"Martyrdom Doesn't Help Anyone." — Breanna Hughes on Building Bird & Be Without Burning Out | Ep. 63

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, a podcast for founders, by founders.  We explore the real journey of building and growing a company. Each episode, we go beyond the highlight reel to unpack the strategies, decisions, and hard lessons that shaped successful businesses, revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the growth. This week, Josh sits down with Breanna Hughes, COO and co-founder of Bird & Be, a company providing at-home fertility testing and supplements for men and women, supporting people from trying to conceive through pregnancy, postpartum, and ongoing hormonal health. Breanna built Bird & Be out of her own five-year infertility journey — three rounds of IVF, four embryo transfers, and the anxiety and depression that came with it. Three days before the company launched publicly, she found out she was pregnant. She later conceived a second child spontaneously, without IVF, while taking her own company's supplements. She opens up about launching in Ulta Beauty as an act of destigmatization, a packaging mistake that had customers accidentally taking their partner's supplements, why she rejects the "martyr founder" mindset, and her own decision to start taking a small dose of Prozac to manage postpartum mental health while running the company. _ This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey! Contact us: http://wisdompartners.llc/contact Subscribe to our Substack: http://blog.wisdompartners.llc Chapters (00:00) - Intro (02:56) - Why a family doctor often isn't enough for the fertility journey (05:08) - Why this became personal: 5 years, 3 rounds of IVF, and pregnant 3 days before launch (08:51) - A big win: launching in Ulta Beauty as an act of destigmatization (11:43) - The overlooked gap in postpartum care (20:54) - Riding the dragon: taking care of yourself while building the company (23:41) - Rejecting the martyrdom mindset (26:15) - Starting Prozac and what it changed for her as a leader (31:10) - The packaging mistake: when husbands started taking their wife's supplements (35:43) - The biggest challenge now: scaling a physical product company (38:42) - Navigating inventory, cash flow, and the decision to raise capital Links & Resources Breanna’s LinkedIn:   / breannahughes   Bird&Be: https://birdandbe.com/ Keywords founders, entrepreneurship, fertility health, reproductive health, Bird & Be, Breanna Hughes, infertility, IVF, at-home fertility testing, postpartum care, maternal mental health, Prozac, founder burnout, martyrdom mindset, product design mistakes, physical product startups, inventory and cash flow, venture capital, Ulta Beauty, destigmatization, women's health, men's health, hormonal health