Deanna Shimota 00:00:05 Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.

Deanna Shimota 00:00:47 Hello listeners! This episode of the HR Tech Spotlight, we are diving into the world of benefits with a platform called Midi Health. Midi Health is the only virtual care platform focused on midlife female health to help women employees feel strong and healthy through a critical chapter of their lives and careers. My guest is Joanna Strober, founder and CEO of the company. Hi, Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joanna Strober 00:01:12 Hey. Thank you.

Deanna Shimota 00:01:14 So first off, tell us a little bit about your background in the HR tech space.

Joanna Strober 00:01:19 So I'm pretty new to the HR tech space actually. I have a pretty diverse background. I, I think I have had five careers. I was a lawyer, I've been investor. I started another company that we sold to Weight Watchers, and then I started this company. This really is my first advent into the HR tech space.

Deanna Shimota 00:01:37 Welcome. I find this a lot where the founders end up in the air tech space. After being in a lot of other spaces. How are you finding it?

Joanna Strober 00:01:47 It's going really well. I'm very excited actually. I think that when you think about it, there's 70 million women in perimenopause or menopause in the United States, and you go into this stage of life just as you're doing well in your career. So around 35, 40 Things are going well for you at work, and then your body starts doing some funky things to you and we'll talk more about that. But what's exciting to me is that I think employers are caring about this population and interesting, interested in keeping these women and helping them to thrive in the workforce.

Joanna Strober 00:02:20 And so there seems to be a lot of interest in working with us.

Deanna Shimota 00:02:23 Yeah. Let's talk about what Midi Health does and why we're talking about menopause at work.

Joanna Strober 00:02:30 Yeah, so many health is a platform to help women thrive, really through all aspects of their health journey, primarily after having children. So it usually is around 35 or 40 when people are looking at their health and thinking that they're seeing some challenges, whether they're having anxiety or depression or brain fog, or they're just gaining weight in ways they didn't use to gain weight before. There's also a lot of weird symptoms of perimenopause. Like, it turns out that joint pain or itchy ears, or there's so many different things that are related to perimenopause and we don't even know it. So what we have done is created a platform to take care of women for all of those issues, and everything is covered by insurance. So it's not a cash pay platform, it's an insurance covered platform. For us. It really is about access and accessibility. So it's about giving women access to great care and making making it very accessible to them.

Deanna Shimota 00:03:27 And I know you are the founder of Moody Health. What is the story behind creating this vision for the company?

Joanna Strober 00:03:35 Yeah, for me it really was personal. So I was around 47. I started experiencing a lot of perimenopause symptoms and for me it was a lot of anxiety, sleeplessness, waking up in the middle of the night soaking wet. But I was still having my period. So the doctors that I went to said, just grin and bear it. Basically, you're not in menopause. And I started down this track of trying to figure out what how could I get help, what was the right care for me? And eventually I found a really good care provider. I paid her $1,000. I drove an hour to get there and I got the right care. And within two weeks my whole life had been transformed. I was on the right combination of medications, and I was sleeping and my brain fog went away and my anxiety decreased. I was in a better mood, really, a lot of changes.

Joanna Strober 00:04:24 And so I started thinking a lot about how we could scale that and what would be the right way to scale that to a lot more people. This was prior to Covid and prior to Covid, we couldn't have created this company. So I started thinking a lot, though, about what it would take to build this, a company that would address those issues and give all women access to that kind of care. And then over Covid, the health rules changed. So now you could have insurance covered care. So now virtual care like I we offer would be covered by your insurance. And so that's when I decided I should start this company because there was a business model to match the need that I saw.

Deanna Shimota 00:05:01 That's very cool. And as an employer listening to this podcast, what do you see is the big problem or challenge that really is the reason why they should look at offering a benefit like Midi Health has.

Joanna Strober 00:05:16 So what I find very interesting is that these symptoms, candy railwaymen, and there's really good research on how many women actually get derailed by their perimenopause symptoms.

Joanna Strober 00:05:29 Most women say it negatively, negatively impacts them at work. Probably 85%, 59%, need to take off time because of these symptoms. Importantly, 20% think about quitting and 10% actually do quit because of their menopause symptoms. And also, a lot of people don't apply for raises because they're thinking they can't do as well at work. And the research shows that women can not only do as well, but they can do better as they age. There's nothing that stops us. As long as you get the right care. For me, it really is talking to employers about making sure that women get the right care during this time of their life, and then actually, I want to add also understanding the research about how you should behave, around your needs. So I'll tell you a Harvard Business School study, which I find fascinating, that it said that women, when they were experiencing menopause symptoms like brain fog or hot flashes when younger people saw them or anyone in the workforce saw them experiencing this, took them less seriously and thought they were less competent, which is obviously a huge issue.

Joanna Strober 00:06:37 But when women named it and they said, oh, that's brain fog and I'm getting treated for it, or oh, I just had a hot flash, but I'm having to I'm taking care of that and I'm fine. They were actually seen as more competent and more powerful leaders. I think it's really important that it's a very easy fix for employers to remind women. You don't have to be derailed by these symptoms. They can be very manageable. And as long as you get care for them that they don't need to, they don't need to cause you problems.

Deanna Shimota 00:07:04 That's really interesting. And I feel like this is probably one of those things that it happens to, presumably 50% of the workforce or every woman. However, however many women are out in the workforce, it's going to happen eventually. But it's not something that employers typically talk about. It's not something that women typically talk about with their employer. I feel like it's one of those you silently suffer and you're having brain fog, but you don't want to admit it to anyone, and you're having all these other symptoms.

Deanna Shimota 00:07:33 And many women don't even realize that the things that are happening to them are perimenopause. And because it's the weirdest symptoms, right? It's like everything you can think of, you start to look up and research. You're like, oh, that's probably perimenopause, like all of these things. And I don't feel like as a society even we've talked a lot about or prepared women for that stage of life. And it absolutely does impact how you function on a day to day basis. Yeah.

Joanna Strober 00:08:06 I think that's right. I think it's really important to name it. And you need to know what's going on first, and then you have to know that you can get it treated. And once you can name it and treat it, it's actually very manageable.

Deanna Shimota 00:08:18 Yeah. So are there other solutions like medi health out there that you've run into in the market?

Joanna Strober 00:08:25 There are companies that sell hormones. I am a little less comfortable with them because I believe you need to talk to someone. I think talking is a big part of this understanding and then iterating your symptoms.

Joanna Strober 00:08:36 So talking and iterating. So we're the only company right now that does insurance covered care that actually can prescribe you medications. There's a company called Maven, which I'm sure your people are all familiar with. Maven is a great company, but they provide primarily coaching. So what they provide is coaching to help you understand what your menopause symptoms are. But they don't prescribe medications. It is it's a different business model. for us, our business model is pretty straightforward. We are in network with insurance companies. So when we work with employers, it really is around educating the employees about our option. But there's no extra fee for the employers to work with us because it's all insurance covered care.

Deanna Shimota 00:09:17 Okay. And how does it work when you have employees? And let's say you have a female population that wants to take advantage of this benefit, how does it usually work within an organization that is using maybe help?

Joanna Strober 00:09:30 We do. We do a lot of webinars for the population. We do a lot of webinars. We create a lot of content that we educate women about menopause and menopause symptoms, and perimenopause and breast cancer and menopause and bone health and sexual wellness and relationships and all the issues that come along with perimenopause and menopause.

Joanna Strober 00:09:47 We have a lot of content. And then we yes, we have a lot of content and we have a lot of information that we can share. And then women sign up to work with us, and then we can give data to employers about why women are coming, what they're getting care for, are they feeling better. So we're able to really track outcomes and show that women are getting better when they're getting the right care?

Deanna Shimota 00:10:09 And what type of employers are the perfect fit for your solution.

Joanna Strober 00:10:13 What's so interesting that I love is that we have people coming to us who got learned about because they're warehouse workers and actually like those warehouse workers, very hard for them to go get in-person care, right? So they they do calls in their car or from a closet at their work. And then we have law firms, when large, much more professional organizations that are offering this to. So we're seeing a pretty broad range of populations. More I would say more like there's a lot of call centers, a lot of people who are have just big populations of women and want to make sure they have access to the right care.

Deanna Shimota 00:10:53 And what impact have you seen organizations that work with your company experience?

Joanna Strober 00:10:59 They get a lot of thanks from the women. I would say that's the probably the biggest impact, honestly, is after we do this, they are so excited and grateful to their HR department or whoever brought us in, because they feel like this is just an under discussed topic and having access to really high quality care can make a huge difference in their lives.

Deanna Shimota 00:11:22 As you're going out to market Joanna and talking to these different employers. What would you say is the biggest hesitation that you see companies have in implementing a solution like Mini Health for their employees?

Joanna Strober 00:11:37 I actually have a lot of empathy for HR directors because the there's so many things they're trying to promote and there's so many things they're trying to talk to the employees about, it's hard to figure out the right strategy to promote the things they want to adopt. So I actually feel like that's the biggest thing. We don't usually get pushback on using us because honestly, we're essentially free to an employer, right? So it's not there's not a cost issue.

Joanna Strober 00:12:04 It's just do I have the time and resources to work with Midi to promote it to my population? it's not worth doing if you're not going to tell the population that it exists and you're not going to do webinars, and you're not going to send out some emails, there's no we have to have engagement from the employers. So some employers just have too much going on. And I would say that's the probably the biggest reason why they don't necessarily adopt us.

Deanna Shimota 00:12:29 What is involved in implementing this type of solution for those companies that are interested in exploring the option?

Joanna Strober 00:12:36 It's pretty straightforward, right? We give them the emails or we can send the emails. We do the webinars. We just organise webinars. It's just it's a very low lift. But there is some lift involved really to just do the communication. Otherwise you're not going to get the employee engagement that you're looking for.

Deanna Shimota 00:12:52 Sure. And what is your future vision Joanna for medi health.

Joanna Strober 00:12:57 We are building the first really national brand for health care, for women's health care.

Joanna Strober 00:13:04 I think women deserve access to really high quality care for everything, whether it's period problems, whether it's just migraines, thyroid issues, hormone issues. Our goal is to be your partner when you don't need an in-person visit. And I think there's a lot of times you do need an in-person visit and you should have your doctor for that. But for those times when you don't, we can be a really good partner for women. And I would just I think women deserve access to great care and we want to provide it.

Deanna Shimota 00:13:33 Awesome. As we wrap up this conversation, Joanna, what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?

Joanna Strober 00:13:40 Women can truly thrive in the workforce until they're really old. Look at Nancy Pelosi or look at a number of our other leaders. Right? With the right care, women can thrive and be really successful at work. And what I would urge you to do is think about the fact that, sadly, menopause and perimenopause symptoms do derail a lot of women unnecessarily. And if you're able to support them, that they will be incredible for your organization and the support is available.

Joanna Strober 00:14:10 So that's really how I like to think about this.

Deanna Shimota 00:14:14 Excellent. Thanks so much for sharing that information. Where can our listeners go to learn more about Mindy Health?

Joanna Strober 00:14:21 It's just join Midea. Com join Am I Dicom? And then you can see a section on it for employers who will talk about the employer offering that we've created.

Deanna Shimota 00:14:34 Awesome. Thanks so much, Joanna. I really appreciate you coming out and being a guest on the show today.

Joanna Strober 00:14:39 Yeah, it was really fun. Thank you.

Deanna Shimota 00:14:47 Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing. Com or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review. This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening.

Deanna Shimota 00:15:21 We hope you'll tune in again next time.