272: From Corporate Hustle to Fertility Leader: How Mary Fusillo Built a Business That Changes Lives

Mary: 0:00

I wish I'd raised my prices earlier. Instead of being the cheapest, I should have been in the middle. When we changed five years ago and went to more a more slightly above average price point, my business exploded.

Camille: 0:23

So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business and sharing your voice. How do women do it? And still chase after those dreams. This is Call Me CEO. Welcome back, everyone, to Call Me CEO. This is your host, Camille Walker, and here we celebrate women building amazing businesses in the juggle of life. And let's talk about that. It's going to be an amazing episode because we have Mary Fusillo, who is the CEO of Family Solutions International. It is a fertility special specialist clinic that helps women to women, couples, single dads, whoever become parents. And how do you navigate the world of fertility? It's definitely changed in the last 18 years, which is how long she's been doing this business. So we're going to be talking about the ins and outs of that, her own career, what she's learned from the highs and lows of her business, having a husband in a high-performing career, and a mother of two. So thank you so much, Mary, for being on the show today.

Mary: 1:32

Great. I'm so excited to tell other people that, you know, there is life at the end of your kids growing up. So Yeah.

Camille: 1:39

You know what? I actually love interviews like this when I talk to women who have been in whatever industry they've been in for however for this many years, because, like you said, it's not the end of your world, but it's the changing of a season. And I think that that's really important to see. And also our huge benefit to have you as a guest because there's so much life lesson and work lessons that you've learned along the way. So please tell our audience where you're from and a little bit more about your business and how you got started in the world of fertility.

Mary: 2:11

Okay, well, um, I live in Houston, Texas. Um, I've lived all over the country, but I'm from Houston, so I full circle came back to Houston. Um one of the things is I've I've had multi-careers. I was a journalist first, and um that is always not the most well-paying job. And uh back in the 80s when I was a journalist, uh it was very hard to put food on the table. I was single, and so I said, I've got to find a job that like I can like count on the money every week. And so I went to nursing school at in out in California and uh ended up becoming an emergency room nurse and then an ICU nurse, and I went up the ladder and ended up being uh director of critical care at a big hospital in Houston. Wow, got married, had twins, and decided that this was really difficult to be at the level where at the time, you know, you were wearing a suit to work and pantyhose. Remember pantyhose? Most people don't remember pantyhose. I remember pantyhose. And then um going to work at six o'clock in the morning, my husband having to do the morning routine with these little tiny kids, um, working all day in my high heels, trying to beat traffic to get home before the nanny left. Um, the stress was incredible. And um, and so I was like, oh, I gotta do something else. And so I ended up, a friend of a friend, it's always the best way to find a job, said, Hey, I heard this fertility clinic is looking for a manager. And I thought, well, you know, they're not gonna pay me, you know, whatever. Um, so I ended up interviewing, and lo and behold, they paid more than I was making at my, you know, big job in the Texas Medical Center. So I took the job and never looked back, and that was 1999. So I was the manager of that clinic. We started several really cool programs. Um, this was just the start of donor egg. It was a start of gestational surrogacy. Um, it was really very rare to have a single person access care. Um, and then I went to another place on the West on the East Coast that was even bigger and giant. I did three years of consulting, which was the best job of all. Consulting is the best job. You have lunch for a living, you tell other people what to do with their lives. It's a great job. And then I said, you know what? My kids are like seven, eight years old, and I'm traveling all the time, and my husband is traveling. And I knew it was bad when I had a day trip to Denver. Yes, you can go on a day trip to Denver from Houston. I fly out on the early flight and I go see my client and then I fly back and you hope for everything is gonna be fine. Well, my husband actually was out of the country, and so I had a backup plan. I had a friend and you know, they could go pick them up, but the school calls me at two o'clock as I'm done with my uh meeting to say that I have one of my twins is throwing up, and can I come pick them up? And there I am, like, yikes. So, fortunately, I could call a friend who then, you know, has to go pick up my sick kid. And I said, I gotta do something. I can't, I can't do this. The stress is killing me. And so that's when I started my business in 2007. And so I started out doing a donation because I knew how to do it and I was telling everybody else how to do it. So I'm like, well, I should put my money where my mouth is and I should do it. And I started my business on $27,000 of credit card advances, cash advances. Now that was, I look back and go, wow, I was pretty crazy to do that. I can't imagine I did that with a family with no other income coming in. And, you know, I said, okay, I'm I'm gonna do this. And I did, I paid off those uh credit card advances in the first year of my business.

Camille: 5:41

Wow. And tell me a little bit more about that. Was that a new technology that was up and coming? Or why tell us a little bit more about that?

Mary: 5:50

Well, what happened was egg donation had been around since the mid-80s, but it was very um, it was a very small part of fertility treatment. And it was mainly meant for women that had premature ovarian failure. So like they their ovaries were menopausal by before they were 40. And usually it meant that they would put like they should have a sister or a cousin or a friend that would donate their eggs to her. And so they would go through the IVF cycle. And when they retrieved the eggs, they would then um use her husband's sperm to um inseminate them. So, and then they would implant the embryo in her, and so she would carry the baby. So that was kind of it. It wasn't really common, it was a kind of a specialty thing by the late 1990s. More and more people were doing it, and it was it was in the IVF clinics because we started a pool of egg donors at the clinic that I had started at, but um there wasn't a lot of variety and and it wasn't well known, and people kind of wanted more variety. It's like you you come in there and you think, I'm I'm gonna pick this donor, and they have 10 choices, okay? And four of them aren't the same ethnicity as you. So now you have six choices, and this is the choice for your genetics for your family forever. And so I really felt like people needed to have a lot of information, they need to have a lot of choices, they had to have more than just, oh, she looks like you. Because because the donor looks like you doesn't mean the baby's not going to come out looking like your husband's ugly Aunt Gertrude. I mean, seriously, you know? So hence that's what we did. So we built this program, or actually, I did at the time, I didn't have anybody working for me, that um was like 26 pages of information down to what kind of earlobes you had, and what's your fondest memory of your dad? What's the fondest memory of your grandparents? Tell us more about your growing up, what was the conflict you had so that people got a more well-rounded information. And now today, here I am 18 years later, we have videos, we have um people can meet and talk on a like a chat, like on a Zoom call. It's really been revolutionized. And I'm not the only one. A lot of people do that, but I was kind of the start in Texas of that, and then we expanded. So I thought I was gonna have my little local business in Houston, and then it went to Dallas and Austin and LA, and then now it's around the country.

Camille: 8:13

Wow. So was that something as you got into it, or you were the project manager or the manager of this firm? How did you then decide, no, I'm gonna take this and make it my own? Like what was that? What helped you in that decision?

Mary: 8:28

Well, what helped me really was the fact that I had worked at a IVF clinic and so I had managed it and we had started one. So I had the template of how to go about doing it. And so it, but I everything else was kind of blind. I figured, you know, if I build it, they will come. And this was at the very beginning of Facebook. Okay, so this was when Facebook, now you know, young people is like Facebook, forget that. I'm not doing that's for old people, but at the time it was all for young people. So I did Facebook posts. So I had my company was had a Facebook, they had Facebook business at then. This is 2007, right? So, and I would have this thing that said, you know, call this number, and it was a voicemail box that said to leave your name and your address. And um, this is really before people really had, I mean, they had AOL.com as our hot mail, was their, you know, their uh email server. And we would mail them this application, which is like 26 pages long, and then they would mail it back, and maybe one out of 10 would mail it back. So we went from that to this total online database, uh, I guess customer relationship management system that automatically sends them emails and follows up with them and tells them to get their paperwork in and their medical records and you know, does background checks and all this kind of stuff. So now it's very automated, but we've tried to keep it personal. So every donor gets a personal interview on Zoom. You know, they we keep up with them via newsletters and things like that. But I remember starting out and I met every single donor. I would go into um like Starbucks, right? And I we'd be whispering because we you know we didn't want other people to hear a conversation because it was kind of like, oh, what's she gonna do? Now people are open, they're oh, they're like, you know, and the compensation is now compensation is huge. So um back when I started, it was a thousand to two thousand dollars. Now donors make fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars. Wow, and that that is per what? For per cycle of IVF that they do that they donate their eggs. They usually donate to one couple.

Camille: 10:36

Okay, that's so interesting. And is that hard to recruit for people looking to do that?

Mary: 10:41

Or is oh my gosh, we have to turn them away. Really? Well, part of it is that people people want the the the demographics of the person that is looking for an egg donor is a it's women with premature ovarian failure, or they have premature menopause, or they just their window of opportunity to have a family is gone. They're 42, 43, 44, and they're just not getting pregnant, or they're getting pregnant, they're having miscarriages because of their their eggs are older. And then the second group is basically single men and same-sex couples. And so we didn't have that group 18 years ago, and in the last six to seven years, that group has gotten huge. So it's like 40% of our business. And so they want they want education, they want good family health history, they want athletic ability, they want pretty, they want um all the attributes all of us want for our children. So it used to be, I think there was this kind of idea that, oh, they were just plucking somebody off the street, which I don't mean that's a bad thing, but I mean people are like, I'm going, this is gonna be my child, you know. I I want the absolute best start for them that I can get.

Camille: 11:56

That's so interesting. And as you were building this business, tell me a little bit more about how you were able to manage building the business. Your husband's in a high-demand career, you have young children. What did that look like? And how were you able to manage all of that?

Mary: 12:13

Well, I wish I could say that I was meditating and that was what got me through it. But nope, that wasn't it. Um, literally, I felt like I had been a competitive swimmer and then I was a competitive runner. And so I was very used to putting in the mileage or putting in the laps. And so I thought of it all the time as okay, and this is really not a way to live, to be honest with you. Just come on, you just got to do it. Put one foot in front of the other, you're gonna do it. One time my husband was in um Vietnam on a project for 17 weeks. Yes, that's four months, okay? And um, and we're upside down time-wise. So, you know, it's seven o'clock in the morning there, seven, seven p.m. at night there. So there was no like, you know, you couldn't really talk to each other. And I had two, my kids were 12 and they went to two different schools. I don't know what I was thinking because they're 20. Why did I do that? That's number one, don't do that. And then um she was a competitive swimmer and he was a competitive water polar player. And the two practice areas were literally at other ends of a very big boulevard in Houston that was 18 miles difference. So I took her one way and him the other way, and then I went to see my elderly father who was in the middle, and then I went to pick her up, and then we went to pick him up, and then we went home and we ate a lot of jack in a box.

Camille: 13:37

Late nights.

Mary: 13:38

Yeah. And so I would get home and then we'd have to do homework, and then we'd have to make sure the laundry was done. And then and then I had been gone since like three o'clock from my office. So then I had a couple hours to pick, you know, catch up on all the emails or what was going on. That was the most difficult. I was begging, I was thinking, uh, why do I not have a nanny? Oh, I can't afford a nanny because thousands of dollars a week.

Camille: 14:00

So, how did you get what what kept you going in that time? I mean, putting in the reps, but like you keeping your sanity, like how did you keep it all together?

Mary: 14:10

I had a really good support group of women friends. I was actually in a women's running group and we were all around the same age. So it wasn't like a bunch of young whippersnappers out there, you know, doing five-minute miles. And so every um we trained on our own during the week. And so my kids were old enough, they were like 12. So, and I was in the neighborhood. So I didn't feel bad about leaving them in the house at five o'clock in the morning because you know, lock the door, put the alarm on. And then I would go run, and then on Saturday mornings, we would meet at 5 a.m. and do because we did marathons. We did, you know, during that time frame, I did a full marathon. I trained for a full marathon, and that's what kept me going because I would be able to go. I get to go be with my friends because I didn't really have time to go out and have drinks with them or play mahjong or play pickleball or whatever. I mean, that wasn't the world I lived in at the time. So my time to be with my friends was on Saturday morning when we were putting slogging through 10, 12, 15 mile runs.

Camille: 15:09

Wow. That sounds exhausting and also very high performing of you. That's crazy. What were you looking back as far as like building the business, especially in those first few years where you're going from thing to thing and helping get all of the checklists done? Was there something or a time that you could tell us when you learned a big lesson, whether it was a hard way or a good way in building your business?

Mary: 15:36

Yes. And this is there's actually two things. One's kind of minor, and one was a big aha moment. The minor one was when I started my business, I should have never gone to getting an office originally. Now, this is 2007. So people, their expectation is that you're a legitimate business. You have a door that you can walk into and somebody's sitting there, right? They didn't get the whole virtual world that we live in now. So I spent way too much money on an office. Okay. And this is really before the advent of a lot of like co-working spaces or executive suites. So, in hindsight, number one, I would have done that. Okay, because I just needed an office. And I 18 years ago, a lot more people came to visit me in person. Remember, I was I was interviewing all these donors in person, the intended parents came to me in person. But man, you can't. I if we get so we have still have an office. Um, but if I get somebody three times a year to go to the office, we're all like, oh, we have to put you know clothes on today and go to the office. And so um, that's kind of fun. Um, and that's kind of a minor thing. But I think for me is the fact that because I came from a um uh a servant's heart kind of world, I always wanted to serve others, and that sounds kind of trite sometimes, but I really that's why I became a nurse, and that's why I did all this other stuff, is I didn't want to make it so unaffordable to people. So I always kept my prices really low, and I always made sure in the down times of a business, and every business is like this, they go up and down. In the down times, I always made sure my people got paid when I wouldn't get paid. I've made a profit every single year, but that doesn't mean like some September cash flow is bad, there's not enough really to run the business and pay everyone. Hence, I would not pay myself. I wish I'd raised my prices earlier. Instead of being the cheapest, I should have been in the middle. When we changed five years ago and went to more, a more slightly above average price point, my business exploded. And that was a really hard lesson. I was like, wow.

Camille: 17:46

Yeah, what is this? I've heard you're not the first to say this to me because it's almost like have you heard that story or the analogy of water, of a bottle of water that you can buy the same bottle of water at a park, in a grocery store, at an airport, in a hospital, and that same bottle of water costs a significantly different amount at each place you go. In fact, I just went and to a concert with my daughter last week, and a cup of water with ice was $10. $10. But my daughter, I would, I bought it because I'm not going to not buy her water if she's desperately thirsty, you know? And it's interesting because in many businesses I've heard people say this where it's not about being the cheapest or the least expensive, it's about proving the value and showing that you have. In fact, it makes me think too of my my husband works with attorneys, and it's not a good idea to be the most affordable attorney. People get suspicious. It's just interesting. This the psychology of that money and the kind of clientele you attract, it puts a different spin on it. So tell me how that changed for you five years ago.

Mary: 18:57

Okay, so we were my my husband had been transferred to Phoenix and we were coming back. Now we kept our office in Houston, and I had an office in Phoenix, and so I would used to fly back and forth every six or seven weeks. I mean, we everything was virtual, but I just wanted the my staff to see me in the flash or whatever. And I started re I started looking at the business changed. Business kind of went from um these frozen eggs became a big thing. So the donors would go through the same thing, but they would freeze their eggs. So then it became much more like a sperm donor option. You could look at a catalog and say, I want that one, and they already had a cohort of free frozen eggs. But the pendulum swung back the other direction by 2019 when people realized the pregnancy rate wasn't as high. Okay, so the pregnancy rate's higher when you do what they call fresh uh retrieval, where it's your egg donor and she you get all the eggs versus you get like a portion of the eggs for that. So once people realize that the pendulum started swinging. And I actually had an old friend of mine who had spent years in the business world. Like I had no business training. I did a few courses with the small business administration when I was starting my business mainly about bookkeeping and stuff. But she had spent years being the vice president of a very large consulting company. And she basically showed me that I could make more money and not have to hire people if I would raise my price by this. I would make more money. I could give my people all raises because I didn't need to have more customers. I needed to have better customers. And so for me, who's like, everyone gets a baby, you get a baby, you get a baby, it was kind of hard to hear because I was like, but I want to help people. She goes, You're not the most expensive. You are a little above average. And what you bring is you bring your expertise. These other places don't have that. They have somebody who's an attorney, somebody who's was a stay-at-home mom who now wants to have this little job. You've worked in the clinic, you have the clinical knowledge, you've put together this fabulous program. People will pay for that. And lo and behold, they did.

Camille: 20:56

Yeah. Oh, I like that. She told you that, especially leaning into that expertise and those, I mean, all those years of experience.

Mary: 21:04

Yeah, she did the math. She sat there. We were we were having a retreat with the staff, and she came in with the big white, you know, the the the uh, you know, on the easel, the big white paper with the, you know, you're using a magic mark and everything. Yeah, yeah. Old school. And she took, here's your costs, here's this, here's this. Look, you can keep the same amount of customers a year. So you don't have to change anything in your advertising, nothing. And you raise it by this, and this is how much, and I was like, oh, wow. It seems so why didn't I think of that? Right? It was so simple.

Camille: 21:35

Well, I mean, I think outside perspective like that is so valuable to have someone take a look and say, wait a minute, taking the emotion out of it, where your value is so significant, let's look at this with the hard facts, the numbers. And having someone like that in your corner is huge.

Mary: 21:52

Well, then the the other side of that was then we got we got really aggressive after that because we used to have we bundled everything. So all the little costs that go into this, the fee that they pay us for the donor. Okay. So the donor, um, it's kind of like we're the real estate agents and they're the houses. Okay. So you're they're paying us to organize everything for them. Yeah, they pay for the house, right? So um we started to offloading all the different costs that were bundled into us the attorney fees, psychological evaluation, the insurance for the for the um uh the escrow payment that so in other words, we don't hold the money of anybody, it goes to an escrow account. All those things were used to be included in our fee. We took them out and made them separate and we did one by one. So over the course of two years, no one realized that our price stayed the same, but now they were paying these add-ons. No one said anything. So then we were able to increase our revenue even more, and yet no one said anything. And then the biggie was we quit taking credit cards because the credit card companies were chart, we were spending 30,000 plus a year on credit card fees because that's you have to pay them. That's a lot of money. That's a you know, that's a half of a person I could have working for me, right? And so we did that and nobody said anything. It was like, wait, why didn't I do this years ago?

Camille: 23:14

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Mary: 24:08

It's like the airlines, you know. You didn't realize that now they make me pay for my bag, and now they make me pay for my seat, now they make me pay for a a drink. You don't realize it until it's like, oh, it's done. We're nicer than the airlines, though. Nicer.

Camille: 24:22

Yeah, okay, okay. Nicer than the airline. So tell me a little bit more about as you're as you're moving into this new phase looking back, is there anything you wish you would have said to yourself first starting out? I know we've kind of reviewed that, but in terms of you kind of looking at as a chapter that's closing, is there anything you would look back and give advice to someone who was starting brand new?

Mary: 24:47

You know, I look back now and I think to myself, I was so worried, absolutely petrified that I wasn't going to be able to work without a boss. In other words, I didn't think that I could be an entrepreneur. I thought that I would end up watching Oprah on TV every day eating Oreos. And my husband just howls when I say that. He's like, yeah, right. I didn't. I attacked it like I was attacking the marathon. I worked day and night, and I carved out that 3:30 to 8:30 every day was my kid time, and I never, I never really missed anything. I never missed plays. My daughter was in the orchestra, my son ran track, my daughter did lacrosse, she swam, and they did everything. They were over overmanaged, just say that. Okay. Um, and but that was the sacred time, and that meant then at 8:30 that I, you know, I still had to, you know, have spend time with my spouse. Okay. I had to not ignore him, but um, and then I would work until the work was done. And I had been petrified that I would end up every day procrastinating and not doing it. So that was the real take-home message. When you want it, you do it.

Camille: 25:59

Yeah, yeah. The right motivation. And do you feel like that why was in within you, or did you had have to discover that?

Mary: 26:07

It always was. I just didn't see that I had it. I had a mother who was um, bless her soul, but she was very much like when I was in nursing school, I was also getting my master's in public health at the same time. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know. It's crazy. But um and so I and I also worked. So I worked in the emergency room as a student nurse at LA County USC Medical Center, which is this enormous, like it's the knife and gun club, the whole bit's very exciting, right? So um, and I literally would get one day off, like every two to three weeks. And so I'd call my mother. This is before cell phones, so I'd call my mom like once every two weeks on, you know, landline, and I would say, you know, mom, I'm I'm tired, you know, I've been, I've been working I literally work 32 hours a week and I do these two school things and blah, blah, blah. And she goes, Oh, you can do it. Come on, that's not very much. You're just being lazy. And it used to make me feel that way. So my own daughter, when she was telling me on Saturday that she'd worked 12 days in a row, I was like, didn't say a word. Oh, honey, that's awful. Because I know my mother made me feel lazy and I didn't have a lazy bone in my body, but she made me feel lazy. So I carried that for all those years for 20-something years till I started my own business and I realized I wasn't lazy. I always worked two jobs or I was climbing the ladder at my career or whatever. And so sometimes I think moms need to zip it and not say things that they they can think them. I think it to myself, oh honey, you're 27, you can work those days, but I didn't say it.

Camille: 27:40

That's so interesting. Do you think that that perspective from your mom drove you to achieve more? Or do you think it was more of an encumbrance that you carried that with you?

Mary: 27:51

I think it's both. I think that my mother kept moving the finish line.

Camille: 27:57

Yeah.

Mary: 27:58

You're never, never, never. I mean, I have a ton of degrees. I just finished this bioethics degree and master's of bioethics, and and I have a master's in public health and a nursing degree and a journalism degree. And so it's like I kept moving the goalposts. Yeah. And but on the other hand, I think it also was um, I got a lot accomplished. So I'm somebody who I don't ever see myself sitting, and my friends all say this. Oh, we can't see you sitting still. I just can't sit still.

Camille: 28:26

Well, it's cool that you put it into so many amazing. I do needle points, so I can't sit still. You sit down? That's really surprising. I do. Needle point. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we kind of wrap up here, I want to change the question just a little bit. Um with a lot of questions that I get it from professional women about fertility and becoming a mother themselves or professionals of any kind that are delaying starting motherhood. And that is happening more and more often, I think, with people dating later, getting serious later, or prolonging with their career or whatever the thing might be. What would be your best advice for someone who is thinking that might be part of their story? And what is the best to do in terms of, you know, your advice as a nurse? If someone wants to have a family, what is the best course of action in terms of everything that you've seen and covered?

Mary: 29:23

Okay, so don't do as I did, do as I say, because I didn't have kids till I was in my late 30s. And the reason behind that was I didn't get married till I was 35. And it that was because I was doing all these careers and I think that's more and more common. And yeah, do I regret it? No, I don't regret it for me because it worked out for me. Okay, but I would regret it for you or your friends that it didn't work out for because that's what my business is. My business thrives on women who it didn't work out for them. So my feeling is, and this is old school, and I do not have an old school bone in my body, but this is gonna sound old school. Is when you're mapping out your life when you get out of college, okay, because you really your brain isn't quite ready to do that until you're 22, 23, 24, start thinking, don't say I'll have kids when I get this, this, this, and this. And yes, finding the right partner is of paramount importance, but you can't wait for them. It wasn't until I literally joined a dating service that I was able to find a plethora of dateable men. Because let's face it, sometimes there's just not a lot of datable moment out there. And so it's even worse now. So that's it. So if that's what you want, make it your goal. I mean, you don't have that sounds really sexist, and I'm not, I'm very feminist, but if you want a partner to spend the rest of your life with, then you've got to go find that partner. They're not gonna be, you know, you can't hold up your flag and go, I'm looking for you, baby. You gotta find it. Number two, you got to decide we want to have a family. When do we want to have family and work it out together? Because sometimes it doesn't work. Okay. Even people that I know, like in my, because I work with a lot of younger people, they would try for eight or nine months saying, I can't believe this is taking this long. And then they would they would conceive, and then the next baby they get pregnant the next month. Okay. So, but you never know if that's gonna happen to you. Okay. And I also think that if you're in a career where you've spent all this time, money, and effort getting into that career, be it law, be it a scientist, be it in the United Nations, whatever it is, okay, don't think that I gotta wait until I'm 40 to solidify my career to have this baby. Do it now. But the backup is always gonna be frozen eggs. It doesn't work as well. And basically, if you're over 34 or 35, your chances of freezing enough eggs to make a baby five or 10 years later are not as good. But if you froze your eggs at 27, 28 and you got 12, 20, 12 to 20 eggs, you have a pretty good chance of using them. But you don't want to wait till you're 45 to use them.

Camille: 31:55

Okay. So I'm curious for someone, let's say they're 27, 28 and not in a relationship, they're not, they're young enough that they're like, okay, I want to do this and plan for this for the future. What is a typical cost for something like that? Okay. And what would be the prep? And is doing it one time enough typically, or do people do it more than once to get enough for the retrievals?

Mary: 32:19

So I would say that first of all, it the the average cost is about $12,000. Depending on where you work, you may actually have a benefit. So if you have a job, a big corporate job, then you may have a benefit that covers IVF for egg freezing. So sometimes the companies will have a benefit for IVF. You can use that, you're just gonna freeze the eggs. You're not gonna inseminate them, you're gonna freeze the eggs. Um, it costs about $12,000 cash. Usually it depends on what your numbers are, what your fertility numbers are. So if you, when they do an ultrasound, when they look at you at your first visit and they say a lot of um follicles, which is the little house where the egg lives, on the top of your ovaries, you probably have a good chance. They could get 18, 20, 30 eggs. Most of my egg donors are getting between 20 and 40 eggs. Okay. So if you're the age they are, 25, 26, 27, 28, you could probably get that many. That's a probably a good cohort. If you're older and maybe they only see seven or eight on your ovaries, you might have to do it two or three times to get enough. Just because you got the eggs doesn't mean they're gonna thaw and if they're gonna, you know, make an embryo with sperm down the road. So that's kind of a story of that.

Camille: 33:34

That's interesting. And I'm curious for these donors, is that something that I guess it would vary so much from person to person. But if you're donating these retrievals, is that a risk for their own like no abilities? Okay.

Mary: 33:48

Every month is a new month to your ovaries because every month all the eggs that were there last month disintegrate. Okay. So you don't have one egg on the top of your ovary, you know, sitting there. You have multiple, but only one becomes the the queen. Okay. So so the your your brain sends out FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, that stimulates your ovaries, but only one basically kind of sucks up all the juice, okay? And so that's the one or two that plop out and go down the fallopian tubes and hope to be it, meet the um the sperm. The rest of them go and crumple up and die. They're gone. So they don't go back and go, okay, we're gonna try again next time. Try to get it's it, they're gone. And so the next month you have a whole nother set. So another crop, huh? They cut off how many egg donations you should have you can do at six as a donor, mainly for your health reasons because it's a lot to go through, and also for genetic diversity. If you make a lot of eggs, and let's say you were a um a frozen egg donor where they froze your eggs and then later on people purchased them for their own use, you could literally have 24, 26 families out there that used your eggs, much like the issues we have with sperm donation, where they could have 400 offspring. So an egg donation, we saw the writing on the wall, and we've limited the the ability to have 50 kids out there.

Camille: 35:14

That's interesting. Okay, well, that I really appreciate you answering that because I feel like those that's a topic that not a lot of people are familiar with unless they're specifically looking for it, which if you are, there is a wonderful podcast called The Explanation. And the host is Mary, who talks about these fertility questions and helps you find those specific answers that you're looking for. So this has been so fascinating. I have loved interviewing you, and I would love to ask you the questions I ask all of our guests, our guests, which are what are you reading, watching, or listening to?

Mary: 35:54

Well, this is gonna make me sound really vapid, but I'm so tired at the end of the day right now because of all that's going on and moving and everything. I watch TikTok at night. Okay. You're not alone. A lot of people are watching it. I I you know, I read four pages of a book and I fall asleep, but I like I'm totally into Alabama sorority rush and I live for August. I don't know why. It takes you, it transports you out of all the horror that's in the world right now. And so I love it. I I that's what I wait for. So you have to like teach your algorithm that that's what you want to look at. I don't look at that other stuff. I only want to look at that Alabama sorority rush. So that's my big thing. So now um, like it's starting to happen. It's gonna happen in three weeks.

Camille: 36:43

So I spend like you're Gary guy.

Mary: 36:47

I set a timer, I can only do it for 10 minutes. Only 10 minutes. Only 10. Oh, otherwise, it would be four o'clock in the morning. I just keep going.

Camille: 36:54

Well, that's what I was going to say with you loving it so much. And do you and you stick to the 10? How do you stick to the 10? I stick to the 10 because I'm disciplined.

Mary: 37:03

I would say so, actually. But I'm telling you, I I I never see anything. I seriously, I've taught my own algorithm. It's like I don't ever see anything political. I don't see like I would not stop at any of this, the tr anything tragic. I don't, I just keep scrolling. So basically, I get sorority girls, I get Matt does hair. Uh I get I get how to uh oh my new one is how to how to make your face thinner. Oh yeah, with doing your own like that that thing you put on your head, it's like a it's like a bandage, whatever. So that's that's because it keeps me out of that. So but it's I do actually read, but um, I'm reading London, um, which is by uh Edward Rutherford, which is a kind of a long form story of London from prehistoric times to now. And because and I've already read it before, but I miss my daughter so much, and she lives in London, so it makes me feel close to her.

Camille: 37:59

Oh, I love that. So um to follow up with that, what's a motherhood moment you'd like to share?

Mary: 38:06

You know, it just it just happened a year ago, and it was um our family went to the Olympics. It was a bucketless trip. My husband whined for a year. I can't believe we're gonna do this. Wow, he didn't want to go. And my daughter happened to get married the Saturday before we went, and she did her wedding so that we could all, because we were all gonna be in London, then we were gonna go to Paris. So she got married on Saturday, and then her new husband, he wasn't invited because he wasn't in the picture when we decided to go. So we all the four of us went to um Paris, and we spent six days going to all kinds of events, and we had the absolute greatest time, and I got very weepy and very sad then because it was never going to be like this again. We've added a new person to our family. Yeah, and both of my children and my husband looked at me and said, This is the best time we've ever had.

Camille: 39:00

Oh, that's so special. I was actually in Paris right before the Olympics. I was there the week before.

Mary: 39:07

It was amazing. And and my husband at the end goes, That was amazing. You did a great job. It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun. It was so much fun that my husband and I are going to the winter Olympics in February. Oh, you're kidding. Where is it going to be? It's in uh northern Italy, like Milan and Torino and everything. But we learned our lesson. We learned that you don't have to kill yourself and go to like three, we did it's very expensive. So we did like two and three events a day. So we were running all over Paris, north, south, east, west, okay? Yeah. Um, but for the Italy one, we're gonna go to like four events over the course of like six days and just kind of trot on out and see ski jumping and then go do something else. So we're gonna make it not about the Olympics, but just we're happened to be in Italy during the Olympics.

Camille: 39:53

Cool. Oh, I love that. That is so cool. And my last question, because you are so disciplined, what is your advice for staying disciplined for us in our lives where everything is so distracting, there's so much going on. What is your secret to being disciplined? Timers. Timers on your phone? Or do you some people say I have a timer?

Mary: 40:15

I I like I like on a morning when I have like back to back to back to back things, it stresses me out. I hate that. I hate I want to have some downtime, you know? And so I have learned to always fill in downtime. Okay. And so I time it. So if I'm gonna go, like I'm gonna have some downtime, I want to go watch the news. Okay, it's been really intense lately. I want to watch 10 minutes of it. I watch 10 minutes of it, and then I stopped. Um, and that's the only way I can do it. I go to bed at the same time every night. What time do you go to bed? 11:30, which is kind of late.

Camille: 40:50

What time do you wake up?

Mary: 40:52

About six.

Camille: 40:53

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So timers, and you can use your phone timer, and that's okay. It's not too big of a distraction. Because some people say I use different timers, so it's not my phone.

Mary: 41:04

No, no, I do it on my phone, and then it plays uh Vita La Vita by Coldplay. So that's a good one. Yeah. So that's it. But I will say I don't feel disciplined. I just have made myself be disciplined.

Camille: 41:17

Okay. Timers all the time with getting ready, with working, with cleaning, with everything.

Mary: 41:25

No, I'd say mostly it's about task-oriented things, timers. I I limit the like for instance on a Sunday, I sometimes do nothing all afternoon, all Sunday afternoon. I read the paper, I lay on the sofa, I read a book for a half an hour. I that's kind of my afternoon to do nothing. I had some friends who um were Mormon and they had Sunday was the day that they did nothing. And I thought, I want to do that. So I incorporate that. They don't do anything. So I do that too. I Sunday afternoons.

Camille: 41:55

Love it. Well, this has been so wonderful, Mary. Thank you so much for being on the show. And please tell our audience where they can find you, support you, and learn more about your consulting for fertility.

Mary: 42:06

Well, I'm at Family Solutions International. That's a long thing. Family Solutions International. And our um podcast is at the explanation, and it's on uh you can see our little thing on Instagram, but it's the explanation spelled E-G-G-S-P-L-A-N-A-T-I-O-N. I think that's it. So it's explanation, but the X is eggs.

Camille: 42:30

I like it. We'll make sure to link with to that in the show notes below. Perfect. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And as always, thank you for your support, your reviews, your shares. It helps to inspire women all over the world when you do that and it helps me out too. So thank you. I appreciate you, and we'll see you next time. Hey CEOs, thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment in a five star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at call me CEO Podcast. And remember, you are the boss.