Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Change Maker, Julie Smolyansky, CEO of Lifeway Foods, on Heritage and Helping Ukraine

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

When her father passed away, Ukrainian-born Julie Smolyansky stepped into his role as CEO of Lifeway Foods. Julie shows what it was like taking over that role in her twenties. Plus, Julie shares her close perspective on Ukraine, and how we can all help. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1082992947/ukraine-support-help See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. As you know, here on Money Rehab, we feature changemakers,

public figures making change in every sense of the word, and along the way have been in or might still be in Money Rehab. Today, we're talking to changemaker Julie Smolanski. Julie is the CEO of the company LifeWave Foods. It's a role she took over from her father when he passed away when Julie was only in her 20s. Since taking over the company, Julie has scaled the company in a huge way, and I wanted to hear how she did it. So, Julie, welcome to Money Rehab.

With our changemaker episodes, Julie, we start with a quick game of Money Rehab, Never Have I Ever. Have you played this game? I have. Not around money, but usually with my teenage girls. Yep. This one, unfortunately, has no beverages included. But if you have done something, just say you have. And if you haven't, just say you have and if you haven't just say you haven't never have i ever leased a car never never have i ever donated to a charity i have never have i ever signed a prenup never never have i ever had buyer's remorse. I have. Never have I ever invested in cryptocurrency.

I have. Never have I ever bought a lottery ticket. I have. Never have I ever taken a mental health day. I have. Never have I ever argued with a romantic partner about money. All the time. Honestly, who hasn't?

Never have I ever overdrafted on my account. Maybe once or twice. And finally, never have I ever worked as a CEO. I have. Yay. Along with a lot of other jobs over my life. I'm sure. And I'm sure as the CEO, you also wear a lot of hats and have a lot of jobs within the company. I can't wait to get into all things you're doing with Lifeway right now. Of course, you started as the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company. When we last spoke, it was in person.

I wish we were doing this IRL, unfortunately, URL. So we'll take what we can get. But you have been quite active and quite busy these days. You and your parents, for those who don't know, came to the United States from Ukraine when you were little. Can you tell us about your family's immigration story and how you're feeling right now? Yes, thank you for asking. Yeah, my parents and I were refugees from the former Soviet Union. I was one when we were given asylum and were able to come and settle in Chicago. We were one of the first of 48 families who escaped in this

first wave of exodus from the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War. It was 1976. The day that I was born in 1975, my father made a silent promise to me and said that he would do everything in his power to get me out of the country. He was an engineer. We're talking a lot about shortwave radios right now as things are being blocked. And my father was able to wire radio and catch Voice of America, which was being jammed by the Soviets. And he started to learn about what life was like outside of the Iron Curtain. So it was one of the things that inspired him to leave. He also was able to get rock albums, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Underground through a black market system.

This was contraband in the Soviet Union. They did not allow for freedom of expression, artistic expression, political expression, religious expression. None of those things were allowed or forbidden. And he got really angry that just by owning these records, it could send him to jail. And so when I was born, he made this promise. And a year later, in the middle of the night, we defected with nothing but the clothes on our back and got to Chicago with $116 in our pocket. We lived in exile in Rome for three months while we waited for our paperwork. So great admiration for these countries that are now taking refugees and holding them and giving them a safe place to catch their breath. It's really heartwarming. So my parents started our life in Chicago. And a few years later, my mom noticed that there was a bigger wave of immigration every year. More people were leaving and coming and settling in Chicago. And she said, well,

there was limited scarcity of food in the Soviet Union. She noticed that the food was very different in the States. And so she opened up the first Russian, now we don't know what identity, Ukrainian, Russian, at the time it was Soviet Union, the first delicatessen catering to this population. And people would come to land at O'Hare and were told, you got to go to my mom's store. And they'd come in for some pierogies and some advice on how to start life in America. I write about this in my book, The Kiefer Cookbook, which shares a lot of recipes from refugee life, immigrant life, entrepreneurial life, and so on. And so this is how we started. And a few years after that, my father and my mother were in Germany at a trade show, at a food buying show. And they said, America has everything. They bought three bottles of kefir in the product, design a plant, design the factory, and I will sell it through my food distribution system.

And so in 19... That was 85. In 86, they launched the company. No business plan, no logos, no money. Just a dream. But take charge and do it. So they did it. And 2 years later, he took the company public. It was

growing so quickly. He needed more capital. And somebody said, well, you should go public. And he went to the library to research what that meant and wrote his own business plan then and took the company public and continued you know, continued to grow the business until unfortunately in 2002, he had a sudden heart attack. And I was thrust into the position as CEO at the age of 27. And I haven't stopped. I haven't looked back. Just keep pushing forward. You have indeed kept pushing the company forward. You've also lately paid a lot of homage to your roots. It is the most amazing American dream type story. You even posted on Instagram your father's, it looked like, refugee paperwork, the U.S. Department of Justice going to Chicago. What are you feeling now for those who are leaving

Ukraine? I mean, I am devastated as we all are. Everyone in my community, my team, you know, we have over 200 people who work at Lifeway and many of us are refugees and immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine, the surrounding regions. We're all heartbroken, devastated, horrified, traumatized, just broken. It is so painful to watch what's happening, to see our home countries being decimated and turned to dust. Our people, our cousins, our friends and families' homes destroyed. These grandmas, our elderly, our babushkas and our dedushkas,

you know, walking with one bag, all the, you know, whatever they can take. It's heartbreaking. whatever they can take. It's heartbreaking. It's gut-wrenching. It is so painful. I don't have even words to describe. We are trying to mobilize and do everything we can. We actually just today announced our participation as the title presenting sponsor at the Chicago Chefs Cook for Ukraine, which will be held March 16th at Navy Pier in Chicago. We have probably 30 to 60 of Chicago's top chefs all cooking on behalf of chefs for World Central Kitchen, which is Jose Andres' humanitarian relief organization. His team is on the front lines at five bordering countries right now, bringing food and relief to mostly women and children and some elderly people and some sick people. But it's not lost on me. We're recording this on International Women's Day. And the people who are crossing the border right now are women and children, and they are

hungry, tired, scared, grieving, traumatized, confused, broken, in pain people, just broken. But I will say the humanity, the outpouring of support, the unification, you know, within hours, this fundraiser was created in an iconic location in the United States at Navy Pier in Chicago. You know, the outpouring of support from all over the world, it is unifying us. It restores our faith in humanity. It heals us. It is very moving and touching to see the outpouring of support.

And what else can we do but channel our pain into something that can help? Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. Now for some more Money Rehab. And you have used your platform through the company and fundraising efforts to help do just that 35 years or more after the company was founded by your father. What do you think if he were alive today,

he would say about what you're doing and what's going on? I think my father would be so proud and you know, I, I think he would be beyond, You know, I think he would be beyond proud to see what we're doing, to see how we've grown, to be in a position to be able to do this kind of work. And screaming from the top of the rooftops, you know, everywhere and telling everyone how proud he is that we are in this place to do this. That we, you know, that he took the courage and the risk and the bravery to leave all those years ago, unknowing what was going to be behind those walls, behind that iron curtain. And he'd be, you know be mourning and crying for his homeland. He would be devastated and broken, as broken as we all feel. It's taking everything in me to not book a flight and fly over there myself and take a rifle and learn how to shoot.

over there myself and, you know, take a rifle and learn how to shoot. Uh, it's, it's hard, but I, I have a pull to do that. Um, you know, but there's a bit of survivor's guilt even for me that, you know, somehow we're here. I made it, I'm, I'm here and safe. And so many women and children and families are not. And, you know, I don't know. I'd love to do anything I can to help. Your father and his legacy is something that you continue to work on and bring to heights that he could have never imagined, I'm sure. You've said that you immediately fell in love with what he was doing and the impact it could

have. Can you talk a little bit about that some more? What did you especially love? And did you always feel this, you know, pressure around continuing his his legacy? Yeah, I mean, I've always felt that I was incredibly lucky to be in the United States and in America. And, you know, he's, since I can remember, talked about the values of America, democracy, the freedoms that we have, human rights. This was just part of everyday conversation, you know, moral ethics, whatever. you know, moral ethics, whatever, these values that America holds dearly and that you have to fight for them always. And, you know, I feel that, again, because I am in this country, I have this obligation to give back and to elevate those values. And, you know, when I, and yes, I've always felt this urge to want to help people and change the world, quote, unquote, as cliche as it sounds. But it's true. And,

you know, when I started to learn about the impact or the benefits of kefir, you know, at first I just thought, oh, it's this crazy, you know, Eastern European product and it's for the grandmas and, you know, I'm American and so I want Coke or whatever. But when I started learning about the benefits and, you know, my father talked about them, like, you know, there's a famous doctor, famous biologist, Dr. Elie Metchnikoff, who in 1908 did the first science research studies around kefir and gut health and probiotics. And Dr. Metchnikoff was like a unicorn rock star in my house. And this man, he won the Nobel Prize in 1908. So this is like an older gentleman, let's say. But he was a mystical creature. And as I started to learn more about Kiefer and

hear what my father was talking about as it could help people, I just thought, gosh, well, here I can help him and help my family business and, you know, use the skills and education that I've learned here in the States and grow this and help him. And, you know, I was in the office late one day and still kind of deciding what I was going to do with my career. And I picked up the phone and it was a customer who called and she started telling me about how Kiefer helped her that she had Crohn's disease and was supposed to have 80% of her digestive tract removed. And on a whim, somebody told her about our product and she tried it and almost immediately started to feel better. Within you know, this story stuck with me and really, I think,

changed my position on Kiefer and Lifeway and made me realize that, you know, here I have an opportunity to improve people's lives, their health, their well-being, reduce their suffering. And this is everything that I wanted to do. This is how I wanted to spend my time on earth. And so that's what really prompted me to... I was originally in grad school for psychology. I was going to be a psychologist, but same purpose and apply it to this business. And that's what I've done. When you started as CEO, this was a different time. How much pushback did you have, you know, what was 20 years ago versus the confidence

that you have now as a CEO and the comfort that you found in your own skin? How have you done that? Well, following incredible women like you who send incredible inspirational messages out into the universe all the time really actually does help quite a bit. But yeah, you know, the day that my dad died, all the friends of my family showed up at my mother's house. And, you know, less than five feet away from me, my father's best friend talking to another person said, oh, that's it. The company's over. Sell all your shares. There's no way a 27-year-old girl can run a publicly traded company. It's over. And that really pissed me off. It fueled me. It gave me all the inspiration to prove him wrong. And I think of

him and I have gratitude for him as angering, as mad and pissed off as I was about that comment. It absolutely gave me fuel to prove him wrong. And every day I prove him wrong. And yeah, I mean, once I got my groove, at first, I just didn't really know what to do. And I would be... I remember being obsessed about the sign in front of our business, in front of the building and thinking like, I got to change the sign. I got to change the sign. And I think really what it was is I just needed to make decisions and whatever those decisions were until I really found my groove. Some of those decisions were silly. Some of them were minute in importance. But you know, importance, but ultimately, yeah. Then when I realized that, you know, no one's going to give you power, you just have to take it. And you either, yeah, you either,

you know, you have leadership skills or you don't. I mean, I think we all have them and we all can lean into them. Not everyone does. And, you know, it's, it takes guts. It takes courage and bravery to, to make decisions, to maybe be wrong, to, to fail, to, you know, make a decision that doesn't go the way you want it to go. It takes risk and courage. And, you know, if you don't try, you know, you'll never, you'll never win. So I think, you know, leaning into that fear and those risks, making those decisions, following my gut. I mean, I would say most of the time I get literally, I have not really made major missteps that I can recall.

And the things that went wrong were always used as learning, you know, learning opportunities to only get better and stronger and pivot. And I think that's how we always have approached those situations. Like take every hand that's dealt to you and play it, you know, play it to your advantage. And that's what we've tried to do. That's what we've tried to do. And yeah. And then I just didn't have time to even worry if I was going to fail or not fail. I just had to... To be honest, failure was just not an option. I just didn't even have time to think if I was going to... If I'm doing it right or not. We had to just keep moving forward, keep making decisions, the best ones that

we could for the company using whatever hand was dealt to us, no matter what. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. If you are moved by Julie's perspective on Ukraine, you can help. You can find resources to help the people of Ukraine in the show notes. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team, Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine law for her production and writing magic and Brandon Dicker for his editing engineering and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.