In this episode, Dr. Dweck and Rachel interview Emily Sauer, founder of OhNut, female entrepreneur, maker, IRL community leader, and sexual health advocate with a passion to empower women who are co-creating a deeper understanding of how sexual identity informs our individual and collective lives.
Emily shares how after years of painful intercourse, also known as dyspareunia, why and how she invented the OhNut, wearable rings that feel like skin to control the depth of penetration during intercourse. The OhNut is backed by renowned surgeons, pelvic floor physical therapists, sexual health educators and guided by a medical and scientific advisory board.
Watch the Interview with Ohnut Founder, Emily Sauer
KEY POINTS:
- Emily’s story
- What Emily was doing before she invented the Ohnut
- Emily’s kickstarter campaign
- Customer testimonials
- About dyspareunia
- How Emily markets the Ohnut
- Cancer patient customers
- Customer population
- OhNut Team
- What’s next
- Pelvic Gym
- Larger ecosystem
- Awareness
QUOTES:
3:45 “Health care professionals are in part rushed for time. In part, they may feel they don’t have anything to offer for this type of problem so they dismiss it but luckily that is changing.”
4:40 “So often there are delays in diagnosis and people with sexual complications often won’t ask their physician for help so there’s often a lack of diagnosis.”
7:47 “When sex causes fear or anxiety, the pressure to have an orgasm removes the appeal to have sex at all.”
8:48 “It’s obvious that more than 70% of women have painful sex.”
12:04 “The assumption is that painful sex is caused by a mechanical mismatch and the question then stops…without looking deeper to find the root cause.”
13:29 “Most women address (dyspareunia) with avoidance.”
14:24 “Every single part of our message is hopeful.”
15:12 “Of the 75% that are having pain, half of them don’t talk about it with their partner and some subset look for a solution. People are unnecessarily experiencing pain during sex.”
16:29 “The site itself becomes a resource of education. The marketing is not over sexualized. It is educational.”
28:19 “A report just came out that Femtech is expected to reach 1.1 billion in revenue by 2024.”
29:00 “Sexual health and genuine health are intricately intertwined.”
29:19 “You don’t ever talk about painful intercourse without ever including the emotional toll that it takes.”
29:34 “One of the most important things to understand is that a woman’s sexual response is an intersection of so many aspects of her life.”
30:14 “We have to get to the point of a relationship falling apart to take our health seriously.”
EMILY ’S BIO:
Before founding the OhNut, Emily was previously a Technical Director on high production photo shoots working with revered photographers including Nadav Kander. She gained additional entrepreneurial experience by founding a successful digital equipment rental agency, and due to her reputation for charisma and attention to detail, media corporations, blockbuster brands, and entertainment companies like NBC, Adidas, and Time Magazine hired Emily for her expertise. Emily also gives lectures at the School of Visual Arts and taught kickboxing at Cornell University, where she graduated with a BFA.
CONTACT EMILY Sauer:
https://ohnut.co