Women in Wellness: “I’d advocate for all of us to periodically reset & reevaluate our personal lives” with Nikki Brown

While the current, global pandemic is beyond tough on everyone for a variety of reasons, the upside has been a reset for my home life. I’d advocate for all of us to periodically reset/ reevaluate our personal lives. This time at home has made for lots of dinner and mealtime conversations that we don’t get with our busy, sports packed nights. We are home and together and while I have a million reasons to not be sleeping, I crash hard at the end of a day.

As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nikki Brown.

Nikki Brown began her career in 1997 with Champion Nutrition. In 1998, she joined her father and brother to add her expertise to the successful start-up of Cyto Sport / Muscle Milk. Her she was instrumental in creating the infrastructure of their operation which became a 200,000 square foot headquarters housing business operations, marketing and a state of the art manufacturing facility. She began to direct the Branding in early 2001 and was named Chief Marketing Officer in 2009. She led all brand activity including innovation, packaging, advertising, sports marketing, collegiate programming, lifestyle marketing, national events and sampling. Her efforts resulted in unprecedented revenue acceleration in the protein category and acknowledgements including Beverage of the Year(2008), Best of the Small Companies Under 1 B (2009), Packaging of the Year (2009) and Most Innovative Brands (2013). In 2014, the family sold the business to Hormel Food Company, where Nikki stayed in her role. In 2016, she joined her father and brother at Flavor Insights, a start-up specializing in the functional food and beverages pace helping companies with flavor, innovation and application. Nikki serves as CEO. In 2019, the entrepreneurial family launched the ALTWELL line of CBD products where she has led the brand and marketing efforts. She is a graduate of University of Southern California and lives in Alamo with her husband and four children. When not running from sports to dance, they love to travel.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

I graduated from USC and went to work for my dad days after. Our family has been in wellness and sport nutrition for decades and soon after I started with him, we started CytoSport (my father, brother and a few others). A few years in, we founded the Muscle Milk brand. I led our brand efforts from packaging, messaging to customer collecting. I grew into the CMO role leading all brand building and consumer facing efforts. We sold the business in 2014 to the Hormel Food Company. I stayed in the CMO role until 2016. I left to help my father with his latest start up, Flavor Insights, which specializes in flavorings for food and beverage products. While we love the flavor business, we knew we would get back in the branded space eventually. In 2018, the idea behind Altwell was born with our first products launched early this year. In addition to the businesses, I am a mother of four active kids that range from 13 to 6. We enjoy our alone time as a family and so love getting away with them and seeing new or experiencing our favorite places. We seem happiest with our toes in the sand.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

While building the Muscle Milk brand was the highlight of our careers for all of us (our family), I think selling a family company to a food and beverage giant was an interesting and memorable process. The process itself is a huge learning. It wasn’t easy and you learn more than you want to know about all the different parties involved along the way. For entrepreneurs, brands and their businesses are like a baby and learning to step back and let others raise your ‘child’ doesn’t come naturally for most.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We never called them mistakes, always learnings. Key learnings end up becoming some magical part of the overall strategy. There are likely too many to count!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’d thank my parents and my husband. My dad gave me plenty of room to grow independently and do things differently than he might do or would have done. He can be tough (but always fair and loving) but he’s reasonable and we generally arrive at the same place when it’s important. He also made it clear that he was never going to make excuses for his children which made us work that much harder in a family environment. If any of my children join us some day, I would hope I would treat them similarly. My mom kept the balance. When you’ve had a bad day and you don’t care for your boss (in this case my dad and yes, it happens though few and far between), it’s generally words from my mom that got me through it. She also taught me how to negotiate my raises early. “You tell him this is how it’s going to be”. Ha. It goes without saying, a working mother needs a supportive spouse. I got lucky there.

Ok perfect. Now let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

It goes without saying, we all have lots on our plate. It’s hard to disconnect given how our world is wired. When you vacation, you still have the ability to connect. It really never stops. We wanted to get into the CBD space in hopes that we can be a part of this bigger movement towards alternatives in health and wellness. We need more balance and calm. I visited my doctor shortly after turning 40. I shared similar complaints as many women (working or at home). I wasn’t sleeping well, feeling anxious, etc. I tried some of her suggestions and found that it was a short-term fix for me. I turned to alternatives like CBD and revised my routine. I am pretty sure I will need to routinely reevaluate and modify.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

1. Eat healthy
2. Try and move around and or workout every day
3. Take a minute or two for you- even if it’s an extra 10 minutes in the shower as you start or end your day
4. Drink more water and tea and less alcohol
5. Keep up with people that keep you laughing
6. For me, Altwell has been a game changer- our tincture and capsules are my go-to in the morning and evening and I love our protein powder as my breakfast smoothie.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

While the current, global pandemic is beyond tough on everyone for a variety of reasons, the upside has been a reset for my home life. I’d advocate for all of us to periodically reset/ reevaluate our personal lives. This time at home has made for lots of dinner and mealtime conversations that we don’t get with our busy, sports packed nights. We are home and together and while I have a million reasons to not be sleeping, I crash hard at the end of a day. I had a personal event a few years back that caused me to reset and while the early part is generally tough, it always follows with calm and peace. Unfortunately, we slip into our old habits.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

• It’s not going to be easy, even if you have done it before
• It’s like building a house, it generally takes more money and time than you think it will
• As a working mom, make sure you balance family. We often feel the expectation to be available around the clock and to prove ourselves. Take the time to make the important things happen. Little people grow up so fast. I learned the balance part as I grew up professionally and added to my family. I’m still working on this one.
• Take the time you need for you. You can’t be perfect at all of it. Good works and you are the only one that can take care of you.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental wellness. I am learning that my needs are changing, I need more sleep, I need more calm. I feel like I am changing biologically, and I need to embrace and support it. I need to make tweaks to my normal. Be in touch with yourself. The change or unknown sneaks up on us. With little ones we are generally trying to survive. Be empathetic. I have also realized that everyone has a little something they are dealing with. Some are big and some are small. A little grace goes a long way.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

On Instagram at @AltwellCBD.

Thank you for these fantastic insights!