Heather Sloan: Co-Founder of Heali Medical

Episode 904

What if managing everyday pain didn’t have to mean pills, creams, or simply living with it?
On today’s episode, we welcome Heather Sloan, Co-Founder of Heali Medical — a wellness company creating wearable, drug-free products designed to help people manage pain, recover, and keep moving. A trained chiropractor with more than a decade of experience in medical sales, Heather saw firsthand how many patients and athletes were looking for better ways to manage pain and recovery in their everyday lives.
Together with Co-Founder Enwei Li, a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, Heather built Heali around a different approach. Starting with kinesiology tape incorporating magnesium and menthol, Heali has expanded into products addressing muscle recovery, headaches, period pain, pelvic discomfort, and more. In this episode, Heather shares how they turned that idea into a profitable, largely self-funded business, scaled into more than 26,000 retail doors, and what she’s learned about building and selling physical products along the way. We also get into some incredible founder stories — from Dragon’s Den and Floyd Mayweather to the lengths you sometimes have to go to simply get the job done.
If you’re interested in wellness, consumer products, retail growth, entrepreneurship, or what it really takes to build and scale a brand without relying heavily on outside capital — this one’s for you. Tune in now on The Kara Goldin Show. 🎧

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up. That I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. We just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out. Knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go! Let’s go! Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Here’s a question: Why, with all the innovation happening in wellness, are so many of our solutions that we are finding for everyday pain still pills, creams, or just deal with it? So today, I’m joined by Heather Sloane, the co-founder of an incredible company called Healy Medical, also known as Healy. It’s a wellness company creating wearable, drug-free products designed to help people manage pain, recover, and keep moving. So, Heather came to this from a very interesting place. She’s a trained chiropractor who spent years working with patients and athletes, plus more than a decade in medical sales overall. So she kept seeing the same problem. People wanted effective ways to manage pain and recovery that could actually fit into their everyday lives. And so Heather and her longtime friend and co-founder Enwee Lee and a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner decided to build what is known as Healy Medical today. So I cannot wait to dig in to Healy and hear the behind-the-scenes stories of building this incredible company with great products. So very very excited to meet you, Heather. So welcome to the Kara Goldin Show.

Heather Sloan 2:08
Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Kara Goldin 2:11
Very excited. So for someone who’s just discovering Healy, as I was for the first time, I’m a huge fan now, but hadn’t seen it yet or tried it yet. What did you believe was missing in the market, and what is Heely today as a co-founder would describe it?

Heather Sloan 2:32
Yeah, thank you. I think I’ll start with the second question first. Healy today is a true wearable wellness company. We create products that help with pain relief, recovery, and support, and infuse all our products with natural ingredients with a core focus around magnesium, and then add a dose of style. So we want everyone to look good and feel good, and try and encourage people to choose a natural alternative that looks, you know, looks amazing at the same time to deal with some of the core issues around pain.

Kara Goldin 3:12
I love it. So magnesium. You mentioned magnesium. Why magnesium?

Heather Sloan 3:17
So magnesium was something that both Lee and I were really fond of in our practitioner practice, so we used it. You know, both Lee used it in Chinese medicine. I used it as a chiropractor, and it’s good for so many things. Well, first of all, everyone’s depleted in magnesium, so you lose it with stress, you lose it with alcohol, you lose it with sweat, you lose it with taking any other supplements or possibly other drugs, prescription drugs, whatever it is, it’s hard to balance your body with the amount of magnesium it needs, and it’s so crucial for so many things. It helps flush inflammation and lactic acid. It helps relax the body overall. It helps relax the muscles. It’s good for cramps and twitches. So it’s good for so many things, and it’s very difficult to get what your body needs.

Kara Goldin 4:06
So you’re a chiropractor and spent years working with patients and athletes. So when did you decide I need to go and create Healy, and I guess figure out a better solution for. I would imagine it started with your own patients first.

Heather Sloan 4:28
Well, for sure, there was an aspect of being a practitioner and seeing patients and knowing that they had issues between the patient, like the chiropractic visits, where I would help them. It was difficult to empower people in between those visits to take health and wellness into their own hands. And my journey went from being a chiropractor to then later being in medical sales and seeing what happens when people need to go through the operations and waiting for the operation and the recovery from the operations. For hip replacements or knee replacements or other surgeries, and I really wanted to empower people to be able to help themselves, whether it was leading up to a surgery or in between their doctor visits, and that happened to align with the exact timing of COVID. So when COVID hit, a lot of people, especially in Canada, but you know all throughout different pockets of the U.S. were unable to visit the practitioners that they normally would see, whether it was healthcare practitioners or regular doctor visits, and so it really became so important to give people tools to help manage their own symptoms of pain and recovery. And both Lee and I wanted to use our skill sets to be able to create something that didn’t currently exist on the market and give people that that tool and that that choice. How did you two connect? So when I was in chiropractic school, I got very interested in business and specifically sales, and I joined an import-export company where I started to learn how to sell. And at that company, Lee was the head of operations and logistics, and so she was managing a lot of the infrastructure that helped me with my sales. So we became fast friends, and our business knowledge complemented each other with the operations and logistics, and then the sales and marketing. So fast forward 2025 years later, we decided to combine that with both of our passions and pursuits of healthcare to create what we thought was missing on the market. Healy’s first product was the kinesiology tape incorporating magnesium and menthol of all the products you could have built? Why start there? I think because we were so passionate from our own history. So I, as a chiropractor, really cared about support, really cared about recovery. Had used magnesium in my practice a lot, and had seen the benefits. Lee also was really passionate about magnesium and menthol, and she was seeing a lot of athletes-athletes that needed a solution as well to travel with, take to games, and a lot of younger-minded, stylistic people that wanted to also look good. They were tired of wearing boring patches and white sterile solutions or popping pills. So, and the tape-it wasn’t a new category. But what did you believe was missing? Was anybody doing the magnesium and the menthol combo with the tape? No, all that previously existed was the tape itself to provide support and support during movement, but there was a complication, which was people were trying to solve for pain relief at the same time. So they were adding bombs or pain creams, and the wet nature of the pain cream will loosen the adhesive of the tape. So we were thinking we could solve for all of that at the same time and improve on the style.

Kara Goldin 8:06
So interesting. So Healy talks about drug-free pain support. Are consumers actively looking for alternatives today? To do you see it more so than when you first started? Do you think that that’s just increasing. Where people really want to move away from the pills and the topical products, and just you know have an option where it’s doing something as as Healy is doing to actually help somebody immediately.

Heather Sloan 8:36
Yeah, 100% The natural wellness space is growing, and the magnesium awareness is also growing. I think there’s about 3 million weekly searches on top engine searches, search places for magnesium alone. Weekly searches, and I think over a billion hashtag magnesium views now on TikTok. So the magnesium awareness is up there with omega three and vitamin D, and people are really looking for alternative options now for their wellness.

Kara Goldin 9:06
So interesting. I was just talking to my husband about magnesium. So because people have said not just for pain, but also to just sleep better and just like I mean, if you’re deficient in it, it’s amazing what a deficiency in magnesium can cause? Correct.

Heather Sloan 9:24
Yeah, and cramps, spasms, overall inflammation. So, even for you know someone who has an injury, if you want to recover quicker, it’s an it it will help if you want to improve your flexibility. It will also help work directly on the muscles. It’s just so good for everything. So Healy, how did you decide to call it Healy? How did you come up with the brand name? We spent a lot of time on this, but someone actually suggested combining our names. So my name is Heather and Lee. So the H E A is is the he, and then the Lee, and. It’s a nice play on healing. It’s a catchy five-letter word, so we loved it. The second, the second it was suggested, we fell in love.

Kara Goldin 10:09
So you had worked in medical sales, and then you were a business owner. You were running your own. You’re a doctor. You ran your own chiropractic care, but you are now in the CPG space, the entrepreneur, the co-founder. How much different is that role than what you thought it would be?

Heather Sloan 10:33
Oh my gosh, so much! I mean, I actually thought I would have more free time running my own my own company with Lee, and I thought that we’d be able to, you know, just kind of make our own schedule. And that’s definitely not the case. You’re, it’s kind of like your baby. You know, you’re up every night, no matter what problem it is. You’re there to solve it, and there’s no off button. There’s no vacations that you’re not thinking about work, and there’s no next steps that you’re not, you know, pre-planning in your mind.

Kara Goldin 11:02
So it’s so so true.

Heather Sloan 11:04
It’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I mean, it’s a real ride.

Kara Goldin 11:08
I always tell people that those first love letters, I call them, that you get from consumers, which I know you’ve received,

Heather Sloan 11:17
yeah,

Kara Goldin 11:17
are you know they’re they’re fuel, right, for entrepreneurs, especially they tend to come when you are really having those down days. Do you remember any of those love letters that came to you where somebody’s saying thank you so much for creating Healy, and I’ve learned so much about magnesium or really through your products, can you share anything about any that you might remember?

Heather Sloan 11:44
We’re getting that all the time, and I think that part of the reason is we’re innovating. So we’re creating-you know-we haven’t talked about it yet, but we have all these new categories. We have patches that help with your period pain. We have patches that help with women’s issues like UTIs and bloating and endometriosis. We have headache patches. So all these new categories are so exciting for consumers because there are no solutions or there are no topical solutions that are really working. And all of a sudden now you’re really meeting those needs. And we’ve had some fun. Like I mean, we I think I mentioned we got our product in hand, August 2021, we attended a trade show the first week of having our product, the very first week, and we won first place at the National Buyers Association voted us to like best product, and we won first place for all like the big box from the big box buyers. So you’re talking CVS, Walgreens, Vitamin Shop, Wegmans-all these big places voted in one week from having our product, we won first place, and that was another type of validation because it was coming from these buyers who see hundreds and hundreds of products in their categories. So interesting. So you’ve gone from zero to more than 26,000. I would imagine that’s even on the low end to in you know four years ish. What exactly unlocked that growth? Do you think? Yeah, so 26,000 plus store doors for North America. I mean, I think really offering something that doesn’t exist is part of it. So really innovating and trying to be the first to market with new solutions, but really leaning into that wearable wellness space-it’s so fun, and people can really get on board with wearing something that looks cool that actually helps. So I think that’s really been the pivotal change for

Kara Goldin 13:46
us. So it’s one thing to get this great distribution, but then to actually sell it through and get the consumer to come back. So what have you learned about that cycle?

Heather Sloan 13:59
It’s way harder than you expect. That would be the first thing I’ve learned. It’s a crowded. It’s a crowded space. It’s really hard to cut through the noise. And even if you have the best product and the most differentiated product, you still have to get people to know who you are.

Kara Goldin 14:17
So I’ve read that you’re primarily, largely still self-funded.

Heather Sloan 14:23
Yep, that’s correct.

Kara Goldin 14:24
And what has that forced you to get right that maybe a heavily funded, big marketing dollar company or or a heavily funded startup might have been able to ignore?

Heather Sloan 14:38
I think we have to be very, very careful where we spend our marketing dollars. I think that a larger company could have splashed around and probably accelerated their growth as well, and moved much quicker than we did. We did move pretty quick, you know, relative. But I think that could we have gone? You know, we look back now. Could we have gone quicker? Did we make the right decisions? And I think you have to make that decision from the beginning. Either you’re gonna try and grow as fast as you can and own a very small piece, or I guess grow at a moderate rate and try to own large, you know, a larger amount of your own company. Yeah, definitely. So you went on Dragon’s Den, and what happened? Dragon’s Den, if for those who might not be familiar with it? What can you describe it? And and what did being on that show actually change for you as as an entrepreneur? Change your company. Dragons Den is a TV show that is very similar to Shark Tank, but it’s in Canada, and they also have a version in the UK and a version in Australia. So you basically go up against five business gurus who criticize you and grill you to determine if your company’s worth investing in. So for those of you guys who haven’t seen Shark Danker Dragons, then it’s a fantastic show to watch to see different business types and and different considerations to think about as you’re growing your business. So we went on in 2022. We filmed in May 2022, and at that point we had just launched our kinesiology tape as a single type of product. We hadn’t come out with the other patches, and we had Robert Herjaback and several other Canadian dragons on the show, and we brought an Olympian with us as well to showcase and show off our product, which was a really good decision because she has a six pack, and it took a lot of the a lot of the focus was on her six pack, which was amazing. But they they really grilled us and made sure that we knew our numbers. We were comfortable talking about our product, about our business, and at the end, we were fortunate enough to get four offers from Robert Herjaback and Michelle Romanow and two other dragons, and we considered partnering with them over the long term and giving up part of our business to them to help help accelerate it,

Kara Goldin 17:04
and but you did not

Heather Sloan 17:06
not in the end no in the end we decided you know by the time the dragons get in touch with you after you’re airing you’re filmed and you’re aired many months have already passed and often you’re not in the same place that you were when you had pitched on the show, so our growth had accelerated so much at that point that the original offer just didn’t make sense.

Kara Goldin 17:27
We’ve heard that from numerous entrepreneurs who have joined us who have been on Shark Tank. So some have actually gotten amazing deals, and others didn’t get deals or decided not to take the deal that was offered, and I think everyone has said that just the awareness had really built at least like a boost in initial traffic, and some of them, you know, that you can’t withstand growth just by that. You have to be a good company and have good products and etc. But everybody has said the same thing that it’s like it’s a lot of work, but it’s a no brainer if you can actually go and and do

Heather Sloan 18:12
it. It was a lot of work, but it was so useful for us. I mean, yes, you got marketing awareness, and the public gets to know your brand. You can use that to help show buyers in a one-minute clip who you are. So it helps with expanding your retail, and it also helps with us, you know, to validate us. It was a real nice feeling having four dragons put in offers to say they’d love to be part of us. I mean, that was so exciting for us.

Kara Goldin 18:42
That’s so incredible. And then I, I read about something Floyd Mayweather, the the boxer. I’d love to hear about that interaction. I should say. And can you share that story?

Heather Sloan 18:57
Sure. Yeah, one of the many crazy stories that we’ve had along the Healey journey, and it’s just been so exciting. Lee and I often find ourselves in a really fortunate room, just always meeting new people, and we feel that very blessed to have you know amazing experiences, including meeting Floyd. We had a friend of a friend who worked on Floyd’s TMT team, who had given a Healy package to Floyd, is a real funny story. But basically, I got a text at midnight on a on a Friday night saying, “Hey, you know, Floyd Mayweather wants to Facetime you, and I thought it was a hoax. So I was like, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Yeah, tell him to Facetime me. And then at the last minute I was like, “Oh, I’m wearing my pajamas. Maybe I should throw on like a sweatshirt or something. And sure enough, not more than two minutes later, Floyd Facetimed me at my house at midnight, and because I’m Eastern Standard Time, and we had he was in his mansion in Las Vegas. He gave me a walkthrough of his 20 car. And his mansion, and told me all about how he loved Healy, loved the business. He wanted to know more, and we had this amazing FaceTime, and that led to Lee and I flying down to Miami at a different time when he was Miami to meet him and the whole TMT team and spend kind of a 24 to 48 hour window of opportunity from you know going to dinner with his team to his boxing gyms to private rented at movie theater, back to his mansion in Miami, and then later presenting kind of what Healy was all about and taping everyone up from his team and giving everyone samples to test out, and we ended up we ended up talking to the entire like Floyd and his entire business team at two a.m. in the morning in Miami at his mansion, and it was it was a wild wild experience and another really cool validating experience for us having one of the greatest of all time athletes be like, your product is amazing, your company is amazing. You know, you girls are onto something. Like, it’s just so nice to be able to hear that from from different people and different aspects, and especially you know, a top tier athlete like that. It’s you know, very. It was a very fulfilling experience.

Kara Goldin 21:18
That’s so wild. So, I’d love to hear. There’s probably less fun when you’re than it’s it’s more fun to talk about it now than when you’re living them and you’re trying to operate a business and get to the buyers. And I read about one where you travel through a snowstorm. Can you talk about that one as well,

Heather Sloan 21:41
sure. So I mean, I think the less exciting part of owning your own business is that no matter what, you have to show up, and no matter what you have to get stuff done. And Lee and I have the attitude that you know we’re in it, and we’re going to put 150 in no matter what. So we were traveling back from buyer meetings where we had presented our product in hopes for next year’s review, and we landed back. We had to take a connection. We we landed back in New Jersey, and Taylor Swift had flown to Toronto, and every flight under the sun was locked down because of Taylor Swift’s, you know, exciting concert that everyone was flying into in Canada. So we got stuck there, and we just at the last minute we had to get home. We had stuff we had to get done, and obviously we’re juggling work and family and a bunch of other commitments. And we hopped in a cab, and we said okay. We found a cab driver to take us across the border for a 910, hour drive home. We did not anticipate a snowstorm along the way. Certainly, one of the I’d say wilder, crazier experiences we’ve had traveling to get to these business meetings or traveling to get back. But I guess our philosophy has always been, you know. We try and and maximize, put in as much effort as we can to be successful. So you’ve built a profitable company with significant retail distribution in a category dominated by you know pretty big consumer brands, and you’ve gotten a lot of traction. What do you know now about building a physical product company as you are doing that you wish someone had told you at the very beginning? I mean, I certainly think the more advisors that you can get who have lived this space before you the better, and I think that if I had known that from day one, it might have taken us, you know, a few months or a year or two to find the right ones, and that’s certainly something that I hope to pass along when I’m done this Healy journey. Is you know, being advisor for a growing starting company that kind of can I can help teach what they need to know. I think that really shortens your your time to success and try to avoid some of their pitfalls.

Kara Goldin 24:10
Definitely. So, how many products do you have total now, and is there one that you believe everyone needs to try it? It will, you know change your life?

Heather Sloan 24:22
So we have three core pillars. So we have support, we have pain relief, and we have women’s wellness. As women co-founders, we are obviously very passionate about women’s wellness. We tried to create products that we wish we had along every stage of the journey. The most exciting ones right now that we have are really these new products. So the we love the kinesiology tape. It was our initial start to success, and it it really differentiated the kinesiology tape space. But now we have these period patches and headache patches and women’s patches that are just so cool, and. So for anyone who suffers from period pain or suffers just from cramps, these ones are really a game changer. So I would say if you were going to try anything, I would start with those.

Kara Goldin 25:11
Yeah, I love the headache ones as well. So I tried them, and a couple of people in my family tried them. They’re like, these are amazing. This is this is super great. So I think you guys are really onto something, and I I love also how fun your brand is. So you’ve built it. It’s not so medicinal, if you know, and and serious. It’s just it just seems like a lot of fun. It gets people smiling even before they are using the products. Was that intentional?

Heather Sloan 25:44
100% Yeah. If if you’ve had an opportunity to see our Dragon’s Den episode, we actually say products so fashionable you just might want to fake an injury. And I think that’s really the core essence of it. Is you know that space has been so boring and sterile, and we’re here to make healing fun. We’re here to make healing accessible, and people no longer feel necessarily like they want to hide everything. There’s a lot of, I’d say, open stigmas now around women’s wellness, around pain, and we’re here to support that journey and just make everyone try and, I guess why not match your workout outfit or your out, you know, or your general outfit and feel proud to wear it. I love it. Well, Heather, thank you so much for

Kara Goldin 26:30
joining me today. It’s so nice to meet you, and I love everything that you’re doing with Healy. For everyone listening, check out Healy Healy Medical and follow Heather and the team to see what they’re doing and building next, and thank you again, Heather. And we’ll see you all next time on the Kara Goldin Show.

Heather Sloan 26:49
Thanks, Kara. Thanks for having us.

Kara Goldin 26:51
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin Show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal best-selling book *Undaunted* where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint: We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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