842 Helen Christoni: Co-Founder of Make Time Wellness

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business.

0:45Kara Goldin:Hey, everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. AT &T Business is a reliable provider for small business owners.

1:27Kara Goldin:For Small Business Month, we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, and smart communications. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is sponsored by Upwork. Growing a business doesn't mean hiring more people just to fill seats. It means finding the right talent exactly when you need it. The reality, trying to wear every hat yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck. Upwork makes it easy to connect with experienced freelancers who can help you move faster and scale smarter.

2:11Kara Goldin:Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours.

2:58Kara Goldin:No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, bringing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com, upwork.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kira Golden Show.

3:47Kara Goldin:Have you ever noticed how women's wellness conversations often focus on everything except the brain? We talk endlessly about beauty, fitness, hormones, sleep, aging, longevity, but brain health, cognitive decline, and dementia are still conversations many people avoid until it becomes deeply personal. So our next guest, Helen Crustoni, saw firsthand how devastating cognitive decline can be. And the idea became Make Time Wellness. So the incredible co-founder of Make Time Wellness, a brand redefining women's wellness by putting brain health at the center, alongside co-founder Emma Heming-Willis.

4:33Kara Goldin:Helen launched the company in 2023 to create science-backed supplements, education, and accessible tools designed to help women prioritize their cognitive well-being. So I cannot wait to dig into this conversation. So, so interesting. And I'm so happy that Make Time Wellness is here. So Helen, welcome to the Kara Golden Show. So excited to meet you. Kara, thank you. I'm so excited to be on and talk about women's brain health. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand.

5:16Kara Goldin:You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating. It's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

5:59Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

6:40Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is sponsored by Upwork. Growing a business doesn't mean hiring more people just to fill seats. It means finding the right talent exactly when you need it. The reality, trying to wear every hat yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck. Upwork makes it easy to connect with experienced freelancers who can help you move faster and scale smarter. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more.

7:25Kara Goldin:It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories, so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business.

8:14Kara Goldin:And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. Thank you so much. So for listeners who are just hearing about Make Time Wellness, I described it a little bit, but I'm sure you can do a better job. So please let me know how you would describe the brand and what makes it different from other wellness brands out there.

9:04Sure. Well, first of all, like we like to say that we take care of a woman's brain, body and beauty in that order. Right. Because everywhere you go, you know, you're thrown every type of supplement. And one thing that we do at Make Time that I think is really important is that every one of our supplements is supporting a healthy brain. And so, you know, our mission is to get the world talking seriously about women's brain health because everything starts here. You know, it starts in the brain. And so it's very important that we're paying attention to that because it can really affect our day-to-day today, not just in the future.

9:40Kara Goldin:So the backstory is very interesting and also one that I think is really important for others to hear. Can you share that? What led you to focus on the brain health component prior to founding your brand? Yeah, so my co-founder, Emma, it was actually during COVID and we were on a Zoom and, you know, we were girlfriends and I was helping her. I was advising on some skincare brand she was working on and she had been taking all the supplements to support her brain health. And I think she was like popping supplements on this call and I'm like, what are you taking? And she's like, you know, I've been taking this brain health regimen that's really been working for me.

10:24And but I wish I could put it all on a drink. And I was like, well, wow, you know, I know how to do that. And so we started talking about like launching this all in one drink powder that really supported a woman's brain and checked all the boxes. And and, you know, I lost, unfortunately, my grandmother to dementia. my also my mother-in-law to frontal temporal dementia and actually just just as we launched make time we lost my mother-in-law and we started looking in the space and crickets out there about women's brain health i mean nothing nada and as a you know marketer founder when you go to launch something you're looking for a hole in the shelf and it was non-existent for women's brain health So we set out to fill that hole and make something that was really easy and accessible for women to start taking care of their brain today.

11:23Kara Goldin:So the statistic that one in five women will develop Alzheimer's is staggering. What do you think most women still don't realize about cognitive health? Well, first of all, it's one in five women compared to one in 10 men. And so when you think about that, it's like it's just this continuation of us not being studied, included in clinical trials, treated differently as it relates to our health. Women and men are completely different. You know, our bodies are different. The way we take is different. We have a lot of hormones, you know, and those go up and down with every phase of life. And so I think that when we learned that, we were like, wow, I didn't know.

12:09Emma didn't know. And we set out to let people know. Another thing I think that is important is that your Alzheimer's or dementia starts 20 to 30 years before. And so, you know, you need to do things today to take care of yourself in the future. And so, you know, my Alzheimer's could be forming right now and it can show up in 20 years. And so this isn't something that's like for our senior parents or for, you know, it's for us today. And also, I think that, you know, when you take care of your brain and you prioritize really the engine of your whole entire body, everything else falls into place.

12:50Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating. it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

13:34Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

14:17Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it.

15:03Kara Goldin:And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. AT &T Business is a reliable provider for small business owners. For Small Business Month, we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, and smart communications. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is sponsored by Upwork. Growing a business doesn't mean hiring more people just to fill seats.

15:48Kara Goldin:It means finding the right talent exactly when you need it. The reality, trying to wear every hat yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck. Upwork makes it easy to connect with experienced freelancers who can help you move faster and scale smarter. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories. So you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead.

16:32Kara Goldin:You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support.

17:16Kara Goldin:It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com, Upwork dot com. Definitely. So you partnered with Emma Hemming-Willis, who is Bruce's wife, to launch Make Time Wellness. So how did that partnership actually come together? Well, I mean, you know, we had a mutual friend, you know, and, you know, she was helping Emma with this skincare line. And our girlfriend just decided that we should know each other and that I should help. They needed my help.

18:04And so we met and we became fast friends. And really, you know, when she had this idea, we just decided to go for it. It was COVID. And, you know, we were just, everybody was at home and we had time. And so we made time to launch this brand. And initially, you know, we didn't realize how much, how it would be so well received by kind of press and women in general. And so it's been great to see the conversation that we had a hand in starting.

18:38Kara Goldin:I love it. I remember hearing a few years ago, actually, from Maria Shriver, who's done a ton of work around this topic. And she made me realize that there are many who actually have the gene, but who are not actually showing up yet, if ever, with Alzheimer's. So there has to be something in there that really allows people not to actually, you know, get it later on in life. So when you look at the ingredients and you have done such a great job of nailing it in your supplements, but what would you say is kind of the key thing? And I know it's, you know, compounding things together, but what is the key thing that so many are missing?

19:31yeah so let's talk about that i think that when we sat down to create the formula we really took we started with what emma was taking you know and then we and then we really thought about a woman's needs and so our hero ingredient is cognizant and cognizant is a nootropic it's it's ingredient name is cetylcholine and this has been clinically studied on women to do many things help us stay on task, help us stay focused, really take care of our brain health. It is definitely an energy source in our brain that's got tremendous clinical substantiation. So that was very important to us that when we sat down that it was really efficacious.

20:11Then we included curcumin, you know, and curcumin is such an important ingredient. And our drink is like a curcumin shot. It is loaded with curcumin. And it's such a great, I mean, you can't really talk about it because it's like a disease thing, but I'll talk about it. It's like, it's an anti-inflammatory. It's also an antioxidant, but we just packed a full of curcumin and you really see the benefits when you drink the drink. Also MCT oil, a multivitamin. We threw some beauty in there because, you know, we had to get everyone's attention. And so, you know, we have green tea for a little bit of energy.

20:45So we really filled this drink and we call it like your girl tang with a lot of science-based ingredients that really supported everything a woman needs.

20:56Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is sponsored by Upwork. Growing a business doesn't mean hiring more people just to fill seats. It means finding the right talent exactly when you need it. The reality, trying to wear every hat yourself eventually becomes the bottleneck. Upwork makes it easy to connect with experienced freelancers who can help you move faster and scale smarter. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead.

21:48Kara Goldin:You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support.

22:33Kara Goldin:It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kira here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it.

23:22Kara Goldin:And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. AT &T Business is a reliable provider for small business owners. For Small Business Month, we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, and smart communications. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. It's incredible. So you launch in 2023. Yeah. And you've formulated other products before. You have experience in the industry.

24:11Kara Goldin:But what was kind of the first step in actually getting the word out? Because you are formulating something that is, you know, really trying to help people change a habit, right? That they've been not doing, I guess, in many ways. Maybe many of them are taking supplements to your earlier point, but they don't really know what they're taking. So how do you get your product out there and get people to purchase it, but also to know that you're around? Well, you'll appreciate this. So what we did is we went to Expo West and we did a focus group. And so we had a bunch of, and Expo West, for those of you who don't know, is like the biggest natural foods expo.

24:58It's in Anaheim. You know, 50, 60 ,000 people come to this event, all buyers and a lot of people in the health and wellness space. And so we took a little booth downstairs and we had some samples of the drink. We put our little, you know, packaging, we made a little pyramid. Nobody knew who we were. We just showed up and poured little shots of our brain, body and beauty formula. And we wanted to see the reaction. And that's exactly what we got. Everybody was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. We love it. It tastes so good. Wow. You know, and also we got some buyer attention. We got some press attention.

25:33And so we had a few things go right at that show. And that was kind of our big aha moment that we had something because, you know, to get attention at that show, you're there with tens of thousands of people. And, um, and so the feedback was amazing. And that's when we decided to roll the ball and go into production. And the next year is when we launched the product line.

25:56Kara Goldin:What's been the most difficult part of launching Make Time Wellness for you? Oh, gosh. You know, I think that I have to say, personally, both Emma and I have had our share of stuff, you know. And so we've both gone through some personal trials during the launch of this brand, which has been trying at the same time, inspiring and motivating to have this really positive thing to drive purpose with, right? So this is definitely a passion project. We're very purpose-driven. And so I think that, you know, life has thrown some things our way that we've had to deal with with the launch of this brand.

26:38But I think one of the hardest things I have to say is working the kinks out in the formula. Our first run, we learned some things and we had to go back in, right? I mean, we had to go back in and pull some things out, put some things back in to get it perfect and really be enjoyable for women and so they can take it every day. And then I also think just what you're saying, it's not just about taking the supplement. We have to also talk about lifestyle. One doesn't go without the other, especially when it relates to your brain health. And so we, it was very important to us that with the great supplement line that we launched, we also were talking about connection and sleep and moving your body and, you know, just doing all these things that are so important for our brain health.

27:28And so that was important. Like, and, and, you know, us kind of pulling this together, we really learned that this needed to be a movement of women getting together to really have this big, broader conversation of women just making time for themselves.

27:46Kara Goldin:I love it. I love how your distribution is pretty unique too. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, it was so interesting. We got a lot of big retail right out the gate. We had a lot of attention. And it was a little almost to the point where you have to say no to some. You can't do everything all at once. Well, and so we're definitely trying to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. And so earlier this year, we launched QVC and we were the first ever cognition formula and claim to ever be sold on QVC in their 40 years. I mean, wow, that was hard to talk about something that was a challenge, like to just get through all that legal, the legal vetting.