The Trailblazers Experience Podcast

EP85 From Clinic to Code: Kirsten’s Digital AI Revolution building Conceivable

• Ntola • Season 5 • Episode 85

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In this episode , Kirsten Karchmer shares her inspiring journey from running a fertility wellness clinic to founding Conceivable, a digital platform aimed at making fertility care more accessible and affordable. She discusses the importance of understanding the menstrual cycle, the role of AI in healthcare, and the need for emotional support in fertility journeys. Kirsten emphasizes the value of mentorship, the significance of trust and truth in leadership, and offers practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in the health tech space. The conversation highlights the challenges and triumphs of building a startup while advocating for women's health and empowerment.
Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:35 Kirsten's Journey: From Literature to Fertility Care
03:29 Facing Challenges: The Impact of MS on Kirsten's Life
07:21 Understanding the Menstrual Cycle: A Key to Women's Health
10:01 Insights from Working with Fertility Patients
15:12 The Birth of Conceivable: Bridging the Gap in Fertility Care
18:41 Leveraging AI for Women's Health
21:14 Emotional Support in Fertility Journeys
26:03 Building Conceivable: Lessons in Entrepreneurship
31:09 Transforming Women's Healthcare
31:45 Values in Leadership
33:43 The Future of Women's Health
34:39 Building a Business with Impact
36:06 The Importance of Effectiveness
37:15 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
38:06 Leveraging Outsourcing
39:47 Starting Small and Iterating
41:39 Utilizing Social Media for Validation
43:59 The Role of AI in Business
44:35 The Joy of Mentorship
47:12 Building a Strong Team
48:30 The Need for Mentorship
51:55 10X Thinking for Growth
53:19 Trailblazer Takeaway Tips

Find Kirsten 

Linkedin Kirsten Karchmer | LinkedIn

Instagram The Fertility Experts (@conceivable.official) 

www.conceivable.com



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The Trailblazers Experience:

So welcome to another episode of the Trailblazers Experience Podcast, a podcast where we have candid conversations with women sharing their career journeys. Today is no other, my next guest is Kirsten. And I'm just going to read a bit of her bio here because I always feel at the beginning of the podcast we need to big up our guest. She is the founder and CEO of Conceivable, a modern digital platform transforming fertility care. Make it more effective, affordable, and accessible. With a community of over 400,000 engaged women, Kirsty's work is redefining what inclusive science-backed care looks like. Kirsten, welcome to the podcast.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm I'm excited. I mean, I love all things trailblazing. So, you know, your show is always such a source of inspiration, even for me, because, you know, like building whatever you're building can be extremely lonely, you know? And you think that everything that's happening to you is only happening to you when really it's happening to almost all of us who are trailblazing in whatever way we are.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah. I think that's a that's that's why I started the podcast because I wanted to get beyond what was on LinkedIn. What we can see in someone's highlight reels, actually, how did you get there? Actually, how does it feel? What have been your challenges? Do you have any highs and lows? Um, is anything you would have done differently? So, on the basis of that, let's start with your journey, just researching about you as well. You ran one of the largest fertility wellness clinics in North America. What inspired you to pivot from hands-on care to building a digital platform? What was that moment? And maybe we go back as to, you know, what you actually studied, what what you actually wanted to be growing up? Is this what it's pivoted to that moment? Let's start from there. There have been many pivots.

Kirsten Karchmer :

There have been many pivots. I'm just a very curious person, and I I've always been driven by two things service. Like I just really like to help people. It makes me feel really happy in any way. Service and impact. And so that can show up in a lot of different ways, you know. Like you can have many different jobs and be able to fulfill sort of those what Dan Sullivan would say, unique abilities. So anyway, so you know, I I love languages. And when I went to college, I had no idea what to study. Um, I really loved literature and reading. So I was like, well, I guess I'll get a job and I'll I'll get a degree in English literature. Great classics. And my father, who did not go to college, he was like, What in the hell? We need a marketable skill here. Literature, you just go fucking hang out at the library all day. That was the red flag, right? He was like, Are you sure? He's like, This isn't gonna do shit. We're I'm not because my dad paid for my education. He was like, I'm not paying for like you to go read books that you can just get at the library. What the fuck? This is we're not doing this. So then I double majored in French. Still, he's like, What are you gonna do? And I said, Dad, companies need people who know how to communicate. And he, you know, he didn't buy that at all. I ended up getting a master's degree in linguistics and um was teaching at UT and then got diagnosed with MS. And I was very sick. I I couldn't, I was a competitive gymnast my whole life when I was growing up, so I trained a lot. I looked very healthy on the outside, but then suddenly, you know, in my early 20s, I couldn't walk. I was dropping things all the time. I started using a cane, I was sleeping all the time.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And I'm a massive pivot, isn't it? Because I I'm into my sports and it's all about discipline. It's it's your whole world. So if you were a gymnast before and then you you are confronted with this with diet this diagnosis, what did that mean for you?

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, it meant everything. I mean, the first it's interesting because I probably first started having symptoms when I was probably 18. I'm not that good with the past, you know, rarely know what happened when in the past. I'm a just a future person. Yeah. But what I do remember because, you know, I was pivoting to tennis there in, you know, my old like as I was getting older, and I was just serving the ball. And every time I served, the racket would fly out of my hands. And and you know, in Texas where I live, it's very hot in the summer. Your hands sweat a lot. It's not uncommon for you to serve sometimes and just lose the racket. But that might be like once a month, maybe. And it happened like three times in a row. And I was like, I could tell I just couldn't hold on to the racket strongly enough to not throw it. And it was so disturbing. I put my tennis racket in my trunk and then, you know, I played tennis every single day. Every single day. I didn't play tennis for like three months because I just knew like something, I don't know, I can't, I'm not ready to go there, you know. So it was really hard. But that, you know, I ended up going and seeing an acupuncturist. And, you know, at that point, the drugs for MS were very new, and I was kind of afraid to start on any medications that weren't had any long longitudinal studies yet. And my friend sort of forced me into seeing this acupuncturist, which I was very resistant. I was like, acupuncture is shit. Like, that's never gonna do anything. That's like going to a psychic. I have a real disease, blah, blah, blah, you know. And she's like, you know, just shut up and quit bit being such a jerk.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And what's the worst that can happen, isn't it? Yeah.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, yeah. And she's like, the the worst thing it happened is maybe you get 10% better. That's really literally like if it helps a little bit. She goes, it will help some, I promise. So I go and see this acupuncturist, and he just said something to me that was so profound, it changed my whole life that one moment. So I was sitting there and he's like, Look, when you were born, your body was really strong. Not like gymnasts strong, like your constitution was very robust and your disease was very weak. So high on the, you know, body was strong, disease was very nascent. Because people, you know, well, anyways, well, I won't go there. So so I he said, but then you were a gymnast and you trained in a hot Texas gym hours and hours and hours until you threw up almost every single day of your childhood. And so what happened was is on the outside your body looked healthier. But on the inside, you know, you threw up after every workout, you were super lean, you didn't have a period anymore, you were really tired all the time. But those signals, you didn't read, pay attention to any of those signals. So you kept training, you kept getting weaker, you kept training, you kept throwing up more, you kept training, you kept needing more and more sleep, kept having more diarrhea, you know. And he's like, until like you turned 18 years old, and then it started really coming in your mind. I should just train hard. If I'm weak, I should train harder, right?

The Trailblazers Experience:

Which is the default, isn't it? How we how we are as people.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah. Yeah. And he said, but your nervous system was so blown out, your energy was so blown out. There's no resource to modulate the immune system. So what our job is, is to rehabilitate the inside of your body. Again, this is not like Instagram, not running ultramarathons. This is rehabilitating the nervous system, the energy and the blood and the hormones. And he goes, and if we do it right, there's a good chance that you'll either have significant reduction in your symptoms or even go into remission. And then I did. I was in remission for almost 30 years. It wasn't like people say, oh, MS, you know, acupuncture cured your MS, not at all. MS helped me to basically modulate the situation and stay pretty close to being in remission. So I could still like, if I'm not sort of working how I take care of myself that I know my body responds well to, you know, I start drinking more, staying up late, you know, just doing things that just running too hard, not listening, I'll start having some early symptoms like a little bit of vision changes or a little can feel weak in my face. Those are very, very early winks, like, hey, something's about to happen. And then, you know, I dial it back down.

The Trailblazers Experience:

So he basically taught you how to listen to your body and to just rebuild from from within. Is that what led you to become a reproductive acupunctureist?

Kirsten Karchmer :

It is. So it was a long, there's just not a short way to tell that story and to get the whole picture. It I mean, that day that he explained that to me, it just made such perfect sense. And I was like, this is like chess. It's very simple to learn, but very hard to implement. And and and as I my co-pilot just told me.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Well, I love this. I had that on another podcast when the dog was sleeping underneath. We always love that. There's always there's always an audience member.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yes, yes. Well, I heard her, I could hear her just very quietly, like, hey, pay attention to me. Yeah. So in that moment, I was like, I gotta I need to learn about this. Like this could this could really why doesn't everybody know this? Why doesn't every person, like not even acupuncturist, know how this system works? And I had already taken a job in Korea and so had a commitment there. So I went and spent my year in Korea. It was amazing. And then when I came back, I started acupuncture school. And then once I got to acupuncture school, I fell in love with the menstrual cycle. I know that's the weirdest thing anybody's ever said, probably on your show. But the reality is why why did you what was the fascination or the curiosity with that? You know, just historically, every woman relates with her period is a curse, right? It's the worst thing. It's it's you know, it makes us less than, it's filthy, we should be embarrassed about it. But what I saw was that every single thing that happens in your period, and then your period meaning from day one until you're done bleeding, that's a whole cycle, gives us so much robust diagnostic information that can help us to understand almost every health problem a woman has. So the days like between periods, the amount of cervical discharge, the color of cervical discharge, the thickness or the wateriness of the cervical discharge, the intensity, the types of PMS symptoms she has, the days of bleeding, the volume of blood, the color of blood, the clotting, the amount of pain, where the pain happens, what happens when the and so on and so on. All of those things are little red flags that if we look at them as a whole system, we can actually get a very clear picture of what's going on with a few symptoms of what's going on with a woman's, like if she's struggling in any way, health-wise, whether it's related to her fertility, PCOS, if she's got prediabetes, you know, any chronic health condition, you can use the menstrual cycle as a starting point to start seeing, like, you know, what in the world is going on here? What should we start? What's the foundational pieces that we should start optimizing and see if this gets better or not?

The Trailblazers Experience:

I mean, that is so interesting because I know that you've worked with thousands of couples facing infertility. Now it's all coming full circle just hearing you talk. What patterns or insights emerge that most people don't talk about? Is it all rooted in in how you fell in love with the with the menstrual cycle and and the female organ as as it is?

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, I think that it um you know, so in my clinic, you know, we saw about four or five fertility patients an hour. So two to three hundred fertility patients a week. And because the foundation of Chinese medicine is patterns. So they always say you're never treating anything like infertility or PCOS, you're always treating everything, which would be infertility, PCOS, insulin resistance, bad sleep, wrong exercise, you know, whatever. And the main things that we saw happening was that basal body temperatures are actually really important, taking your temperature in the morning first when you wake up, not only for predicting ovulation. You don't actually need to predict ovulation, we can talk about that later, but actually your temperatures after ovulation give us a very good indicator of how much progesterone you're making. Now it's not perfect, it's not like it's you can't tell from your temperatures, like if your temperatures average 98.1 after ovulation, your progesterone is this. No. But you can tell that there is plenty of progesterone every single day of that second half of the cycle. Another thing is the biggest one is that most people are really fatigued. They're exhausted. And even more, isn't it? Yeah, and the question that we ask to determine that number, so we try to get the cleanest number is that we ask people on a one to ten, if you haven't had any exercise or caffeine for two whole days on the third day, what would your energy be like? And and we interviewed about 16,000 women last year, and only eight percent of women said that their energy was eight, it was uh eight. Fi 50% said their energy was five or below.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I mean, you say last week was World Mental Health Day, and I'm a mental health first aider, and I lead a running group on a Wednesday where it's all about it's a 5k, but it's for people to get together and have just somewhere to be. So you can talk during the run, you can, you can share, you cannot share. And I always say you never know what people are going through. There's so many stories which I'd I'd love to share, but it's even just women and men, that stat that you've just brought about just tells us about how much we are just internalizing as women.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I think it's so complicated because, you know, if you go to Instagram, you get messages that, and I love Instagram, right? I'm not, and I'm, you know, TikTok too, but you get a lot of visual cues as a woman of how you're supposed to look and how you're supposed to be working out and what a good woman, you know, like all these like insertions of values. And so one thing is women aren't, I don't think it's as easy to establish your own values. Like what is important to you? There's a lot of external pressure to, you know, have certain stuff, to have your house look a certain way. And then what that does is that drives harder working, double jobs. Then they're like, but I have to be super fit too. Then they're getting up at four o'clock in the morning to exercise, and then, you know, and then they're like, but I don't have time to do anything. So then they're eating all these protein shakes, you know, and you know, just becomes this cascade. And then at the same time, there's only one way that generally women can be in society, and that's this like happy and agreeable. And if we're not, right, if we're mad, we're a bitch, and if we're sad, we're a baby. So it takes a lot of energy to keep just a happy face and be eating shit all day long, you know, just putting up with whatever, you know, not being able to really express yourself. And so I think it's a real compounding of effect. And I think that also there's a lot of misinformation about what's a healthy diet. You know, like women will tell me, like, what do you believe about, you know, how, you know, a vegan diet for fertility? And I said, it's not about beliefs. Just look at the data. Women who eat a vegan diet are 70% less likely to get pregnant than men who have omnivore. I'm still very plant forward. Like I was telling my doctor, daughter, because, you know, I was like, want to really discourage people from being full vegans. And because it's really hard to fix like the side effects on women's health of being a vegan for a long time. But as I'm getting older, I'm really losing interest in meat. And I told my daughter last night, I said, Oh my God, I think I'm gonna become a vegan. And she's like, I can't believe you just said that. And I said, Well, I'm postmenopause. I don't need all that blood.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I mean that's it. You've lived a life, isn't it? You've built, you've built the nutrition, the fuel in your body. So if you decide to pivot now, it's, you know, it's actually okay. But if you're starting off as a vegan in your in your teens, and you know, like you said, most people don't understand what nutrients, what supplements they'll then need in addition to make up for that deficit. And that's the challenge that we're having out there, isn't it?

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah. Well, and it's truthfully, I would actually never be a vegan because I don't think that most it's too hard. Like it's in and I like cheese and things like that. But meat, I just maybe just like I think for me it's more about like just following like what I'm craving, but then also paying attention to the symptoms, right, that give us indication because mostly, you know, red meat for in small amounts can be very beneficial. It has, you know, especially if it's grass-fed.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Now we have gone around, you've talked about your passions and what led you to acupuncture, and just the amount of data that you've amassed in your day-to-day jobs. What was the moment that you then said, right, conceivable needs to be built, this is needed.

Kirsten Karchmer :

So a study was published in 2015 that showed that less than 3% of couples could afford fertility treatments. That means 97% of people who want to have families who are struggling will not have access to all the resources that they need. And I literally cried when I read that study. I felt so ashamed because I had been bragging about, oh, I treated over 10,000 infertile couples. And I was really proud of that. And then it goes to show you how perspective can change everything. And then I was like, I haven't done shit. Like, I have done some good work, but that is not I cannot just I can't be okay with that. And so I had this high, you know, I was like, I wonder if I could build some technology that would even be 50% as good as me, but be like a hundredth the cost of in vitro fertilization, just like almost free. And so over the last seven years, I've been building this algorithm, which is basically a digital twin of me. So it's an AI version of me with a virtual care team. So who helps me is, you know, the users using the conceivable app, they get uh a data scientist so that whenever you're using fitness trackers or fertility monitors, it gives you all this information, but it doesn't tell you what it means, and more importantly, it doesn't tell you how to fix it. Like, oh, your PGD is 14.7, your LH is not. It's not the stopped, it's just there, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And people are like, but I need to know my hormones, like, okay, and then what? And like, but I and then I was like, I know, but then what? Then what do you do? How will you change it? And how will you know if it's working or not? To me, if that doesn't do that, it's completely useless. So, and because all of conceivable is looking at the whole picture. It actually can't, if it says, why is my progesterone low? It can't answer that question. It can only tell you what's wrong with the system, why you have low progesterone. So it can't say, oh, you don't have enough B12. Actually, it doesn't care about that. It's like, well, your energy is a two, you only get four hours of sleep at night, very stressed during the day, you're exhausted, and you drink coffee all day to avoid that, which is making your sleep even harder. Then that's messing up your hormones, your ghrelin and leptin, so you're starving all day, right? That's why your progesterone is low. That culmination of all those things producing not enough energy to raise the temperatures to produce the progesterone.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And helps you come up with the call to actions, isn't it, as a person to say, okay, this is what I need to change.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Exactly. And often it's very funny because we give them a to-do list. We, you know, they get a chef, they get a nutritionist. So based on they do an interview with me, it's like survey now, but collects all the data, then it the app finds all the underlying issues that are contributing to whatever's going on. You can have PCOS endometriosis, PMDD, and infertility. Again, she's not going to work on any of those, she's gonna work on just the foundation, but you start to fix that foundation and all of those problems are going to get better. And so you get custom menu plans, you can you can track what you're eating by either saying I ate what was in my menu or just take a picture of it. She can analyze your tongue. She has a the AI acupuncturist. So you, if you're going to acupuncture and your acupuncturist has questions about your case, she can talk to her, all of that.

The Trailblazers Experience:

But and it's all within the app itself. That is such a really good use case for AI for good, isn't it? Because um I've been attending so many conferences and sitting on panels talking about, you know, AI and personalization and what it means. And one of the messages that I keep on bringing across is it needs to be either helping reduce the cost. So, like, you know, infertility, like you said, is very expensive, so people can afford it. Well, if this is helping people get all the data and the call to actions, then that's a very good use of AI. You know, it's not replacing jobs, it's actually making technology information and data more accessible.

Kirsten Karchmer :

I think so too. And sort of, you know, our conceivable started in the fertility, you know, place because that's where we had the most data already from the clinic. But since we're not treating anything, we're always treating everything, what what will evolve is a women's health operating system. So the back end of the conceivable app can pivot to any place in a women's reproductive journey. So starting with age seven, where the little girls before they have their first period will have a specific experience. Bless you, love. And then all the way up through post-menopause, well, till death. And that care team will one age with her. So when we build the experience for the little girls, all the characters, me and all the care team, will be 16 years old.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And so you can, you know, if you've got daughters, you can now embed learning about your body, about your cycle into your your day-to-day. So really it's it's technology with impact, but not just thinking about women at the point when they do want to conceive or treat other issues, but starting it in those early preteen stages as well.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Mm-hmm. Well, I just feel like, you know, I have two TikToks, and one is for fertility and one is for periods. And the period one started during the pandemic. And like in about four months, I had 200,000 followers. It was insane. And it was mostly girls who had not had their first period. And they were DMing me thousands of questions a day. Like, there was no way so I started doing a live everyday just QA about periods. There would be three, four, five thousand girls a day. And I could never get through all the questions. And their questions were like, I want to use a tampon, I have no idea where to put it. I mean, they were the most basic questions like how do you talk to your mom about when your period comes? What do you tell her? How do you choose what to use, a cup or a pad? Like, give me the breakdown, whatever. And we want to build like an immersive experience where she has her peer group where she can talk to them about anything that's going on with her body, her questions in a conversational way that's very supportive about, you know, how to avoid human trafficking, how to be careful in the grocery store. And as she's aging, more and more education about like, think about it as the curriculum that you wish all parents were delivering to their children.

The Trailblazers Experience:

For girls, balance, you know, medical rigor, so all of this data, et cetera, it feels like there's a lot of emotional support that is that is needed as well, especially in a space that is as sensitive and as personal as, you know, the female body and fertility. How are you bridging that gap, whether it's, you know, through the technology that you're building or through through your lives or how you're interacting on social media?

Kirsten Karchmer :

So the, I mean, everything that we're trying to do is to try to make the experience like practically free and stable and safe and effective at almost no cost. So we try to keep humans out as much as possible because that it starts making it not easy for me to make it super affordable. So a couple of things, you know, I'll talk about it like emotional support and stress. One, what we realized from those 16,000 interviews is that unfortunately women are not that in touch with how stressed they are. And the reason that I say that is I asked women in the survey, you know, what's your stress level on a one to 10? And people say, you know, I'm pretty stressed. It's like a six or a seven. But then when we looked at their energy level and we looked at their heart rate variability, which is different than heart rate, HRV, heart rate variability is how much variation in your heart rate. And what it is a reflection of is how your nervous system, how much resilience your nervous system has to the environment. So for example, like if we're on this recording right now, but if there was like a big loud crash outside of either one of our houses and we both heart, I'm like, oh my gosh, right? Obviously, we'd both jump into flight or fright. Our heart rate variability would go down, we start trying to conserve resources. But if if we both had very high heart rate variability, like above 100, we'd be like, oh man, okay, the garbage man backed into the dumpster. Everything's fine. In 30 minutes, we re-regulate and we go back to rest and relax. But people who have low resilience, low heart rate variability, they don't have the resources to pull themselves out of flight or fright, and they will stay there for hours and sometimes days. And what that means is when you're in flight or fright, you're pumping out adrenaline and cortisol all day long. And the higher your adrenaline, the lower your fertility, right? Because it's so think of it as being sort of acidic. It's very inflammatory to all your cells, tissues, organs, and systems. So we want to interrupt that. So we pay attention to those. And so even if she says, I'm not stressed, and the apses, you know, the data analyst um will say, uh-oh, I see your heart rate variability is still like 15. It seems, and your energy is still a four. That seems like a little bit of mismatch. So we built a therapist for her. So she can pop in every day, all day, a hundred times a day if she wants. This is not a therapist that you're gonna work with, you know, about your childhood trauma or anything like that. Literally, she's trained to do sort of cognitive behavioral therapy and compassion therapy. How do you cope with today? How do you have a place to get it off your chest, especially if you need to bitch about somebody that you can't talk about? Like maybe you never talk about your husband to anybody, but he's really driving you bonkers. And even though he's not really doing anything that bad, it's really space, isn't it? Yeah. Get it off your chest, right? And people are like, even we have husbands who are using it. Their wives, you know, her name is Saren, the therapist person, for like performance anxiety. Because when the men, when it's when the female their wife or partner is ovulating, it is like, we gotta have sex, we gotta have sex, and then the guy feels all this pressure, and then he can't give it up.

The Trailblazers Experience:

There's the there's stress levels there, isn't it? In that whole fertility journey for the men as well, it's also tasking on them. So giving them the space to have to be able to talk to someone and to deal through and work through it is important too.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah. So that's how we're doing it. You know, um, we are gonna have a page in the app, probably not for six months, where we just have people like you and all like I just feel like there's a lot of misinformation um that's really not useful for people on social media, especially in the world that we exist around, not straight Western medicine. So we just, you know, I always like to control things. So I want to basically start creating, inviting the creators and the care providers who do in-person work um and in-person services, because we do have people reaching out to us saying, you know, I'd like to find a therapist. Do you know somebody who like works specifically with people with fertility that you can recommend? We want to find an acupuncturist, we want to find a fertility doctor. So we're basically going to just build a page where those people will just have like a little profile and in four or five videos that can be repurposed from TikTok or Instagram or whatever, but that really like if the person watched those couple of videos, they would really get you. And like, okay, and then just a button to contact you directly. That way we can just start helping build the larger community of people who are inside and but you know, not only in like not only physicians, but most even more importantly helping to find to network and bring people together who have those services that are sort of outside of just what your doctor might do.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah, definitely, you know, leveraging technology, but building that ecosystem that is offline as well. Now, coming full circle, so you studied literature, you've got no tech background. How have you built conceivable without the traditional tech, you know, Silicon Valley, etc.? And is it all bootstrapped? What advice would you offer others? I mean, now that you've been on that journey in in the startup world?

Kirsten Karchmer :

This is probably the best reason. This is the most important thing that I'll say on this episode because I think it will help people to be less scared to try something that seems impossible. And I can barely work my phone. Like I can speak 11 languages, but I cannot use a cell phone. I can't work my computer. Every time if you email me, if I delete it, I mean if I like delete it, it should be archived. It just goes away and I have no idea how to fix that. Like I'm just trying to really be very transparent here, right? But I don't need to know how to build an app, right? You just need people for it. There are people and and in a great entrepreneur, the sooner that you can realize it, like what your best strength is, where are you unreplaceable? And of course, in early businesses, you know, for eight years I was just writing this algorithm and testing and testing and testing, building little products and testing and you know, eating shit and not making any money at all after making tons of money as a clinician. And and so it never occurred to me like, but I don't know how to do that. Just start building it in whatever way that you can. Do you know what I mean? And so if that means on the back of a napkin, start mapping it out, start thinking about it, start visualizing it, start making vision boards, go on upwork and think like, what's what's a small piece of this that I could try to build for a couple hundred dollars? And now with lovable and cursor, there's some technology that I mean you couldn't build some the conceivable app is like very sophisticated algorithms. Very complex. You couldn't build your lovable person. It's an operating system. But if you wanted to build a dating app, if you wanted to level, literally, you guys, you can type in I want to build a dating app that does this, this, and that, because I actually want to build a dating app, so I've been playing around with it. It's it's it's unbelievable what you can build. You can do it, you can deploy it, you can it's it's nuts. It designs it, you know. So I encourage you if you're an entrepreneur and you have an idea to do anything, that there has never been a time in which, especially like solopreneurs and people who are never entrepreneurs before can build things that have been in their head for a long time, if it's around technology and make a fortune and make a big impact too. I think that the other piece of advice is I just because I'm a systems-oriented person, everything that I want to build is so flipping complicated. You know, they'll say, Well, let's just build like a menu app. I'm like, but the menu is not the only thing. You have to have the diagnosis. Okay, well, instead that let's just build a tool that predicts their fertility, I'm like, no, no, no, who cares if it predicts their fertility? That's fucking them. That just leaves them with like, okay, you're never gonna get pregnant. And so my approach makes it so much harder.

The Trailblazers Experience:

So I think so actually. I think from everything that you've said, it's because you understand what that end-to-end journey is from all the women and men that you've worked with, that's been like your se secret source to then say, right, this is actually the problem I'm trying to solve. So it's it's a good thing though.

Kirsten Karchmer :

It's in the solving. It's like actually teaching AI to think and do like me. That's the goal. So it's like if you ask a question of the of Kai, Kirsten AI, I want her to answer with the same tone that I would use in my voice and the same kinds of things that I would say. And they're just the permutations of like what they of course we have, you know, we just keep training her. Like every year she's gonna get smarter and smarter, you know, we're warehousing all of these recordings, all these things. So she can just continue, continue, continue to like, you know, learn the playbook. But what might have been smarter was to do it might have been smarter to just start with the prediction tool, right? And build a whole like ecosystem and revenue. Just thinking from an entrepreneurial, like a whole ecosystem. People do want to know, are you fertile or not? Pay five dollars, take this quiz, figure out your fertility, right? And then build one more feature after that. And then say, this is what's coming. And so by trying to build all of it at the same time, it just was extremely expensive. And then it wanted, because like all these AI pieces are talking together, it wants to break a lot. There's more places for breakage so. So you have to spend more money to build more. So that's what I'm just saying. If you can, you will suffer less if you start smaller.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah. So I guess you're the problem you are trying to solve is you're building for impact and making it accessible for those who couldn't afford it. So that is your return on investment, really. That's what you've been looking at, isn't it?

Kirsten Karchmer :

You know, it's just so funny because there's a person on my team who is just has been instrumental and he only worked for a little bit of equity, like the smallest bit of equity. And so like 10 times more hours than he agreed to work. And I tried to give him more equity because I was like, I want to bump up your equity because you have worked, your impact has been enormous. I wouldn't couldn't be here without you. And he said, No, you need to protect all of your equity. I don't need more equity. And you're gonna need it because we're gonna need to attract the brightest minds and we're gonna need all the equity that we can to be able to lure them, you know, to attract people. He's thinking long term, he's playing the long game. But I mean, what a human, right? And you know, I always say, like, for me, you know, I'm I'm 57 years old. This will probably be fully mature in, you know, five, ten years. I was like, look, even if I got a built if I built this and got a billion dollars, I don't even care about that because first of all, I'm gonna be 70 years old. Who cares? Who needs a billion dollars at seven years old? All I really care about is seeing, like, holy shit, we proved that you can make healthcare affordable for all people. That you can actually completely make women the hero instead of being gaslit and so frustrated and being like, this is normal, this is normal, passing out your period, that's normal, not having periods, whatever. You just have bad luck because you had 16 miscarriages. I want to prove that you can fix all of that for a couple bucks a month. And that is worth way more than any money.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I mean, your mission and your vision for conceivable is just amazing. And just the way you've just told the story, what values guide your leadership, especially when building a team, you know, where the return hasn't yet come? You know, you've talked about one of your team members who you're trying to give more equity because they're putting in more than 10,000 hours. But what values guide your leadership, especially when you're building a team?

Kirsten Karchmer :

I mean, the most important thing to me first is trust and truth. I just feel like, you know, even when I was raising my children, I only I was a single mom the whole time and I only had two rules. Be kind to yourself and every other creature and person on the planet and never let anything pass out of your mouth that's not the truth. And be as like, because at some point I'm going to have to defend you. You're gonna do something dumb because all teenagers do. And if I know that you always tell the truth no matter what, I will go to bat for you. But if you sometimes lie, how am I gonna know if this is just to stay out of trouble? And the same thing with your team, you know, truth, honesty, integrity. I don't like gossip. I think that's the fastest way to break a team down. It's basically gossiping is not being truthful. Being truthful, have open conversations, isn't it? Exactly. You have a problem, you go directly to that person. That's a truthful experience. You know, the second for me is just commitment to like the future of women, like really realizing that women are the future of the species. And without women and women's health being optimized, we're gonna be in real trouble because actually we have nobody really looking out for women's health right now and our rights and the access to research on women's bodies, you know, all of that. So that vision around we have some, this is not about like make a billion dollars. This is about we fucking want to change how women are cared for on the planet. And then fun, right? I want to have fun. This is a lot of work, and so we better have a lot of fun. So, like sense of humor, levity, curiosity, like all of those things I think can build help to buffer the stressful and scary times of building a startup.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And it feels like you're already leveraging that. The fact that you are already on TikTok and Instagram and leveraging social media, but also thinking about, okay, it started off with infertility, but you're thinking of, you know, the seven-year-olds, the preteens, the teens, and just moving through that whole cycle of a of a woman's journey, which I think keeps you current and makes sure that whatever you're building on on conceivable, which I now need to download because I'm like, oh my God, this this could help me. I have two kids already, but you know, there's so many other things that I could use the app for just to do like an MOT, uh a checkup on on my life as well as 100%.

Kirsten Karchmer :

And it's free for the first month. So, you know, if you're gonna try it, even if you're if you if you have any period problems that you want to work on, if you can tolerate just having to hear about the fertility stuff, again, the playbook is the same for the periods. It'll just be different conversations. It'll just be more targeted conversations, but it's just not built yet. And um, you know, I think that it's just, you know, when you are trying to be transactional, it takes all the fun out of building a business. But you kind of have to be transactional. But the more that you can keep really whatever the whatever the impact is that you want to make, if you can stick to the impact, it's a lot easier because you're gonna have times when you are making a lot of money and times when you're not, you're just like, I don't know, we're just not we're not converting, nothing's happening, people don't like it, people are complaining about it. But you can eat that can suck you into demoralization. But if you're like, then I got a big problem I gotta solve because I got people I need to help. You don't, you don't take it personally. You're not like, oh, I'm such a loser, whatever. You're like, okay, thank you for bringing that to my attention. That's an opportunity to fulfill on my mission.

The Trailblazers Experience:

You're thinking of scale. I recently listened to a podcast where the founder of the Runner app was talking about how he studied, he started the app because he wanted to help as many people as possible in their running journey. And that was always the goal. So it meant, you know, the algorithm need to change, you need to change things, you need to, but I think on their database as well, you know, they've got four X people and they finally sold the company for an undisclosed large amount, which has changed the lives of everyone who started off in the business, but he still stayed on to improve. And the main goal, the mission, is to make running and training accessible at a low cost for as many people as possible. So I think, you know, that's that's always been the goal, I suppose, even with conceivable, make it accessible at low cost to as many people as possible.

Kirsten Karchmer :

And like impossibly effective. Exactly. Yeah. Like because it doesn't matter how cheap it is if it doesn't work.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah. Exactly. It's just another money-making scheme, isn't it? Yeah.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah. Even if people like it, I don't care. Like, even if they are like, I love this app, but nobody's getting pregnant, nobody's changing their lives, nobody's getting more empowered, then I that's a failure to me. Even if the company is making a billion dollars but the success rate is like 10%, I'm like, I failed. You know, like it's not because we increase the likelihood of pregnancy by 150 up to 260% in four months. Like ridiculous.

The Trailblazers Experience:

That's just, I mean, and these are the things that are not talked about, isn't it? We need just more research and just more more investment, I think, in in women's health tech. So coming back to that, what advice do you give to women who want to build something mean meaningful in health and the tech space? I've interviewed quite a few women. So one of them, she had to then actually relocate to the USA because that's where all the investment, the funding is. That was a very big, bold step for her, but she realized that was one of the steps she needed to take in order to be in the health or tech space. What advice would you give from your own experience?

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, I don't know where her country of origin was, but I'm not sure that that's true. Like many other countries, like Israel is huge in health tech, especially, and they really take care of women's health a lot better all over Europe, and especially like Switzerland. There are great funds there too. So don't necessarily I personally would not move to the US until I had launched my company in my country and showed that there was enough opportunity to then move to the US because it's expensive, especially with what's happening in my country. You're probably never going to get here. Unfortunately, that's not costly now at the moment, isn't it?

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, costly and like with Trump is our president, you know, his immigration is all he cares about, preventing people coming to this country who are not from here. So I don't agree with that. So just to be transparent, you are more than welcome to bring your genius to the US. But I think I wouldn't waste money on it. Get it perfect in your country and bootstrap as long as you can use upwork like crazy. If you here's my trick for upwork. So a lot of contractors will go on upwork and they just need to get a few customers so that they can have some reviews and they will have extremely low prices. You just need to see their portfolios, right? You need to, you know, and like, you know, I have a VA right now who's $4 an hour, right? And she's just doing like, I have we just got a new website and I had to, we have 51, we do like personalized supplements. So you do a quiz and then it makes individual packs of your, so you have a daily pack of your supplements. And um I didn't do something right, and I had to have her go back and like take all the individual pill pictures, remove the background and change the background on like a hundred different things. Okay, $4 an hour. Like that, even though we're not making a ton of money, that is that is not work that is worth me doing because I need to be building, right? It's not that her work is less valuable, but it's like I need her to be doing the thing so I can work more. So don't be afraid to hire, like, try and find yourself a good VA. And you might have to go through a few. If you make an investment for like a month, a time investment of really just training your virtual assistant to really just start learning one system at a time that you like maybe it's customer support or maybe it's doing research for you or whatever, and make them use AI for everything and then just keep building their skills, you know, and just giving them a little bit more raise, a little more raise. And you know, in three or four months, you will have somebody running your business for like $15 an hour. And that will be a fortune to them. Like in their country, that's like mine's VA is from the Philippines, and she's like $10 an hour would be like I would be rich. So that's our goal is she's brand new. I'm to get her up to $15 an hour. So she's like feels really good about it.

The Trailblazers Experience:

So outsourcing and using outsource as much as you can for the skills that, like you said, how long it would have taken you then to do that piece of work versus bringing in the expertise is well worth the investment.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because it'll allow you to go faster and test, you know, like do the smallest version. Like the first version of conceivable was a type form quiz that asked all the questions that I would have asked, and then I would read the answers and then I would hand write a report. Then the second version of it is then after I did like a hundred of those, I started grabbing like the blocks of responses. Like, oh, if they have one day of bleeding, what do I typically say? And then I, you see what I'm saying? And then the next thing, and then the next thing. And so then I started testing what about video? So at the end, I would, after I made the report, I would do a five-minute just review. I say, here's what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They loved that. I started at $19, $29, $49, $99, $139 for that report. It got more and more fancy. I automated it. So after I built those blocks, I, you know, was able to automate the responses and like generate a report. It wasn't as good. People didn't like it as much as they could tell, but still, that's what you learn, right? And so that way you don't throw it all, you don't throw a million dollars into a piece of software that you're not even sure what they like and don't like.

The Trailblazers Experience:

But I mean you've just broken it down, isn't it? It's just you need to start. Start small, start somewhere, and then iterate and improve as you go along. And like you said, we we are watching social media, it's it's a highlight reel of, oh, we've made this successful. However, the steps as to how they got there are what's missing. And a lot of the time it's to your point, it's making that decision just to start and put something out there. That is the first step and keep going, keep iterating as you go along.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can do an easy way to do Facebook testing is like say you want to do something for you're a mom and you want to do something for kids. You don't know what. Go into mommy support groups and in Facebook and in the search bar. I just learned this recently. In the search bar, type in the word frustrated. And every post that says frustrated or frustrated, you know, and then do another one for like frustrating help, like I need help with something, all of the posts with those that word will come up, and then you can see all the questions. And then you start seeing what question are they asking for help the most, or what is the thing about being a parent that's frustrating them the most, and build for that. And you can do that in any vertical. You just find a Facebook group, join it, start participating, and then you just start searching, you know, any word that would indicate that they needed help, that they're mad, that they're frustrated. A lot like in the fertility groups, they that they're like, I need emotional support. I'm so depressed. That's why we built that, you know, the Thai therapist, because we just saw that coming up over and over. And on the live, two people were saying, I just I just don't know how to cope. I'm so upset all the time. And that's another thing is if you do have a TikTok account, Instagram's not very good for this, but on in TikTok, if you have enough followers and honestly, I don't know what it is anymore, you can go live and don't be shy. Don't be shy. Just get on like I'm here, just get in front of your camera and just put your topic like, okay, we'll go back to our example with like the mommy, you know, like tips for parenting three-year-olds, whatever. Just you make a little title, and then people are gonna come in and start asking questions. And those questions will help you determine what to build.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I mean, it's so much easier now, isn't it? Because in the good old days, it was you had to find a focus group or you had to go on the street and get a permit and ask people, or you know, so it's utilizing social media to to help validate your your question and your problem that you're trying to solve as well.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Mm-hmm. And use AI. I mean, because then once you decide your thing, say you want to I wanted to make this thing for uh I'm an entrepreneur at heart, I want to build like 20 companies, this little dog toy. And so then I I like described it and then I went into GPT and I was like, show me all the products that are similar to this, show me all the reviews for it from Amazon and um give me a report with like a summary of the pros and cons of this and how many they've sold in the last 12 months. So easy.

The Trailblazers Experience:

You are a serial entrepreneur.

Kirsten Karchmer :

I have built, well, I I built and sold my clinics. Yes, that is true. Yes. Then I built a professional line of supplements of Chinese herbal medicine called conceivable. That acupuncturists for acupuncturists, they sell them in their clinics, and then now the real conceivable, but now this is too much work. So every time I talk about any of my other ideas, my team is like, uh-uh, baby, you have so much.

The Trailblazers Experience:

We need to focus. So which which one was the most fun? So obviously there was the clinics, there was the supplements, and now there's this. Which one gave you the most joy? Because obviously there were different phases of your life, but the most highs.

Kirsten Karchmer :

The well, I mean, of course, being in my clinic was extremely rewarding. And like never until the very end, I never had a day where I was like, I don't want to go to work today. I and and I it wasn't only just the patients, I mean, because it's very depressing sometimes. Like people cry a lot and it's very because they're so frustrated and sad. But I I really also really enjoyed, I had almost 20 acupuncturists at one time on my team. And I I enjoyed training them and mentoring them and watching them grow as clinicians. Um, but what I'm doing right now, I think is I think it's more liberating because like for the first time I have a team, like when in my clinics, I was the, you know, the founder. We don't really have a CEO in a clinic, but say I was the founder of the clinic. And then I had a bunch of employees and I had a, you know, a admin person who worked at the front desk. But I didn't really have any other like executive team. And this is the first time that I have a real executive team. I have a chief operating officer, I have a chief technology officer, I have a chief marketing officer. And while all of them are sort of fractional and don't work well, what you can do when you start building a team around you, wow. And you just see how like I'm like, oh man, when because I'm learning all new my my chief operating officer is like really good in finance. And every month he goes through every single thing that we spend and is like, why do we spend 18 cents on this? And I was like, motherfucker, I got too much work to do to worry about this. He's like, no, man, it all adds up. We are gonna have like financial discipline. We don't have a lot of money. We need to like really make this money laughed and be really intentional about our allocations of resources. And I just respect that. So even though I don't like it. And he's like, okay, time to talk about the money. I'm like, no, I hate that part. But so the other thing is like, I didn't have the resources to hire those people. Like, I went and recruited them and gave them equity. So again, it's back to, well, I don't have money to hire those people. Go persuade them, find people and find the best you can find. You'll be surprised all of mine were ex-Apple people.

The Trailblazers Experience:

You know what you've just really um brought across is so you've you've built and sold two businesses. And in this iteration of your building phase, you've realized having that circle of intelligent people who just know what they're doing gives you the space to focus on what you're doing, which is obviously building conceivable and, you know, making it the best um app with impact possible. Sometimes we forget about that, isn't it? When we're looking for investment, we're thinking, oh, the investment is the money. It's actually the the investment is actually the resource, you know, like your chief operating officer, he's into the numbers, he can make sure that you have your finances in order, which is very pivotal when you're scaling a business as well.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, not only that, is like we talk about sort of like the team versus the investment of team, which I think that's very astute insight versus the money. But you know what? You build a really cracker jack team, investment starts getting a lot easier.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Yeah.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Right? If I go in with my old financial model that I built to Andreessen Horowitz and I try to raise $10 million and they see my financial model and they're like, this fucking girl can't do it. She she won't. I mean, she can build a financial model, but she can't, we can't give her $10 million. You look at my financial model day and they're like, give this person a hundred million. These these people fucking know how to run money. Do you know what I mean? Same thing. Like one of the people on my team was the former head of digital product from Apple, right? Like, you walk into investors with that guy on your team and you're building a digital product, they're like, okay, like there's and so bed, borrow, steel, if you're if you're building, I mean, and most of those guys were men and they still saw the value. They're like, this is I have a wife, I have a daughter, I have a granddaughter, this is really important. We have to do something about this. I want to get involved.

The Trailblazers Experience:

It's a really good nugget in itself. You talked about how with your other businesses you've mentored your teams. Who's mentoring you? Where do you seek your mentorship and your or do you not think you need one? Who's who's been that person on the side that's helped you develop as a leader, as a founder, as an entrepreneur?

Kirsten Karchmer :

I'm really looking for that person. So if you're that person and you resonate with my conversation, I'm looking for you. I'm calling you in. I do, you know, I do have friends and colleagues and things like that. And one of my investors has been with me from the very, very beginning who has been my staunch, staunch protector, you know. Like on the days when I was crying, I'm like, I can't pull this off. You know, he's like, dude, you are going to do this. I have never believed more, like wholeheartedly. He's like, You're gonna get there. How can I support you? You know, but I haven't really had someone who really was my mentor, like somebody who is really, yeah, just very badass. So I'm c I'm calling that person, and I a hundred percent need that person. Every person needs a mentor. Like, if you meet anybody who says, I don't really need a mentor, just walk away because that person is telling you I've stopped growing. And I mean, I mean, I want to grow into like the next dimension. You know, it's like I don't even want to, you know, like I want to expand my ability to grow beyond here why I am here and where I am tomorrow and what I can do with my mind and placebo and all of those things.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I think that's it. We should always be learning, isn't it? That's um how you not lose your cognitive reasoning and your brain keeps on functioning. There's been research done about that as well. So you should always be learning, always be curious and having that accountability buddy or mentor to then say, actually, have you thought about it this way? And is is something out there? Well, you've you've spoken into existence. So, you know, for anyone listening, I'm sure there'll be people who will be in touch.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, it's it is. I mean, I've just really I think that, you know, a lot of my mentorship has come from Joe Dispenza, who is a meditation teacher and my breath work teacher. Um, because also I think there's, you know, we have to have our mentors for our internal work and our mentors for our external work. I have my internal mentors, but I need my external mentor. Or a combination. Yeah.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And you'd be very surprised, actually. So you may think that you have not had any mentorship, but it could be books you've read, podcasts that you've listened to, you know, authors or they might be in the research field. They're people who you look up to who, through listening to the information, etc., has been an indirect mentorship to you in some way, shape, or form.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Well, in that case for sure. Well, and actually Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, he was my mentor about 10 years ago. I was in his program, and I highly recommend Strategic Coach. You have to be making at least, I think, 100,000 um before you can get into the program. So um, I in the last few years better than this and was not always making a hundred thousand. But if you're not, all of his books, so he's got at least 15 books out. The one to start with is 10x is easier than 2x, which will completely change it change. I mean, that was the most pivotal like business book that I ever read. Very quickly, basically, Dan says doubling, having the goal of like, let's just double our revenue this year or double our users or double our impact is the most dangerous goal because you can do it by overworking. He says, You can double anything. If you work twice as much, you'll double what you have for the most part. And he says, and that that will not create a better life for you. You'll have more of what you asked for, but that will not, you'll just be working all the time. And he said, So, what you want to do is you want to set it 10 times bigger than where you are right now every time. Because when you want a 10x, you can't do it by working.

The Trailblazers Experience:

You have to automate, great processes, operational efficiency, right product, right customer. Yeah.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Exactly. Or, and also like you have to take a different path to get there. And so for me, like when I was in my clinics, I was like, okay, I want to, I don't want, you know, all these people not to be able to afford it. But I was an acupuncturist with three acupuncture clinics. And I was like, how do I scale this and still make it like really, really cheap? And um, and so Dan was like, Well, how many women do you want? And I was like, all women. I want to touch the lives of all women on this planet. He's like, Whoa, that's like a you know, a thousand X or a hundred thousand X. And I was like, whatever. And he said, Okay, well, do you are you gonna do that with acupunctures? Do you want more people? No. Do you want more clinics? No. And he's like, Okay, how are you gonna do this? And I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, that's the 10x goal because to get there without those two things, it requires a paradigm shift, right? You have to be like, it never occurred to me that an app without acupuncture would work. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, like my ego, right? It was like, well, if you take me out of it, I mean, how's that gonna work? Yeah, what's the point of it? Yeah. And it outperformed me. So the out got six percent better success rates than the same same amount of women coming to the clinic twice a week for four months.

The Trailblazers Experience:

And it's not as expensive as well, because people can actually afford it then.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Fifteen dollars a month, like nothing. Yeah, yeah. And Apple takes five of that, just for transparency.

The Trailblazers Experience:

I know. It's uh the joys of capitalism, you know, but you're getting where you need to be. Listen. We close every episode with the Trailblazer takeaway tips. So where we ask you to share a piece of advice, it could be a mantra, a mindset. I mean, you've shared so many nuggets. What would they be? There's a f if I can have a couple, because I have some favorites.

Kirsten Karchmer :

First one is um, if you're not failing 50%, this is what one of my mentors told me, um, one of my directors. He said, if you're not failing 50% of the time, you're not playing big enough. And he was like, You're playing small, and I'm just not a person who plays small. And I was like, What are you even talking about? I'm playing so big. He goes, You're hardly failing. And he goes, That means that you're just playing safe. He goes, We go into the meetings with the developers and they tell you one thing, and you're like, that sounds great. And I said, It does. And he goes, How many professional baseball players hit a home run the first time they swing? And I was like, Okay, hardly any. And he said, Yeah, push your teams for better, higher quality work. Don't be satisfied. Break things, force them to break things. You break things, be fearless, do not accept like just ease. He goes, if it's easy, you're not, you're playing too small.

The Trailblazers Experience:

A lot of it is you have to give them the permission to do that as well, don't you? Yes. If you don't give them the permission, then that doesn't happen.

Kirsten Karchmer :

You have to celebrate it. You have to be like, holy shit, I am so glad we figured that out now, instead of when we have whatever, you know. It's really, you know, like Joe Dispens always says, everything is made up. So we can just make up something good. You have a catastrophe happen, and either you're like, oh my God, you screwed up and you screwed up and we're all gone, or you can be like, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. Because if we didn't know this, we would have had a huge problem or whatever. The next one is what my father told me almost every day. You're a river going down a mountain, ain't nothing can stop you. And I just encourage you to say that to yourself every single day. It will change you. Like, as you're imagining it, you imagine the force like in the Rockies, you know, of a river just like it's coming up against the rocks and it just goes around, like the rock's too big, it'll just pull up and then it'll get enough force and it'll push the rock out of the way. But it just, it's relentless, it's unstoppable, you know? And you know, I would always tell people like, you can punch me 25 times in the face, and I'm gonna get up every single time. Like, I'm a river going down a mountain, man. Like, I might take a little bit longer to get up now that I'm getting older, but I'll get up again. And, you know, who we embody for ourselves, it actually communicates to our customers something, even if your customers don't, you know, I mean, we know that like our energy is expanded in the universe. Just like when I c if I come over to your house and I'm in a bad mood, you're gonna get in a bad mood because I'm gonna be complaining about everything. And um, and it just communicates, it changes your posture, it changes how you talk on the phone, it changes how you deal with disappointment, rejection, flicked. And and so whether it that's your mantra or whatever, but like make it a badass one. Like when you say it, you feel something. Feel it. Yeah. You feel it, right? Because just saying I'm a river going down a mountain, that doesn't do anything. But if you let yourself feel like you contact your riverness, you know, your force, your power, then your physiology even changes. Investors who don't even know you will become aware of you.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Brilliant. I mean, I am inspired. Kristen, thank you so much for sharing your story with such depth and clarity. I think you've shown us that innovation isn't about technology, it's about empathy, equity. And I guess the challenge, to challenge broken systems, because there's a lot that is broken in the world. So to our listeners, explore conceivable, join the community. And I think I think that's what's resonated with me is your health, your voice, and your vision matters. So thank you so much for for joining me today.

Kirsten Karchmer :

Thank you. It's been such a lovely way. It's eight o'clock in the morning my time, and it's been such a nice way to start the day. So I've you got me inspired too, just having this conversation, and I hope that the listeners got something that put a little fire in them to, you know, to do something about something that y they want to change. Where can people find you on the socials? The easiest way is on TikTok, your fertility expert, and Instagram conceivable.official. And then, of course, if you just visit us at our website, conceivable.com, if you reach out on the website, you can get to me.

The Trailblazers Experience:

Awesome. For our viewers, this has been the Trailblazers Experience Podcast. One little wish if you could follow, subscribe, and like, and we are on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Until next time, thank you so much. Thank you.