Julie Smolyanksy is a tough woman to nail down.

Not in terms of her schedule — although she is all over the place, having recently published her first book, The Kefir Cookbook, while running Lifeway Foods full-time as CEO and President.

Instead, over the course of our conversation on the #WeGotGoals podcast, I found myself trying — and repeatedly failing — to put Smolyanksy neatly in a box that I could easily write 500 words on in a blog post.

Smolyanksy is a CEO/President, sure. But she's also been the first female CEO of a publicly held firm (when she took over Lifeway Foods in 2002 after her father's unexpected death). She's a mother and a feminist activist, identities that drive her decisions as a businesswoman who wants to set a strong example for her daughters. She's an immigrant who came to the United States as an infant with her parents, who brought kefir with them as a taste of Eastern Europe and later turned it into a $12 million business (up to $120 million in 2017). She's sharp as a tack and incredibly organized and detail-oriented, but she's a believer in holistic health and says things like "the universe is going to give me what I need" without a hint of irony.

Needless to say, my head was spinning as we sat down to talk, knowing there were so many dimensions to this woman. But interestingly, one of the things we talked about was the benefit of ignoring your brain and listening to your gut, something Smolyansky got a crash course in when she lost her phone in Mexico for a few days.

"It was like sort of the universe doing a wake up call like 'Julie, stop, stop, slow down, stop, listen to yourself, listen to your body, you're spinning out of control,'" Smolyanksy revealed.

Without her phone to distract her outwardly, Smolyanksy spent her days doing yoga, meditating, and journaling, only to find that hip pain she had dealt with since pregnancy had mysteriously disappeared after a particularly cathartic meditation.

"I think that was this moment of following my intuition," mused Smolyanksy, noting how after that realization, she was able to look back in her life at times she had ignored her gut instincts only to regret it later.

Today, Smolyanksy hones her intuition through regular SoulCycle classes, running, enjoying the occasional glass of red wine — and of course, incorporating kefir into her diet regularly.

"What we're learning now about the microbiome, I am blown away by how important it is having that gut, which we call a second brain now, how important it is to have one that's running well. When it's healthy, it's like magic."

Listen to Smolyanksy's episode of #WeGotGoals wherever you get your podcasts to learn more about taking over the family business during a tumultuous, grief-filled time, plus how she feels her identity as a feminist impacts her daughters and what it's like to be the only young, immigrant female CEO in a room full of old, white males. To get more of #WeGotGoals, make sure you subscribe and leave a rating or a review so others can hear these stories, too.

Psst... don't stop listening when the interview portion is over. We saved a few minutes at the end of the podcast to devote to real-life goal-getters like you, and we'll hear from one inspiring goal-getter each week.

Start Transcript:

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JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and with me I have Maggie Umberger and Kristin Geil.

KG: Good morning, Jeana.

MU: Good morning, Jeana.

JAC: Good morning and today Kristen, you talk to a real boss.

KG: Yes. I talked to Julie Smolansky who is the president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir.

JAC: And Julie was not the first president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir. She sort of stumbled into or was thrust into that role under some not so ideal circumstances, but really thrived there, right?

KG: Yeah, exactly. So Lifeway Kefir is Julie's family business. It was started by her father. Her mom contributed a lot as well, and she and her brother actually both grew up working for her father and learning the ins and outs of running Lifeway Kefir. Then in 2002, her dad passed away very suddenly from a heart attack and at that time Lifeway Kefir was about a $12,000,000 business. Julie took over the next day as CEO and president and began running the company. It made her the youngest female to be the CEO of a publicly held company at that time. She was somewhere around 27, so very young, but since she's been in that role, she has grown Lifeway Kefir to $120,000,000 as of last year, 2017. So we talked a little bit about how tough it must have been to be thrown into the CEO role in such dark circumstances, but she actually had a really unique perspective on it. She thought that having to take over as CEO right away was her father's way of leaving her a project where she could direct her energies and help work through her grief without being totally consumed by it.

MU: And we've gotten to speak to many different CEOs and entrepreneurs on this podcast and one thing that has come up as a theme that I found pretty interesting is how certain people have talked about the importance of their intuition and how they have really, really leaned on it and making decisions. And so it's obviously not something that they take lightly and Julie is one of those CEOs as well. Is that right?

KG: Yeah, so a little bit of backstory. We obviously talked a lot about Lifeway Kefir and how kefir is so good for your gut health with all of the probiotics, so in the biological sense, Julie's always thinking about the gut, right, but we also talked a little bit about how she's learned to hone her intuition and listen to her other gut, so to speak, and how that served her in the business world and she told a story that you'll hear about losing her phone for a few days in Mexico and how she learned to just figure stuff out without technology and she offers some really good advice for anyone who's looking to disconnect a little bit and really hone in to their inner self and driving their own decision making without outside influences.

KG: And I think that's another thing you'll hear come through this podcast a lot is I feel like there's really two sides to Julie. You know, on one hand she's a really sharp business woman. Always thinking about her next move. She just wrote a book that recently came out. So she's very savvy in that sense of the word, but she also speaks really beautifully about listening to the universe and learning how to hone her intuition and she's a little more woo-woo than what you might expect from a CEO, especially someone who is such a young CEO in a tough business world. So I think you'll get a lot out of this interview guys.

JAC: And we can't wait to hear Kristin with Julie. It sounds like it was a really great interview. And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real life goal-getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today. Here's the show.

KG: Welcome to #WeGotGoals. My name is Kristen Geil and today I am here with Julie Smolansky, the president and CEO of Lifeway Kefir. Julie, how are you today?

JS: I'm doing great. How are you?

KG: I’m great. We're so excited to have you on today. Lifeway Kefir has been a friend of aSweatLife for awhile now and we've gotten used to trying your delicious kefir products at all of our SweatWorking events and we're especially excited to have you on today too because we're going to hear more about the book that you've recently published. So thank you for being here today. First of all, we'll start off with the question that we ask everybody who comes on this podcast and that is, what is a big goal that you've achieved in the past. Why was it important to you and what steps did you take to get there?

JS: Well, one of my goals for quite a while has been to write a book and I finally did. I just published the Kefir Cookbook and it took me quite awhile to write and it was a challenging for a variety of reasons, but we did it. I'm super proud of it. I share a lot of great stories from my life, my family's life. I touch on a lot of various issues from being an immigrant and a refugee to a female entrepreneur to a mom. Um, so, you know, even though it's a cookbook, it's very personal and I, I think it was sort of like the appetizer to my first kind of entry into publishing and writing. But yeah, that I am right now just kind of sitting back and watching the book have its impact and being able to talk to my customers and various people as I kind of tour around the country and hear about how kefir has improved people's lives. It's been very, very touching to me. So I'm, I'm kind of just enjoying this moment right now.

KG: And you mentioned just now that the Kefir Cookbook is more than just an actual cookbook. I've flipped through it a little bit and it seems like there's a lot of stories of your family woven in. How did your family influenced the conception and the actual writing of this book?

JS: Yeah, so I mean, you know, my father passed away, which is how I ended up as the CEO of Lifeway. Uh, he passed away about 16 years ago now. And so he, for me, it was sort of writing some of the stories that were important to me to share that I wanted to sort of document and leave for next generations because those stories become diluted over time or lost. And so now these are kind of forever and you know, it seems a very natural platform to use food to tell these stories. It's, it's become natural for me to like share a picture and say something about it. And I actually think social media really helped me kind of find the inspiration and my voice in that. So when I, I feel like I got good at it through social media, then it became very natural to do it in a more formal published way, organized neatly, you know, strategically. And then with my mom, you know, a lot of recipes kind of were hers, you know, there's a handful that were hers that I had to call and ask her, you know, how to make things or I forgot how to do certain Russian recipes that, which is our, our background. We immigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1976. So, you know, kind of grew up with these old old worlds, Russian Ukrainian recipes, and then there were some stories that I'd forgotten that, you know, I didn't even know that she shared with me that were just kind of fun. And you know, and I think about how far we've actually come when I, I'm very humbled by these stories because, you know, my mom and dad both grew up in a country in communist Russia after the war there, experienced lots of challenges, adversities, political persecution, religious persecution, poverty, hunger, sickness.

JS: Like when I think about just how far my mom went to the bathroom in an outhouse, you know, and, and when I think about the rooms and the situations I've been so blessed to be in, it's incredibly—I just get filled with gratitude. So to be able to kind of tell those stories. And then like I said, like they’re, I grew up with them, but now they're like neatly organized, indexed official. There's a Dewey Decimal system number two, it, um, it's just, I'm just so proud of it. And then, you know, I think it's a great way to bring attention to certain issues like immigration, like refugees, like why it's important to support diversity and how that impacts and, and you know, the fact that because America, because Chicago opened its arms to us, we were able to bring kefir, which is a staple in eastern Europe here to the United States and the impact of this product have kefir of probiotics, of gut health, of us leading that conversation for the last 30 years. That becomes incredibly rewarding. I think it's a great example. So I think when I think about the conversations that are being had on a kind of a bigger level, I think it's a great example. Hard to argue with it.

KG: Lifeway Kefir is a family business. Can you tell us a little bit about how it was founded, what your first role within the company ism and how that has all grown and developed over the past. How many years has it even been?

JS: So it's been 16 years. Yeah. My Dad passed away June ninth in 2002. So I'm coming up to his 16th anniversary and my 16 years of being the CEO. So he, he had a sudden heart attack at the age of 55 and died on a beautiful sunny morning in Chicago and the next day my brother and I essentially took over the company. He was 23, he had just graduated college. He had been with us for about six, six months. I had been with my dad for about five years and I had left—I had intended on becoming a psychologist and I was in grad school, but serendipity brought me to the company kind of on a more formal way and I had decided to leave grad school and I didn't come back for my second year and went full time with my dad and worked with him five years side by side, really learned all the elements of business, kind of a lot of his philosophy and whatnot and it was a great time for us because we. I really got a chance to sort of heal our relationship because I had grown up with both of my parents running businesses as immigrants to the new country, they really, you know, they didn't, I think when we talk about balance and whatnot, that's such a luxury because as immigrants you don't even have that conversation.

JS: It's just a nonexistent topic because they're just head down working, getting their feet into the country and putting food on the table literally. And I as, as I kind of got to know my dad and some of his challenges I, a different level of respect sort of started to happen or just like an understanding of how much that both him and my mother had taken on. Not that they were perfect, but it's just, uh, a different level of understanding. So anyways, he passed away. I ended up taking over with my brother. I become the CEO. He's the CFO and we just grow it from about 12 million to about 130 today. We're, I feel like on the cusp of another kind of growth spurt right now. Of course, probiotics are having a moment as everyone knows. Gut health is having a moment. I don't think it's going away.

JS: We're just learning about the microbiome and the bacteria that that is so critical for our health and wellbeing. You know, it's a 2000-year-old product that's just making its way here to the United States. It's 30 years is nothing actually considering its long 2,000 year history. What our relatives knew in the Caucus mountains in Europe, they said that 2000 years ago when they tried this product that they had a sense of wellbeing when they consumed it, they called it the champagne of dairy and a gift from the gods and they intuitively in their gut, you know, no pun intended, kind of realized and knew that they felt good when they consumed kefir. Well, fast forward to 1908, Élie Metchnikoff did the first science research around kefir and its influence on our health and our wellbeing and he won the Nobel Prize for it. So for now, the last hundred years we've had science and medical research backing up what and our ancestors knew intuitively that kefir is actually really good for you, very beneficial to the body.

JS: And so in the last hundred years, we've just advanced on that research and science and it's now, it's like unbelievable what's happening, the incredible breakthroughs that are happening, even we knew that it was good for your digestive and your immunity, you know, your health from a physical perspective. But now we're learning that it's even beneficial for mental health. So we now know that gut health influences your stress, anxiety, depression, all of the mental health and, and like incredible research that's coming out around microbiome and mental health, but all health. And so, you know, we're, we're just really excited about kind of sharing that information. I mean, it survived by word of mouth, by storytelling, by oral history and storytelling, word of mouth. And now with social media, that of course elevates and explodes it and so we can really get the word out around the, you know, when you make certain food choices and certain lifestyle choices, you choose to heal yourself.

JS: You choose to love yourself. You choose to love your family or community for a very like, you know, there's no risk. It's not like a pharmaceutical drug that has side effects. There's the only side effect is that you feel good, you know, that's the, that's the impact. So that becomes incredibly rewarding to try to get it into the hands into as many people get this information out and support communities that are trying to do this. Um, I think that's kind of if, if, if that's the purpose, my life purpose, then I think I've lived a good life. Yeah.

KG: When you took over Lifeway Foods in 2002, you became the youngest female CEO of a publicly held firm. But unlike most CEOs who have time to grow into the role, you were thrust into it really unexpectedly. What was that like and what did that teach you about your leadership and goal setting style?

JS: Yeah, I mean it was incredibly challenging. Of course, on one hand, you know, I was mourning the loss of my father, but it sort of, it gave me a place to focus and put that energy. It gave me an outlet. I almost think like he was sort of looking over me and like handed this project to me. Like here, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, go work on this. That's very much him. And I really was, I constantly thought about this mantra that failure was not an option, that my parents had gone through so much. My family had gone through so much blood, sweat and tears to get to this point that I wasn't gonna let it all just fall apart. And I mean, I had backlash. I had older men who tried to undercut, you know, my role and prevent this from happening. And it took a lot of courage for me to stand up to a, you know, a bunch of older white men and say no, and I'm gonna run it and I'm going to kick ass at it.

JS: I mean, I kind of, I knew that I would. And then I think, you know what? I guess what I thought about was that my parents came with no money, no friends, no language. They didn't have a network. Here I was, graduated, uh, you know, schooled in the United States with a network for the most part, access to network already with, you know, a $12,000,000 business now. It's just like, don't fuck it up. I just, I think that was the biggest thing is that I just did not want it to fail and I knew that we were onto something. I mean I had known that we were really on the cost of some major growth, that the country was sort of ready and just starting to be prepared to make big food changes and food habits and all of that, which all came true and being first to market with so important, which we were and I had grown up in the business.

JS: So I had sort of, these were normal conversations in terms of business. It became intuitive to me on how to run a business and I had always been a leader my whole life. I mean I watched my parents be leaders and pioneers and pave the path for other immigrants and lead in their community. And of course in their businesses. You know, my greatest role model was my mother and she had started a deli two years after settling in the seventies, opened the first Russian deli, didn't speak English, really, you know, learned English, watching General Hospital actually, and started doing international deals all over the world and she was so brave and courageous. So I had these great examples and great role models. I thought the least I could do is sort of rise up and show them what they had kind of built. And I learned, yeah, I learned what I was made of.

JS: I learned that I could really go through the fire and come out of it OK and come out stronger that I can persevere, that I'm tenacious, that I am resilient. All of those things. I knew that I was. I mean I knew that I was in the past, but I, this was like the challenge. You know, it was interesting because I had just run my first marathon the year before my dad passed away and he challenged me. He was like, you know, it started because we sponsored a lot of marathons and races. So I sort of saw, I was always athletic, but I had seen these people, old, young, all different body shapes running this crazy distance and I remember seeing like an 80, 90 year old man running and I thought, my gosh, if he can run a marathon, I should be able to do this.

JS: You know, I'd been a figure skater for 15 years. I played tennis, I rode horses, I was super athletic but I'd never been a runner and not that distance. But picked up some shoes, started running and my dad saw me cross the finish line and he didn't believe that I was going to do it. He's like 26 miles, that's crazy. You would never be able to do it. And once he gave me that challenge I had to prove him wrong of course. And, and I did. And I thought that was a great lesson also for me and that, you know, I learned that I can challenge myself, set goals, that I don't have to be the first. You don't have to win the thing. I can still do it and have a great experience. And seeing him see me cross the finish line was very important for me as well. So I'm happy that he got to see that. I think it's probably a metaphor that at that point he knew that I could probably do anything at that point I think is what he realized. And I don't know, maybe it was just his time and mine.

KG: I love the way you talked about yourself so confidently just now. Like I am tenacious, I am this, I am that like you seem to really know yourself and have that inner confidence, but I'm guessing it wasn't always that way. Did you ever have imposter syndrome when you were starting out as such a young female CEO? And if so, like what kind of pep talks did you give to yourself to pump yourself up before going into a room of these white American men and what would you recommend for other young females maybe just starting off in business, who have those same feelings of not being quite as confident as you are now?

JS: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I had to work at it. I was not always so confident of course. It was a couple things. I had a few series of success, you know, I had a few wins behind me, so when you get good and sort of master something and you can feel yourself master it, that builds your confidence. So I had done that repeatedly over and over, whether that was, you know, public speaking or writing something or launching a new product or selling a new product. All of those things help build my confidence in business and then I started to realize that every person, no matter who they were, had something to offer to being in the room, that we were all there to learn a lesson from each other and so then it, I feel like it got equalized in my head. Maybe the other person didn't know, but all it took was for me to feel confident.

JS: That didn't matter really what the other person felt. I started to see that I would show up in rooms and people wanted to hear from me. People wanted to hear what I thought about things. Think about like social media was blowing up, here I was a woman on social media, dominating social media because women were, you know, at the time when social media was sort of happening, and this is about when I was took over Lifeway, we really carved a place. Our voice really became powerful in, in social media. We're creating content, we're selling merchandise, starting businesses, all these things. And so I realized I had this asset to offer that and a certain skillset that all was very like intuitive that sometimes I saw men struggle with and so I started to feel like, okay, we each have something to offer, like you have a great skill in this area.

JS: I have a skill in this area. And I felt like there was kind of greater currency in leveraging both of those and that we're kind of all equal. And I, it was these kinds of small thoughts in my head. And then of course having children really exponentially grew my confidence because now I couldn't even live in fear anymore. It was just absolutely not an option. I had to really rise because, you know, I have two little girls that I want to create a better world for them and the only way to do that is completely to let go of all fear and to live out my true life purpose and show them and model that for them because I really want that for them more than I want anything else is for them to be able to really live fearlessly and fiercely with all the power that they can take and to, to ask for as much power that they can.

JS: We have a lot of work to make up for here as genders and, and uh, and for power. And so I spent time with various coaches. I had a group of other executives who, you know, gave me accountability that helped me in certain areas where I was challenged. I leaned on friends of course, and I have a really good support around me of people who help me when I'm not necessarily feeling at my best. And then I feel like, again, I've, I've just tried to learn like I don't think anything's really a failure or a mistake if you've learned something from it and I always want to find those lessons and so then it becomes a nice little dance that you do with the universe to keep building on those skills, keep shedding more, you know, more of that fear and just letting it go and really kind of getting to the essence of who you are, what you want to be, what you want to project out into the world, what you want mirrored back to you. Those are all kind of important things. I think that as I kind of think about the next decade, two decades of my life that I want to think about.

KG: You mentioned wanting to be a good role model for your young girls in terms of how you grow the business and in terms of how you live fearlessly. Did you have any other female CEO role models that you looked up to when you were starting out or that you've developed over the past 16 years?

JS: Yeah. Actually one was actually Christie Hefner here in Chicago. She so, so when was in college and I came home and my dad was watching CNN with a special of her being featured and my dad turned to me and said, look what she's done. She took over her father's company. I want you to do that. I want you to be like her. And I feel like that was a really important statement that he gave me.

JS: It kinda gave me a good push to know that I could do it, that he wanted that for me, gave me a lot of confidence and so I did actually look at her life sort of how she carved out her role as a CEO and then we've become friends. So I definitely lean on her just for friendship, but advice and whatnot, mentorship. Um, and I've sought out many kind of female business groups and communities. Like the Fortune most powerful women community is a great one; here in Chicago there's the Chicago Network and C200 as a national one for females and in business. But there's so many now. I mean it's really great. It is so important, I think, you know, if you can't see it, you can't be at. And it's still so rare. I mean, and I think we just dropped 25 percent on the Fortune 500 list of female CEOs and there's only like, well there were 21 last time I looked.

JS: I haven't checked the news in the last couple of days that keeps seeing those headlines. I'm guessing we dropped. So that's nothing. You know, we're less than 20 percent in Congress and there's only been like five female governors. I mean we're really underrepresented. Behind the camera, we’re like less than six percent or something. I mean, don't quote the numbers. It's been a while since I looked at them, but we're, you know, our stories are not really told our, we're not really visible. There's no like, like here I'm on the board of the Women's History Museum. There no single standing museum actually that represents the history of women's accomplishments and we've been doing and building this country and the world from the beginning of time. But there's nothing to point to concretely. And so I really start. I started noticing that there is just a lack of women in power, a lack of women in media, lack of women, you know, running heads of companies, a lack of female titans, a lack of women in every single area.

JS: I mean we’re there, but our stories aren't told, but, and we're not there at equal numbers either. And likewise, you know, where are the men raising the kids? I mean they're there obviously, but I think when we reach gender parity, where it’s like 50/50 and equal responsibilities in the household and in corporations and whatnot and throughout government and all of these areas that I think we will have a better, safer, healthier world, a more peaceful world, a more, I don't know, meaningful world. And I think the time has come. I think the last eight, nine months have proved that we are not going to take it sitting down and that we're gonna come together, that we're stronger together. That, you know, when our voice collectively it's fierce, it’s unstoppable. The, you know, when many women come together, when the most powerful women come together and share the truth about their lives, about their accomplishments, about their challenges, about all of it, that the world actually stops and listens and starts to make changes.

JS: I think we're just at the very beginning of this reckoning. I think there's going to be so many conversations. So I think the next generation, I have personally acted in a way that I have wanted to evolve, not just for myself but for the next generation. I think I, you know, I've personally been an activist since I was 15. I am exhausted. I am personally exhausted for the last 30 some years and I think it's really great that the next generation has been activated and has been empowered with tools, with social media, with role models, with voices, with many of us pulling them up and saying, yeah, go talk, share, go. You know, go do all the really important things. Hold men accountable. I think that is when we start to change the world. And so if I could have just done that for my girls, if they speak loudly and demand for some of these changes, then that's a good thing.

KG: When it comes to being empowered to find your voice and listen to your intuition, I feel like that's a lot easier said than done. And I know that's something that you sort of hinted at it at the beginning of this interview was how kefir can actually help you listen to your gut, not just because it's good for your gut health, but it might help you find your intuition and you know, dive into that mental benefit as well. So I'm curious to know what some of the strategies you've developed for actually listening to your gut are in honing your intuition as a woman throughout the years as a CEO. Yeah. I'm really just interested to hear about listening to your gut as it is.

JS: Yeah. That actually listening to my gut has become a really fun way to live. More and more, I feel that there are no coincidences, that everything is sort of happening for a reason, that we're living these sort of alternative universe lives, multiple lives, whatever. I know it sounds so crazy, but whatever. I feel like, well, we're so distracted from these, our intuition. We run such busy lives. We're completely on social media or in our electronics, just in our electronics, actually. We, I personally have sort of lost sight of my own intuition and it took me a minute to stop and actually lose my phone for three days in Tulum. I shared this story in the book and it took me these three days where I lost my phone, had to get in touch with myself, had to rely on friends and community to get me from out of Mexico into New York with no money, no phone, no nothing, and for a couple of days just shut down and think. And I healed parts of my body and it was like sort of the universe doing a wake up call like Julie, stop, stop, slow down, stop, listen to yourself, listen to your body, you’re spinning out of control.

JS: And I was, I was completely setting and I was processing a lot of things that were kind of going on in the last couple of years. And finally the world took my phone away and made me pause and a lot of things started to come to me. And I started taking notes and I started journaling and went inward. I meditated, I did yoga, you know, over these three days. And I had had this really bad hip pain for about six years and I kept blaming it on my pregnancy and I started realizing that it had nothing to do with my pregnancy but more to do with a whole lot of shame and all these other various issues. And I remember doing this meditation and just this moment of like release and this feeling just left me and it just walked away into the ocean because we were oceanside. And I started to like cry.

JS: Like I was sobbing. And the next day I notice I'm walking around through the sand and my hip doesn't hurt. And I'm like, wait, this is so weird. If my hip doesn't hurt. And then it basically has kind of stayed that way and I think that was this moment of following my intuition where I didn't have time to go to this conference. I went to Tulum to do this, this thing. It was like not the best time for me to do it, but I just said, you know what? The universe just is gonna give me what I need. I don't know what I need, but you know, I'm just going to go and I'm just gonna let it happen. And it did and it, the universe gave me exactly what I needed and it's this thing, this is this, this moment of following my gut. And I started realizing that I'd actually done it all all the time.

JS: I just didn't know I was doing it. And as I look back now, hindsight 20/20, I see all these moments where I followed my gut were something intuitively something called to me. And every time when I didn't listen, I made a mistake and I started realizing over and over again that the times that I've talked myself out of things that I have wanted to do, that I, my heart pulled me to. I lived in pain and suffering and when I started to get in touch with those feelings, both not living intuitively and living intuitively, it was night and day and the, I don't want to say luck because everything is hard work. And I—somebody just said this, I think it was Shonda Rimes just that, don't use the word luck. It cheapens all my hard work. And that's absolutely true. It's like I worked really hard to get to this point and now it's just continuing to ask myself these questions, giving myself time to think and feel.

JS: Mostly, uh, I think I've mostly lived in my mind, in my head and letting my intuition lead me now is so much more intuitive, but it's, it's very natural. It's, and it's, I think a skill set that women have because we have an amazing intuition. We have this maternal female intuition that is very hard to touch and once you realize it, it's unstoppable and it's, I think a skill that will be leveraged and can be monetized. I think corporations want that because you can go to all the Harvard schools and Ivy League schools and you can run every spreadsheet in the world, but there are some things that you need to like know intuitively in your heart. That's a very magical, special gift and I think many of us have it, which is a lot of intuitives in the world. I think that's a skill that will continue to be important in our world.

JS: But yeah, so you know, writing, taking time, processing, making positive food choices, you know, living sorta as clean of a life as I could. A couple glasses of wine never hurt anybody. Taking time to exercise and rest. Exercise, like I love running, I love spinning, or you know, I do SoulCycle. These are the times when I do get to focus on my heart and my emotions and my feelings and what I think sort of are, are things that I want to work on, accomplish challenge, learned from all of it. I think that's really what it's all about. That on I, once I started to realize that impact that food had and specifically key fair because it is just the easiest—when I learned about now what we're learning about the microbiome, I am blown away by how, how important having that second the gut, which we call a second brain now, how important when that's running well, when it's healthy, it's like magic the way that you move through the world. It's really, really special and I think it's a lifelong process. I don't think it's like, OK, I'm going to do this for a week. It's forever. It is for me at least that I think it's like healing myself is sort of healing my community. That again, I think about when I, we’re all just like mirrors for each other. So if I crave a healthy, safe world where you know there's love and there's abundance and there's safety and spirituality, then that's what I need to find in myself so that I can see that. So that became really important to me and yeah, I think there's just these basic elements we have to live for lifestyle, forever, and that's it. Leave the next generation with the same, you know, these lessons and tools. Like I feel like I definitely banged my head against the wall for a long time and it took me awhile to sort of learn this, but I've done it actually fairly early.

JS: A lot of people do it much later in life. I was kind pushed into learning this probably a lot quicker than many people do. So I think if I can expedite that process for other people, like I just think, think about the evolution that can happen so much quicker. You know, when younger people are at this level already in their teens or in their 20s, what else can they do when they're not spending so much time healing? Because that it is exhausting. It is absolutely exhausting to get to this place, but it's a lot of work, but there's so many great rewards. I'm almost there, almost reached what I wanted to do.

KG: Well, you’ve inspired me to go chuck my phone out a window the next chance I get, but in the meantime I feel like we could talk to you forever about your perspective as an immigrant, as a female CEO, as an activist, as a mom, but we have to wrap this up eventually, so we'll have to save some for the next part, the next part 2 of having Julie on the podcast, someday. We’ll close with the question that we ask everybody who comes on this, which is part two of our intro question: What's a big goal that you have for the future? Why is it important to you and what steps are you taking to get there today?

JS: Oh boy, there’s, I mean, just one is too hard. I want to write another book. Eventually I want to write sort of my memoirs. There's still a handful of years I feel that I need to live and a few more chapters left to right before I really do that. Mostly right now I'm focused on of course growing my business, but that's, that's actually not that hard. I mean, it is, it's hard. Of course it's always hard, but you know that I feel like I could do with fairly smoothly.

JS: I've mostly spent the last 16 plus, even 20 years if you add at the beginning of my career. I've spent the last 20 years focused on my career and then growing my family. I think right now I'm really focused on my heart and myself and healing myself, healing my community of course, um, was a sort of in a lot that's happened for me personally in the last couple of years. I'm just trying to process it. I want to enjoy the work that I've done and the energy that I've put out and sort of sit back and watch how, how that looks and see all of this effort and celebrate it. And I guess I want to just fall in love in the deepest, most sacred way. And that's probably with myself. That seems to be really important to me right now. I think it's time to really, really deeply, I guess fall in love with myself and the world.

KG: I think that's a perfect sentiment to end on. Julie, thank you so much for being here today. Where can we find the Kefir Cookbook?

JS: So the Kefir Cookbook is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods has it on the shelf. Independent bookstores, you know, all the places that you buy your books.

KG: Perfect. Well, I know we're looking forward to trying out the recipes and again, thank you so much for being here with us today on the #WeGotGoals podcast.

JS: Thank you so much for having me.

CK: Great. Hey goal getters. This is co-host and producer Cindy Kuzma here.We’re about to play another one of your goals. This one was also recorded live at the Hotel Moxy. We've got a few more coming up for you in the weeks ahead that we recorded live at the Michelob Ultra SweatWorkingWeek Fitness Festival a couple weeks ago as well. Stay tuned too because soon we are going to have a way for you to email or call us with your goals and you can be a part of this very podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And here is your goal.

JB: My name is Jaime black. I am a podcaster based in Chicago.

CK: Excellent. And Jaime, what is a big goal that you have accomplished and how did you get there or what is the goal you have for the future?

JB: That's a good question. I was just, I was just told about 40 seconds ago that I'm doing this. So, um, you know, for me a big goal that I have ahead of me this year is a—well I guess I should say this, a big goal I had recently in the last year was setting up a podcasting class. I teach a podcasting class through a few different platforms like AirBN&B experiences and Dabble. And so getting that up and running was a goal in 2017 and now that that is running, you know, the way that it works is people physically come to my studio space in Pilsen and take the class in person. So my new goal for this year is to really get the, um, the online component of that class active. I have it on one platform. There's like three or four other platforms I'm trying to get it on. So just building the podcasting class that people can take it in person or online and you know, like we're here today because of all the podcast stuff, everything I do is just podcasts related.

CK: So, but ah, getting that online presence. So that's like a multifaceted goal, right? Because first you have to figure out the technology and then you have to figure out the marketing. So what are some of the things that you're doing to, to bring that all together?

JB: Yeah, there's a lot of steps to building an online class and I'm very new to it. I have it on one platform called teachable. And that was a learning experience because I do a lot of audio work, but I don't do a lot of video work. So taking a class that I teach, it's three hours long and building video content around that when again, I'm not a video producer first and foremost, that was a learning experience and now now that it happened on one platform, I've got to reformat in and kind of retool it so that it could live on a few different platforms. Each of which have their own format and model and you know, kind of activation level. So, you know, it's just plugging these things into different platforms. And uh, and then once it's even alive, then of course you have to actually, like you said, market it, get it out there. And that's just the beginning of getting it just posted on a platform.

CK: So how do you plan to get the word out?

JB: I think I want to tell me like, just promoted on youtube and I'm like, Oh man, it's going to be more video work, isn't it? But I think, yeah, I think that's what it's going to come down to as short video clips that are going, like help promote and talk about the class and you know, how it can help people learn how to podcast because we're here today because podcasting is really great. So this is a really good time to learn how to become a podcaster because there are resources like this booth here at the Moxy Chicago. Um, and it's just in general, it's, we're in this time now where people are really passionate about podcasts and a lot of people are really finding them.

CK: It's true, it's true. So how do people find you and your classes?

JB: Yeah, great question. So you can look at dynastypodcasts.com, it's plural. So dynastypodcasts.com with the s at the end of podcasts. I'm, we've got links to the class there and I'm always active on twitter. My twitter is Jamie black, jaimeblack. So I'm always posting my links. If you see me go six hours, without tweeting, like call my parents, something's really wrong, so yeah.

CK: Awesome Jamie, well thank you for all of your help here today and thank you so much for sharing your goal.

JB: Well thank you for letting me help with this podcast.

CK: This podcast was produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you have a chance to leave us a rating and a review while you're there, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Julie Smolansky; and to TechNexus for the recording studio.