Melissa: I'm so excited to introduce you Carrie Young and Beth Przybylski of Evensong Women's Health and Midwifery. Your certified nurse midwife team serving Western Wisconsin and the East Metro areas. In this episode, we're going to get into the story of how it all came to be, the journey of finding their purpose and passion, along with creating a community of their perfect people coming right in their doors.

Melissa: Evensong Women's Health And Midwifery is part of the fourth edition of Healthy In The Valley. Healthy In The Valley is a free digital resource for the entire sacred valley. In each publication, you're going to find the area's best and leading business owners who are passionate about health and wellness in mind, body, and soul, helping you to live your best life. So if you're local to the Saint Croix area or Hudson, Wisconsin, I invite you to grab your free copy by going to the healthyinthevalley.com. Now let's hear it from Carrie Young and Beth Przybylski of Evensong Women's Health and Midwifery.

Mellisa: Hey There, studio owner! You've put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating a Brick and Mortar business that serves your clients and impacts the community you love. You are my hero! And I'm pretty sure we could sit down and talk like besties do because I get it. I've had my studio business for over twelve years, a handful of kids, and a few passion projects that I love, like this one. Hey there, I'm Melissa Rose, your visibility coach for the studio owner who wants more stellar clients coming through their doors, more bank in their bank account, and more time to hang out and be completely present with those they love most. In this podcast, we're going to share the nitty-gritty of running a successful studio business, sharing stories, talking strategy, and learning practical tips that leave you inspired, empowered, and equipped to create your epic life every single day. So, if you're a dance studio, yoga studio, pilates studio, or a fitness boutique studio, you are in the right place. Add some kiddos into the mix and maybe a life partner and I call you a rebel woman, ready to dive in? Let's get real!

Melissa: Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to the Brick and Mortar Visibility podcast. Today we have Carrie Young and Beth Przybylski with Even Song Midwifery And Women's Help. Welcome, ladies. How are you?

Carrie: Hello.

Beth: Thank you. Good. Thank you.

Melissa: All right. The fun part is that I have never done a threesome on a Zoom call for the podcast, so this will be fun.

Melissa: So the hardest part is just not talking over each other. So that all the words are heard, so this will be fun. Ladies, Carrie, we'll start with you. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Carrie: I wanted to be a ...Inaudible... when I grew up.

Melissa: A what?

Carrie: A dolphin trainer.

Melissa: Oh, perfect. What about you Beth?

Beth: I wanted to be like a lawyer or a doctor. I just wanted some... Some success. I didn't know what I wanted.

Melissa: So I don't know you two very well at all. So, Beth, I'm thinking, based on your answer, you're more of the analytical type then.

Beth: Hmm... I'm both. I'm really like... I go all over the place for sure.

Melissa: Okay. And Carrie's nodding your head. So, Carrie, where do you lie, then? I would think that more the creative.

Carrie: You'll learn that me and Beth are like identical twins.

Melissa: Okay.

Carrie: So, we have some creative, and then, you know, we both work in medicine.

Melissa: Yeah.

Carrie: So there is... pretty much the analytical side as well.

Melissa: Yeah. So let's dive right in. Carrie, can you tell us who you are and who you serve?

Carrie: Well, I'm a certified nurse midwife, me and Beth both are. So we like all midwives take care of women during the childbearing year, but we also take care of women through their whole... their whole adult lives. So from adolescence, through menopause, we do a lot of well-women care, and both of us are functional medicine trained and herbalists. So we really focus on... really holistic care instead of just traditional medicine.

Melissa: Okay. And you two are newer in business, right? Beth, how long have you been in business?

Beth: We're just over a year in business.

Melissa: Oh, cool.

Beth: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa: Okay...

Beth: We both have about 20 years of experience with birth.

Melissa: Yeah. So tell me about that. So tell me why and how you guys got started with your business.

Beth: Sure. We... So it's kind of interesting. Carrie sort of started in the world of home birth and went into the hospital and now is back into home birth. And I started very much in hospital births and have come out into the world of home birth. And, you know, we both... We kind of have different paths of becoming midwives. But long story short, we both ended up in hospital practice. And with COVID coming around, it just didn't feel like the kind of care we wanted to be delivering in the hospital. Birth in the hospital during COVID was just really tough. And so our horizons started to open more to being able to make some of those decisions for ourselves. And it really matched with what the community was asking for.

Beth: Home birth has increased like... huge amounts in the last 5 to 10 years and especially in the last three or four years. And so, you know, most home birth midwifery practices are... were like booking out. Like women would go to try to get an appointment at eight weeks like that's early and the midwife is already booked out for that... for when that woman is due.

And so it was sort of a combination of our kind of dissatisfaction with the care delivery in mainstream medicine, in pregnancy and birth, but also just in wellness and COVID. And I think COVID really just gave us the last push to make that change.

Melissa: No pun intended. So, Carrie, where did the title or name of your business come from?

Carrie: Actually, I'll pass that one back over to Beth.

Beth: No...

Carrie: I am. I'm going to.

Melissa: Oh, good.

Beth: My husband and I... Oh, man. We agonized, just agonized over figuring out a name. And Even Song is a term for vespers, which is like an evening prayer in the church. And it just really, really matched. It's like this beautiful, peaceful 'settling in' in the evening and it's musical and we just... It just, it was this word that really matched with that kind of like that sort of same kind of energy in birth. And what we also focus on in our practice is... is like menopause and perimenopause care in our functional medicine and hormone stuff. And in that in that way, you're sort of in the... like in the evening of your life. And it's this really special, like safe time of day. So it's kind of conceptual, but all of these, all of these like kind of thoughts and feelings about how we wanted our practice to be sort of ended up being summed up in this word that we really... It just totally connected and clicked when we thought of that word.

Melissa: And I can see that. Yeah, totally makes sense. So, Carrie, can you speak to... a little bit about the perimenopausal and that demographic of women that you serve? Because with the title of your practice or the name of your practice, that's not intuitive to me. So when I got to know you and learn what you do, I was able then to refer some people to you. So talk to us about how you help those women.

Carrie: Well, we do an outside-of-the-box perimenopause and menopause treatment. We use a lot of different functional labs, which are different than kind of the standard menopause labs that you would get from a physician and a hospital. The Dutch Test is one that we often use. And so we can look at a whole cycle of hormones and be able to fine-tune herbs, nutrition, sometimes supplements, sometimes bioidentical hormones to really match the whole picture of what's going on throughout the cycle if you're still having one. And then obviously into menopause, we do the bioidentical hormones, which are... it mimics the natural hormone, so different than the synthetics. And again, often we can work with nutrition, with herbs, and with supplements to help balance you out and make you feel really good through this you know big, sometimes long change.

Melissa: So why are people coming to you or why do you find that people are coming to you?

Carrie: Because they're not getting good answers and, you know, they're getting kind of cookie-cutter treatments from other providers. And then they want something that's more intuitive, more specialized, and also, this is a more natural approach.

Beth: The other thing I think I would tag on to that is, is like the relationship. I think we really develop our relationship with our clients and we have long visits and that's some of the freedom that we have as being business owners like you know, if it's going to take 2 hours, it's going to take 2 hours and we get to make that choice. We can have a visit as long or short as we need. Not like, you know, if you make an appointment with your OB-GYN, you literally have like 15 minutes to dump out your story. And, you know, get a prescription for whatever... a Band-Aid method is going to fix it. And nobody... women are just not satisfied with that.

Beth: And we're so lucky that we don't... We were both in positions where we had to navigate as providers giving that kind of care. And it's not fun. And so now we get to have those relationships with women and really learn who they are and help them, you know, meet the goals that they specifically have.

Melissa: Who are your referral partners or who is referring you, Carrie?

Carrie: We honestly, a lot of our business is word of mouth.

Melissa: Okay.

Carrie: And then... we have a... you know a lot of our birth... pregnancy, and birth patients come from... We put a lot of birth stories on Instagram and people love that. The hormone referrals are a lot of word-of-mouth. We have a handful of chiropractors that refer to us as well, you know, other natural health providers that do different things than we do tend to be the people that referred us.

Melissa: So you've had a fun... good... like you said, a year you've been in business? You've been in business a little longer. Yeah, a little longer. That's been... I can imagine the need, I guess. Okay. So I'm just putting myself back there like in trying to put myself in your shoes a little bit, like leaving this structure, of this... and then going out on your own. And I'm sure, like, I know others that did that as well. And I think they were inundated with people like flooded with people that were not happy with kind of the status quo over what everybody thinks to do. So you've created and... not created, but you've found your niece and you found your people, and people are loving you and referring you really well.

Melissa: So what is besides the referral partners that we talked about and then getting the word out about what you do and everything, What is one visibility strategy that's been really helpful for you? Because this is a visibility strategy for... or podcast for brick and mortars. So what is it Beth, something that in your mind has been really helpful for you guys to get the word out about who you are and what you do?

Beth: That's a really good question. I think... I have to say, like, I think the best referrals and stuff that we've like... are clients who have received care from us. So a lot of our clients initially were people who came with us from our hospital practice because they also were unhappy with that. So they came with us and they believed in us and then they like spread the word. Almost all of our home birth clients have been people who have... who have met others who have received care from us, and the experience that they've had is so good.

Beth: I mean, having your baby at home is just like it's unbeatable. It's awesome and like there's so much power in that. And the other thing I think I guess another avenue that has been helpful for us has been getting in on like Facebook groups where people are talking about the services that we offer and just like get tooting our own horn and getting our name in on those groups like, "Hey, I'm looking for a homebirth midwife in the Twin Cities?" and we pop on and say, "Hey, we can help you with that" or someone's like complaining about their PCOS. Like, "Oh, like, come see me. I can... I can help you deal with that". So I think that has been a good way for us to get clients. We honestly haven't done a huge amount of legwork in that area because we've been... we just keep getting more clients.

Carrie: Yeah, we've been really lucky that the relationships we developed... our patients, really, that's our visibility. Even our birth patients, they've sent us hormone patients and you know for Well-Women visits. So we're... we're pretty fortunate that we are in the business of relationships. And so that really has... has helped us grow with time.

Melissa: Good, good. All right. So I want to go back just a little bit to your ideal client, that perfect person. So if somebody is listening and they want to refer you are thinking about you, like who is that perfect person that's coming into your doors? Can you speak to that Carrie?

Carrie: I think our perfect person is somebody who recognizes that they're having some struggles you know with their hormones, with their health in general, and are ready to make some good changes and just need guidance and really help pinpoint where those changes need to happen. And I think it's you know women that are frustrated with not getting great answers from their health care providers and they're looking for somebody who will take a little bit more time and dig a little bit deeper and spend that time really giving them the personalized care that they need.

Melissa: So, Beth, can you speak to how the onboarding process goes or when somebody, you know, says, "Okay, I think I want to check you out" So what is this... What does this look like? Can you talk to us about that?

Beth: Yeah. So we have a website and we have kind of like descriptions of our services on the website and straight from there you can schedule an appointment if you're interested in having a home birth. We always do a one-hour consult with people that's free prior to signing-up for care. So Carrie and I do those together on Fridays. And so through our website, we use Acuity for scheduling. Moms or families can just you know pick a... pick a time when they want to come and meet us, and we meet in person in the office in Hudson.

Beth: And then, you know, like if you wanted to have a hormone visit or a functional medicine visit or a wellness visit. Those are also on our website, it seems like sometimes people have a couple of extra questions. So sometimes we get... there's some emailing back and forth prior to those appointments being scheduled but mostly we have just a self-scheduling system so you can hop right on and schedule a visit when it's convenient.

Melissa: I guess. Yeah. So some of those questions people have, can you, can you lean into that because like yes, you can send somebody to your website and schedule a call, but what are those questions people usually have?

Beth: Yeah. So sometimes somebody will be like, Well, I am trying to get pregnant. I'm not sure if this is really the right visit for me. Here's what's going on. What do you think? And we'd write back and say, "Yeah, you know, you should schedule a hormone visit, and here's what you could expect from that visit."

Melissa: What about somebody who's past childbearing years? Like what are some of those questions that maybe you are going back and forth?

Beth: It's always like I have thyroid problems, I have hormone problems. I don't know like... I just feel... I mean, I'm in that phase of life, so I totally get it. Like perimenopause women are... they just feel like a wreck. And so it's like a lot of times they have a whole bunch of different symptoms. It's like, I have this and this and this, Is this for the right thing? And it's kind of interesting like a lot of the hormone stuff is actually thyroid or is actually gut health or, you know, there's so much to dig into in these visits. So a lot of times it's just like, kind of like little clarifying questions and trying to see if this would be appropriate.

Beth: Sometimes people are asking about insurance coverage. We don't accept insurance. So...

Melissa: Oops, we lost her.

Carrie: Listening to that was super, though. So, you know, if you want to submit it to your insurance, we're out of network. But some people are able to get reimbursement from their insurance.

Melissa: I guess what I would like a little bit more clarification on like because we're... we're talking to people that might come in. So can you speak to that Carrie? Like what are those questions? Like, some people don't even know they have the issue. Like, no, they've been living with the issue for so long, they don't even realize it's an issue because it's become their norm. So what are some triggering questions that you could ask people that go, "Oh my gosh, maybe, yeah, I do need to get my hormones checked" or "Oh gosh, yeah, that might be it".

Carrie: It's a long list, you know. Is it weight gain? Is it sleepless nights? Is it like just constant bloating, hot flashes, irregular periods, terrible periods, lots of PMS, fatigue, exhaustion, and, you know, a lot of the things that women struggle with? And so there is a better way. It's not just, you know, you don't just feel crummy because you're in your forties or early thirties. This is... there are things they can do to help you feel better.

Melissa: Okay, cool. That's good to know because sometimes you don't even realize it can be better. I think a lot of us feel that way like we just feel like this is it. This is what it is. I feel healthy. I feel fine.

Carrie: Yeah.

Melissa: So, I'm fine.

Carrie: Yeah.

Melissa: And you don't realize it could be better.

Carrie: Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a difference between, like, living really well and, and, you know, like, we think of our life expectancy and death at a certain point, but we can live really well up until then and you know we can slowly deteriorate. And, you know, our goal is to keep people really healthy. So they're not in that phase of feeling like they're absolutely deteriorating.

Melissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So in Healthy In The Valley, you guys have a special offer. Can you talk to us about that, Carrie?

Carrie: For any of our hormonal functional medicine visits, we have a package that, you know, if you mention Healthy In The Valley, we'll give you a little package of some seed cycling, you know products that can help balance your cycle while you're still having them.

Melissa: Awesome. Awesome. So Beth where is the best place for people to book that first consult or connect with you?

Beth: The easiest thing is to just go right to our website.

Melissa: Which is?

Beth: evensongmidwifery.com.

Melissa: Perfect. Thank you.

Melissa: And any last words that you'd like to tell our audience about you or anything that you'd like to share?

Beth: I just have to say I am so happy to be outside of mainstream medicine and I just had no idea how good it would be. And I hope that's the experience that our patients and our clients experience as well. It's really eye-opening and refreshing to be doing something different.

Melissa: What about you, Carrie?

Carrie: So much of the same that Beth just said. Yeah, it's amazing to really be able to help heal people instead of just throw on a Band-Aid to get them through to the next step. And I love having the time freedom to be able to do that. And also the relationship. You know, there's so much intuition that we lose when we're seeing 20 or 30 patients in a day. And when we get to sit and really spend time with our patients. I think it's such a beautiful way to not only get to know them but to trust our intuition and where our guidance is going to lead them.

Melissa: I love that. I love that so much. And I love that you guys stepped out and were brave, and especially during a time when it was maybe scary to open up a business. Right? Not many people were opening up businesses. Most of us were like just trying to stay alive. So good job, ladies- super brave and bold and showing up big for our community. And I know I have referred people there to you and they have said the same thing. They... The in-depth relationship, getting to know, getting to understand their bodies and where they're at. And it is as women, to take the time for ourselves is harder. And so I just applaud you both for doing what you're doing and doing it really, really well. So and thank you for being part of Healthy In The Valley.

Melissa: So with that Ms. Beth, what is saving you on this beautiful, snowy day?

Beth: ZOOM... I mean, it is awesome that like... It was snowy out so I had some clients this morning to be able to say, "Hey, let's do a telemedicine visit instead because we really shouldn't be driving". Oh, it's awesome. That's one thing that's just been such a huge improvement in the last five years or so. It's great.

Melissa: What about you, Carrie?

Carrie: Adaptogens... Everyday! You can come see us. We recommend them a lot.

Melissa: Okay.

Beth: I putting... I have like an I.V. drip of adaptogens right now because I gave up coffee for Lent, and...

Melissa: We're on day one.

Beth: Day Two! I'm calling this as day two.

Carrie: NO...

Beth: I don't have... I've been drinking Rasa Tea all day long, super, super strong, pretending it's coffee and it's not, but it's working. And usually, when I stop coffee, I get a headache that is just, like, intractable. And I haven't had that yet. So I'm attributing that to the adaptogens I've been like... I've been like... If I could just eat the tea leaves, I would because I need them so bad right now.

Melissa: Too funny, Too funny.

Carrie: Also I live off of Rasa always... Because you know, we need it.

Melissa: Awesome. Well, ladies, I thank you for being part of Healthy In The Valley. For those of you in the Saint Croix area, you can grab your free copy and this is filled with business owners who specialize in health and wellness in mind, body, and soul and Even Song Midwifery is in there. And we appreciate your support and all of you who support them, we appreciate you. So everybody, check them out. And ladies, thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you all...

Beth & Carrie: Thank you so much...

Melissa: You're welcome. And everybody else we'll see you here same time same place next week. Bye-bye.

Melissa: Oh, my gosh, you're still here. You are such a rebel woman. I have to meet you. Come on over to the Rebel Women Tribe on Facebook created for Brick and Mortar Business owners just like you. In this group, we empower, encourage, and support each other. And every week I come in and share with you a tip, tool, or strategy that I'm learning in my Brick and Mortar Business to help you and yours. And you guys, this is the real stuff, the nitty-gritty in real-time of what's going on. So come on over to the Rebel Women Tribe on Facebook. I can't wait to meet you.