How To Have A Life – Tips From CEO Julie Smolyansky

Wharton School professor Stew Friedman chats with the Lifeway CEO about balancing work and life.

Portrait of two beautiful young girlfriends sitting in modern coffee shop interior and talking with happy smiles. Successful attractive women friends chatting in cafe during coffee break.

“We all have to … integrate our career, our self, our family, and our community into one overlapping circle.”

— Julie Smolyanksy

I host a weekly radio show on SiriusXM 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton, called Work and Life. We publish edited versions of my conversations as free podcasts. In invite you to listen to the episode (embedded below) that is my conversation with Julie Smolyansky, CEO and President of Lifeway Foods.

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Smolyansky took on the role of CEO at age 27 and since then has boosted annual revenues to over $130 million (as of 2015) with a combination of innovative product development and marketing strategies. And she has done great work in her community through such projects as founding Test400k, an organization dedicated to ending the backlog of 400,000 untested rape kits in the United States.

I spoke with Smolyansky about her inspiring example of how to successfully integrate work, home, community and the private self. She tells the fascinating story of how she became CEO of LifeWay Foods and describes how her passion for distance running benefits not just herself but her family, her community, and her business too. We can all learn from her example.