Hello everyone and welcome back to our podcast, The Patients Speak, where we’re combining the business and science innovations of healthcare with the patient voice and how to help them navigate the system to get from diagnosis to wellness faster and more smoothly. Our guest today is Kaitlin McGreyes who is the founder and CEO of a venture called Be Her Village, a gift registry app.
Mark Stinson, host:
Kaitlin McGreyes, founder and CEO of Be Her Village.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
We need to engage with the people we want to help. Put your ego and yourself to the side. The end of the day, we need to build something that people will use and will tell each other about as they experience it.
Mark Stinson, host:
Welcome back, everyone, to our brand new podcast, The Patients Speak. And, you know, we’re combining the business and science innovations of medicine with also the patient voice. What do we hear from the healthcare consumer about how we can innovate and make a wellness journey better, faster, smoother and more productive for everyone? And we’ve got a great story for you today, one that is definitely a technology innovation. But it actually comes from a mom’s experience, her own motherhood journey, her own parenthood, and things that she lived and learned, but then converted this and applied all sorts of exciting technology, and we’re gonna hear all about it. It’s a, it’s a story that builds, so stay with us as we meet Kaitlin McGreyes. Kaitlin, welcome to the program.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Thank you so much, Mark. It is my absolute honor and pleasure to be here-
Mark Stinson, host:
Oh.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
To be able to tell my story.
Mark Stinson, host:
Well, it’s a great story. Kaitlin is the founder and CEO of a venture called Be Her Village. And Be Her Village is a gift registry app. And that, uh, it’s so simplified. I can’t wait to hear all the things that unfolded behind that. And so, Kaitlin, maybe you can describe Be Her Village, the concept behind it?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Absolutely. So, Be Her Village is a gift registry for moms. So, instead of a baby gift registry, we are helping moms get the support that they need when they are welcoming a baby into their families. This is my answer to the overwhelm and the overload of expensive baby stuff, baby clothes, baby gear, baby toys, baby mementos, that new parents get an onslaught of as they have their baby shower, as their baby comes. Um, the traditional baby registries, the big box stores, have perfected the art of convincing parents that they need a whole bunch of stuff, thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff, to be successful parents. And I am countering that with Be Her Village.
I think that instead of all that stuff, we need a little bit of stuff, sure, and we need a whole community of support. We need support during our pregnancy. We need education. We need prenatal care. We need advocacy help. We need doulas. And during our birth and after our birth, we need someone in our community caring for us, whether that’s someone like our neighbor, our friends, our moms, or professionals. Lactation consultants, pelvic floor therapists, maternal mental health providers, postpartum doulas. We deserve, the mothers in this country deserve the care that mothers across the world in the developed world are getting. And, s- so Be Her Village is my way of helping parents access the funds to pay for all of those support providers that insurance is largely not covering right now.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yes. Well, and you say, you know, instead of maybe another onesie or another blanket, if we could provide a lactation consultant, if we can provide some postpartum, uh, mental health support. H- how does it work? How do you make those connections between, uh, the providers of these, some of these services, and the moms who need it?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
That’s such a great question. So, the way it works is we have a growing network of, um, over a thousand providers across the country, in all different categories. And we are telling families, “Hey, you don’t have to know everything there is to know about support. You can come to us and our team will match you up with someone. We’ll do a, a whole consultation, we’ll understand what your needs are, and for free, we will match you up with the providers in our networks, and we’ll help you get your registry set up so that you can get the funds you need to pay for them. And if we don’t have a provider in your area, we’ll help find one in your area, and you can add them to your gift registry.” So, we are the place for parents to come to find the support they need, to learn about what’s available, and then to be connected to them.
Mark Stinson, host:
Mm-hmm.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
And then, what they do is they connect their bank account, and their friends and family are able to gift them funds directly to that support team. So, rather than sending a check for $50 and saying, “Good luck, not really sure what this is for,” and it feels a little-
Mark Stinson, host:
You could probably use the cash.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Feels a little awkward, though, to just be like, “Here’s cash, I guess,” you know? It doesn’t, doesn’t have the warmth of a carefully-selected and intentional gift. And with Be Her Village, you can say, “Hey, I’d really like to support your breastfeeding goals. I’m gonna send you some money for your lactation consultant.” And, “I know how important having a doula is for you. So, here’s some money towards your doula fund.” Or, “I know you want to return to exercise. I know that exercise is a really big part of your mental healthcare. So, I’m gonna support your pelvic floor therapy journey.” Um, there’s something really beautiful about reinventing the village as a village of professionals that we can tap into and get the wisdom from, and get the care into the homes of mothers, and get them connected, um, in a really direct and efficient way.
Mark Stinson, host:
Mm-hmm. And from a business and marketing standpoint, obviously I knew that the baby shower registry, uh, business and market must be huge. But when I read in your profile that there were, well, it’s 12 and a lot of zeroes behind it.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
(laughs)
Mark Stinson, host:
12, 12 trillion dollars?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
It’s 12 billion.
Mark Stinson, host:
Oh, billion.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
It’s 12 billion.
Mark Stinson, host:
Okay. Still, billion.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Which is still an absolutely mind-boggling… It might as well be 12 bazillion. I, I don’t think that’s a real word, but.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s just a big number.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
It’s just a number that’s sort of unfathomable. And it becomes even more unfathomable when you see parents going without support. You know, we have this sort of two-tiered system in our country where people who have thousands of dollars out of pocket are able to line up the support, and the people that don’t have those funds aren’t, and their health outcomes suffer because of it. This is really a maternal healthcare issue. There’s an entire spectrum here, right? We have the world’s worst maternal mortality rate, and it’s rising. But it doesn’t, it’s not just about maternal mortality. There’s a spectrum of care here. We also have horrible PMAD rates. We also have unbelievable birth injury rates.
I mean, there’s just, there’s a lack of care and regard for mothers in general in our country. Um, and I, I feel excited about the idea of using a for-profit company to be able to sort of do this efficiently, and do this without having to go through the red tape of maybe having, you know, government policy change or changing insurance companies and what they’ll cover. There’s just this beautiful way of saying, “Hey, communities. We know you care about your mothers. We know because we see you spending 12 billion dollars a year on them. So, spend it on the right stuff, and we’ll help you get connected to that.”
Mark Stinson, host:
Mm-hmm. And so far, in some of your, uh, success stories and impact, this, as you said, is not just a, you know, sort of, gifting idea. It is a women’s health idea.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Absolutely.
Mark Stinson, host:
And what sort of, you know, impact, personal stories, might you share with us?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
So, it’s been really incredible. The stories are what keep me going every day, to be honest with you. We’ve heard stories from both sides. We’ve heard stories from practitioners, from doulas, from pelvic floor providers, from mental health, uh, practitioners, who are saying, “These clients couldn’t work with me,” or, “These clients were on a payment plan and couldn’t afford me, and they made a registry, and now they’re paying me in full, and they’re able to access my care.” And that’s incredible. That’s incredible to me, to see that the money is being se- spent where it needs to be spent, and that it’s actually increasing access to care. We’re also hearing from our registrants, who are saying, “I got my entire doula paid for. I wasn’t able to afford a doula, but I came here, and then someone bought me my doula.” Or saying, you know, “I didn’t think I was gonna have trouble breastfeeding, but I had the funds from my Be Her Village registry so when my daughter was diagnosed with a tongue-tie and we needed extra support, we could afford these out-of-pocket costs and our breastfeeding journey,” uh, you know, “was actually able to continue.”
And it’s those stories that are so powerful, because this is not, you know, this is not really about the bottom line. This is about help- the bottom line is helping people. And we do. We have a ticker on our website of our exact number of dollars that have been funded to parents. We’re at about $79,000 so far. And it’s so exciting, ’cause every single one of those dollars is a dollar that otherwise would have been spent on some sort of baby gear or baby item that wouldn’t have been as impactful.
Mark Stinson, host:
Mm-hmm. And, on our podcast, we like to think of, you know, we want to make sure we’re amplifying the patients’ voice, in this case, the women’s healthcare consumer voice. Ha- have you had any feedback from the clinical community, whether it’s OBs, nurse practitioners? You know, anyone else in the, I’ll call it the medical side of things. Are you getting the kind of, uh, recognition and awareness that you want from that side?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Absolutely. We are, the midwives, the nurse practitioners, the lactation consultants, the pelvic floor providers. They are so existed that we exist. Because they have been saying, day in and day out, to their own patients, “You need support. You need to think about what happens after the baby comes. You need someone, you need to go get educated about your birth. You need to line your team up.” They know their own limitations. They know that they are there for the amount of time they’re able to be, and they know that they can’t do the full spectrum of support, that it does take a clinical village to support a mother. And so, the people that we’ve been talking to are talking about us, their clients, I can barely keep up with sending out pamphlets and information to their offices, because they’re talking to every single client about Be Her Village, and asking them to make a registry, and directing them to us.
So, the feedback from the clinical community has been really beautiful, because we’re not… In some ways, what we’re doing is groundbreaking, ’cause nobody else has done it. But in other ways, the clinical community and the birth worker community have been talking about this sort of thing forever. They know that what parents need is not all the expensive baby stuff. They know that they need support, and they need support from a multitude of different practitioners.
Mark Stinson, host:
Mm-hmm. And you mentioned this village idea. Now, uh, Be Her Village is also part of a larger ecosystem of parenthood type technologies. Wonder if you could give us a little sense of, you know, the other partners and other technologies and ventures that are a part of this movement?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
So, uh, one of the things we were just talking about is Parenthood Ventures, and we are part of a network of parenthood technology companies that are working to make life better for parents. And it’s really an incredible thing, because parents deserve that attention. Parents are there and we’re struggling, for the most part, quite frankly. And we have problems that need to be solved, and there has been this real, um, awakening. There’s been this, this like, this big, uh, push to solve parenthood problems through tech. And it’s really, really exciting. And I don’t know if it’s, like, because all the tech guys are becoming parents. That might be part of it, right? (laughs)
Mark Stinson, host:
(laughs) There you go. It’s all demographics.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
All of a sudden, they, like, they hit the parenthood age and they’re like, “Wait a second. I need help with this.” Um, but, yeah. There’s, there’s a whole bunch of companies that are working, you know, to help improve technology for, you know, monitoring our babies and for clothing our babies, and for making sure our babies are financially, uh, sound. One of the companies that I absolutely love is called EarlyBird, and it’s actually in a similar vein as Be Her Village. It’s all about gifting parents, uh, investments for their babies. So, instead of buying a baby something that will last, you know, a week, a month, a year, you’re making an investment into their future. And so, we feel like we’re in the exact same vein as that. It’s like, let’s make an investment into the parents, so that the parents can care for their babies. And it’s a beautiful thing to see all these companies coming together and working together to create a new sector, so that we can get investment and we can scale and really reach, um, the people that deserve us and need, um, the impact of our products.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yeah. It brings new meaning to, “There’s an app for that.”
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Yeah. (laughs)
Mark Stinson, host:
All of a sudden, it’s, it’s medically, it’s parenthood-relevant, right?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Yes, exactly.
Mark Stinson, host:
I love that. Well, thinking about, then, partners and collaborators, investors. You know, what sort of support and collaborators are you looking for to build around you and your, uh, technology?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
That’s such a great question. So, one of the biggest parts of this company and where we’ve gotten to it mentorship. I, my background is, I was a special ed teacher that became a mother, and through my own experience of the maternal healthcare system, I was called into doula work. So, I became a doula, and I worked for eight years. I built a whole practice out, a doula mentorship program. I was really excited about being an advocate on the front lines. Um, and when I decided to do something a little bit bigger, I didn’t realize how big, um, and think about how we can make doula care and all those other sorts of supportive, uh, practitioners accessible to every single mom in this country, I realized I would need help, because this was something I had never done before. And so, I have multiple mentors, and in various different, I have a marketing mentor, I have a business mentor.
Um, so I would, I would say that mentorship is such a huge part, um, of any entrepreneur’s journey, and it should be one of the first things. I hired my, or, hired, I found and worked with my mentor, my original mentor, before I hired anybody on my team. Um, so, that’s a really big part of it. And, and of course, I mean, this is sort of, investment and investors, but more specifically like-minded investors are the thing that I, personally, am looking for, where, we, we know that to reach the goals that we have, and they are lofty, big and totally attainable goals, that we’re gonna need an infusion of cash. But we want to be very careful, um, to grow this company with somebody who is a financial partner who understands the mission, um, because that is absolutely the most important thing to me at the end of the day, is making sure we achieve that goal first.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yes. And listeners, if you’re listening to this as a podcast and you didn’t see the video, when Kaitlin said she’s hiring people and did the air quotes around hiring, all of us who have been in a startup know exactly that, uh, emotion behind that word, hiring.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
(laughs) I did not even realize I did that. I love it.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yeah, but you’re definitely building the team. And that’s great.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Yes.
Mark Stinson, host:
And I’m sure there’s listeners who are gonna be interested in learning more and potentially, uh, mentoring or partnering up with you. Where can we learn more about you, and connect with you, and learn about Be Her Village?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Absolutely. So, behervillage.com is the first place you should go. Um, and you can contact me directly through there. There’s a chat function there that goes to my inbox. Or you can reach me at kaitlin@behervillage.com K-A-I-T-L-I-N at behervillage.com I am so excited to speak to the people who feel called to reach out to me after listening to my story. Thank you.
Mark Stinson, host:
Yeah. It’s very powerful. And so, as we think about it, and it’s kind of rewinding the tape here on our conversation, what would you say was the biggest takeaway or call to action you would have for us as we think about motherhood, women’s health initiatives and applying technology?
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
I think what we should take away is that we need to engage with the people we want to help. Because that has been one of my biggest lessons, um, through this. I, I sort of built this in silo, and then introduced it to the community I was trying to help, and learned very quickly that engaging them is the only way, uh, to build something that they want to use. And so, anybody who’s listening, continue those conversations. Let the, the people that you are interested in impacting, uh, be your guide, and be your leader, and put your ego and yourself to the side, and focus on that, um, as your guidepost, because that really is, at the end of the day, we need to build something that people will use and will tell each other about, um, as they, as they experience it.
Mark Stinson, host:
Ah, fantastic. Well, my guest has been Kaitlin McGreyes, and her company is Be Her Village. She’s also part of a consortium, an ecosystem called Parenthood Ventures. Uh, so glad to talk to you, Kaitlin. Enjoyed your inspiring story and your enthusiasm about it.
Kaitlin McGreyes, guest:
Thank you so much, Mark.
Mark Stinson, host:
And listeners, come back again next time. We’re gonna continue our conversations with innovative and creative healthcare leaders, like Kaitlin we talked to today. As they’re looking to respond to and incorporate the patient voice, and the patient’s journey, all to get things faster, smoother, better, and a healthier outcome for their patients and their healthcare consumers. So, come back again. We’ll continue to listen to what healthcare leaders think when they hear the patients speak. Bye for now.
