for tuning in to the Ecomm Show. Head over
to Ecommshow.com to subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform
or on the Bluetusker YouTubechannel. The Ecomm Show is
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(25:17):
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Out of the Lab, Into Their Hands: Empowering Consumers with Proov | EP. #189

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Out of the Lab, Into Their Hands: Empowering Consumers with Proov | EP. #189