How To Develop Ad Inventory That Sells & Performs (with Abby Mercado from Rescripted)

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Ben Aston: Welcome to the Indie Media Club podcast. I’m Ben Aston, founder of the Indie Media Club. We’re on a mission to help independent, bootstrapped media entrepreneurs succeed to help people who create, promote, and monetize through content—do it better. Check out indiemedia.club to find out more. 

So today I’m joined by Abby Mercado, and she is a former VC investor and the co-founder and CEO of Rescripted. It’s a media platform for fertility and women’s health. They reach more than 9 million people every month. So after going through IVF to conceive her now four year old twins, Max and Annie, Abby went on a mission to rescript the fertility industry through community, through education and empowerment.

They’ve raised over $3 million all from angel investors today and are proud to be profitable with more than 30 staff on the payroll. And they attribute so much of their success to a really engaged niche community and also search optimized content as well. 

So keep listening to today’s podcast to learn how to develop ad inventory that sells and performs. 

Hey Abby, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Abby Mercado: Thanks so much, Ben. Super excited to chat with you today. 

Ben Aston: Awesome. Well, I wanna go back to the beginning and tell me a little bit about how you went from the world of VC to the world of media. How does that transition take place?

Abby Mercado: Oh man, it was a windy, super exciting road. So the short story is that my husband and I started trying to conceive, I was investing in mostly B2B SaaS companies. We were investing from, seed to series B, and it was really fun, but I always kind of knew that I wanted to be on the other side of the table.

So, instead of investing in these companies, I wanted to be invested in, like I just wanted to be an entrepreneur. And prior to VC I’d come from the entrepreneurship world. So I had worked at a couple of energy related startups and it was something that I really enjoyed. So I knew that I wanted to go back.

So in year three of my VC investing career, my husband and I started trying to conceive and we thought it would be easy. We thought, a couple months we’d get pregnant, like we’d have a kid. Two years later we’d have another kid like mortgage, SUV, the whole shebang and spoiler alert, none of those things happen.

Actually you already spoiled it. I’m an IVF mom of twins, Max and Annie. So ultimately it worked. But when we went through IVF, I took a kind of a VC investor approach to it. So I just got so frustrated. It was just, such an impossibly difficult way to build a family. I didn’t feel like I was educated, I didn’t feel empowered.

I didn’t feel like I had enough, information on what we were going through. And, there was just so much stigma around, what we were facing as a couple infertility that, we didn’t feel comfortable. We didn’t feel confident. We felt really scared. And so as a VC investor, I always said, okay, let’s throw technology at this problem and, see if we can make it better.

And I just became so obsessed with some of the problems that I faced, just like really specifically, medication management, you mental health, like a lot of these things. And so, ultimately I decided that I wanted to leave VC and start a business in the fertility space. And we started out as a B2B SaaS company, believe it or not.

And we ultimately headed over to the consumer space. We did an acquihire of a large, a fertility influencer who also happened to be a professional writer, Kristyn Hodgdon. And you know, she became my co-founder. So, three co-founders got together and we said, Listen, you know, what we’re gonna be really good at is creating a media platform.

So, Abby does the business. Per, our CTO does all the technology. And then Kristyn is the consumer face of the business and she’s responsible for all the creative and making sure people love the content that we put out. So as of today we’re, you set it in the intro, but we reached about 9 million people on a monthly basis, and we’re the number one global media platform for fertility and women’s health.

And we provide content, tools, and resources for wherever you are in your reproductive lifecycle. 

Ben Aston: Awesome. And so at some point in that journey, you formed a media company, it was a B2B SaaS, and was the idea that Rescripted was the funnel for the SaaS? Was that the original idea? 

Abby Mercado: Yeah. No, that’s actually exactly right, Ben.

So essentially what we are trying to do, so we had this consumer front end and we, I already mentioned that one of my pain points, like going through IVF specifically, was the pharmaceutical. So, you had to take 50 shots in the span of a month. That’s really horrible. And so, I said, how can we make this better?

Let’s, create a new pharmacy, one that you know helps you with education. One is technology enabled. One where you have nurses on call 24/7, pharmacists on call 24/7. Pharmacists are underutilized. Let’s utilize them all of these things and let’s use, this layer that Kristyn had really built as a layer to, recruit people into our pharmacy.

And then, ultimately we decided that, actually pharmacy’s really really difficult. And we weren’t, the pharmacy still exists and it’s still rocketed and rolling. But I would say the point at which we realized that we are a media company, it was when people started approaching us with cheques.

And this was about a year and a half ago. And lot of people in the industry, we were kind of building a name for ourselves and we had a pharmaceutical company approach us with, a six figure cheque. And we said, Wow we’ve never made that much money. This is really cool.

Can we repeat this? Can we do it again? And so, we kind of spent a month saying, basically doing ad sales. And this was all founder-led sales. It was me, getting in touch with these people, selling them on this platform that was reaching a ton of consumers. And, ultimately we sold some more deals and we said, Hey, we’re better at this than we are at all the other stuff let’s just do this. Let’s lean in. And so we did. 

Ben Aston: Fun stuff. So obviously before you got to the point where advertisers come to you with a big fat cheque, you had begun to build your visibility, your audience. Tell us a bit about how you did that, because yeah, for a year in someone to be waving a cheque at you, that must have been someone that, had you had an audience that the advertisers wanted to engage with.

So how did that happen? 

Abby Mercado: Yeah, absolutely. So this is definitely Kristyn’s story to tell, but I’ll tell it on her behalf. So Kristyn is my co-founder and our chief creative officer, and she’s a creative genius. And she’s an Enneagram 7. So, these are the types of people who are, just overflowing with they’re super social. 

Kristyn always says that she got in trouble in the classroom for talking and like it’s that kinda life of the party wants to hang out like these types of people. So Kristen’s also an IVF mom of twins, believe it or not. Her twins are six months older than mine.

They’re also boy/girls twins, working and Charlie, whatsup? And so when she was going through IVF a few months before me, and by the way, we met on Instagram, so we didn’t know each other. She’s in Long Island, I’m in Denver. So like match made in Instagram heaven. So she would go into the fertility clinic and she would say like, why isn’t everyone talking?

This is so weird. We’re all going through the same hard thing. Like, why is no one talking about this? Like, why aren’t we all like at least hugging each other, like smiling through the hard times together? And so that was her big pain point. And she is, you not only is Kristyn an Enneagram 7, she’s also a voracious reader and she was an English major and she loves to write. She loves to consume the written word, and she loves to write the written word.

And so Kristyn’s response to all of this was just to write. So, she started writing her story down. She started blogging. This was back in 2018. And people, and she was putting all of this out there on social media. I’m not gonna say Instagram was early in 2018, but it’s certainly earlier than it is right now.

And so, it was easier. Well, I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but you know, she started putting her blogs on social and would connect them to, an image or a video or whatever. And so, she used Instagram as a funnel to get people to read her blog. And pretty soon she asked people to, share their stories themselves and they started sharing their stories. 

And so, it was like, not only was she producing all of this amazing content, and it became, not only Kristyn’s personal story, but like Kristyn would had a question and she’d be like, okay, well I’m gonna actually research this and write about it. And be the right, put out the content, like, you put out the science backed content. And so she did and she garnered a huge following in, a very short amount of time. So when Kristyn and I merged our businesses, she had about, let’s say like 15,000 page views on her site, the Fertility Tribe, and about 80,000 Instagram followers.

And today, together we’ve certainly grown the business along with our team. We’ve got about 60,000 page views and over a hundred thousand Instagram followers and, active on, every other social channel as well. So, but yeah, that’s how we amass the following that we have.

Ben Aston: Nice. And so it was a blend of search optimized content based on the questions that you knew people were asking. And gathering those insights from social and then using social to drive awareness of the website and drive traffic to be that way. 

Abby Mercado: Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s how things were hacked together early on.

And Kristyn is a, force to be reckoned with when it comes to search and I think she discovered pretty early on that just how important search was. It’s we’re all, students of the Googles and what do you do when you have something going on with your health that it was a little bit odd. 

You’re like, okay, it’s been six months, why can’t I get pregnant? Like I literally think I Googled that. And so it’s a unique way, like for us it’s really important that we’re really good at search because that’s primarily how people find our content right now. And in the months and years to come, we hope more of it’s direct.

And that’s some definitely something that we’re working on. But you know, right now a search is super critical and we have somebody on our team exclusively working on search res. 

Ben Aston: Cool. And so you’re building an audience and getting more and more traffic to the site. You have advertisers who begin waving cheques at you.

So tell us about those media products then that you began to develop to sell to advertisers. How did you develop those media products and iterate on them to have more stuff to sell to advertisers?

Abby Mercado: Totally. And this is all, so, we have, I guess I would say this has all been like very iterative with our advertisers.

And so, I think that, if I had one kind of lesson to get across in this podcast episode, it’s to really listen deeply to your advertisers and, understand, like how are they going to look back at, whatever project promotion that you all did together and what made it successful.

So what’s the key criteria that will make this successful? So, it’s been being really strict with, carrying that message to advertisers. So right now we have nine different media products. This has grown a lot over the last year or so as we’ve been listening to our advertisers. And they won’t all work out, we’ll, definitely there will be some that we won’t push because advertisers won’t want to buy them and we’ll want to stay focused on a few.

But the ones that are kind of our lead, our best sellers if we can call them that. It’s native advertising far and away. So, you our mission above all is to educate and empower the consumer, mostly the female consumer. 97% women between the ages of 25 and 44. That’s our demo. And so, educating and empowering them is the most important thing that we can do.

So, we always say that, “we’re not the experts, you are” when we talk to our advertisers. And you know, keep in mind these are like fertility clinics, these are gynecological clinics, these are, pharmaceutical companies. These are, direct to consumer women’s health companies, health and wellness businesses, so on and so forth.

So, like truly these brands have a ton of expertise. So when we do native content, they really do weigh in and help us put out our content. So, what we say to them is, we’re the connective tissue between the consumer and the brands that matter to women. The brands that matter to women are you advertiser, like you matter.

And one’s a consumer sees that you have weighed in on this piece, they know that like they’re gonna connect that. They’re gonna connect the dots, especially if we do this month for month. And you we don’t like to do native advertising if it’s going to be less than three months.

So we have three month deals, we have 12 month deals. We wish someone would sign a 24 month deal. I’ll let you know when they do. But you know, like the consumer seeing a brand over and over again, weighing in on a topic that the consumer wants to know about, that brand is an expert in, that’s what really works from a native content perspective.

So that’s like far and away our best seller. Instagram we’re big on Instagram and just short form video in general. So any type of platform that you can, put short form video on, like that is big. We are definitely, diving into that. Women like short form video too.

They don’t necessarily love YouTube, so we really focus heavily on Instagram, on TikTok. We are really excited about YouTube shorts, which is something that we’re leaning into. And also Pinterest video, like we actually get a ton of traffic from Pinterest, which has been really interesting to just, understand this consumer a little bit better.

So those are our top two media products. And we also have, different kind of advertising things that you could do. You can sponsor our newsletter. We have two right now. You can sponsor a podcast, you can run a podcast ad. We have, two podcasts. We’ll, we’re going to four podcasts in April.

And then, an array of other kind of, more direct to the point advertising opportunities for advertisers who, don’t necessarily have the time, the money, the know-how to invest in native ads. 

Ben Aston: So just to kind of unpick the native ad piece just slightly. So what advertisers are paying for is essentially an advertorial piece where you are positioning them or they’re explaining a topic that people are searching for anyway, and you allow them to insert themselves in a positive light? How do you limit the extent to which they hyperbolize their offering?

Abby Mercado: Yeah. No, it’s a good question. So I think rule number one at Rescripted, we always have the pen. So, and this is another reason that, like when we work with certain advertisers, they’re like, well, can you get me conversions?

And that sounds awesome, but no, we can’t control what happens once, the consumer leaves our site. We don’t know. We think your product is great, but what if it’s not? So like our mission is to educate and empower so the consumer can make her own choice. So that’s like above all the most important thing to us when it comes to native. 

So we always hold the pen and we have over 15 creatives on our staff. A lot of those are writers, some of ’em are video producers, but you know, we’re really focused on, the quality of the writing. Our voice is science backed content, but in the voice of your best friend over brunch, and we take that really seriously.

So the brand gets a logo at the top of our site. It always looks the same. We like kind of have that built into our articles. So that’s really cool, sponsored by such and such company, whatever. And usually they get a small CTA at the end of the article. So we can link out to their site, we can talk a little bit more about their brand, we can talk about a particular product that they’d like to shine light on, and that’s kind of where we stop.

So, and you if they have a particular expert that you know, and again, this is science-backed content, this is content about health. We take that really seriously and a lot of the brands that we work with have medical advisors. So, we wanna lean in on the diversity of experts that we do have access to.

So, we love working with brands for that reason. And usually they’re not, to, like salesy about it, if you will. Like they get, they understand native advertising and they understand how the consumer’s mind works when you put an article in front of a consumer that is branded. 

Ben Aston: So you position this to advertisers more as a brand awareness piece than a lead gen piece?

Abby Mercado: Totally. Yeah. 

Ben Aston: Which I think is super important because I think, I mean, what we’re talking about here in this whole, in terms of developing advertising products that advertisers want, but also that visitors value. Like you’re saying, advertisers want direct response. They want to be able to say, what’s the ROI on this?

How much this, is this gonna cost me? They wanna, obviously there’s gotta be, the map has got to work, but also from a visitor value exchange, the visitors have got to value that content. And actually, with the focusing on ensuring that you’re providing that education and empowerment for visitors enables you to play a long game in terms of that, the brand building so that you can provide value to the avatars, but also to your visitors and grow it symbiotically rather than making a cheap buck. 

Abby Mercado: Yeah, absolutely. Truer words have never been spoken. And I’ll give you a quick example. We did a post a video on our social channels the other day, and it felt flat.

Why? Because it was too salesy. Like the consumer didn’t like it. They’re like this, like, I feel like you’re selling me. And so, this is a really, yeah, and it’s a really, and in retrospect, like maybe we shouldn’t have posted it, that like the brand loves it, right? But like for the consumer, like our audience is so important.

So maintaining our authenticity as a media platform is just of the absolute utmost importance. So, more times than one, we’ve had to be really strict with our advertisers and to say, we know what works, and that’s gonna totally fall flat. 

Ben Aston: Cool. So obviously you have the, yeah, they have the native advertising products.

You have iterated on that though, and developed the media kit throughout the time that you’ve been running the site. How have you figured out and developed and broadened the media offering and iterated on those products that you have? What’s been your inspiration for that and where have you learned some lessons?

Abby Mercado: Yeah, so like a big lesson that we’ve learned is we work with a lot of brands. So we’re a startup, right? So, working with Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, Unilever, like those are all dream customers for us. Have we hacked into those advertisers yet? No, almost. We’re getting there.

We’re getting a lot closer. But, startups work with startups and so, a part of what, some of our advertisers who are startups, mostly on the CPG side, they’re really focused on conversions. And so being able to say, all right, like a sponsored article is probably not the best thing for you.

Because you’re literally telling us that like you’re a focus on bottom of the funnel. You want clicks to your site, you want clicks to your product, like that’s totally fine. We can probably come up with something to make that happen for you. So we heard that over and over again. Especially from startups like these startups, they have to, in order to raise their, and this is, kind of, I think where a little bit of my background adventure comes from.

Like they have to start show certain metrics in order to raise their next round in order to continue to survive. I get it. Like we’re right there with them. Like we want them to succeed, like they want us to succeed. It’s symbiotic. And so what we’ve done, so, a good example is a newsletter that we put out called The Cycle.

So our original newsletter was called The Wait. So this kind of plays on, infertility and pregnancy loss, about, I would say right about when we got this big cheque and we said, oh wow. And this was, about a year ago. Oh wow. Like, infertility and pregnancy loss, like that’s really niche.

How do we, expand our audience, expand our reach? Like we need to actually expand our audience. We need to expand our reach because these topics that, kind of happened before infertility and pregnancy loss are really important as well. So, we are talking about infertility and pregnancy loss in The Wait.

But where are we talking about some of this earlier stage stuff? Period care, stress care, sleep, like diet and nutrition, fitness and exercise. Like all of those things that are really important to our consumer. So we said let’s start this type of newsletter, but let’s do it in the style of the new Z.

So, I will say like the new Z is a media platform that we’re really inspired by. It’s educational and empowering for its demographic, but it also helps a) get consumers like directly the information that they need, and b) it’s an advertiser’s dream. Because sometimes what the consumer needs is what the brand is selling.

So you know, this is something that like it straight up, it gets a lot of clicks and that’s awesome. And straight up it also educates and empowers. So we have a humongous open rate, a humongous CTR, but like it’s meeting both parties where they’re at. So the consumer gets what she’s looking for and the advertiser gets what they’re looking for and it’s clicks to the site.

And beyond that, we can’t really control that. But if we can get people to your site, advertiser, give us a chance, like we’ve got a shot here. So that’s an example of a way that, know, we’ve said, all right advertiser, what do you want? Like in your stage as a business. Okay, given the tools that we have, given the dev team that we have, we can answer you.

Ben Aston: Yeah. And I think it’s, again, it’s so important to listen to advertisers in terms of the lead generation that they’re looking for, and brands versus direct response or lead gen, and figuring out products that address the complete purchase funnel. Right? From unaware through to awareness through to consideration of different options through to, okay, I’m gonna pick something here.

What is it? Is it A or B? And providing those products through that journey, that also visitors value as well, so that they keep getting eyeballs is super important. So wanna touch on we touched on this earlier, but in terms of your social and how you get folks off those platforms, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, how do you connect their dots?

And I mean you, you said, Instagram has continued to grow from 80k to 100k since you acquihired, but how are you ensuring that the work that you do on social actually does generate traffic, or at least is providing you with opportunities to create advertising that works in those channels?

Cause obviously you just talked about that example where you have, oh, this is challenging. We made an ad and it didn’t quite work. So how did you join this together? 

Abby Mercado: Yeah, I think, I mean, the challenge of our year will be getting people to our site versus on social. Like we have, 101k followers on Instagram and many additional on TikTok, Facebook blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But like, how do we that, these are channels we can’t control. Like we don’t know if they’re gonna see our stuff. And that really sucks. Like it sucks to run a, like a whole aspect of your business that you can’t control it. And especially as a startup, like we all know that if you throw money at Facebook and at Instagram and at TikTok, like your stuff will be seen.

But we’re a startup, we can’t do that. Right? And so I think it really is staying super dedicated to, our content planning and, letting our following know over and over again, what is on our site, here’s what you can sign up for. Still engaging them with amazing content, but also saying, Hey have you signed up for a newsletter?

I would love for you to do that. Hey, have you joined our free infertility support community? Infertility is hard. We’d love to be there with you. Please join. It’s really easy. And we do creative things like, for instance, we have an AMA this evening on our platform. So we do AMAs and a variety of different ways.

So Ask Me Anythings mostly with physicians, nurses, embryologist, like anyone who’s a medical professional in the fertility and women’s health field. And so, what we’ve said is okay, we’re gonna collect questions on Instagram, but you could only see the answers on our site. So, you know, that’s a, like a specific way that we’re playing with getting our community off of social and our dedicated users of our site who are going to Rescripted on a, every other day, every week, et cetera.

Ben Aston: Yeah. And so in terms of, just so I understand that the kind of AMAs that you do, are those sponsored activities so that the people participating, is it pay to play or how do you balance that? 

Abby Mercado: Yeah, it can be. So, that aspect of our site is, I would say it’s pretty early, which is why we’re, collecting questions on Instagram because we’ll have surety of getting, we’ll have 60 questions that we get on Instagram, which is awesome. 

In terms of, is this particular AMA that I’m talking about like, is it sponsored? No, but you know, in three months, like absolutely this is something that we could get sponsored. So, that’s a huge visibility for anybody, so we’re working on it. 

Ben Aston: Awesome. And in terms of, do you mind sharing as you developed this media kit, as you developed your different offerings and your iterating on your newsletter, on the ways that you place products or sponsorships within AMAs and things like that, what has been your biggest screw up along the way? What hasn’t worked? 

Abby Mercado: Oh my gosh. Okay. So this is like a big screw up recently. So like Kristyn and I both have a really particular design eye. So I think we started leaning on external designers, like maybe like too late in the game with regard to our newsletter. So we were using Flodesk to send out our newsletter and like meeting many other media entrepreneurs, people were like, what’s Flodesk?

And I was like okay, I should probably like, Flodesk is great for making like beautiful emails. And know, for two founders who like really like design, but neither of us are professionally trained in design, we just really like it. We like pretty things. Like we’re millennial females, like of course, oops.

That’s why we like to Flodesk. But then we, and trying to grow our newsletter, we’re trying all of these different things we need to get under referrals and, merch and like all of these things that are kind of like in the media company playbook if you wanna, have a successful newsletter.

And we realized this couldn’t be done with Flodesk. And so we’ve moved over to Convertkit and it has been so hard to kind of restart a two super successful newsletters on a platform that is totally new. So, I think we held on to Flodesk too long, so that’s my big screw up. 

Ben Aston: Oh, well thanks for sharing.

And in terms of when you’re assessing the health of your ad revenue, obviously the bottom line matters. But how do you evaluate month on month as you are looking at that, the media ad side of the business? What are the metrics that are important to you? 

Abby Mercado: Yeah. I mean, profitability. I mean, you said like bottom line, like that is kind of the singular thing for us.

So, I think like profitability for us this year as we have a, a lot of new customers, we went to a, an infertility conference last year and we got a booth and we are like we know all these people. Like, this is, we’re kind of like seeing the same people over and over again, which is great.

And so, we’ve gone out kind of expanded our horizons in the fertility and women’s health space versus just the infertility and pregnancy loss space. So we have a lot of new customers this year. So this year it’s about profitability. Next year it will be about profitability, but also are we seeing repeat customers?

Are they coming back to us? Do they think that this was successful? So, after every program we have a wrap up report. Before we sign every deal, we say, what does success mean to you? What do you think you’re gonna get from this partnership? So asking questions like that and really getting into the data with them before we signed a deal.

Cause like the worst thing that could happen is that we’re not successful or, the customer had something that they thought that they were going to achieve. And we didn’t help them achieve it and they don’t renew and that would suck. 

Ben Aston: And so part of the vendor or that the advertiser deciding whether or not something was successful or not, is obviously based on the ROI that they get from that and to figure out that, obviously is dependent on your pricing. Obviously the less you charge, the better the ROI is that they get. 

So when you’re developing your own media kit and you’re developing your own custom products, you’re not using ad networks. By and large, how do you figure out your pricing and how did you evolve that?

Abby Mercado: Oh, man. Well, so I will say, first of all, it’s different for different kinds of advertisers. So we’re not gonna say, here’s our pricing. 

Ben Aston: A standard rate card. 

Abby Mercado: Totally. It is really important to us to work with startups and to work with like young companies doing really innovative things.

So that, that’s part of that’s a core value of ours. Like work with startups, work with like focus on innovation, bring this innovation to the consumer. So, if you’re a Pre-seed startup, we’re not gonna charge you as much as, we charge like a big old, CPG company.

So I will say that’s one thing. The second thing, we’re able to charge higher rates. So, we reach about 9 million people on a monthly basis, like across our channel. So that’s not just page use, it’s social, it’s all the things, it’s our community, et cetera. The thing that’s different, there’s media platforms that reach multiples more than, you know, those people.

Right? But the key differentiator for us is that our community has a very unique, very specific type of intent. So, you know, if you’re trying to sell ovulation predictor kits, you’re, these are, this literally like 3 million people who are trying to get pregnant. So it’s a really interesting niche of people who are like, trying to do various things.

They’re trying to conceive. They think they might have PCOS or endometriosis and they don’t know what to do about it. They have really painful periods and it’s like really debilitating. They can’t even go to work. It’s a really specific type of intent. And so that’s really how we’ve been able to, develop our rate kit for some of the larger players.

And, for the smaller players, it’s more of a we really wanna work with you. We think you’re cool. We really wanna lift you up, and thank you for lifting us up in whatever way you can, so. 

Ben Aston: Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah, I think it’s interesting. Embedded in the audience is a really clear intent, which, yeah, many other media platforms wouldn’t have at all. But the, the audience intent there is so clear that it makes it, that ROI conversation probably a bit easier. Because it’s well, these are the people you need to speak to if that’s what you’re selling. 

Abby Mercado: Absolutely. 

Ben Aston: That’s cool. And what lies ahead for 2023 as you think about what’s on your roadmap and how you’re gonna evolve this further?

What are, I mean, you talked about having 9 different products right now in your media kit? How’s that gonna evolve over the year ahead? 

Abby Mercado: Well, I hope we start selling like fewer. It’s I hope that there will be a couple things that do fail and I think focus is really important. So, I think we’ll continue to experiment.

We’ll continue to test what I’m really excited about for our platform. So we’re about to launch kind of the, it’s just like an amalgamation of like months and months of work and months of thinking. And it’s just like understanding the consumer. Like right now we’re providing content of course we have like different topics, like you can go through our site and you can, find topics on pregnancy loss or like even adoption, whatever.

It’s broken down and all the things. But we don’t do an awesome job of meeting the consumer where they’re at and saying, oh Ben, you have X, Y, and Z. So I always give Ben’s a bad example you’re a man. Kristyn, like we have a site for women mostly, 97% women. Yeah. So I always give the example Kristyn.

So Kristyn is 34 years old. She has PCOS, which is a disease that, you know, super debilitating. 1 in 10 women has, so lots of women have it. She has a thyroid condition called Hashimotos and she has two kids and she wants to have another one. So basically like my journey is a place for her to tell us about that.

And we have so much content. We have, like 500 different articles on our site that are unique to us. We have, all of this video content. We have podcasts, we have products, we have pharmaceuticals. So actually saying, okay, hey Kristyn we understand what you’re going through.

Here’s all the content, all the tools, all the resources that you need based on where you are at as a woman in your reproductive life cycle. So we’re really excited about that. Just from, a consumer perspective and an audience perspective, we think they’re gonna love it.

Ben Aston: So is that a more of a content categorization and like taxonomy play or a dynamic site personalization based on what people are looking at?

Abby Mercado: Probably the latter. The latter. So, instead of us like doing a lot of like guesswork, it’s, you say people coming onto our site and saying, oh my gosh, I found Rescripted and now I’m gonna stay and now this is gonna be a place that like I’m going to come back to over and over again because, I don’t have to do any work.

Like the consumer’s lazy, we know that. So, with our My Journey feature, it becomes, us saying, here’s some content literally for you. 

Ben Aston: Yeah. Here’s what you need next. 

Abby Mercado: And for advertisers, it’s great because, they know let’s say there’s two companies called in the PCOS space that are like super unique PCOS. 

Poly and Awara, both of them are friends of Rescripted. So you know, for Polly and Awara, like there’s no guesswork. Like we know who the people are with PCOS and who actually wants to read this content. So working with advertisers becomes much more focused and much more just precise and exacting.

So you know that it’s exciting on the revenue front as well. 

Ben Aston: Good stuff. What’s the biggest challenge that you face probably in the year ahead? What’s gonna be difficult? 

Abby Mercado: I mean, one of, one of the reasons that we’re launching my journey is we have all this stuff that’s on our site. Like we have a social network, we have e-commerce, we have pharmacy, we do lead gen for kind of a gynecological pharmacy along with a kind of IVF specific pharmacy. 

So we’re doing all of these cool things with technology. Now, how do we get the consumer to know about them? Basically, how do we reduce bounce and get people to stay on the site for longer and, explore, really become super fans of what we’re doing?

So I would say that’s the biggest challenge, and I think it’ll, it’ll continue to be. 

Ben Aston: Cool. Well, let’s end. I wanna end with a lightning round. Tell me what’s the best advice that you think you’ve ever received? 

Abby Mercado: There’s something every day that scares you. And I have a coach and she’s amazing.

Her name is May. And we talk about that a lot. If you’re not doing something every day that’s a little bit scary, you’re not learning and you’re not growing. So if you’re not getting scared, you’re like not really improving. So that’s my best advice. 

Ben Aston: And which of your personal habits do you think has contributed most to your success?

Abby Mercado: So I’ve recently like really gotten into strength training. And it’s it’s just really improved my, no one ever tells you this about strength training, but it’s like feeling physically strong makes you feel mentally and emotionally strong as well. So, that’s something that’s, really important for me just as a human to continue doing.

Ben Aston: And can you share an internet resource or tool, some software? 

Abby Mercado: Gosh, I’m like a Trello fanatic. Like I run my life on Trello. It’s interesting, as a team, we run on Notion. But most everybody on the Rescripted team uses Trello to manage their personal schedules. 

Ben Aston: Interesting. 

Abby Mercado: I use Trello to manage like my own work schedule. You and also my personal life, I’ve got two kids who have tee-ball games and afterschool care and all the things. So, Trello has been awesome for me. 

Ben Aston: What book would you recommend and why? 

Abby Mercado: So it’s not a business book, but it’s called “Nobody Will Tell You This But Me”. It’s by Bess Kalb and I’m just, I’m really obsessed with memoirs. Like I feel like I learned so much from people’s lives and, I really loved this book in particular. It’s about a grandmother and her granddaughter’s relationship. And it just really hit home about the importance of family and the importance of, passing down stories generation to generation and, just storytelling.

I think that’s what I really took from the book. So, anyway, a fun little read.

Ben Aston: And finally, for someone at the start of their digital media journey, what’s one piece of advice you’d give from your journey so far? 

Abby Mercado: So I’m gonna quote Mr. Jacob Donnelly, who recently emailed me this, who is like such a mentor to me, and Pati who’s an advisor to Rescripted. The most important thing that you can do.

There are two important things that you can do as a media company. The first is, present content the consumer is interested in and that the consumer loves. So build up your community through content that they love. That’s really resonant. And the second thing that you can do is be profitable. So, I think that like right now, we’ve raised a lot of money.

We’ve raised too much money, to be honest. And that’s, like in my next media company, because this is an awesome business model. I love this business model, but in my next media company, like I will totally bootstrap it. I think media companies can be really lucrative for founders and they’re businesses that can be bootstrapped if the founders able to do that. So yeah. 

Ben Aston: Bootstrap it. Yeah. 

Abby Mercado: Those are my two lessons. Bootstrap it. Do it. 

Ben Aston: Yeah, that’s good advice. 

Abby Mercado: If you can, not a lot of people can. But if you can, do it.

Ben Aston: Abby, where can people find you and what you’re up to? 

Abby Mercado: So you can find me on LinkedIn or at [email protected]. I love talking to people in this space.

So reach out if you are a fellow media entrepreneur and just wanna chat media. Learn about Rescripted in rescripted.com. No www, and then you can follow fertility.rescripted on Instagram. 

Ben Aston: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been great having you with us today. 

Abby Mercado: Thanks so much, Ben. 

Ben Aston: And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on indiemedia.club and please leave us a review on iTunes, too.

But until next time, thanks so much for listening.