Startup Physicians

From Pediatric ER Doc to FemTech Founder with Dr. Lara Zibners

• Alison Curfman, M.D. • Season 1 • Episode 46

Share episode

In this episode of the Startup Physicians Podcast, host Dr. Alison Curfman talks with Dr. Lara Zibners, a pediatric emergency physician whose winding career path led her from the chaos of the PEDs ER to the world of women’s health innovation. What starts as light-hearted humor between two ER docs quickly evolves into a powerful conversation about identity, reinvention, and the unexpected paths physicians can take beyond clinical practice.

Lara shares her journey from insisting she’d never be a doctor, to practicing in the U.S. and U.K., to ultimately leaving the bedside after a mix of personal, professional, and global circumstances made clinical practice unsustainable. She opens up about her seven failed rounds of IVF, adoption, surrogacy, and the lived experiences that inspired her to co-found a vaginal drug-delivery medtech company—reshaping how women receive progesterone and other therapies.

Alison and Lara dive into:

  • The surprising origins of Lara’s medical career
  • Practicing medicine across two countries and navigating identity as a physician
  • How infertility and motherhood shaped her mission in women’s health
  • The reality of transitioning out of clinical medicine
  • How physicians can translate clinical expertise into startup leadership
  • The importance of storytelling when raising capital or influencing change
  • Why learning, networking, and experimentation matter more than having a perfect plan
  • Practical advice for doctors exploring entrepreneurship or seeking a more aligned career path

This conversation blends humor, vulnerability, and startup strategy—making it essential listening for any physician who’s curious about new career possibilities or the future of women’s health innovation.

Connect with Dr. Lara Zibners:

Alison Curfman (00:01.198)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Startup Physicians podcast. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I am here with my colleague, Dr. Lara Zibners. Thanks for joining me today.

Lara Zibners (00:12.69)
Hello. Hi, good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Alison Curfman (00:16.172)
So our listeners are fortunate to get to hear two pediatric emergency physicians who have a lot of bizarre experiences and really enjoy making fun of themselves. So that should be entertaining.

Lara Zibners (00:32.786)
I was once told by an adult, one of those grownup doctors, that the cruelest, meanest people in the world are pediatric ER docs, because apparently we are not moved by crying. Like we have no, it just doesn't bother us.

Alison Curfman (00:42.444)
What?

Alison Curfman (00:49.474)
Hmm. Well, I like to think of us as a little bit crazy and out there and willing to try different things and not very fazed by a lot of things running at us. So maybe that's why I talk to a lot of ER doctors in startups.

Lara Zibners (01:07.11)
Well, we're the most fun because we have ADHD. And the pediatric version has ADHD, but wears Halloween costumes to work.

Alison Curfman (01:14.702)
I did wear a Halloween costume. I worked on Halloween and I dressed like a butterfly because I was able to take it off very quickly when I had to do something serious like talk to a child about suicide. I was like, I can't do this dressed as a butterfly. So I learned that.

Lara Zibners (01:29.36)
That might have been what went wrong that year.

Alison Curfman (01:32.35)
Yeah, yeah, I have definitely been in bad situations on Halloween in costume, so I I've learned my lesson there, but.

Lara Zibners (01:41.33)
I was subtle. I had a cow tail pinned to my white coat that was just sticking out of the back. Or a little devil tail. A tail is a good one because it goes behind the white coat. can always just... Anyway, that was us Halloween tips for work. There you go.

Alison Curfman (01:48.088)
Yeah, you could s-

Alison Curfman (01:57.184)
Yes, Halloween tips for work. So now that people know that this is probably not going to be the most serious episode ever, they can prepare themselves. And I was joking with Lara before we started based on just our introductory conversation. Sometimes Peloton instructors would be like, hey, if you have kids in the room, we're going to use, our songs have explicit language or something. So I feel like I should warn people about Lara before she starts talking.

Lara Zibners (02:03.03)
and

Lara Zibners (02:23.122)
Well, Lara Zibners can sometimes talk like a sailor, but I try not to because I have a 12 year old little boy and he thinks it's cool to say dick every other word. So I'm trying to role model a different, like I'm trying to role model more intelligent language, but sometimes it slips out.

Alison Curfman (02:39.298)
Well, all right, so we are going to, now that everybody knows a little bit about you.

Lara Zibners (02:44.902)
that my son says, Declan.

Alison Curfman (02:48.918)
Now that everybody knows a little bit about you, let's actually go back and talk about your career path. Because Lara and I met at the Health Conference, which I know people have heard me talk about before. It's a health tech conference that is actually incredibly great connection, but very overwhelming because there's 1 million people there and it's in Vegas. But we instantly connected over our shared specialty background and many of our shared experiences in startups.

Lara Zibners (02:52.091)
Okay.

Alison Curfman (03:18.018)
Larry, do you want to maybe take us back to your medical career and how that all started?

Lara Zibners (03:23.59)
Yep. Yep. So I grew up in California. My dad's a doctor and I was never, ever, ever, ever, ever gonna be a doctor. And then all my friends, I was doing a biochemistry degree at UC San Diego and all my friends were taking the MCAT review course and I didn't wanna be alone on Tuesday night. So I signed up for it. And literally that's how, that's a good reason to go to medical school. So yeah, I was the only one out of that group that went to medical school, but it turned out,

Alison Curfman (03:44.13)
really good reason to go to medical school.

Lara Zibners (03:51.568)
So my parents, when I called them, said, I think I'm gonna go to medical school. And they were like, are you insane? You don't wanna be a doctor. Like I would throw up if I saw blood. Like I was the kid that like, yeah. Yeah, I kid it. no, my sister came home. Yes, you tell your vomit story, I'll tell mine.

Alison Curfman (04:01.496)
Me too, I used to pass out. I had to...

Well, I had to go in the hallway during like history movies because there was blood and I never dissected the frog in biology or anything. was disgusted.

Lara Zibners (04:18.425)
No, No,

Alison Curfman (04:23.694)
You

Lara Zibners (04:47.255)
really thrived and found my... I stopped passing out. I passed out once, but that's because I might have been out the night before and it was a Sunday morning on the psych ward. so did it and loved it and turned out I loved procedures and I loved excitement and ended up, but I also did not like adults because they smell and I don't, their coughing grosses me out a little bit. So I decided to do PEDs and then PEDs emergency medicine and...

Alison Curfman (04:48.47)
And you stopped passing out?

Alison Curfman (05:14.67)
We have so much in common. also, like my career path was defined by the fact that I didn't like taking care of adults, but then also felt like I needed more action.

Lara Zibners (05:17.051)
Right?

Lara Zibners (05:28.269)
Exactly right. So I was actually I matched in the cardiology fellowship and then I did two months in the PEDS ED back to back and all the attendings were like, you are not one of them. You are one of us. And so I had this existential moment and my fellowship actually made an extra spot to take me. And so I stayed at Ohio State for at Children's for my residency, then my fellowship. And then I got a job in New York City at Mount Sinai and I moved to the big city and

was a real doctor in a real hospital. And I was there for a few years and I thought that was my life. I was like, this is good. Okay, I can do this. But then as happens, I met a man and decided I was going to marry him and he was asked to move to London in 2006. So I followed him to the UK and the idea actually was that it was just for six months. So I did some other stuff. I actually wrote a book.

called If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay. I was on Rachel Ray, I fell off the stage. I was Parenting Magazine's mom squad pediatrician for like seven minutes until the editor stopped answering my emails. I did all these other things thinking, and then when I realized I was not coming back, I got my license, I went through the GMC registration, and I ended up getting an honorary consultant post at St. Mary's, figuring I would figure out the NHS and how medicine worked there and eventually get a real job.

Alison Curfman (06:53.57)
And that's funny because they, do they call doctors consultants? Is that what you mean? Okay, okay.

Lara Zibners (06:57.915)
So attendings are consultants. That's right. And emergency medicine is accident. And it's still emergency medicine, but the department's called Accident and Emergency. So I was in the Peds A &E. And it turns out they have the same stuff. They just call it different things. Like somebody was like, get the transport. And I'm like, what's this transport? Turns out that's the brand name of the tape. Right? But they wouldn't. Right? So I was like, want me to transport the patient? Anyway, I figured it out. I f-

It pretty much medicine, you you spend a long time when you go to a different country going, oh, why do you do it that way? And that's the first year. And then you realize why they do it that way. And it's like, well, it's not so bad, right? Pretty much most of the kids live, no matter what you do to them. That's the beauty of pediatrics. So I didn't really harm anyone, I don't think, in my time in the UK. Ended up getting a master's in medical education because I was doing a lot of teaching. And I got really involved with advanced trauma life support. So I was doing lots and lots of that.

Somebody said, go get a master's to justify all this teaching you're doing. So I got my master's in meta.

Alison Curfman (07:56.366)
Can I just say, that's what a lot of doctors think. They just need to pay for another degree. Every time they have an idea that they might wanna know something more, like, you know what I need to do? I to spend some more money on tuition.

Lara Zibners (08:10.001)
I'm not a poster child for anything other than that because I have done that a few and I've just signed up for another program. We'll get there. So I'm now enrolled in a life science exec program at Harvard that starts in two weeks. But okay, so I got my master's in med ed and I ended up becoming national educator for advanced trauma life support UK. And I've been doing that since 2018. But otherwise I was kind of a corporate wife.

right? Because I was keeping my foot in medicine, but like a day a week. And then I had these kids, and we'll get to that story in a moment. And then I got divorced. And my ex husband was the finance guy. Like he managed all of that stuff. And I took care of the part where we get into heaven and have nice people as children, right? That was my job. And then like, I didn't know what a mortgage was. Like, and that seems really dumb. I became the woman, my mother.

told me to never become. It was not like I couldn't add, but like I couldn't work Excel. I did my budget in Word. Like I was like that. So I then realized I had no life skills and a few people were like, you don't know what you're doing. And I got really mad. I was in the shower and I thought, I hate all that stuff, but I have to force myself to learn it. And the best way for me to learn is public shaming and embarrassment. So if I go get an MBA, then there will be grades. And we all know how I feel about grades. So I decided to get an MBA.

So I Googled best online MBA and that was UNC Keenan Flagler. And so I did the MBA at UNC in the middle of the night from Europe for two years. it back up, I had been involved with this company that was a period care product since 2018. I was involved with them. I was an investor and advisor through other circles. And we had been chatting in 2021 and Tang, my now co-founder said, you know,

There's this guidance in the UK that every woman at risk of miscarriage should get to 80 days of vaginal progesterone. And we've got the drug delivery patents for this device that was called the tamp liner. It was a tampon liner hybrid. And I said, Tang, we've never talked about my seven rounds of IVF that all failed. Like the only thing I've ever tried to do in my life that I just bombed spectacularly, like go big or go home, whether it's good or bad.

Lara Zibners (10:26.769)
I did seven rounds, I never got pregnant. I said, I got vaginal progesterone once and it leaked so badly, I think I put it in a tampon, which was a great idea if it was my tampon trying to get pregnant, but since it was me, that was really stupid. So then my doctor said, you're American, you're a doctor, we'll do it American style. There'll be different needles in the bag. And what people who have ever done IVF in the US don't realize is nobody else in the world is doing progesterone and oil injections, right? The outcomes in the US are not better.

The rest of the world considers it abusive and it's rarely done. And so my doctor, but this was 2008, right? She goes, well, let's just do it this way. Then you'll know you're doing it American style. And I did five months of injecting this oil in this huge needle into my butt by myself, stealing myself in the mirror. and it was, I tell people, know, I'm a doctor and the rest of IVF didn't bother me, but I still remember what that was like. And it was...

It was horrible. And I ended up outsourcing it. I finally got tired of it. Two adoptions and a surrogate in three and a half years. So, you know, my pain is no less real, just very different these days.

Alison Curfman (11:27.405)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (11:38.879)
And you just had a lovely child just interrupt our conversation, which is very much like my house.

Lara Zibners (11:43.122)
He did not have clothes on. He is like all 12 year old boys. He is very easy to please with Nutella. My daughters insist that he now wears at least underwear to the dinner table. I feel like I'm making good progress with him. Yeah, anyway. So I got this MBA and I had been had this conversation, but I told Tang during that, said, look, I'm more interested in this vaginal drug delivery option. Like if you ever did that, that's something call me and I might want to do that with you.

But my original business school plan had been just to get some life skills, maybe do some angel investing, maybe do board portfolio stuff. I wasn't really sure other than I, know, divorce is a horrible thing to experience and it makes you question what you're doing. And that's the best I can explain that I, and I wanted to go to an American school because I wanted to feel connected to the U.S. again. Like there were so many things going on. I had these kids. So this was like a, to throw yourself in there.

like kind of gut feeling thing I did, but I did it. And then I find myself in 2022 halfway through this and Tang calls and says, by the way, the commercial side has hit a wall for a number of reasons. Period care innovation is not so easy. Consumer retail is not easy. Customer service and management is not easy. And he said, I don't know what to do. we...

We talked for about 24 hours back and forth, pinging each other on WhatsApp. And I said, you know, I think there's an opportunity here to pivot and do this as a med tech. And he said, you know, I wish you'd been at some of these meetings with me. I'm a dude in women's health. And there's a lot of women who think that women own that and men are not allowed at the table, which is absurd because all men came from a woman. they all have a mother.

And so I said, well, would you want me to take on a bigger role? And he was like, yes. So we just decided to do it together. And I had no idea what I was getting into. None. No clue. I thought I'm going to invest and I'll put my face on the box and then he'll raise some more money and then we'll whack some progesterone onto a tampon and then we'll be acquired probably like in September. No, it turns out that that's not.

Alison Curfman (13:54.53)
And that's not what happened.

Lara Zibners (13:59.108)
how you do it, especially when you're like going to need regulatory approval, it's not that easy. You have to like have scientists and you have to like do things in an ethical manner, right? There's all that stuff that goes on. So the first year Tang righted the ship. Really, we had the health care subsidiary buy the patents. We flipped the structure. We put the consumer side to bed. I was finishing my MBA and I was planning my wedding to the most amazing man who's ever.

lived and when I emerged from the other side of that with my MBA and a new husband, Tang said, you're mine. And so since for the last two years, I've been full-time chief cocktail officer. On my business card, it says co-founder and chair, but I quickly said, no, my job is to actually be the face of this because I'm not the smart one. Like I'm not the finance person. I'm not the PhD. I'm not the drug device expert. I am the woman with a lot of degrees.

who has a story about why what we're doing is important. And I enjoy that part. I always enjoyed that part. I've always kind of liked the public speaking and that thing. So I've jumped in both feet and that is what I do now.

Alison Curfman (15:15.54)
And being a founder, think you hit the nail on the head that you have to be emotionally connected to the mission. people really respond most to stories. You can give data, you will need data. But I think what really moves people to action, whether that action is, yes, I'd like to partner with you, or I'd like to fund you, it's stories. And I found that out also when I was starting Imagine and

My story was all about having built a similar model for complex kids and it really worked, but we didn't have budget and it got shut down. All these kids that I used to care for in the home were always in the ER and that's why we were doing it this way. It was compelling and it was crazy how so many different groups of people that I spoke to about this, everyone knew someone.

with a sick child. Everyone had someone that they knew that had a child with some sort of medical issue, whether it was them or their family member or someone in their network. It's a really compelling story. Same with being a founder who's lived the challenges of what your product is trying to solve for. That story is so compelling.

Lara Zibners (16:37.403)
Well, I mean, exactly right. But even I was always open about it. Even when I was doing all that IVF, I was always talking about it. And every time I would talk about it, everybody else would have their infertility story, but people didn't talk about it. And then when I became an adoptive mom and I had a surrogate at the same time, because I'm, you know, like I said, I jumped in both. Just going to whack infertility, I'm going to punch it in the nose.

Alison Curfman (16:59.064)
You're like, I'm just gonna get this done, yeah.

Lara Zibners (17:04.399)
So I end up with these two girls three months apart, but I have talked to so many other people about surrogacy. I've talked to so many other people about adoption because my kids know that's their story. that, the IVF could have been nicer, but if it led me to where I am with mother of these three amazing people, great. You know, if you talk about it, then it's amazing how many people you find out have a problem that, especially in women's health, that they don't want to talk about. Like when I say,

You know, we are a vaginal drug delivery platform. We can deliver your progesterone in a painless, leak-free manner. And you know you're getting the dosage, so you don't have to get up three hours before your kids have to go to school to lie down to make sure you absorb it. All of a sudden, you can see people saying, we never thought to complain about that. But now that you say it out loud, it seems kind of ridiculous.

Alison Curfman (17:55.054)
Yeah, no, yeah, because I know when we were talking before we started recording, I was asking, so are you a pharma company? And you described it really well.

Lara Zibners (18:05.969)
We're a drug-led device. So we are a platform. Think of it like a tampon liner. So it's leak-free. They're connected by a sheath. And we incorporate the therapeutic onto the scaffold. It's not like a syringe where you just whack on a, you know, it's not you take a pestle or something to stick it on there. We actually adapt for every different therapeutic. And this is done by somebody far smarter than me. Our principal scientist is a drug device expert and ex-J &J tampon, and he has 55 patents. So he looks at molecules and goes, well, we should.

do it this way. And I'm like, whatever, Andy, that sounds good. But whatever it is, he figures that out for progesterone is a big molecule. So, you we found a way to make it. We don't absorb the progesterone, just the excipient and the aqueous discharge. But yeah, you know, and that's been one of our challenges is just explaining what we do, starting with, we're a vaginal drug delivery company. And, you know, sometimes you have to start really basic, like, let me explain to where vaginal drugs go.

It's not the nose, but I do often, I found that early on. I started saying, how many of you realize how many drugs, how many of you ever put a drug up your nose? That's how I start. And then I go like, besides cocaine, ha ha ha ha. Right, do you realize there's as many, if not more drugs that should be given vaginally than nasally, but if nasal drugs leaked the way vaginal drugs did, one of y'all would have done something about that, right? Like women haven't complained about it, but it's a problem and we're gonna fix it.

Alison Curfman (19:03.15)
That must be interesting in a pitch.

Alison Curfman (19:34.424)
So how do you feel like your medical training has helped you with your chief cocktail officer position?

Lara Zibners (19:43.164)
Well, was boozy in medical school. I mean, we had a lot of parties, so that set me up. We did fluid rounds after our night shifts, so that was prepping me too. It is the credibility. When you are a doctor, and I'm very passionate about this, when I decided to go to medical school and my parents finally accepted that's what I was doing, my dad said, it's not a bad choice because people are always going to need doctors. And for me,

Even though I left clinical medicine quite a while ago due to a variety of personal factors, I really believe that medicine is a vocation. I did not work as a doctor. I became a doctor. And it is a part of who I am and how I identify. It's why when I initially moved to the UK and I was doing these other things, had a real, I didn't know how to explain to people what I did because I am a doctor and then they'd say, what, but I'm always a doctor. You're always a doctor no matter whether you're in the hospital.

or you're retired or you're on mat leave or wherever you are, you're always a doctor. You're always the person who like is trying to hide in the airplane seat in case they ask for you. And so that being able to do this is something I didn't understand when I was a little doctor that you can do different things and still be a doctor and people will respect that because people generally respect what you've done to get through medical school and get through your training. And you can walk into a room and when you say I'm a doctor,

people will change the way they look at you. And that is a very powerful tool. And you also, found that I speak both languages because I went and got my MBA and I'm MD. I speak the business language and I speak the medical language. And there are a lot more now than there used to be, but there aren't that many people who can do both. And to explain to doctors why the admin people are so...

hell-bent on watching the ROI and explain to the private equity people why they're killing patients because you have to listen to the doctors.

Alison Curfman (21:49.838)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a rare skill set and that's part of what my goal is, is to try and help physicians who already have this very deep clinical expertise to feel both confident in what they know and what value they can contribute while also having the humility to learn the other parts of the field and the other parts of startups and business that

just are foreign to us. And if nothing else, we're really good at learning things. Like I think that sometimes doctors have more of a problem like not feeling confident that their skills, their clinical knowledge is really valuable in this space. And sometimes they have the opposite problem, which is where they have too much pride and hubris to be able to admit like, I don't know anything about product development or something like that.

Lara Zibners (22:46.203)
When I explain what a master's in medical education is, I go, look, it's a master's in adult education specifically aimed at people with huge egos and little insight. But I think the longer you practice, I think most of us realize the longer we practice, how little we know, but we know where to go find the answer. We know sick from not sick. can tell across the room whether that kid's getting admitted or going to be discharged that evening.

Alison Curfman (23:06.798)
Mm-hmm.

Lara Zibners (23:16.335)
That becomes so deeply ingrained into us because we do it day in and day out that not many people have that skill set. And I will say that there are so many opportunities. And it's not just you have to become a startup founder. You can become chief medical officer for something. You can go work for an advisory thing. I run into doctors now who are doing everything but medicine, right? Advising funds on what to invest in or advising law firms on their cases.

because those letters after your name, you earned them and people respect that.

Alison Curfman (23:49.666)
What sort of advice would you have for physicians who maybe feel sort of trapped in their clinical day to day and maybe don't know what sort of pathway they could take, but find this, they're listening to this for some reason. So they're finding this to be somewhat interesting and intriguing. Like what advice would you give for them?

Lara Zibners (24:11.057)
have your head checked? No, just kidding. Because we were laughing earlier, like had I known what I was getting into, I would have thought twice. I still would have done it. you're raised, at least when I think there's more attention now that there's other opportunities and more doors are open. But when I was a little doctor, if you didn't work clinically, then you were wasting your education. And that's just not the case anymore. So I think you can start listening to podcasts. You can start.

getting into, are, for example, a very easy thing to do is just get involved with some of the physician investment syndicates because you're open then to the world of innovation and you can lend expert advice. Like I invest in a couple of different funds and I'm often brought in to comment on things. So there's just so many different ways, but you start by just kind of spending some time going down the internet route.

and look for local angel groups because they're always wanting somebody with medical expertise to weigh in on something. It's network. And let people know you're interested in doing something else. And make sure it's something that you really are passionate in, not just because, like, a good reason to think about expanding beyond medicine is because there's something you're really passionate about that you want to do on a different scale.

A really bad reason to leave medicine would be because you're just burned out and hate medicine. Like you need to figure that out. But starting a startup is not, it's not going to cure your ailments. That's 100 % you said it. Yes.

Alison Curfman (25:37.901)
Yep.

Alison Curfman (25:44.024)
You have to be running towards something, not running away from something. So I mean, I try to emphasize both, like I try and, but I'm actually really careful in like my messaging around trying to teach doctors this sort of thing, not to offer it as like a solution to burnout. I mean, I empathize that like we are burnt out as a profession, but it's really like a calling to do something more creative or more.

impactful in a different way. And it needs to be something you feel called to do, not like I just have to get out of here. I have to do something that's not seeing patients.

Lara Zibners (26:19.121)
100%. And I think for a lot of physicians, you also have to be comfortable explaining to other people why you are making a switch because you will get judged by some people. And when I left clinical medicine, was honestly all, it was for many personal reasons, but also there was this pandemic and I was stuck in a different country and couldn't see patients. And now I was like, now I've really not touched a lot of patients in the last five years. But I talked to a lot of

other physicians that I trusted who were mentors to me. And I said, I'm thinking about retiring my number in the UK system. You have to retire it or else you're constantly revalidating. And he said, you know, it's okay. And a few people gave me permission. And then I realized in all my ATLS educator stuff, well, if every course I teach on has 16 doctors who are gonna go teach on a course with 24 more doctors, I've run a Ponzi scheme when it comes to taking care of patients.

And so I had to, but it's a big thing. Everybody I know who leaves clinical medicine, some people are able to keep a foot in the door, but at some point, depending on how involved you are in the other stuff, it's not possible to do that and be true to yourself and be safe with patients and be responsible and accountable to your colleagues. So if you do want to, it's hard.

Alison Curfman (27:40.226)
And that, yeah, and that's something that like, I felt like when I was first a founder, chief medical officer, I like tried to talk to as many other doctors in that sort of role as I could to be like, how many days a month do you have to practice to be competent? And there was actually no real answer. Like, and so I was really nervous about like, I don't want to throw away my training. Now I still do practice clinically. do some locum stuff and I do some PRN stuff and it ebbs and flows based on

much other thing of other initiatives I have going on. I, you know, it's, it's, it's a distinction you have to make yourself. Like, I think that when I was in academics, I, was very much ingrained in me that if you are not working 15 shifts a month in a pediatric ER, a tertiary, a courtinary center for at least 10 years, you are not a highly competent pediatric ER doctor. And that's really, really extreme, you know? And so I actually,

Lara Zibners (28:30.107)
Okay.

Lara Zibners (28:36.166)
That's right.

Alison Curfman (28:39.854)
I've been assessing myself as I work in the ER. Like, do I feel out of touch with my skills? And I don't. Like, I feel like it doesn't have to be like giving something up.

Lara Zibners (28:51.601)
No, it doesn't, but for me, it definitely, because I had been working so peripherally for so long and then all of a sudden hadn't seen patients in months, I had already started to have those check-ins like, okay, I know sick from not sick, I know who to call, but.

I'm starting to get a little bit nervous. I reached that point where I was, and especially in a field like ours, a little bit nervous is okay if it's good nervous, but not if you're walking to work going like, God, I hope I don't have to hurt my brain today. And then I also, for me, I think you have to remember that there is a liability perspective as well. Like I don't want to be answering the question called into some inquest because something bad happened and have somebody say, well, how many patients have you touched in the last five years? And my answer was not enough.

And so that was for me, that was a self check. And I think that's very much, I'm not ashamed of that at all that that happened because I, you know, that was, I let that happen. I think that that's a sign of my professional responsibility to say this was the time for me to go before I was asked to leave and to find another way to turn my very complicated life with these three teenagers and all these other things I've got my hands in, into something else.

Alison Curfman (30:02.56)
And one of the things that we talked about before we started recording was that this wasn't really your plan. Like same with me, none of this was like my plan. I didn't like sit down and be like, this is how it's gonna unfold. And so when you talk to people about like getting started, I mean, you gave two really good pieces of advice, which are ones that I always say, it doesn't matter what phase you're in, whether you're looking or not looking, whether you're a trainee or a 30 years out of training.

You can always keep learning. You can always network. You can always grow your network. honestly, people in like venture are very friendly. They love networking. And so it's okay to not have a plan. Well,

Lara Zibners (30:41.425)
They don't like giving money, but they're friendly. Well, I said, get all these degrees. came out of business school, my husband said no more. So I signed up for diploma in corporate governance because like, okay, now I need to understand like board level stuff. And then I went and I did that. And now I'm in this investor fellowship, which is out of California for the year. And then I just enrolled in this Harvard program. So yes, we are lifelong learners.

Alison Curfman (31:08.002)
You have a continuous love of learning, lifelong learning, but yes, learning, connecting, finding opportunities and being okay with the fact that like, none of this was the plan. You don't have to have a plan. And these opportunities come organically.

Lara Zibners (31:25.369)
My plan, this is what I told somebody, I was talking to a med student about this and I said, listen, my plan was not to fail seven rounds of IVF, never get pregnant and then go on to adopt surrogate and start a women's healthcare company so I could share my story. That was not the plan. You take what life gives you and you figure out what to do with that.

Alison Curfman (31:47.948)
Absolutely. Well, this has been a very fun conversation. Do you have any last thoughts or advice to people that might be listening? Yay. Yeah. Do you want to share with people? Yeah. Unstable vitals.

Lara Zibners (31:51.985)
Super fun.

No, I'm looking forward to having you on my podcast in a few weeks. So we'll have you on unstable vitals. Unstable vitals. Yes, unstable vitals wherever you get your podcasts. But that's one of my business school professors and me. We're both ER docs turned entrepreneurs and our motto is healthcare is unstable and so are we. But it's just a very fun. We like to interview smart people like you while we just make jokes and use inappropriate language. So I'm looking forward to having you there and letting you this.

Alison Curfman (32:21.272)
Yes, so if anybody enjoyed this like somewhat different of a podcast for me, you can get much more of that over at Unstable Vitals. Well, I am so grateful.

Lara Zibners (32:30.129)
yeah, yeah, we talk about like pooping our pan, yeah.

Alison Curfman (32:34.986)
Okay, all right, so y'all should go check that out. I am so grateful for your time and your openness. thank you. Thank you so much.

Lara Zibners (32:36.561)
Oh, yes. That's right. Thank you, Alison. I love what you're doing. Thank you. I love what you're doing. I think your mission is very important. So keep it up.

Alison Curfman (32:49.002)
Awesome. Well, thank you all for listening. And as we said, go check out, you can connect with Lara on LinkedIn. We'll put her connection on the show notes. And we also put a link to unstable vitals, which is her podcast, but thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.