A Special Interview with Hailey Heard

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how.

While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Hailey, I'm so excited to have you here today. I remember when you guys joined our program, I was like, yes, we have a genetic testing company in our program this is so cool. Not that I'm a genetic scientist but we're helping genetic scientists and it was so exciting to get MaxGen into our program and I'm excited to have you here.

Hailey: I'm super excited to be here. This is fun.

Alex Charfen: This has been a really... so you have been in our Billionaire Code Accelerator program for just about a year, so tell us... let's just jump right into it. I want to get as much to the people listening in as possible so they can hear what it's like to grow a business, how you've grown the business, how much you've achieved in just one year. When you came to us, what was the problem you were having in the business before you joined the Accelerator program?

Hailey: We were very much a fly by the seat of our pants kind of team. We were literally just being clinicians because we're really good at being doctors, but not so hot at being business owners, shall we say, and when we met you just over a year ago, we were looking for the structure, and the organization that we knew we were lacking, and there you were so-

Alex Charfen: Well, and when you say you were lacking structure, there's three of you and you're all three practitioners, right?

Hailey: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: You would think that like three practitioners would be highly structured, but there's a big difference between being a physician and running a business, right?

Hailey: Absolutely. I can be super structured, where I'm like, oh, here's your medical case review and what you're doing and what's going on, but when it comes to charging you money and running a business, that's totally not how my brain functions. It was definitely the part that was lacking, so.

Alex Charfen: Let's go back to that time. What did it feel like? What were the frustrations you experienced on a daily basis without having the structure?

Hailey: Pretty much just any time we made a sale we were like, oh this is exciting. We can keep doing this but really had no idea how to keep doing it, so we would just... we'd be on Facebook groups and try to basically [inaudible 00:03:18] ourselves out and saying, hey, we've got this really cool genetic test going on. We think it would help you, and then of course I was doing a lot of self selling to get patients and teaching them nutrition and all the food based aspects, and then that kind of caught on because people liked what I was saying there, and so it was a nice little leeway to sell a genetic test but it was never a planned... we have this awesome product, we're going to go market it in a specific way or build a team in a specific way to actually keep the business running. We didn't have any idea how to do that until we met you.

Alex Charfen: When you found us... I want to dive into that just a little bit just to get some contrast. What was different about us that made you decide to work with that... because I know you were looking for someone to work with. What made us different?

Hailey: Yeah. That's a really easy question, so we've worked with a ton of different coaches in different spheres. We've had chiropractic coaches or functional medicine coaches or marketing coaches, but the one thing that I... and it was really Megan that listened to you at Paleo f(x) last year that really said, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about, is you pretty much cut through all of the junk that other coaches were trying to sell us, and it wasn't just, hey, get your mind right and you'll sell $1 million or do this one little marketing tactic and you will sell $500,000 worth of product in a week.

You didn't give us any of that junk. You were literally, okay, if you have all this pressure and noise going on, you're never going to succeed because you don't know what you're working for, and I think that was really the turning point. It was literally that phrase, pressure and noise. We were like, oh, we want to lower that. How do we that.

Alex Charfen: Oh no, I think we have that and we need to get rid of it.

Hailey: I know we have that, like we really need to get rid of it. It was just that kind of language. It was no fluff, no BS. It was totally like, okay, what's your... who are you marketing to? What's your game plan? How are you going to resell, upsell? Like we didn't know any of those answers until you asked the questions, and we really had to think about it, so that's the main difference.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, that's awesome. It's a good contrast. What was the difference with the product itself? Getting into the Accelerator, you've been in a lot of coaching, right?

Hailey: Been in tons of coaching. I think mostly like what I call your playbook, like the Charfen Cadence. You literally had these notebooks for us to fill out and for us to photocopy and for us to use on a daily basis. No one's ever given us anything like that. People have given us directions for a final product, but never the steps to actually build said final product, if that makes sense. We always had this grandiose idea with other coaching groups, but we never had the step by step process to actually get us there.

Alex Charfen: The difference was the process, the actual having the steps laid out for you?

Hailey: Absolutely. Megan calls it the directions to building a bicycle. Like we see this bicycle, but how do we build it? You're the only person that ever gave us the instructions to build it.

Alex Charfen: That's awesome. Take us to the moment that you realized that like implementing the Cadence or getting involved in the coaching was actually working.

Hailey: Absolutely, we joined around May, June-ish of last year here, and I remember thinking in September... was actually right after the, I believe it was the second event we came to with you guys. We doubled in income for our direct-to-consumer market, which was not something we were anticipating at all, which was really exciting, and then we finally started to build a team.

We had already hired one person on in the beginning and then she was kind of our executive assistant doing everything that we didn't have time to do, and in September we were able to hire a shipping department and a person that was more customer service based, so it was no longer me having to do every single part of the business. That was really when I noticed, hey, this whole Cadence thing is working for us just a bit.

Alex Charfen: That's awesome. How did it feel Hailey? What was it like as a business owner to like have that almost surprised success and having your direct-to-consumer double?

Hailey: I think it was the first time I started breathing in 10 years of being a doctor.

Alex Charfen: That's interesting.

Hailey: It was finally a moment where I was like, oh, I don't have to worry about paying my bills and doing all the things that I got... constantly worried about trying to run every aspect of every business we've ever done, so it was literally a breath of fresh air, so [crosstalk 00:08:12].

Alex Charfen: You know it's interesting. I think you just revealed to at least my audience, something that most people don't understand that I know intimately is that, most people look at doctors and they're like, oh, doctors have it made.

Hailey: [crosstalk 00:08:21] no.

Alex Charfen: Anybody who's a practitioner has it made, and-

Hailey: Not at all.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, being a practitioner, especially owning your own business, it's precarious and riddled with stress, isn't it?

Hailey: Yeah. If I'm not there, if I'm out sick one day or have a family emergency, I'm not making any money. It was literally things we didn't have to think about anymore.

Alex Charfen: That's so cool. How did like having that success and having that freedom, how did that change your outlook on the possibilities for the business?

Hailey: It just made us want to grow it bigger and better. A big part of it was defining who our avatar is, and granted that's changed a little bit over the past few months because we've expanded and grown other aspects of the business, but it really helped us tailor in exactly who we wanted to serve, exactly how we wanted to serve them, and that has... As a doctor, as a practitioner, I am constantly wanting to help people heal, and then we with your help we were able to create a product that people could help themselves heal. That was a huge turning point for us. It just let us get more specific and get even cooler that I think we were.

Alex Charfen: Are you having more fun in the business now?

Hailey: I'm having tons of fun. Literally I'm working from home today, that never would have been an option for me before. It's a lot of fun, we have a lot more structure to our personal life and our business life. I can finally say I'm going to turn my phone off at 7:00 PM and not feel guilty about it. It's been a huge change and a tremendous success in my eyes.

Alex Charfen: Gosh, that makes me so excited for you and Megan and [Chad 00:10:05], but since you and Megan are a couple, it must be nice to be able to turn the phones off and just spend time with each other.

Hailey: Absolutely.

Alex Charfen: That's awesome. Let's get to the details because anybody who's listening here, now they want to know like what really happened, so when we started working together and when we started, you were at about 300,000 in revenue and it was you, Chad and Megan, right?

Hailey: Yup, [crosstalk 00:10:25].

Alex Charfen: All right, so give us the results, a year later where are you?

Hailey: We started working with you May, June of last year, by December of 2018 we closed just shy of 800,000.

Alex Charfen: Nice.

Hailey: So I was super excited and here we are-

Alex Charfen: Nice.

Hailey: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: That's so awesome, it's just explosive.

Hailey: Yeah, it's huge, and then June of 2019 so just over a year later, we are at a one to 1.2 million run rate.

Alex Charfen: Holy cow.

Hailey: I think in the next six months there's going to be dramatic changes and I can't wait to see what happens, and we grew from a team of three just, a few doctors kicking around ideas to a team of [inaudible 00:11:09].

Alex Charfen: That's so awesome.

Hailey: Yeah.

Alex Charfen: About 300% growth in revenue and more than doubling the team in a year.

Hailey: Yup.

Alex Charfen: Did you expect that when you joined?

Hailey: Never. No.

Alex Charfen: Was is it a little surprising?

Hailey: It was, and to be fair, I had never had a truly positive and, or game changing experience before in any program that I had been to, so it was surprising and remarkable and just fabulous all at the same time.

Alex Charfen: Tell me a little bit more about that, so in all the other programs you were in, you never had this type of an experience.

Hailey: Never, no.

Alex Charfen: Were you starting to think it was you?

Hailey: I'm kind of hard-headed, so yeah. Part of it is like, is it... am I not listening? Am I not doing, like I find myself extremely coachable. I used to be an athlete in high school and when I... eons ago, so I've always had some sort of coach and I was always willing to listen, so I never truly thought it was me, but then I'm like, well hell, do I just not have good ideas? Like what's going on, but no, it literally it was more of... there just wasn't that structure and organization that spoke to me. It might've worked for other people, but I'm very much an analytical type of person. If you haven't been able to tell that by now, so-

Alex Charfen: I know well. You started in genetics testing. Let's get real.

Hailey: Yeah. I guess the other coaches I had used were more tactic... tactics that did not speak to my personality, so it could have been me, but quite frankly I think it was them.

Alex Charfen: Hailey, one last question just because... first I just want to congratulate you.

Hailey: Thank you.

Alex Charfen: You know, we put the content together, and we're confident that we can help any business owner, but the results that [inaudible 00:13:13] experience in MaxGen have been extraordinary, and I think it's a combination of incredible talent, a massive amount of drive on your part, and I would tell you you're infinitely coachable because from the very beginning you implemented it at such a high level and you just trusted the process, so you and Megan and Chad need to take a lot of credit for this. You take all the credit for the growth that you've had. It's been amazing.

Hailey: Thank you.

Alex Charfen: One last question.

Hailey: Sure.

Alex Charfen: What's changed in your business or your life that you never thought would change?

Hailey: If I'm completely honest, it goes back to kind of what I said before, we weren't at a place where we could breathe. I honestly thought, okay, I'm just going to die with student loans and never owning a home and never knowing how to adult very well-

Alex Charfen: Being adulting failure.

Hailey: Being adulting failure. You know, I was happy. I have a fabulous marriage, a wonderful family, all that kind of stuff, but the business side of things, I was... when you met me Alex, I was working three jobs, no, four jobs.

Alex Charfen: Yeah.

Hailey: I had genetics company. I have my clinic, I was teaching biology at a high school, and I was a music director at a church, so when we joined you, that's really when I was able to let the other two non-doctory side hustles go. Literally, I never thought I was really going to breathe or come out of debt or be able to pay for things, so it's kind of amazing, you know, money does make the world go round, so it doesn't necessarily make you happy, but it does make you survive, so literary.

Alex Charfen: What [crosstalk 00:14:52] says is, money might not make you happy, but as an entrepreneur there's a minimum amount of money for happiness to be an option.

Hailey: Absolutely, and I think that's one of the biggest things was like, okay, I have been able to help a team build this empire, there are no rules and no walls for me now. Even if this company were to go away, I have every ounce of faith that I could build something from the ground up tomorrow.

Alex Charfen: And the difference was knowing the processes and the system.

Hailey: Absolutely. We have a structure, we have a cadence to work through and that is truly the biggest game changer we've had.

Alex Charfen: So awesome, Hailey, thanks for spending this time with me today. It's-

Hailey: Thanks for having me.

Alex Charfen: I wasn't kidding around when you guys joined, I was so excited to have a genetic testing company because I'm into bio hacking and health and you know, learning about MaxGen, taking your tests has been amazing. I bet anybody who's listening might want to know a little bit more about your company, and by the way, if you're listening, MaxGen has some of the best and most applicable genetic testing on the market.

One of the big challenges with genetics test, and I've had a bunch... if anybody ever wants to clone me, my genes are all over the world, there're a hundred different labs, but I don't think we need to do that, but your tests are just so much more usable and applicable, so anybody who's listening who wants to get some tests, what should they do?

Hailey: They should absolutely go to maxgenlabs.com, and they should also use your name as a coupon code.

Alex Charfen: Nice.

Hailey: So Charfen will get them 25% off.

Alex Charfen: [inaudible 00:16:31] like, yeah.

Hailey: Yeah. We've got multiple panels to choose from. My personal favorite is The Works! which is what you did and that's our three main direct-to-consumer panels in one, so it will give you everything you need from diet, fitness routine to detoxification, vitamin need, all that kind of fun stuff to learn about.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. It was extraordinary, so it's MaxGen Labs, that's M-A-X-G-E-N Labs, L-A-B-S and use my last name, C-H-A-R-F-E-N for a 25% discount, and you-

Hailey: Absolutely.

Alex Charfen: ...will not be disappointed. As far as what I've seen so far, MaxGen has the easiest to read and easiest to apply at genetic testing, so check it out, and Hailey, thanks, will you come back and do this again in a year?

Hailey: Anytime?

Alex Charfen: Awesome. Maybe we'll do it within a year, next time and get you back and share with everybody.

Hailey: That'd be awesome.

Alex Charfen: Thank you.

Hailey: Thanks for having me, Alex.

Alex Charfen: All right, we'll talk to you soon.

Hailey: Thanks. Bye.