Entrepreneurship and Passion: How Courtney Saye Built a 6-Figure Fertility Practice

In this episode of Wonder Boldly, host Christine Santos sits down with Courtney Saye founder of Functional Fertility Clinic. Courtney shares her emotional journey from corporate C suite to entrepreneur, revealing the life-altering experiences that inspired her to build a thriving functional medicine practice dedicated to helping women and couples get pregnant - naturally and holistically.

• A personal fertility struggle became the catalyst for career transformation
• Why fertility struggles go undiagnosed
• Why the bounce-back rate is key in entrepreneurship

Whether you're a wellness advocate seeking inspiration, someone on a fertility journey, or a woman ready to bet on herself this episode is for you.

Learn more about Courtney: Courtney Saye is the founder of The Functional Fertility Clinic, where she helps women and couples identify the root causes of infertility using advanced lab testing and a personalized, functional medicine approach. Her clinic has supported hundreds of families on the path to pregnancy without relying on endless meds or invasive treatments. She’s on a mission to change the narrative around “unexplained infertility” and make real answers more accessible.

• Bring Home Baby https://www.functionalfertilityclinics.com/bring-home-your-baby
• Thyroid https://www.functionalfertilityclinics.com/thyroidfreebie
• Supplements https://www.functionalfertilityclinics.com/supplement-guide-to-enhance-fertility
• VIP https://healwithcourtneyleigh.practicebetter.io/#/63d2b987fc4918f149cf898b/forms?f=66100fd6073156721121705b

Website: Functional Fertility Clinic and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courtneylsaye/

Transcript

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Wonder Boldly. Today I have on with me, Courtney Saye, and she is the founder of the Functional Fertility Clinic, where she helps women and couples identify the root causes of infertility using advanced lab testing and personalized functional medicine approach.

Christine Santos: Her clinic has supported hundreds of families on the path to pregnancy. This is done without relying on endless meds or invasive [00:01:00] treatments. I'm so excited to have Courtney with us today for very, very specific reasons.

So if you're listening to this podcast, you are going to hear about a woman who has started her own business, and also on the health and wellness side. Who is somebody passionate about helping women and couples get pregnant. So from frustration of IVF or constantly getting those, negative pregnancy results to turning around working with her and her team and bringing baby home.

So I'm so excited about this episode. Thank you Courtney, so much for being with us today. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Christine Santos: So let's start with the small business perspective. Can you tell us what happened in your life that you decided to make a shift? And move into this space of starting your own business with obviously a [00:02:00] passion that you have and growing your business.

I know we have talked in other environments where you have shared that it's a very successful business and I think the listeners would love to hear that journey. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. Yeah. I always debate how far back to go on this because, hindsight's always 20/20 and you look back on your life at all the things that didn't make any sense, and you're like, oh, that was all planted there to leave me to where I am today.

So I've always had a passion for health and wellness, but my career was very different until a few years ago. I went to business school and went and got an MBA after I finished college and started down the path of a finance career. Ended up working eventually after.

Years and years of working for other businesses through in that, there was another entrepreneurship stent about 15 years ago in the food space. So a catering food truck operation for a few years. Built that and sold it, went back into [00:03:00] corporate but always had my heart in entrepreneurship. Like I love building things.

My husband and I have gutted, renovated and sold a few homes over the years. I love building things and making things beautiful in the world, which I'll tie back to the fertility stuff in a second. But anyway I was on that path and I was always like a type A self-described, type A like hustle, work harder than the rest of the pack to get it done.

Grew up in the Midwest middle class family and found myself in a world where I felt like I had to prove myself a lot. Almost imposter syndrome on that front. And so anyway building, our own family I had my son we weren't even planning on it yet. We got pregnant again 'cause we wanted another one.

And I had a miscarriage early in the second trimester and it was heartbreaking. And then I went through unexplained infertility, failed fertility treatments, all of the things. Eventually we brought our daughter home. And I keep pushing on this corporate career while this is happening. And I hit the wall about a year into COVID.

that was my mental [00:04:00] breakdown, if you will, where everything just crumbled. And looking back. It was, I think, God opening the door for me to rebuild everything. I found functional medicine, I'll spare you all of the details unless somebody wants to ping me directly and talk about all of it.

But I found functional medicine during that time when I was having a lot of health issues that I'd ignored. so these had started in my teens and gotten worse and worse. And when I was going through the fertility stuff, I kept saying I got all these gut issues. They're like, that has nothing to do with this.

So it was gut stuff, it was headaches, it was skin issues. And I saw all the doctors, the dermatologists, full GI workup, all the things, nothing worked. And then I found functional medicine right after this, mental collapse, if you will in early '21. And it changed my life. within six to 12 months, I was feeling 75% of the way better.

I was like, why doesn't everyone know about this? I felt like I was really well educated on health and wellness. I'd always been into fitness and making sure I was up on, [00:05:00] nutrition trends and I had no idea that this existed. So I was like, I have to completely change my life and bring this to people.

And at the time I was working as a CFO for a venture capital backed tech company. So that's the startup space. If you've seen there was a show called, I think it was called Startup Silicon Valley a few years ago, which is 

Christine Santos: mm-hmm. 

Courtney Saye: it's dramatized, but that world is 

Christine Santos: Right. 

Courtney Saye: Got some similarities.

So I was a executive on the team there. Being paid really well. I could have kept going on that path. Financially, it didn't make any sense to step off of it. But I just felt this calling, which I recognize now as God being like, it's time to make a move. And I knew I wanted to do this and I wasn't sure exactly where I would keep studying and specialize early on.

 But it became more and more clear as I started working with clients that the fertility struggles I went through were the, hardest thing I had ever gone through in my entire life. And that I could be that light to people that [00:06:00] kind of really is the light. 'cause they're not getting any answers, they're not getting any support or help to women and couples who are on that journey and feeling like I did and really alone.

And so I spare you the details of all the extra studying, certifications, all the things. And we started focusing only on fertility clients. And the practice has really grown quickly over the last couple of years. Like you said, we've served a ton of clients and couples and we have practitioners on the team who are doing the one-on-one work with clients and we all work together in the background.

My role within the company now which I feel like, if for the people in the audience who are. Small business owners, you gotta figure out what your superpower is in the business. And then hire people who are better at everything else around you as you can. You do everything at first, because that's how it works.

But I love the client work, but I realized I could hire people who I could train on my method, but they were actually far better and far more experienced at the clinical side of things. [00:07:00] And I make sure that they bring the compassion and the passion and the connection with clients that is a cornerstone of our practice.

And I spend my time now on growth on spreading the message, on making sure the team has all the right tools and that they're working well together. And it's the most soul filling, rewarding work ever. It's hard because people come to us, like you said, after long journeys sometimes.

So they're carrying a lot of trauma with them and they have an ounce of faith left that this might work, but they're not quite sure. They're like, I'm gonna give it a try, but I don't know. And then to watch their progress from I feel fine, I just can't get pregnant to oh, I didn't know I was tired before.

I feel so good in the afternoons. I didn't know life could feel like this. I feel like I'm reconnecting with my husband to their tearful messages. Sometimes their voice notes or written messages when they get pregnant. It's just ama-, it's incredible and it never gets old. I've told all of the practitioners on the team, we keep Firm boundaries around keeping everything off of text message, because I [00:08:00] feel like personal life and business. But if somebody's pregnant, the group messages are popping off and everybody's crying along with me.

Christine Santos: I know. I have chills. I have chills. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. It's it's pretty incredible to get, to be a part of such an intimate journey of helping them, build their families.

Christine Santos: Mm-hmm. 

Courtney Saye: I get teared up every time I talk about it too. So anyway, I think that covers the transition. it didn't really make any sense logically for somebody like me who is very analytical and type A but I think I had ignored that boy. You call it whatever you want, depending on your belief system, the universe coincidence.

God. But I had shoved that aside in, favor of following a logical path my whole life. And. Start going okay, I'm gonna go this route. It doesn't make any sense, but I'm gonna go this route. And now, seeing the fruits of what we've been able to do in people's lives, and it's pretty incredible how you do one thing is how you do everything.

So it's a journey for your whole life, probably. But I am learning to [00:09:00] soften into other areas of my life and go, okay, I'll go that way, even though it doesn't really make sense in my head. And really cool things are happening in the rest of my life too yeah. 

Christine Santos: Oh, I love to hear that. Yeah. So, similar for me, I was in the corporate space for 30 plus years and I actually never intended to leave.

Right? okay, I'm on the track climbing the corporate ladder. I actually had targeted, I had worked out a couple of different corporations. And then I decided to pack my car and I'm in the Boston area, so I'm going cross country to California, live in California. And so I did that and that lasted under a year.

And I'm so glad I did it. But I was ready to come home and I targeted the company I wanted to work at. I had friends that were working there. I knew I could travel all the things. And luckily I was able to get hired and I climbed the corporate ladder. This was a plan. This [00:10:00] is what I'm gonna do. I am going to live and die at this company.

And then you get to a certain salary level, comfort level, all the things. And it would be for anybody looking in from the outside that's, let's say still in corporate or thinking about doing something different like. What was that thing for you that you were like, okay, I'm gonna walk away from whatever it is.

It could be a really good salary, it could be a great team. I'm listing all the things that I had, right? I had amazing team. I worked at a software development company for hospitals, and that was so rewarding. And the people I worked with were wonderful. And so it's like, how did somebody take that leap?

So my question is to you, how did you make that leap? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, so it goes back to not ignoring when you're getting they say like if you need to do something in life, there's the feather and the whisper and the brick or something. And I feel like there were signs of that for a [00:11:00] long time.

I'm a worker, I love working. Even when I'm not sitting at my desk doing work for building my business, I am thinking about it it lights me up inside. And I'd been like that even in prior life, right? When I wasn't as passionate about the work, but I was working in a way that wasn't filling me up and it was burning me out.

And I think most people aren't gonna have this dramatic moment that I had in early 2021 where a lot of things that had been building over the years that I'd kept inside just had me crying on the bathroom floor one night and finally telling my husband something needs to change.

And that wasn't exactly when it happened for good. I didn't know this was coming yet, but there were all of these signs of this isn't filling me up. And if I look back. I knew that I was drawn to entrepreneurship from like my MBA I focused on finance, but also got a minor in entrepreneurship and I loved those courses.

I loved every second of it. And then I built a [00:12:00] business that was unrelated and really hard and not a whole lot of income right away. But I loved it and I remember looking back on that and going, I was making a lot of money and I had stock options.

 but there's something about you're only on this earth for so long and you gotta do what feels like it's going to be the best use of your time. Not in a way that makes sense on paper, but if you believe in yourself. I think you can do anything. I knew I could do it and the moment that I knew I had to go, there were some signs at work, but I was also working with client.

Courtney Saye: I'd been, I don't know how I was doing it, but I was doing that a mom to two and also had clients on the side part-time. And I was like I would do this for free. That's how I felt about that work. It felt so important and I hopped over into it. I think for a lot of people you do have to dip your toe in before you can leave because look, we all have bills to pay and we live in Southern California.

It's [00:13:00] not cheap to live here. We have a family, so I was dipping my toe in, but I finally said, look, I believe in myself enough that I'm gonna take the leap over there. And I think the other thing that I always tell myself when I start to panic about is this gonna work? okay, what's the worst thing that's gonna happen?

And you have to picture the worst case scenario. And for me it was then I won't do it anymore when I get to a point where the money's getting really tight, living on one income, and I'll go get another job with a really cool story of taking a bet on myself. But I knew deep down that I wouldn't go back there, but that was the worst case scenario.

And that's not the end of the world. 

Christine Santos: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a really good point. I wanna talk about that a little bit more in the fact that, betting on yourself, having that belief, I think that similarly I am very analytical. Technical, hence podcast production.

And I was this firm believer like, I can do anything. gimme the formula and I'm gonna go somewhere with this. I say this all the time on the [00:14:00] show, but gimme the formula and I'll do it. That's no problem. I love to work. Same thing. All the things you said. But the interesting thing about entrepreneurship for me that was different than corporate.

I mentioned, I targeted that company. I knew back in the day. We didn't have the internet. I went to the library, I researched the company, I prepared myself. I wanted to work at this company. And I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. And there is, if you will, loosely or not so loosely, a way to do that in corporate.

And I did it. So I'm like entrepreneurship. Great. Common thread early on when I was in my teens, really enjoyed that sort of space. And what I found, and now I'm five years in or something like that. That's the thing about entrepreneurship. There is no formula. 

Courtney Saye: No. N o, 

Christine Santos: And that's where it gets really hard.

Yeah. And because at first it's like that honeymoon phase, right? I can do this and you know, you're all [00:15:00] excited and you do the thing and you keep doing and then it's the bills are tight, whatever it is for you, or can I really do this? All the things. And that is my next question for you.

So when it gets really hard, when those moments happen, whatever they are for you, how do you push past those? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, I think, so this came up for me recently in other spaces with, 

people with similar businesses. And I think what I tell myself now is this never ends. This might become a $10 million brand with products and all kinds of other stuff beyond our clinic services now.

And I am still going to have these moments where I panic and fear of scarcity. But it's so crazy how it was the same in month two as it is now, as it will be in two to five years. It's our crazy brains trying to protect us and keep us in a bubble where we're comfortable when we're in a season where expansion is coming and you gotta believe before there's any proof.

I think that's [00:16:00] a big one with entrepreneurship is you have to have belief without any evidence. And for people like me, it was a theme in my life. I was. Coming into relationship with God for the first time too. So I was learning to go, okay, just believe without the evidence you type A analytical control freak 

Christine Santos: right?

Courtney Saye: And I was practicing it in a lot of areas of life, but my business is 100% virtual. We get a lot of referrals now. We still get a lot of people from social media that follow the stories of the clients and everything we do on the journey. But for, I think three months when the brand started, literally was like talking into the ethers every day.

I showed up every day, I think for three months before we brought a client on. That was a fertility client of like, is anyone listening? is this actually gonna work? Because there's like a little bit of a formula, anything you wanna do in entrepreneurship, somebody's done it before so you can pay people to help you.

So back that I was paying a social media coach to help me get that [00:17:00] presence set up. But I think the big theme in all of it is belief before evidence. And that's tough. That's tough when you want evidence. So even now, we're expanding to new levels here now and we're going to be making our services more accessible through AI so we can go at a much lower price point.

'cause we have so many people who desperately want and need our services, but they just can't afford it because. It's expensive. The test kits are expensive, and We have the best of the best practitioners on the team, and they are supporting clients hand in hand. And so it's expensive. But now we're looking at this and there are investments to make, things to do, things to let go of.

As I look towards that next step, and my brain does the same thing that it did, like 60 days in when it's is anyone listening here? Is anyone ever gonna come along for the ride? Where the feeling is the same. You just, I think what I am learning to do throughout this whole journey is the bounce back rate gets [00:18:00] quicker where you're like, actually that's a lie.

And everybody's brain tells them the same story because it wants to feel safe and it doesn't want any change. And those aren't thoughts that are placed there for your good. They are trying to keep you in this little bubble. Which actually, the funny thing is It's an illusion of safety because staying the same isn't any safer than going for growth.

so I go through the same exercises and I don't know if I've gone completely off track or I'm answering your question, but I go back to okay, what does the cashflow look like? Okay. There's some evidence here that the world isn't collapsing, there's worst case scenario and here's what that looks like.

And then I pull myself out of it a lot quicker now. But I think I may have lost the actual question in there. So tell me if I answered it or not. 

Christine Santos: No, that was perfect. And I wanted to actually say what you just said and you said it so eloquently. I'm gonna put that in a quote and give that to you because you said the bounce back rate gets quicker. And I've always said that, but not [00:19:00] as eloquently as that because I have found that too. So you're on this journey, like I said, the honeymoon phase. This is exciting and you made a very good point also. There is a formula, like you get to do certain things, get an email list, all the things, and then you hit this period, this wall, this really down place.

And boy, it's scary and it's down, right? This is early on in the journey and it takes, in my opinion, community, it takes believing in yourself. It takes the support of whomever's in your life if it's family, friends, whomever, to keep going, right? And it takes a little while to get out of that. And throughout the years I've been doing this, I've had one really great sort of business mentor who is now a friend.

I wouldn't even call her that anymore, but. Who was far ahead of me when I met her in her entrepreneurship journey, and so we voxer, we leave voice messages for each other, she's in [00:20:00] Australia, I'm here, right? and the amount of times that each of us has been there, right?

And you're like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? And then it's two weeks and you're still feeling that. And over time, I love how you said it, the bounce back rate gets quicker, right?

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: So you're like, okay, I've been here before. Might not be the same problem or whatever, but we're gonna get through it and it is so much quicker.

And then I will say, 'cause true authenticity, transparency, there'll be something else that will come up that's even bigger. And then you're like, okay, and then you fall back a little bit. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: And then you bounce back. So it's always in motion. And it's a good reminder to be like, okay, especially I said the voice messages.

I'll say to her, I know I was saying this the other day, like two months ago, and I feel like here I am again and how are we gonna get through it? And you do. So I love how you said that. And it just gets quicker. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, it, it does, but it doesn't go away. And I think that's where [00:21:00] most small businesses go sideways is whether it's the first time and they give up or it's two or five years in and things get really hard and feel like, I don't know exactly how this is going to be okay.

They stop failing fast and trying and trying and they just give up. And I think that's why, especially in this it's not new, but newer virtual health and wellness space. Where, to your point, there's not a formula and I can take some pieces and learn and grow faster from people who have gone before me, but the way my brand grows is not going to be exactly the way someone else's grows.

Because in this noisy online space, what makes people successful and known is people connecting with their authentic voice. the more you can get out there and be authentic you're going to push the people out of your world that weren't meant to be there in the first [00:22:00] place. And then call in the people who really resonate with that.

And that's. Really scary and hard at first when you're like, I don't wanna exclude anyone. I wanna make sure we can serve everyone. I'm just gonna talk about things generically or generally. And then you've learned to start talking to one person. You're like, I talked to this person on a consult call today.

This is what they're going through. This comes up all the time. Here's exactly, what we do in our practice. And those super specific niched down content pieces speak. Even if it's one person, they're like, she's talking to me. So anyway. That's another piece of it as you learn, is the people pleaser in me.

I always, and I probably a lot of women, at least in the audience, will identify with constantly wanting everybody to like them. I really had a hard time with being like, I'm actually gonna turn a lot of people off and they're gonna unfollow or say that's not for me. But that calls in the people who are for you.

Christine Santos: Yeah, absolutely. [00:23:00] Absolutely. So let's turn to the work that you're doing, and I wanna go back to something you said earlier, because I always personally, and it's probably my technical detail oriented side, I like to define things because when we hear terms, we all hear them and we're like, oh yeah, I know what that means.

But when I'm speaking with an expert like yourself, I like to ask that expert to define the term. And you said functional medicine, right? So we're all nodding along. Oh yeah. Functional medicine. But please define that for us and what that means for you. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. Yeah. So I first, not caveat, but say that probably like anything else, the space is a little disconnected.

Okay. So how we run our practice is not gonna look the same as a local functional medicine doc or a naturopath. I think a lot of people are like, those all go together and there's some common threads. But for me, for what we've built here and why it's unique the common threads of functional medicine look like [00:24:00] at a fundamental level, you gotta go back to western medicine to understand the differences.

So everybody understands the western medicine paradigm because that's what we've grown up with. The body is split into its component parts. If you are having neurological issues, you go to a neurologist. If you are having gut issues, digestion problems, you're gonna go to a gastroenterologist.

If you're trying to get pregnant and having trouble, they're gonna send you to a fertility doc your skin, you're going to the derm, right? And it's all separated in that paradigm. And that's what we've always known. Functional medicine. Sees the body as one interconnected system where everything is working together and you can't separate the component parts.

So in our space with fertility clients have been through some rigorous western medicine tests, a decent amount of time when they find us with a reproductive endocrinologist or maybe an OBGYN that specializes over there where they've looked at a lot of things with their reproductive system. Are your tubes open?

Are you ovulating? What's day three [00:25:00] hormones look like? Have your partner do a semen analysis and then they stop there and say, I don't know what's wrong. We didn't find anything. That's very common. Now we do have some clients who have known issues, but about half of them or more in that boat of I don't really know what's wrong.

And the issue is there are so many other parts of the interconnected systems in our body that really work as one that are impacting people's ability to get and stay pregnant. Okay. And there's other people who have other functional medicine niches that they work in. They work with other case types.

That concept is the same though, right? The body is working together as one, and you can't split it. You can't dissect it into these pieces where it's let's look at what's going on in your brain, but not what's going on in your gut. Same thing with what we're doing with fertility. Where our practice is different. I won't say no one else has, something out there. But then the majority of what we see in functional medicine is that we're running tests that are custom hand selected to see what [00:26:00] exactly is going on in their bodies that is impacting their inability to get and stay pregnant.

We work with women on their own and then sometimes couples, we always encourage the couple to come in 'cause it's 50/50 and we're looking at the whole system if you will. And then we are working with them hand in hand on their healing protocols. It's a six month program and. That makes all the difference in the world.

'cause we get probably 40% of our clients who have, like I worked with a functional medicine doctor, a naturopath in town or some group program that was really hands off and they ran some tests and they got a bag of supplements. But the problem is, if you don't have somebody who's really helping you day to day with a nutritional foundation, and some people need help with some of the movement and sleep things that go along with it and mindset and stress management, you're never, not never, but a lot of times you're not gonna get all the way there.

' supplements are a part of what we do. It's all non drugs, no drugs or prescriptions in our practice. Not that people can't take them, but we don't prescribe. But you have to have the foundation there and [00:27:00] you have to have someone who's supporting you through it. Because even as a practitioner myself, I was talking to a friend about this the other day, we have so many blind spots about ourself like I live and breathe this work, but I have to have somebody else look at my labs when I run them every year just to make sure I'm not missing anything. Or go what? What? Because it's so hard to be your own provider. And we get so many clients who are they're the healthiest person. They know.

They've been on a journey of trying to eat organic and clean and they're taking really good supplements. They don't know what their body needs, and they haven't had anybody guiding them through their blind spots too to get all the way there. So I think that's one of the differentiating factors that takes us from getting these clients in who've been doing work for a year or two with somebody in the space to being pregnant at month four or five or six because they got those extra pieces that were missing and there were maybe some components.

I always call our team detectives we're not just looking at this is low, or this is higher, this is off, but how does it all go together as a picture and making sure we're putting together the best healing [00:28:00] protocols for them. 

Christine Santos: And what would you say is one common block that people have? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah like a common thread of issues that come up.

There's definitely some themes. Everybody's body is biochemically unique, but with women who are struggling to get or stay pregnant, like they're having repeat losses in the first trimester, we see a lot of suboptimal thyroid function, and that comes up in a couple of different ways. Some of them know they have hypothyroidism and they're on levothyroxine or Synthroid.

That's incredibly common. And their doctor says everything looks good. Some of them had no idea because it's below clinical levels, which means in layman's terms, it's not diagnosable in western medicine, but it's not optimal. So functional medicine, that's another piece we didn't really touch on.

We're looking for optimal cellular function, not disease state. So we're gonna identify things much earlier than the lab ranges would over there. And so

Christine Santos: I just wanna pause there [00:29:00] in regards, 'cause I know you use a lot of lab work and so I'll let you define it, but simply coming from, working in software development for medical practices and hospitals.

There are standard lab ranges, right? So we could, whatever it is. I'm not gonna name a test, it doesn't matter. But it could be one to 10, right? And if you're within there, oh, you're good. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: And so that's what you're talking about, right? Where it's at? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: Okay. So please continue and share.

Courtney Saye: Yeah. I'll give you an easy example because it's one that relates to the thyroid piece of this, and it's all onion layers. but anyway, most people have seen TSH on standard tests. You probably get it done when you go get blood work, and that's the marker that Western medicine uses for: is your thyroid functioning.

Okay? They will go between 0.5 and five as okay, and then some of them are getting a little better, and they'll be in the four, four and a half. Either way, that's the range for like your thyroid looks good and they don't test all the other [00:30:00] markers that give you the full picture most of the time. We are looking for optimal thyroid function.

To be TSH of one between 0.5 and two is optimal for getting to a healthy pregnancy. And we wanna look at about five other markers that they don't tend to test to see the full picture because that's only how the brain is communicating with a thyroid gland. It doesn't tell me the rest of the picture.

And so it's ranges and then it's depth. And then with something like the slow thyroid function, whether it's diagnosed or it's something they had no idea was a problem, they're like, I asked my IVF doc and they said everything was fine. It's yeah, but they were looking at a different range and they weren't going deep enough.

Then you gotta ask, why is that happening in the body? And there's always a root cause beneath that. Something's going on in the gut. There's micronutrient issues in the body. There are nutrition patterns during the day, even if they're eating super clean and healthy, that they've gotta make some tweaks on.

To get them to optimal function there. So that's a common one that comes up. We see a lot of [00:31:00] PCOS endometriosis. Sometimes there's a known male factor issue where he had some parameter on the semen test that came up, not great or pretty bad. And then some of them have done enough research to know that if they have hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's that it may be contributing to their issues and the rest of the crew falls into unexplained and the unexplained category.

I would say our average we just did the math on this recently. Our average successful pregnancy is, it's in the upper thirties for the woman's age, so 38, 39. And a lot of times when you get there as a woman in western medicine, they say your eggs like it's egg quality. There's really nothing you can do.

We'll just keep trying, just keep going through the fertility treatments. Which, whether you have PCOS, it's unexplained, you have endometriosis. If you're in that category of being, 35 to early forties, there's so much you can do to extend your reproductive longevity and improve your egg quality.

And [00:32:00] that's not ever talked about. So anyway there's a range, but there's some common threads of what's actually going on at the root cause level that lead to a multitude of issues on the surface. So if you have hormonal symptoms or acne or headaches or gut issues, it doesn't necessarily mean, oh, that is this root cause.

You gotta run the labs to see what's actually going on in there instead of guessing. 

Christine Santos: And so once you have that information, then in your program, your signature program, you mentioned that, what is the name of that program? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, we just call it our VIP program. We call it. We need to change the name.

It's the one-on-one, but a lot of times it's one on two. With her husband or partner. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. Okay. So your VIP program, so you mentioned so you do the testing and I'm sure there's a lot more. But I wanna get to the point where, okay, so you've identified something, something is giving you and your detectives, I love that, a clue then what happens for the patient. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. Yeah. So clients are coming in and they're immediately connecting with their practitioner and doing an intake. And they start before they even get [00:33:00] lab results back on an initial protocol that's focused on some low hanging fruit with nutrition. clients are always scared when they start like, are you gonna make me change everything?

No. We meet you where you're at and help you along the way. And then getting drainage pathways prepared for future protocols. And that's a step that a lot of people skip. They're like, I need to do a detox. And don't ever do a detox unless you've done some drainage work, you know what you're doing or with a practitioner.

And then the labs start to come back. And our methods stacks their protocols over the six months in a specific order to make sure that we're eliminating anything from the body that shouldn't be there and replenishing cellular health and energy after we've eliminated anything that shouldn't be there.

And so the protocols look a little bit different for everybody, but they're going to include a series of protocols from their different labs that have some supplementation that's very targeted, some nutrition recommendations, sometimes some lifestyle stuff depending on what came up on the labs.

And by lifestyle, I hate the word lifestyle 'cause it assumes to me, it sounds like [00:34:00] blame, like you're doing something wrong. But that's not it at all. It's little, tweaks to how they move their bodies or their sleep hygiene or stress management that will help them biochemically correct the imbalances that are in their bodies.

Christine Santos: And then after that, or during that along the journey, it's a six month VIP program. Is that correct? Yeah. Then what's next?

Courtney Saye: Yeah, so this, I tell clients it's a heavy lift for everyone in the first three months, call it, 'cause you're doing the labs, you're starting protocols. Then you're likely doing a gut protocol, which is usually the heaviest lift.

And you can feel worse before you feel better. And then around month three or four, we get a lot of messages that are I'm feeling better. I just started my period and I didn't even know it was coming. I haven't had a headache in two weeks and I used to have migraines three days a week.

And then a decent amount of them will get pregnant toward the end of the program. We tell them when they come in, look, you're an adult, you can do what you want. But our recommendation is that you pause on trying to conceive for a minute so that you can slow down to speed [00:35:00] up. Most of them have been at it for six months to 3, 4, 8 years.

Figure out what's going on in your body. Let's work through protocols for at least 90 days, which puts us usually around the four month mark. And then a lot of them will start trying to conceive again. And a lot of them get pregnant pretty quickly. If they get pregnant before the end of the program, we transition our support to early pregnancy care.

 If not, they're continuing to work through protocols through those six months. And some of them need a little bit more support depending on where their starting place is. So they have the option to continue with us month to month no, no big chunk commitment. But a lot of them are like, oh, I made so much progress, and I can feel like I'm almost there.

One thing that comes up a lot is women with PCOS that don't ever ovulate. And they started ovulating and they're like, I know I'm all the way there, but if you take my practitioner away from me, I'm terrified that I'm gonna go back the other way. So some of those clients will stay on with us until they get pregnant for a little bit afterwards.

'cause everybody's body is a little [00:36:00] bit different. But typically, if you're really committed to the program between the four and seven, eight month mark pregnancy is very likely. 

Christine Santos: That's amazing. That's so exciting. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. Yeah. 

Christine Santos: Oh my gosh. And so I'm sure they send you pictures of their babies.

Do you stay in contact with folks? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah. It's funny, one of our clients sent me a message the other day and she I posted a picture. I have one practitioner who lives here locally and we were at lunch and she's her practitioner now. But I got to know her pretty well early in the program too.

And most of them will still follow me on Instagram. So they're getting their practitioner and they're hearing the stories and all the things I share on social. And she's you two are my favorite people. I wish I could meet you and have lunch with you and give you a hug. So that's the kind of connection that we're going for.

The clinical experience is baseline, right? they've gotta know our method and how to work with clients and how to get results, but that connection is the magic spark of them feeling seen, heard, supported for the first time ever on this journey. Like they've got someone in their corner [00:37:00] too who really sees them.

And all of my practitioners are moms. So in one way or another, some of them have been through a hard journey, but in one way or another, and they know what it means to go through this process. So yeah, a lot of them keep in pretty close contact and if it's Saturday when they get a positive test or Friday night when they come home with their, they found out the gender, they'll shoot it to me on Instagram and they shoot it to us over on the official channels too.

So yeah. That's pretty special. 

Christine Santos: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And so prior to the call today, you mentioned you had some material resources that you could share with the audience. Can you tell us a little bit about those and we'll put 'em in the show notes? 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, for sure. We'll get the link over to you guys.

We put together a guide for people who are working in, you don't have to be in health and wellness, but really it's for people who are working in the virtual space and early in the journey of trying to, or earlier in the journey of trying to build their brand, their presence, their [00:38:00] monetizing it with their offers and just how to show up online.

And we're gonna be rolling out an option to have what we're calling a power hour with me, where you give me the whole download on where you are in your business and we do an hour together to strategize next steps. And have a couple days available in Voxer after for questions. But we can send you the freebie.

So that's a few page guide on how to get past, I think we called it something about like getting past imposter syndrome when you feel like. A fraud. Which is funny because as women, and this doesn't knock the men in the room, I just think they're better at this than we are. we think we have to be 20 years of experience and know more than all the books in the world before we feel comfortable being the expert.

And that's not okay. people, I heard something early on, even with base level certification before all of the advanced stuff that was like, people can benefit from where you are and the help you can give them right now. Stop trying to be [00:39:00] everything before you go out and help people because the world, especially in what we're doing and any functional medicine space, honestly, the world needs us so badly.

 there's a paradigm over in Western medicine and It supports injury. if you've got cancer, if you've got, some things going on over there, thank God we have those treatments available, those medications lifesaving. But when we're dealing with something like suboptimal fertility or autoimmune issues or skin issues that no one has an answer for, or gut issues those are the spaces where it's really, your quality of life is impacted, but you're not in an acute emergency or dying.

Western medicine doesn't have answers for that. And so if you're listening and you're, early in it and you're like, I'm I, I know some stuff, but I don't feel like I am an expert yet. At least get out there and start to share your stories, start to share what you've done with clients, because I tell myself even now, every day, if one person hears this and it changes their journey, then it's worth showing up and being uncomfortable. 

Christine Santos: Mmhmm Yeah. And [00:40:00] that's so true. And just to expand on that a little bit it is the journey of entrepreneurship, right? in totality, meaning not just health and wellness, doing a podcast, for example, when my clients get that first oh, thank you so much for creating that episode.

It changed the way I looked at something. Or somebody has, developed products from nature. Oh, thank you so much because I was having this rash all the time. Whatever it is, if you have it on your heart or you feel like there's something calling you to do it, you don't have to be, I'm going to do air quotes expert.

Have all the certifications, have all the things under your belt. Just start sharing because. I think you will be so surprised at how many people you're impacting. You won't even know actually 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: How many people you're impacting. And there will be those few who reach out and let you know. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: And so it's, getting over that hurdle of the imposter syndrome. So I love that. So thank you so much. We'll [00:41:00] put that in the show notes and then tell us how they can find out about your programs, any freebies for, whether it's hormonal, PCOS, or whatever you have for us. Let us know. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah. We'll make sure we get you all the links for the website.

It's got a lot of program info on it. We have a really cool webinar that's pretty new now that we can give the link for that too, that walks through. It's about an hour long. I'm still deep down a little impatient with stuff like that, so I always listen on one and a half speed so you can go quicker.

But it walks through our entire method of exactly how we get from start to finish with our clients from PCOS, endometriosis, unexplained whatever, you're too old, whatever it may be, to successful pregnancies. And we put it all in a webinar that's a little under an hour long. So that's my favorite freebie right now because all the things are there.

We have a couple others on our website and we'll share the website on. Preparing for IVF, a success with IVF. Most of our clients go on to have a natural pregnancy, but a hundred percent of our clients in the last [00:42:00] 18 months that have gone to IVF because they had frozen embryos or their age or genetics, have had success on their first round, which is unheard of.

Usually it takes two to four rounds before most people get to success. So we've got one there. And then there's another good one on thyroid. And by the time this gets published, we have, there's so many fun things that we're putting out right now. We're finishing up a guide on functional blood ranges because we talked a little bit about labs earlier on.

And one of the labs that we run is a blood lab. We look at stool, we look at urine. There's a saliva test. We're looking beyond the blood, but a lot of people have blood results from an annual examiner. Their reproductive endocrinologist ran or somebody ran for them and they said everything looks normal.

If you're looking at it from how we're looking at it, optimizing it for a healthy pregnancy, the ranges are gonna be far different. So we're putting a guide out it's almost done on, what the optimal ranges are and how to look at those [00:43:00] so people can grab their stuff from, quest or LabCorp or wherever they went and their hospital system and pop it up against each other and go, oh, actually there are some things right here on this basic blood work. But no one ever said anything to me. 

Christine Santos: Fantastic. Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for your time. This has been so enlightening on both fronts of the entrepreneurship and the work that you're doing in regards to helping people bring home baby.

I just love that. 

Courtney Saye: Yeah, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. [00:44:00]