Harnessing The Power Of Hormones With Amy Thomson

Almost 50% of women say hormones have negatively affected their wellbeing, but many of us are unaware of how hormones can impact our mood and bodies every day.

Could tuning into our hormonal cycles support women to better understand their emotional and physical health? And could this knowledge help us to optimise our work, life and relationships?

Amy Thomson is the founder of Moody Month, the femtech app that is connecting women with the fluctuations of their hormone cycle and mood patterns through daily tracking, giving them the knowledge to supercharge their lives. Amy believes our moodiness shouldn’t be suppressed or ignored, but by harnessing the knowledge of our cycles we all have the power to be superheroes.

Having raised over two million pounds with Moody Month, Amy is super passionate about rewriting the narrative around female-led business and highlighting the challenges women face when securing start-up funding.

In this episode of The Wallet, Amy shares her experience of raising the funds that have enabled her to build her business ethically and sustainably, as well as her own personal financial story as an entrepreneur. 💕

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1. hormones: stress, power & Money

“History has told us that women should be focused on the utility of their hormones around their fertility rather than the power they serve in understanding everyday health and wellbeing”

— Amy Thomson

Do you ever have turning points in the month where you feel ready to conquer the world on one day, but the very next day you feel like crawling back into your shell? Or do you ever feel ravenous for just about anything on some days, while on others you have no appetite at all? You are not alone, explains Amy. These fluctuations in moods and symptoms can be explained by the four phases of your hormonal month. You may already be familiar with the three hormones associated with your monthly cycle: oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone. However, Amy argues that our sex education provides an incomplete picture of how these hormones impact our mood and what we are able to achieve during the month. A study presented in the New York Post (2019) revealed that 43% of women say hormones have negatively affected their overall well-being. Results from the survey of 2,000 women, however, suggested that many of us are unaware of the potential implications of hormones, with 72% only later understanding hormones to be the cause of adverse symptoms. If we are to support our long-term health and wellness, it is vital that we extend our focus beyond the utility of our hormones surrounding fertility to truly understanding how they impact our everyday body functions.

What are hormones?

Hormones are molecules produced by the endocrine system (a series of glands across your body that excrete hormones) that send signals to various parts of the body, telling each part what to do, when to do it, and for how long. Hormones are your body’s chemical messengers which are crucial to your health and wellbeing, helping to regulate your body’s processes, such as:

Mood
Metabolism (how your body converts energy from the foods you consume)
Sexual function
Reproduction
Growth

Which hormones do I need to know about?

There are, in fact, seven key hormones that are triggered throughout the four phases of your cycle:

Oestrogen: Amy describes this as the ‘superhero’ hormone which increases your drive and motivation in the first half of your monthly cycle. Studies have shown that higher oestrogen levels can create a ‘glow’ and, hence, increase your perceived attractiveness, including illuminated your skin tone and thickening your hair. This is essentially the hormone which, in nature, signals that your body is ready to mate.
Progesterone: this hormone acts as a ‘counterbalance’ to oestrogen, kicking-in post-ovulation as your oestrogen levels fall. Amy describes this hormone as producing a calming effect in the body, helping to slow your body and mind down as its works hard to prepare for a bleed and the beginning of a new cycle. Progesterone will bring your energy levels down and trigger more introverted behaviours.
Testosterone: you may think of testosterone as a male hormone, but women have this hormone too. Testosterone rises and falls throughout women’s monthly cycles and is often linked to higher libido both around ovulation and just before the onset of the bleed phase.
Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH): a stimulant hormone that supports the maturing of the egg follicles within the ovaries before a release.
Luteinising hormone (LH): this hormone act as a green light for an egg to be released around twenty-four to thirty-six hours after peak.
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH): this hormone is responsible for releasing the FSH and LH hormones, essentially signalling to your brain between pre- and post-ovulation.
Sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG): Amy draws on the metaphor of a ‘delivery driver’ in the context of the SHBG hormone since it is responsible for sending oestrogen and testosterone to target tissues in the body, influencing their function in turn.

The four phases

Phase 1: Bleed

The bleed phase is triggered by the corpus luteum (the bundle of cells formed in an ovary responsible for the production of progesterone during early pregnancy) disappearing, essentially telling your uterus that its lining is no longer needed and should be shed. It is the uterine lining that constitutes the blood.

This phase can be uncomfortable for many women and even debilitating for some as our brains become far more susceptible to pain. During the bleed phase, our bodies naturally force us to slow down, and it is important to be kinder, gentler and to not push yourself too hard. Amy recommends a good-quality dark chocolate bar to give you an energy boost and to increase your iron and zinc levels.

Phase 2: Rise (follicular phase)

Amy refers to this as your ‘power-up’ phase, which lasts seven to ten days. During this phase, your pituitary gland releases FSH and signals to your ovaries to prepare for releasing an egg.

This is the phase in which to take on the world as your skin glows, your hair thickens and you are at your most outspoken and driven. This is the time to engage in the more challenging tasks for your month and negotiate with others.

Phase 3: Shift (ovulation into luteal)

This is the phase in your cycle where your LH and oestrogen peak. Once these elevation hormones rise to their ultimate level, a sharp injection of FH into the cycle prompts the release of the egg. At this peak point, you will feel supercharged and become the best version of yourself. This is also the two-to-four day window where you are most likely to get pregnant.

Phase 4: Reflect (Luteal phase)

This phase ranges from ten to fourteen days during which time our bodies stop producing LH and FSH and our levels of progesterone increase. It is the phase that often evokes lower moods and higher anxiety. During this time, you should be sure to reflect, indulge in self-care and give yourself positive reminders that you are doing well.

Why should I care about all of this?

Understanding how the four phases of the monthly cycle impact us is vital to maximising our long-term health, wellbeing and prosperity. Dr. Minish, a leading New York endocrinologist, explains that the hormonal phases of our monthly cycle can be tracked to gauge and forecast how we should be feeling, how we should be taking care of ourselves and when best to take on our toughest challenges. With the Moody app streamlining the process of tracking your moods and symptoms throughout these phases, the patterns associated with phases become clearer and the answers more accurate.

Amy explains that it was her own personal experience of running a communications agency in her early twenties that drove her to founding the Moody tracking app: the stress of running her own business at such a young age led to the complete loss of her period at the time. It was only through educating her self about hormones that she understood the true value of tracking her own cycle. In today’s modern world, our hormonal balances have become increasingly compromised by environmental factors such as extreme stress, exposure to pollution and poor diets. Upgrading your understanding and awareness of your own hormones can help you to navigate these factors and to spot the warning signs of environmental factors on your body’s function. Amy also advocates the power of understanding your hormones in the context of achieving your professional goals. For example, by drawing on the science of hormones, Amy has been able to fundraise more successfully: she is aware that during her ovulation period, she will not need to prepare as much for her business pitches and that she can fit more productive meetings into a day, whereas, during the second half of her monthly cycle, she knows to do more preparation ahead of a pitch to build her confidence.

2. the female founders’ landscape

Female founders have continued to launch and manage some of the UK’s most innovative and successful start-ups, and yet there remains a distinct gender imbalance among founders and the barriers to entry faced by women. Government-commissioned research in the form of ‘The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship’ highlighted the finding that only one in three entrepreneurs in the UK were women: a gender gap equivalent of 1.1 million missing businesses. With Covid-19 threatening to widen that gap - since female-founder run businesses have been disproportionately impacted by lockdown restrictions - it is critical that greater progress is made to tackle this gender imbalance. Indeed, such efforts cannot come soon enough given the recent lack of progress: the share of funding to female-led firms has doubled in less than a decade according to a report published by the Female Founders Forum in 2019.

What are the key barriers that women face to becoming entrepreneurs?

Given the huge disparity in the number of female verses male led start-ups, it is important to consider the distinctive barriers faced by women seeking to become entrepreneurs. Such barriers include:

Shortage of funding: according to a report published in 2018 by the Entrepreneurs Network, just 9% of funding funnelled into UK start-ups goes to women-run businesses.
Psychological barriers: female founders are more likely to encounter psychological barriers. For example, according to a Telegraph survey, two thirds of 750 female founders felt that they were not taken seriously and were treated differently to their male counterparts.
Greater risk awareness
Lack of networks and mentors
Disproportionate primary care responsibilities

The business case for increasing the number female entrepreneurs

Gender balance in entrepreneurship is not only important for equality, diversity of thought and female empowerment, data has suggested that female led start-ups are statistically better investments.

In 2018, research by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and MassChallenge discovered that, although women entrepreneurs receive less financial backing than their male counterparts, they generate more revenue for every dollar they receive: looking at the experiences of 350 companies in BCG’s programme for support and mentorship, 92 of which had at least one female founder, for every dollar of funding the women-owned companies had generated an average of 78 cents in revenue compared to an average of 31 cents for those run by men.

Further, research conducted by McKinsey & Co highlighted that companies with the greatest gender diversity on their executive teams are 21% more likely to outperform peers on profitability and are as successful as men in sustaining a business once established. The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found that up to £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as British men. Given the vast unrealised economic potential of female entrepreneurs, it is pertinent that we address the barriers faced by female entrepreneurs.

3. accessing funding for your business

It is not new news that women are underrepresented in venture capital (VC), both in terms of the number of women-founded companies invested in and those in senior VC positions. Despite the conversation resonating in the media, the overall publicised disparity in funding between female and male founders, and the number of women in senior VC positions, continues to persist: research prepared for The European Commission by Innovation Finance Advisory (2019) showed that start-ups founded exclusively by women entrepreneurs received roughly 2% of overall VC investment by value in the United States, 11% in the European Union and 28.3% in Israel (the highest level globally). While VC investment in female founders has not improved, even less is invested in racial minorities: a study led by American Express has revealed that, since 2009, black women have received just 0.06% of all VC funding.

“The idea that ‘good signalling’ from your funding journey is paramount to success is dangerous for female founders as it simply doesn’t take into account the barriers to entry they are facing. This is why we need to encourage a bottom-up approach, shifting the dynamic from VC’s holding all the cards to solving this problem collectively and empowering founders to look outside the VC route for funding opportunities”

— Amy Thomson

Given that female and ethnic minorities continue to be underserved by VC investors, Amy argues that it is time that we revamp the funding narrative to empower female and ethnic minority founded businesses. The funding narrative, especially in the technology sector, is focused on VC to scale businesses; we have been historically exposed to the success stories of technology businesses such as Facebook, Google and Apple, companies which have pursued a traditional path for funding. Amy reminds us that these companies, which have hugely benefited from a traditional funding, have been founded and funded by almost exclusively white men. The existence of disparity in VC funding, therefore, comes as no surprise given what we know from psychology: the ‘fundamental attribution error’ tells us that people tend to fund things and people familiar to themselves. Amy recounts her own experience of pitching the Moody app to a group of prospective VC investors, having been told that the “market for period tracking apps is saturated”, essentially producing an outcome in which the fundamental point of her business was missed. Instead, Amy hopes to inspire other female founders through her own funding successes to pursue ‘non-traditional’ funding methods to build their businesses, dispelling the notion that there is a right or wrong way to do funding. Although, there still remains a responsibility on the part of the VC industry to address this diversity challenge.

‘Non-traditional’ funding methods

Angel investors and networks: this was Moody’s primary funding route, raising £2 million in capital from angel investors. Amy explains that angel investment means that you can gain access to women who believe in you, your product and your business.
Crowdfunding: Amy argues that crowdfunding has the dual benefit of both enabling capital raising and elevating a B2C business’ public profile.
‘Behind the scenes revenue’: a strategy that can be employed to bridge between funding rounds by finding ways to help other businesses succeed. For example, Moody helped other brands understand how to engage with millennial women, enabling Amy to bring capital into the business and subsidise Moody’s operating costs.
Tax credits and government grants: governments, in attempt to address the gender and ethnic minority gap in entrepreneurship, often have grants designed for start-ups with social missions.

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