The UX Consultants Lounge

Amy Heymans - Realities of an Agency Acquisition: Letting Go and Starting Over

• Kyle Soucy • Episode 14

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In the final episode of 2025, Kyle sits down with someone who has been woven into her UX journey for nearly two decades: Amy Heymans — founder of Mad*Pow, founder of Beneficent, and co-founder of the Dignified Futures Conference.

Amy and Kyle first met in 2006, when Mad*Pow was just a few people in a small Portsmouth, NH office. Over the next 13 years, Amy grew the agency into a nationally respected 70+ person consultancy known for its exceptional design work and its influential events, including HXD, the Center for Health Experience Design, and the Financial Experience Design Conference.

But this conversation goes far deeper than Mad*Pow’s rise.

In 2019, Mad*Pow was acquired — the “dream scenario” for many agency founders. Amy shares openly what that experience was really like: the financial realities behind acquisitions, the emotional complexity of letting go of her company, the personal circumstances that shaped the outcome, and the surprising truth that the big exit doesn’t always look like the fantasy many consultants imagine.

After leaving Mad*Pow, Amy stepped into a prestigious role as Chief Design Officer at UnitedHealthcare, navigating an enormous 400,000-person organization. She talks candidly about why the move felt right, why it ultimately didn’t align with her values, and how she knew it was time to walk away.

Today, Amy is the founder of Beneficent, where she focuses on systems thinking, futures design, and complex problem-solving across health, finance, and the public sector. She also co-leads the Dignified Futures Conference, a gathering dedicated to reimagining systems for social impact — and she shares what inspired it and how designers, policymakers, and innovators can get involved.

This episode covers:

  • How Mad*Pow really began
  • The messy truth behind scaling a design agency
  • The realities of selling a firm — financially, emotionally, and personally
  • Why Amy returned to corporate — and why she left
  • How she’s building Beneficent differently from Mad*Pow
  • How ADHD shows up in her work as both a challenge and superpower
  • The future of UX consulting in the age of AI and speculative foresight
  • Practical advice for landing big clients and navigating uncertainty

This is one of the most candid conversations ever aired on The UX Consultants Lounge — a deep, honest look at success, identity, reinvention, and the realities of leading a UX career across decades of change.

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I can’t wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode!

Kyle Soucy:

Welcome to the UX consultants lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of Usable Interface an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usableinterface.com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another. This is it, the last episode of 2025. And, I have a real treat for all of you. It's not every day. You get to hear the firsthand story of a UX consultant who started a successful agency, grew it to over 70 people in two different office locations, and then got acquired. Today on the UX Consultants Lounge, I'm joined by someone who has been part of my UX journey for a very long time: Amy Heymans. Amy and I first met back in 2006 when I had just moved from Philadelphia to New Hampshire. And at the time she was in the first few years of building Mad Pow, which would soon become one of the most influential UX agencies in the area. But what makes today's conversation especially powerful is what came after the success. In 2019 Mad Pow was acquired, which is the dream scenario for many agency founders. Yet, as Amy and I discuss the quote unquote, big Exit isn't always what people imagine. She shares openly about the financial reality behind acquisitions, the emotional upheaval that came with letting go of her company, and how personal circumstances shaped her Next chapter. After the acquisition, Amy stepped into a prestigious role as Chief Design Officer at UnitedHealthcare. A huge shift from running a 70 person consultancy to navigating a 400,000 person corporation. And if you know Amy, you won't be surprised that corporate life wasn't a long-term match. 11 months later, she walked away and began rebuilding her career on her own terms. Today, Amy is the founder of Beneficent, a consultancy focused on systems thinking, futures design, and complex problem solving. She's also the co-founder of the Dignified Futures Conference, a gathering dedicated to re-imagining systems for social impact, and she'll share more about that work today. We cover a lot in this episode. How Mad Pow really started. The messy truth behind scaling a design agency, the realities of selling a firm financially, emotionally, and personally. Why returning to corporate wasn't the answer for Amy. How she built Beneficent and what she's doing differently this time. How Amy's ADHD shows up as both a challenge and a superpower. And how UX consultants can adapt and thrive in the age of AI and futures thinking. This is an unusually candid conversation about success, identity, reinvention, and what it really looks like to lead a career over decades through downturns, acquisitions, personal shifts, and changing technology. So settle in. I think you're going to get a lot out of this one. Please enjoy Amy Heymans. All right, Amy, welcome to the lounge.

Amy Heymans:

Thanks for having me. It's good to see you as always.

Kyle Soucy:

Good to see you too. And I'm so glad that you were able to do this. I have been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. we have a long history together, so bear with me while I give a brief background to the listeners here about us. So you and I met in 2006 and you had, started a UX design agency called Mad Pow at the time, I believe you were a few years into that. And it was just, two or three other people, with Mad Pow at the time that I met you. And we worked together around that time to also start the New Hampshire chapter of UXPA because there were no meetups or anything at all going on in New Hampshire, and we wanted to change that.

Amy Heymans:

That's right.

Kyle Soucy:

but over the next 13 years, I got to watch Mad Pow, grow into a 70 plus person agency with offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts. And you started putting on events and you created the Health Experience Design Conference, HXD, the Center for Health Experience Design and the Financial Experience Design Conference. And during this time, I was fortunate enough to subcontract on and off with Mad Pow, so I got to see a lot of that growth from the inside. And I, I mean, just up to that point alone, you've had quite a journey and what makes this conversation, I think really interesting. And valuable for the consultants listening is what happened next because Mad Pow did what a lot of agency owners only dream about. You got acquired in 2019 and that's, you know, quote unquote making it in a lot of people's eyes. but you've been really open with me in our private conversations about what that actually looked like. You know, the financial reality, the personal circumstances, you know, what happens after the dream scenario plays out and you were willing to come on here and talk about it, honestly, which I think is incredibly valuable for the consultants listening. So we have a lot to talk about and I wanna hear about the Mad Pow journey, what the acquisition was really like, what's happened since then. And spoiler to those listening, you went back to work internally for United Healthcare for a brief moment, found out corporate wasn't working, and you started a new company and a conference that I wanna hear all about. And, really just discuss the lessons you've learned along the way. So let's start at that beginning. If you could take us back to 2002. You were just starting Mad Pow. What drove you to start a UX design agency in the first place?

Amy Heymans:

Oh, gotcha. during the.com boom, I worked at an agency in the Portsmouth area called Micro Arts and made a lot of friends there. Great work culture there, great people. And that was when, the dotcom boom was happening. So we were building websites, we were designing the interwebs, so to speak back then. And I founded the ux, department there. And I met, uh, who ended up being my business partner at. Mad pow there, as well as who ended up being our COO and another partner there. And we ended up hiring a lot of people from micro arts to mad Pow over the years. but yeah, early, early days, the.com bubble had burst. I was laid off and, started freelancing just to pay the bills. And it just so happens that will, my business partner, had also been freelancing to pay the bills. And, we partnered up on a project, the first project we worked on together. I was nine months pregnant, about to go into labor. And I was like, well, dude, they're not gonna hire some lady about to have a baby, for this big project, a big call center redesign for Starwood Hotels now, now Marriott. So I said, let's, Go for this together. pretend we're a company and he had the brand, he had the website, the insurance, the bank account, all the things that I hadn't built up yet as a freelancer. So we went for it as Mad Pow. We won the work. we worked on that project for two years. and then we got another project, started building a stable of contractors to do the work. awesome people like yourself, who are around the area. And, we grew from there. So we hired our first employee in 2006. he was actually in business development. So where we went from networking and personal connections, we started to do cold calling and business development and grew from there.

Kyle Soucy:

I can't believe it started from, let's pretend we're a company to what it actually grew to. That's really amazing. and that growth, 70 plus people and all that time, what surprised you the most about just growth and scaling that really no one warns founders about?

Amy Heymans:

Sure. And again, the growth, like part of business is luck, it's timing, it's market dynamics. I mean, there's so much a successful business, like yeah, they probably did some stuff, right? But businesses that don't end up growing and thriving probably did stuff right too. So it's not the people who are able to grow and scale are like smarter than those who don't. Number one, is it even a good idea for work-life balance or anything like that? But that aside, say both founders have the intention. it may work out for one and not the other. and it's not anything they did or didn't do. It's just like straight up luck.

Kyle Soucy:

I appreciate you actually saying that it was more luck or that it could be, you know, an

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, I mean, we did some stuff right, but we also made a ton of mistakes. So like the market conditions at the time, you know, because what design is, design, figures out how to apply technology to human and business problems. So at the time where the internet was being built, there was a ton of business to be had. There was a ton of design needed because it was an explosion in technology. Right. So, that was a fortunate, time for sure.

Kyle Soucy:

What worked well for you guys to grow and what was harder than you imagined?

Amy Heymans:

Well, we started with subcontractors, which I think is a smart thing to do because you don't wanna take on a salary, if you have volatility in your revenue, right? there needs to be predictability in revenue in order to take on that responsibility. And it is a responsibility. what really drove me was like loving the people I worked with because they were, brilliant and passionate, but also they had families and depended on their livelihood. Working at Mad Pow, their families and paid their mortgage. And so that created a lot of, responsibility to continue to have stable revenue. Now, in order to have stable revenue, I believe you have to constantly be growing.'cause if you're not growing, you are stagnating or shrinking. And so that constant pro-growth mentality, led to our growth. Now there's different, chasms to cross and whatnot, So going from five people to 20 is a big leap. Going from 20 to, I think we had 70 or 80, at the peak is a big leap. And we always used to talk about responsible growth, like my partners and I, because I'd be like, let's grow, let's, you know, and they'd be like, we wanna grow responsibly. But it's it's hard to know, culture changes, things will be different. You need more infrastructure, you need more operations, HR and accounting and look after culture and all the things. But sometimes it happens so organically and imperceptibly that it's not until you experience a pain or a frustration that you notice oh, we've changed. Like for me it was when I walked into Mad Pow, I saw a new employee and I didn't know their name and I didn't even know we hired them. whereas before I knew everybody and participated in the interviewing process. So scale can be, surprising. folks say always, Be aware of your blind spots. It's hard to be aware of something you're blind of, but I think constantly, having an attitude of humility and hearing from folks, is really important to form your opinion. But also people will tell you a ton of things that aren't necessarily true in general or for you in your business. So simultaneously knowing what's important to you while also like getting feedback from people who have some good advice and wisdom.

Kyle Soucy:

I can only imagine how much you must have to trust your leadership team when it gets to a point of not being able to know every single hire. Like, it's just not even possible. what did you learn about, hiring and leadership and trusting your team during that period?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, so first of all, we had, uh, first it was my business partner myself, so two partners, and we took on another partner, and then we had, we took on another partner. So we had four partners. And that was a great dynamic because we approached, things with very different, mindsets, which I think leads to improved quality. I'm a big fan of creative abrasion, you don't wanna have just everybody agreeing with everybody because you could quickly go off the rails that way. like I mentioned, I was pro-growth and my business partners were more like operationally minded, like slow and steady wins the race, and so we balanced each other out really well. when it came to hiring, we would do group interviewing or have like multiple people interview. we had to be aware though of like confirmation bias really bit us. And so we learned about it after we had already made mistakes associated with it. so for example, if my business partner interviewed somebody and was like, oh, they're awesome, you're gonna love them, I would assume that I'm gonna love them and I wouldn't be as, critical in, in that regard. so we, we definitely had, some, a very interesting experiences over the years, with regard to that. Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

Oh, that, that is interesting. I can see how that would be a benefit to have people that don't exactly yep you constantly, they're willing to give their input, their honest input, and the responsibility you mentioned that, you know, being an independent consultant, never having employees, I cannot imagine what it must be like to have the responsibility to feed other people and keep them employed. What was that like? Is that something that, fuels you or is it just amp the pressure, I just can't even imagine.

Amy Heymans:

No, it's good to have external pressure, like accountability deadlines and just your social contractor, the responsibility and, ethic you have, as a business owner. There's a great responsibility that comes with, providing people jobs, but at the same time, they're adults and they go, you know, I, it used to be that when someone would quit, I felt like they, dumped me. I felt like I got punched in the gut, like you feel like when you know through a breakup or what have you. But then, you know, I'd have employees going like, I'm moving to London to work for Google, and I'm like oh my gosh, they're living their best lives. And it's so great because Mad Pow was a part of their journey. And then it, there became this notion of mad pow alumni, like going and changing the world and mad pow folks still work together. There's these like different bands of mad powers at like different places. so yes, it's a huge, Responsibility. what motivated me though was like working with brilliant people and being able to like trade ideas and this notion of yeah, we're a tiny company in New Hampshire, but we can do things that, impact the world. We can work for the biggest brands and just that, just like raw creativity, ingenuity and, and stuff. I found it extremely rewarding and motivating. so I'd rather do stuff for other people than for myself. And I don't know that's a good trait, but it definitely was motivating for me.

Kyle Soucy:

I mentioned earlier about all the conferences that Mad Pow put on, which was just a huge feat. and from my perspective, these weren't just, marketing, conferences, and an opportunity for you to market yourselves as a firm. They became genuine community building efforts, and I was curious what drove you to invest in that kind of work alongside running the agency?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, sure. it's a little bit of risk, taking a little bit of hubris, a little bit of problem with authority or liking to break the rules. for example, I would go to HIMSS, like the biggest conference in health, or I would go to IXDA or UXPA. And what I noticed was there wasn't a lot of design at the health conferences and there wasn't a lot of health at the design conferences. And so I said, what about designers in health? Like they need content to nourish them too. and I was talking to somebody about it over lunch and they were like, you should do a health conference. And I was like, yeah, maybe we should. And so we did. And, it was scary because with event planning, it's even worse than running a business. Like it's more detailed and you put in all this effort and this outright. Cash outlay outright expense. And you don't know if anybody's gonna buy a ticket. But the first year people came and I think, it ended up costing as much as like a fancy event. Sponsorship would have cost. But the difference was we could leverage that event to yes, stimulate interesting conversations, feature great content, but also to give a platform to our employees for them to share their thought leadership and gain confidence and build their brand. And for our clients to start to speak about the good work they're doing. And hopefully say a good thing about us, when they're on stage and to prospects, like for us to invite the kind of people we wanna do business with, to the conference to build a relationship. And so it ended up serving us in terms of brand awareness, credibility, thought leadership, Relationship building, lead generation. And it really, fueled our growth to the extent that, we were like, okay, this worked for health, let's do it for finance. And we repeated the model. The health conference attracted 500 people. The finance conference was just focused on leadership and it was like 75 to 100 but yeah, it really served us well.

Kyle Soucy:

I was wondering, I, if it strengthened Mad Pow's business overall and it sounds like it definitely did. And, we'll talk about what you're doing now, but it sounds like you're going to use that model again, um, with your new company'cause you have a new conference coming up. what role has community building really played in your overall career trajectory?

Amy Heymans:

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's, planning an event is hard. It's not all like rainbows and butterflies. It's, like I said, it's like a masochistic endeavor. It's like a labor of love. But the reason why I do it is because I love the people in the community. Just like I told you, I love the people at Mad Pow I love the people in the community. talk about inspiration, like convening people, who are like-minded or not, to share their insights and their wisdom and, you know, they always say at conferences, the best conversations happen in the hallways. Uh, but just the energy around it and working toward that creates like a reason for doing things like a buzz, a energy. It starts to take on a life of its own, and then it has an afterlife, if you will, or, a half life, a second life, whatever you wanna call it. so yeah, so right now, um. I missed running the conference, the Health Experience Design Conference. I did it for 11 years. I loved it. I missed it post. Mad pow. And so I had a friend who ran a conference at Kaiser Permanente on the West coast, different network of people. I had been to his conference, he had been to my conference. He missed doing conferences too. And we said, why don't we do a conference together? So we, founded the Design for Dignity, conference a couple of years ago. We're in year three. The theme is Dignified Futures, and it's exploring the inter intersection of health and social impact. looking at systems thinking, futures thinking. also. Digital experience design and service design. but taking an intersectional approach, like looking at social drivers of health, financial wellbeing, transportation, housing, employment, food as medicine. and so yeah, I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah, and I was reading the conference description and it says, it's a call to reimagine how we design systems for social impact. And that's a big ambition. What do you mean by designing systems versus designing experiences or products?

Amy Heymans:

yeah, sure. my, my career pro progression was from graphic design to digital visual design to user experience design, which is what we started Mad Pow on. And then at Mad Pow we started looking into experience innovation, the omnichannel experience, cx, service design, deep ethnography. Then we evolved into, behavior change design, so motivational psychology, behavior science, designing interventions to change real world behaviors. And then we started getting into futures thinking and systems thinking, toward the end. And that's really, what I love because it's, it went from the visual media and the craft to, as the medium, to, to thinking about how do we design all the pieces and parts. because when you get into it, it's like, we could clean up this digital experience, but really it's the process or the policy that's the problem. And so let's do service design. And then once you did the service design, you're like, we can fix it at this company. But really it's. Regulatory or the policy, that's the problem. And so once you really start getting familiar with the problem spaces, you start realizing, and stepping back and taking a new lens and realizing, oh, it's the system. It's how organizations work together. It's the flow of money or it's, this, policy. and so I started to get passionate about, systems thinking, looking across the whole system to identify where can we zoom in, to have an outsized impact. If we change one thing, how might we have an outsized impact across organizations, as well.

Kyle Soucy:

Systems thinking it's really just a bigger umbrella that service design, all the rest would fit into. Is that right?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, exactly. it's like you have the person at the center, right? And then you have their organization, then you have, their, yeah, their employer, and the government, like society as a whole. So yeah, it's taking that, higher level view and also like from a systems design perspective, looking at causal loops, systems loops, like how one thing affects the other because we're so busy oftentimes designing, to alleviate symptoms as opposed to designing to prevent the problems from happening to begin with. So it's really looking at root cause analysis, or, causal loops instead of having systems that lead to, Downward spirals, having systems that lead to, loops that, raise everybody up.

Kyle Soucy:

And Dignified Futures is happening in March, is that right?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah. March 18th and 19th in Chicago.

Kyle Soucy:

In Chicago. And who should be thinking about attending?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah. Anybody in systems thinking, futures thinking or design in health? and when I say health, nonprofit, community health, policy makers, public health folks from, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, health systems. We have a lot of folks coming from, Medicaid organizations as well as federally qualified, health centers. so basically anybody that cares about improving, Improving health, in terms of the outcomes or the experiences.

Kyle Soucy:

Okay, I will definitely include a link in the show notes for anybody that's interested to please check it out. And I wanted to circle back to, this time at Mad Pow before you actually had the acquisition. you were winning these big clients. You've closed deals with major companies and well-known brands, and for consultants listening who are trying to land those bigger fish. When you're crafting an engagement with a new client, what are the most important questions you ask to win the work?

Amy Heymans:

It's a great question and I will say I. I do feel it's harder now to break into organizations. They've clarified their vendor list. Sometimes if you're an independent, it's easier than if you're a small shop.'cause an independent can be paid through like alternative means.'cause it all has to do with the budget classification. you can be viewed as like a subcontractor as opposed to an agency. It's like the dollars are in different buckets, you know what I mean? but in terms of getting into organizations, and doing business with them, of course networking and relationship building and being of service. But when you're talking about that initial conversation, my formula was, just ask questions like hearkening to, human-centered design and research. be a good researcher. Ask questions about what they care most about, what they're trying to achieve, what they've already done, how they plan on getting there, what keeps them up at night. what they're most passionate about. My goal was to have the client talk for 90% of the call. It wasn't about here's our fancy process, here's how we do things. The best calls were ones that were half hour, no PowerPoint. we did have to do ones that were the dog and pony show and people expected PowerPoints. But if you listen for the majority of the time and then say, I hear you saying that this is the most important thing. What if we did this or this? that could be helpful. Or even ask them like, considering that you care about achieving this within that timeframe and that we can offer A, B, C, how do you see us adding value? So almost to like Ask them a question that makes them think of how they wanna work with you as opposed to telling them how they wanna work with you. those types of things, can help. a lot of companies are having layoffs right now. A lot of, budgets for, outsourcing, are also impeded right now. I think also, consultants are getting a bad rap, as well. I think especially I adopted this mentality when I was at UnitedHealthcare. I was chief design officer there and I had a team of 100, amazing designers and we needed that to be sticky with the business and understand the challenges we were trying to solve and get really good at working together and solving those challenges. But, we also needed fresh outside thinking too, because when you're inside you, you just stop becoming aware of all of the other ways people do things, all of the other things happening outside of your organization. So I think it's good to have a blend of internal strength and talent and balance that with external perspectives.

Kyle Soucy:

And you know, mad Pow was, having this exponential growth. you were doing the conferences, landing these amazing clients, building this team, and then somewhere along the way an acquisition conversation starts to happen. And I was wondering if you could tell me, what led to the decision to sell Mad Pow? Was it the plan all along, or did circumstances drive it?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, when, when you're talking about, An organization with all these employees and partners, they say, mo money, mo problems, mo employees, mo problems. that we had been through cycles. we made it through the financial crisis of 2009 and we made it through other, crises where there'd be like a market downturn. We'd have to lay people off. and we felt terrible. It was a miserable thing, but in order for the organization to survive, we needed to make those difficult decisions. but it was difficult and it took a toll. And, and I think it stressed out, the partners and I think, um, it was a combination of a few things. So seeing a convergence happening where large consultancies would be like, design matters, design is cool. We want design to be a point of competitive differentiation. So the cognizance and the sapiens and the Deloittes and the Wipros of the world would just. Acquire the smaller design firms, add them into their umbrella. And so those smaller design firms would help those big consultancies have that competitive differentiation and win and, look cool, be cool and in front of clients and ultimately do great work. and also those big organizations wanted maybe some new MSAs that the smaller org had that they didn't have, right? So it was about competitive differentiation and organic growth. Or Deloitte has a design firm, so you know, this other firm needs a design firm too. And so a lot of the firms ended up getting bought up and it made it really difficult for smaller design firms to compete with a design firm that had been, you know, purchased by Deloitte. You'd have 30 people working on an RFP over on the Deloitte side, and you'd have two people, like one to two people on the madhouse side. So it became difficult, I don't golf, I can't golf with the CEOs of the fortune fives and whatnot. it just became difficult to, to compete with those ginormous organizations. that led to more revenue volatility, which would lead to more, of the unfun, stuff. and I think it was stressful too. managing a large organization for a long time. and so because design firms were desirable from an acquisition perspective, because it was harder to compete because, partners were getting stressed and things like that, we were like, okay, if we're ever gonna do this now might be the time. Now I'll take you back to the 2002 2003 period. I had two kids and one on the way I thought, Hey, I'll grow a company for five years and then I'll be able to spend more time with my kids. Yeah, that was like 2002, 2003. We didn't sell till 2019, 16, 17 years later. So, um, it was a totally different timetable, and mind you, I, I was a single mom, like entrepreneur, growing the business. There was a lot, going on there. Ultimately, mad Pow provided me with financial security to, to feed my family, over the years. and it was an asset. And just like you look at the assets in your portfolio, you don't wanna be foolish, you don't wanna, Not sell. And then the market tanks, just like a stock you wanna sell when, the market is, conducive. And so we decided it was the right time to do that. Now, if I could go back in time, would I still make the same decision? honestly, I'm not sure. because a lot of things happen that I would not have anticipated. my, my vulnerability is that I'm an optimist and I always assume like, oh, it's gonna be great. Things are gonna go well. Like, I trust people, I believe what they say, you know, in hindsight, there are a lot of learnings there.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. you mentioned to me that there were four partners, to split the money with, personal circumstances like, divorce kids in college and the financial reality just wasn't quite the golden parachute people. Imagine. And without getting into specific numbers or anything, and, only what you're comfortable sharing, what did the financial reality of an acquisition look like? what do people misunderstand about what an acquisition actually means financially?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, and I'll just caveat all of this, first of all, first world problems, second of all, like I am personally reframing what is success? What does success look like? And encouraging others to do the same. I teach at Mass College of Art and Design. I get to experience, vibrant, younger designers who are just setting out on the path of life and, growing the company, getting acquired, getting whatever financial goal. I just saw a clip of you on, TikTok. Funny enough. Say, saying this your ver your version of success is not necessarily my, version of success. um, when you look at it, my, at my core, I want my children to be thriving, and I wanna, be there for them. Now looking back over the course of time, because I was so focused on growing mad pow to provide the financial stability for my family that we did need, I missed out on those times. So I'm a big fan of life design and thinking about what do we, what do you actually want your life to be like and designing it that way. but you asked about financials. I will get into that. me personally, whatever my share was in the company, um. there was initial chunk, right? And then there was an earnout period of three years. and so we didn't get it like all at once. Uncle Sam like basically takes half straight up, right? then, according to my divorce agreement, I had to give, 20%, to my ex. And our divorce agreement also said that I had to fund, our children's, education. Um, and after that, being responsible with retirement and such, there's not a ton left. And when you look at it, and this is all the like, good financial advice of live within your means and if you get a raise, pretend you didn't and just save more and do all these financial smart things. honestly, I feel like if most of us. Considered financial planning and being smart financially as a part-time job, we'd probably all be doing a lot better. so instead of slaving away at the day job, maybe just like doing a little, like having a job that isn't as stressful or all consuming,

Kyle Soucy:

Totally, yeah.

Amy Heymans:

Think about these because, if I had saved more money and invested it wisely, I could have probably ended up with the same egg that I had, at the end. you can build toward that chunk incrementally over time, if you set about the work of doing it and even see it as like a possibility. Um, so yeah, one of the themes explored at the financial experience design conference when we had it was this, financial independence, retire early movement. These like crazy kids that live, very frugally and. save 75% of their income so that they can retire early. And for them, retirement isn't I'm gonna go play bingo. Retirement is, I am like liberated from the constraints. and, rat race as a religion, I don't know that it's the best thing to be honest. So the best thing wasn't the payout at the end of it, which is why I always thought we got into it. And again, I am grateful financially. It sustained my family. I was a single mother. I needed to put food on the table somehow. I'm grateful for that. But the best part of the journey and the part I miss the most is working with amazing people every day.

Kyle Soucy:

I really just appreciate that you're willing to talk about this publicly and I think there are a lot of consultants listening right now who dream about that moment, the exit, the big payout, without really understanding what it actually looks like in practice. So thank you for just going into that. mad Pow it was like your baby, you know what I mean? That was huge. And it was uh. synonymous with who you were. Letting go of that too, I can only imagine was just such an emotional thing and just say, okay, that was one chapter. Now we're starting a new chapter. That in itself must be very emotional.

Amy Heymans:

Oh, totally.

Kyle Soucy:

Looking back, if you were advising someone who's building an agency with an exit in mind, what would you tell them to think about or plan for that you'd wish you'd known?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, sure. So there are ways that I learned about later to have employees of the agency, own parts of the agency. or you step away if you have a trusted leadership team, you can step away and, do something else. But the agency is still like running. So whether you convert it to being employee owned or you stay involved, I think there, there could have been ways to get. Some partners, what they were looking for without, necessarily going through the acquisition process. Now, of course, like I said, like rose colored glasses, we liked, the group that, that ended up acquiring us. and, we thought, wow, these are like brilliant guys. we're gonna learn from them, this can be a good thing. And from a culture perspective, it seemed like a fit. And then, of course you hear the horror stories from other design agencies and we're like, oh, that'll never happen to us. we'll be good. You know, and then what do you know? it ends up happening. I feel honestly like I carry a lot of guilt for that because, I wish that, some of the things that ended up happening, like in hindsight, maybe they were avoidable, maybe they weren't. but now I look at how agencies are just struggling and I'm like, okay, whether we were acquired, whether we weren't, it, it still would've been a challenge. and I view an agency like a star almost where, it might burn bright and then die out, but you're, you're glad it happened because it was beautiful, while it existed kind of

Kyle Soucy:

Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the mark on the industry is still there. I think Mad Pow, what it gave back to the industry is huge. the whole legacy of it, and every single person who worked there I think was so special and had a certain quality. you were very good. your company as a whole. I think it's finding good talent and just creating a really good culture. So, it was a beautiful thing. Um, after the sale of Mad Pow and your exit, you actually went back to work internally and became, chief Design Officer at UnitedHealthcare. And when I saw that, I was so shocked. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe she's going back to work internally. And it was such a prestigious role. I was wondering what attracted you to it initially.

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, sure. post Maddow is like full blown existential crisis. Right. You know, it Mad Pow was my identity. and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it wasn't a good thing. But it definitely was my baby, also, like COVID was happening. I lost my mom. my kids were growing up and moving out, so there, there was a lot of change happening and I was like, okay, what do I wanna do next? I was like, do I write a book? Do I go get my master's degree? Do I like, what do I do? and I love to be busy and I love health and I love design, and I wanted to make an impact at scale. And I wanted to learn about the challenges that our clients faced, on the inside, so to speak. And the United Healthcare role, it was fluky in a way where I, I threw my hat in the ring. I never thought, it would go anywhere, but it did. And, I wanted to make an impact at scale. And boy was it, a learning curve going from a, 70 person organization to a 400,000 person organization from private to publicly traded, to like a simple business model, to like a matrixed organization where you need to manage up, down, sideways, and consider politics. You know, I had a PhD in consulting and I was like a second grader when it came to corporate politics. So there was a lot to learn. the funny part is after mad pow, I didn't think I could love again, meaning actually love a team of human beings as much as I did love the folks at Mad Pow. But it happened again, I fell in love with the team at United Healthcare. I had a team of a hundred, just like amazing creative souls who were there because they wanted to improve health. the mission of United Healthcare is, to improve the health system and help make healthcare work better for everyone. And, as we know, there's problems with the US healthcare system. There's problems with UnitedHealthcare. there are amazing humans that work there. but the machine is broken, and not broken in that it functions, but there are serious opportunities to improve the situation. and the opportunity, the challenges, solving the challenges in leaning into finding ways to manifest the opportunities. I, I was really passionate about that and that's why I joined the company. but I didn't last long because I'm not a good, um. if something doesn't make sense to me, I wanna figure out a way that it can be done better. also, things changed a lot. My, my leader, ended up moving on and I was reorged and, my new leader had a different mandate for me. And, it was a lot to navigate. also I was in, 20 half hour meetings a day and, I, it, there were a lot of challenges. so for my own, wellbeing, I decided to, pass the baton to, another leader and, and go back to consulting where, I felt more at home and more confident, but I missed the team there. they were so phenomenal and I wish. Maybe,'cause I hear critique, a lot of people critique, like design leaders, oh, you're too sensitive or you didn't wait long enough, or, just hold on. Or take five punches because, on the sixth try like it'll work. But what it came down to for me is that I couldn't betray my own ethics. I just couldn't. I just couldn't. And so I had to go

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. Just a values misalignment. Yeah. So you left UnitedHealthcare and started, beneficent is, am I saying that right? Beneficent design?

Amy Heymans:

beneficent. Yeah. It's an English word. It means for the good of all. and so, yeah. And that's really where I wanna focus. My work is, again, that finding opportunities for outsized impact. I'm doing a lot of futures thinking and spec speculative foresight work, in the public sector for nonprofits and for corporations, primarily in health, in finance, across industry. and I'm looking at helping organizations envision aspirational futures. yeah, we have all these tools. We have ai, but where are we actually trying to go? What does that look like? and how do we paint the picture of that so that we can start, tracking towards it and, building consensus internally. and then I'm also using futures thinking to do, de-risking of alternative futures and, dark futures because there's so much uncertainty in the world and we truly do not know what is going to happen. The more we think about what could happen, the better, our strategy will be. And so I'm using futures thinking in the realm of digital product, in customer experience, in business strategy, in the realm of policymaking. I did a workshop, with one of my colleagues in DC with a bipartisan group of, junior congressional staffers to teach them human-centered design systems thinking and futures thinking, so they could leverage that in the policymaking process. So really just trying to, get the word out, teaching workshopping. And doing project work for organizations so that they can better serve, their constituencies.

Kyle Soucy:

How are you approaching growth or are you approaching growth differently this time around? do you have a vision for, beneficent That is, uh, different than Mad Pow?

Amy Heymans:

So what's different? like I said, I talked about that creative abrasion and, in the early days of Mad Pow, my, my business partner and I would feed off of each other. he'd say X and I'd say no. Y. but that was helpful because then I knew that y that I liked y and, We'd come up with like z together, so to speak. So meaning my brain is like collaborative. And I feel like through that collaboration, you get to better outcomes. So now that I'm on my own, I don't have that collaboration. I don't have that like accountability to another person. So it is hard to like self-motivate. I know all the recipes for like marketing and business development and all of those things. Like I, I know how to grow a company to the point where like I consult with small, not even small, like organizations from 1 million to 25 million on growth. Like I, I advise companies on growth. I know growth, but when it comes to doing the growth. On my own for myself. they say that cobbler's kids have no shoes type of thing. I think too, like being later on in my career, like maybe I have the wisdom and the knowledge, but now I'm a little more like, ooh, you know, I, I'm not as fearless, in my old age, so to speak. So, um, a combination of things like there's only so many hours in the day, doing like rigorous prioritization and trying to do some things and know that I can't do all the things, but also Post UnitedHealthcare. I was trying to find my way and figure out what do I wanna do, how do I wanna do it? And I was letting the patterns and the themes emerge. But now I feel pretty confident in what I'm doing and the direction of things to the point where I think I can start to, scale up, growth activities. and right now I'm working with a stable of subcontractors and I'm relishing those, relationships. Maybe I'll be able to, grow a team over time or, maybe not. maybe I'll just, continue to be independent. Who knows? So my point is I know the right things. I don't do the right things. Maybe soon I'll do the right things. they'll work, maybe they won't. who knows? Stay tuned.

Kyle Soucy:

I was curious if you had aspirations for employees or you're just gonna see what happens where it takes you.

Amy Heymans:

I would love to, one of the things I was really passionate about and I think is really important now is just the, I was talking about this with Chauncey Wilson, one time of, people who are senior level, like so much wisdom, right? And proficiency. folks that are just getting started, they have just such a different lens and they're inspiring. They look at the world differently. so right now, folks graduating from college, it's hard to get that entry level work. I'd love to create a mechanism where folks can come in, be mentored by senior levels, get work experience and move on. So like to have like the blend of. Junior, senior. I feel like we played with that a lot at Mad Pow and, to varying degrees of success, but I'd like to really perfect that model.

Kyle Soucy:

And, when it comes to where you're working, we were talking before about office space and you're renting, office space in Portsmouth, and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that decision. Like why do you need the, that physical divide between home and work for you?

Amy Heymans:

I was just done working from home. Like I am not a creature made for isolation. I need. To, get out of my house, like the stimulation of, food and people and activities and hustle and bustle. Having somewhere to go, having that sort of commute and that division between work and home. At home, I'd have the dog barking, there's a delivery coming, there's dishes in the sink, there's laundry to be done. That it was all very distracting. and I felt, being alone, staying at home, it just kinda muddied all the waters. And I didn't really feel good about it. Now that I go somewhere, I feel like I have a job I'm doing and I'm going to it, and it helps me focus. it helps me focus my effort because I do have a ADHD and so I have to find ways to manage that.

Kyle Soucy:

I recognize that I don't get out enough and it would probably be helpful to work elsewhere. I did have an experience where I rented office a space for three months, and I loved it. I felt so much more productive and I had that feeling of, it's left at the office and now I'm home. And when I'm home, I'm home. but unfortunately it was just really hard to justify the cost. And how do you think about that?

Amy Heymans:

Honestly, like it's really hard. I think if I didn't have the cost, yeah, I don't know. I feel like it's worth it because I feel like I get a lot more done, in terms of actual productivity and quality, but then I still go to coffee shops sometimes, to work so. Yeah, I think everybody will know for them, like what's the best solution. fortunately this year I've had plenty of work so I can afford the lease, but if next year I'm, I don't have as much work and I can't, I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. So it's a luxury that helps me and for as long as I can afford it, I'll keep doing it.

Kyle Soucy:

and like you said before, it might be that little bit of like pressure that motivates or you know,

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, no, the overhead it does, it motivates you. I gotta pay these bills.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah.

Amy Heymans:

do X, Y, Z. So yeah, it does create some, some pressure there.

Kyle Soucy:

that gives me something to think about.'cause I really did like that time when I experimented there. but you also mentioned, having ADHD and just being open about that. and I was wondering, how does ADHD show up in your work and how have you learned to work with it rather than against it?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, sure. And a lot of people maybe wouldn't admit it. in the past now neurodiversity is certainly a more accepted thing, but it's almost oh, people look at it like, oh, it's a deficit, or it's something you have to compensate for. you work really hard to like, mask or appear like normal, quote unquote, as though anyone is normal. But I, I do view it as just a difference and a, and even a superpower. I can hyperfocus on things and I think that has aided me for sure. And. On the attention deficit side when my mind wanders, I'm thinking about other things and other patterns and my brain is exploring and then, but then I bring it back to what's happening. And I feel like that leads to creativity. and somehow, like my brain is synthesizing things, but I do have, I have had to figure out ways to, make my life work, so to speak. So always putting things in the same place. trying to have a structured routine, writing down everything that I have to do and planning out my days, whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed, making a list, and making that plan. so there are certain things I do have to do to try to manage it so that I can be productive. I had tried, Medication in the past, and goodness, I was so productive when I was on that medication, but the side effects like, were really not worth it for me. So I just came up with hacks that just helped me. And I have actually, before, when I was still interviewing and I wasn't sure if I was gonna independent consult or not, like I just wasn't sure, do I want a job or do I wanna stay independent? I interviewed and one comment, I only went on a couple of interviews, but on one of'em, the person said you look to the left a lot. And they used that as like a sign that I wasn't paying attention. But when I look to the left, my left, it like helps my brain think I, I, I can't maintain eye contact while also thinking, so I literally have to look. Away. but they saw that as oh, that's different. You're weird. There's something wrong. As opposed to being open to, that's just how my brain works.

Kyle Soucy:

Wow. Wow. I'm so glad that you're talking about this'cause I, I know it helps others and I am just so sad to hear that people would think that'cause it, whenever, I talk with you, my mind is always blown by just how. you are very well spoken. You always have a lot to say in a very clear way. and I'm always just blown away by the way your mind works.'cause you're just like, you're, to me, you're just like firing in all cylinders and just go, go, go. And I'm like, damn, where does she get her energy? And how in the world does she do this? Like, uh, managing everything. and still just, you always sound on point to me, I don't know, but I, it's good to know that you found hacks that work for you to make sure that is a superpower and not something that, that holds you back. Because I, I don't see it doing that in any way at all.

Amy Heymans:

Oh, thanks for saying that Kyle. And it means a lot.'cause sometimes, I worry if I'm too much and people run in the other direction, So I'll take your compliment.

Kyle Soucy:

No. In fact, very much the opposite. Very impressive. you know what, this brings up a memory for me. When I first met you, I went to the MAD POW office, which was, I think off Dalton Street in Portsmouth at the time. It was a very different office than when you guys had so many employees. And I walked in, you were having a client call, your eyes were closed, and you were talking with your eyes closed, and you were like, it was as if you were reading something. It was so brilliant. And you were just off the cuff, just like talking about your clients. This is the services we have. And I'm like, oh my God, she's brilliant. and it's like you, whatever you have to do to get into that zone, do it.

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, it's definitely can be some like kinda weird, quirks to get things, moving in my brain. But, yeah, it, I just, I love creative exploration and that's something I wanted to touch on, like the, just the passion and leaning in. especially for a lot of people who are looking for jobs or looking for clients, they're like, oh, do you have any tips in it? And a lot of people are like, do you have work? do you have a job? but I feel like the world is your oyster when you really get excited about a certain problem space when you really get curious about. Something and you really truly wanna solve it. and then interactions with people aren't transactional and kinda what can you do? For me? It's more let's explore this together. And then the exploration is exciting and people want it to continue. And you get to oh, is there a there, there, and could we get there together, kind of thing. And, it's about, something more than ourselves. I was inspired by a dignified future speaker last year who looks at futures thinking through a histological perspective. meaning let's look at history spot patterns, and then play that into the future. but he was recognizing that our descendants. Did work that got us to where we are today in the present moment. And their work wasn't done. And now we carry their work forward. And then after us, that work will continue and others will pick up that work. And, all we can do in the moments we have here is try to continue that work in a positive direction. And so when you view it as I'm part of a movement, I'm part of a group of people who are brick by brick, action by action, trying to move things in a new and positive direction, exploring making messes, making mistakes, but keeping on being curious and convening and learning and doing and making and reflecting. it becomes a cool thing.

Kyle Soucy:

Yeah. And you're carrying that baton, in my mind really leading it in a lot of ways. And you've mentioned futures thinking, multiple times here, and you've been giving talks on it and, especially about, talks about how UX will need to change in the age of AI how do you think the work we do as UX consultants needs to evolve?

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, definitely. there's AI accelerationist who believe AI is the way it's gonna solve all our problems. And then Doomers who are like, it's gonna lead us, um, down the tubes and it's going to be awful and take all our jobs, et cetera. Now, as a futurist, I know that, any of those things could happen and maybe all of those things could happen, like the good, the bad and the ugly. so from a UX perspective though, I'm trying to take a pragmatic approach. To it where yes, AI might, do more of the craft. I was a graphic designer, formerly trained in college and we used to use exacto knives and pencil and paper, and then we moved into computer graphics and then, it was motion and internet and mobile and AI. So I see things differently. Like we're in a messy moment of reinvention, but our role as designers to figure out how to adapt and apply technology to solve human and organizational problems is still what we can do. It's still the reason why we're here. The only thing we need to do is lean into not the kind of stringent labels and definitions of. what we call things, that had been established and enabled us to be more structured and scale, like as a user experience industry. But if you think about organizations across humanity, across civilization, there have always been people thinking about problems, thinking about solutions, trying things, iterating, understanding what people think, synthesizing the information, collaborating, facilitating, ideating, like being creative, all the things. And so I think designers, if we think about what we really love to do, maybe it's not about the tool set, maybe it's not about, the specificity of the process. Maybe it's about really that curiosity, that orchestration, that collaboration, and that creativity. And so how do we apply those things to designing a world that leverages AI in a positive way, to think about the ethics that we need to uphold and envision, that hopefully we can abide by. and yeah, figure out how organizations can apply AI, figure out how we can use AI in our jobs. But so I like to be skeptical and optimistic at the same time. I don't wanna have AI doing all my tasks at work because then I'm just a button pusher and my brain will start to rot. and AI work slop, like obviously isn't helpful to anyone. And but also if I use AI like a colleague, How might I use AI as a colleague, and how might AI introduce new things? Like a living research model where research is constantly happening on big data sets and there are synthetic personas doing secret shopping and evaluating experiences and generating insights and coming up with hypotheses. And you have sort of like a closed loop innovation hub happening that you can tap into and interact with. So we're gonna have to think about things in new ways. We're gonna have to come up with new processes, new titles. We're gonna have to maybe lean into business and technology roles again, like we used to back in the day before we had our own precious discipline.

Kyle Soucy:

yeah. This is an interesting time to say the least, for certain. And things are definitely changing moment to moment, it feels.

Amy Heymans:

Yeah.

Kyle Soucy:

So now that we're, towards the end of our time together, I just wanted to wrap up with just some rapid fire questions here. in your opinion, what makes a consultant good?

Amy Heymans:

I think a consultant is good if they know, the types of people they wanna work with, the type of types of challenges they wanna work on, and if they're listening to their clients, setting expectations and meeting those expectations. those would be the kind of core principles I would think.

Kyle Soucy:

And what's one of the best pieces of business advice you've ever received?

Amy Heymans:

Get to know fast, meaning waiting has a cost. So get people to say no if they're gonna say no, so that you can kind of like move on and find that. Yes.

Kyle Soucy:

Yes. I have to agree completely. I've read something on this, like getting the quick, no, it's such a gift to get that, and stop wasting your time. I can't stand it when it, you have to wait forever just for the no. great. that's such great advice. So where can people learn more about your work? Connect with you or find out about dignified futures?

Amy Heymans:

I'm on LinkedIn, of course, Amy Heymans, and my organization is Beneficent, Design on the interwebs. And, dignified futures is dignified futures.com, where you can learn more about the conference and hopefully join us to attend it. It truly is. an amazing event.

Kyle Soucy:

I'm so excited to learn more about it and I hope I can attend this year, in March. so thank you so much, Amy, for spending the time with me today and just for just being candid about your experience. What a journey, really. it's amazing. It's been amazing to watch you, to be able to work with the companies that you make. And, I'm just so grateful for all your time.

Amy Heymans:

Thanks so much, Kyle. You, you remind me of Barbara Walters. You asked the hard questions in a very graceful way.

Kyle Soucy:

good. I hope. I hope it was enjoyable, not painful.

Amy Heymans:

Yeah, no, it was great. Thanks so much for having me.

Kyle Soucy:

yeah. You're welcome. Take care.

Amy Heymans:

You too.

Kyle Soucy:

All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit. If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

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Kyle Soucy

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