Helen Christoni: Co-Founder of Make Time Wellness

Episode 842

Putting brain health at the center of women’s wellness — that’s the conversation 🧠✨
On The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Helen Christoni, Co-Founder of Make Time Wellness, a brand redefining women’s wellness by focusing on cognitive health, daily wellness habits, and science-backed support for the brain.
Helen’s journey started long before Make Time Wellness. A longtime wellness marketing executive and ultramarathoner, she spent years helping grow wellness brands while also navigating deeply personal experiences with dementia and mental health struggles within her own family. But through those experiences, she noticed a major gap she couldn’t ignore: women were prioritizing skincare, fitness, hormones, and longevity — but rarely talking about brain health until it became a crisis.
That realization became Make Time Wellness — a brand Helen co-founded alongside Emma Heming Willis to help women prioritize their brain, body, and beauty through education, awareness, and science-backed wellness products. Built around the idea that cognitive health should be part of everyday wellness, Make Time Wellness is helping bring a once-overlooked conversation into the mainstream.
We talk about Helen’s personal journey with dementia and cognitive health, why women’s brain health has been historically overlooked, and what it takes to build trust in a crowded wellness and supplement space. We also get into the realities of launching an emerging wellness brand, expanding into retailers like Vitamin Shoppe and Ulta, and how Make Time Wellness approaches education without fear-based marketing.
Helen also shares how her background in wellness brand-building shaped her approach as a founder, the lessons she’s learned scaling an early-stage company, and why she believes brain health is becoming the next major frontier in women’s wellness.
If you are interested in what it takes to build a mission-driven wellness brand, why cognitive health matters more than ever, or where the future of women’s wellness is headed — check out this interview on my podcast now.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. 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, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. 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. Let’s go. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. 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 Christoni, 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 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 Goldin show. So excited to meet you,

Helen Christoni 1:55
Kara. Thank you. I’m so excited to be on and talk about women’s brain health.

Kara Goldin 2:00
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.

Helen Christoni 2:18
Sure. 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 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.

Kara Goldin 2:54
So the back story 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?

Helen Christoni 3:12
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 and but I wish I could put it all in 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 Frenzel temporal dementia. And actually, just just as we launched, big 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 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.

Kara Goldin 4:37
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?

Helen Christoni 4:49
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 that this contains. Innuation 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 tick 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, Emma 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, when you take care of your brain and you prioritize really the engine of your whole entire body, everything else falls into place,

Kara Goldin 6:05
definitely. So, you partnered with Emma Heming Willis, who is Bruce’s wife, to launch Make Time Wellness. So, how did that partnership actually come together?

Helen Christoni 6:17
Well, I mean, you know, we had a mutual friend, you know, and you know she was helping Emma with this skincare line, and she, my, our girlfriend just decided that we should know each other, and that I should help, they needed my help, and 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, 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 it’s been great to see the conversation that we, we had a hand in starting.

Kara Goldin 7:05
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, 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, and your supplements, but what would you say is kind of the key thing, and I know it’s, it’s, you know, compounding things together, but what is the key thing that so many are missing?

Helen Christoni 7:58
Yeah, 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 nootropic, it’s its ingredient amesiticoline, 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. Then 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 it full of curcumin, and it.. you really see the benefits when you shake 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. So 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.

Kara Goldin 9:23
It’s incredible. So you launch in 2023

Kara Goldin 9:27
yeah,

Kara Goldin 9:28
and you’ve formulated other products before you have experience in in the industry, 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, maybe many of them are taking supplements, to your earlier point, but they don’t really know what what they’re taking, so. Do you get your product out there and get people to purchase it, but also to know that you’re around?

Helen Christoni 10:07
Well, you know, 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, it’s in Anaheim, you know, 50 60,000 people come to this event, all buyers, and a lot of people in the, 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, and 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 10s of 1000s of people, and 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.

Kara Goldin 11:20
What’s been the most difficult part of launching Maketime Wellness for you?

Helen Christoni 11:27
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, 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 and sprint, but I think one of the hardest things I have to say is working the kinks out in the formula. Our first, our first run, we learned some things, and we had to go back in, right? I mean, we had to go back in and 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, you know, 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, and so that was important, like, and, and you know, us kind of pulling this together, it, it, 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.

Kara Goldin 13:10
I love it. I love how your distribution is is pretty unique too. Can you talk about that?

Helen Christoni 13:17
Yeah, it was so interesting, you know, like we, we got a lot of big retail, you know, right out the gate, like 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 were 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, and it also gave us a lot of just reassured us about we were headed in the right direction. Our formula was amazing, you know, because we got that QVC check, and so QVC is amazing because we can meet women where they are, and we can talk to everybody. And then we recently just launched a Target in a 370 or so store test across the country. It’s another great place where we can meet our shoppers or women where they are, and you know, we, we built, make time for that target shelf. We want to become a women’s health destination, and we, we are just so fortunate to have this opportunity with this distribution. Easy to say, hard to do, as you know.

Kara Goldin 14:39
Yeah, definitely. So, you’re also an ultra-marathoner. How has endurance sports shaped the way you think about kind of discipline and resilience and overall long-term health?

Helen Christoni 14:53
I mean, look, you just need to keep putting one front foot in front of the other at the end of the day, you know? I mean, it’s just I think. It’s really taught me mentally to stay in the long game. There is no, I always say, the only place you know, the only place you find success before work is on the dictionary, and you have to do the work, you have to train, you have to condition, and it’s not just showing up on race day and you know, knocking out 50 100 miles, it’s the year of preparation before that, before you get to that finish line, so I think, as it relates to long haul strategy, that’s what it’s really helped me there, and also, you know, like for someone who’s completed a couple crazy distance ultra marathoners, you really have a lot of faith in your mental capacity, I guess, and your ability for this long haul stuff,

Kara Goldin 15:44
so you’ve, you’re building a mission-driven brand, clearly, and as you talked a little bit about it’s not just about the products, but it’s also about building community and educating, so How do you do that in a topic that is, you know, often so hard for people to engage on, and especially if they.. I don’t know who this is, who hasn’t been touched in some way by Alzheimer’s and dementia, whether it’s a parent or grandparent or friend, or I mean, it just seems like it is everywhere, and again might not be Alzheimer’s, but somewhere on the spectrum of dementia, and it’s a big, big topic right now, but How do you continue building such a positive, helpful brand while you’re dealing with such a tough subject?

Helen Christoni 16:37
Well, I think first of all, it’s just talking about it, you know, and having this conversation, and you know, because no one was talking to women about their brain health, and it’s not only this, like, you know, this, this diagnosis women go through, they, these, like, they get brain fog, you know, I mean, look, brain fog is the number one symptom for perimenopause and menopause, and it’s like, you might have brain fog when you’re perimenopausal or going through menopause, and you might never forget a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or dementia, and so I think that that is a big disconnect. Like, you don’t have to have brain fog, like there’s things that you can do for yourself, you know, by prioritizing your sleep, making sure you get outside, you know, more green time, less screen time. There’s there’s things that you can do to feel better, and so we don’t have to wait, like we can feel better today, and so I think just, just breaking it down into, and I think one thing that Emma and I are so great at is just speaking English to people, like, and, and our, our supplements might, by design, are like, are very, they’re very succinct in their naming, because I’m like, so many women don’t know what, like, a glutathione is, for instance, and these single note ingredients, they have no idea what it is, what it does, and so we try to really simplify, and we also do great events, like meetups, and we have a podcast, and we’re out there, you know, just talking to women, we’re able to have us to just say, like, everything starts here, like it’s not from the heart, it’s from the head, you know what I mean? If you get your head in order, everything else will fall into place, like we have to take care of our brains.

Kara Goldin 18:12
I love it. You touched on this, I think, at the beginning of our interview, but often this is, you know, you’ll see signs right, whether it’s brain fog, but there are things that maybe people are missing that they should pay more attention to, and especially when we all know that there are things such as Make Time Wellness that can really be helpful to people. What would you say are some of the key things, and how what is the age to where maybe some of this might be showing up?

Helen Christoni 18:47
Well, I mean, yeah, first of all, you start losing your short-term memory at age 30, and that’s just a big aha moment. So, once everybody has that little, that little nugget of information, you’re like, oh, wow, you know, that’s there, that was my short-term memory. Also, when women have children, any sort of hormonal fluctuation that you go through as a woman, that’s going to wreak some havoc on what’s happening in your brain, and it’s all very connected to our hormones. I think when your brain, like women, do so much for so many, they’re the chief medical officer of the household, and they put themselves last, and we’re running around, we’re taking care of everybody else, and if your brain feels fried, guess what it is like. And so I just think, just identifying, like, wow, I’m stressed, I have too much to do, I’m overwhelmed, like all these things, like I forgot what I’m supposed to do. Why I’m in my kitchen, where are my keys? Where am I supposed to be? Like, you know, all this stuff that we have going on that is your brain under stress. And so I think, you know, we really love teaching people little tricks on how to just honestly give themselves a mental break. If you’re feeling fried, you are fried. Hello, you. Don’t have to operate on pride, and so I think just giving people agency to say, like, acknowledge that we are overwhelmed when we’ve got too much stuff going on up here is okay, and that’s where we start.

Kara Goldin 20:15
I love it. Any stories that you’ve heard from some of your consumers that make you know that you’re doing good in the world.

Helen Christoni 20:25
Yeah, I mean, I think like we, in the beginning, more and more so than now, but we would always like this is our girl tang, you know, and we, and so we have this little army of girl tanger. I was like, I need my girl tang every day, I cannot live without this, this is what keeps me focused on tasks every day, like there it’s helping with perimenopausal and menopausal, I mean, like there’s the women who are really drinking this drink every day, or taking some of the gummies that we have, are just so committed, you know, because you can support your brain health, and once you do, and you’re like, just, you know, it’s like a hyper dose of focus and alertness and attention, and you’re just on some people sometimes, and I don’t recommend this, they, they compare it to, like, I’ve had one woman say, I stopped taking Adderall, you know, and I just take this now, and that’s beautiful, you know. When you start hearing things like this, and so, so we’ve got a big girl Tang Fang club out there, and you know who you are, if you’re listening, that are just so supportive. And I love to hear all the great feedback.

Kara Goldin 21:35
I love that. So, you talked about some of your different products, so you don’t just have the drink, but you also have the gummies. Can you talk about not only your entire line, but also how people use them and how easy they are to use daily?

Helen Christoni 21:51
Well, first of all, we have our drink, so that’s our brain, body, and beauty drink, and it’s our girl Tang, it’s our hero, you know, is what we started with. And then we also have beauty sleep, which is really important, and we just combine things like we look for things that aren’t on the shelf to make our lives easier. There’s no reason why you can’t have like a melatonin gummy and throw a little bit of hair, skin, and nails in there. And so we did that. We’ve got our beauty sleep formula, which people love. Then we also have the gummy version of our drink, which is important. We have the Brain and Beauty Gummy, because some people prefer that. We just launched an NAD plus in Rhodiola, which we’re very excited about, and that really helps with Rhodiola as an adaptogen. It decreases your cortisol and helps you focus. And then we threw some NAD plus in there, which is really great, that really helps with your energy, and so that’s another new new product that we’re very excited about. It’s doing really well, so everything has that connection.

Kara Goldin 22:52
I love it. If you could engage for swimming to understand one thing about brain health right now, what would

Helen Christoni 23:02
it be? I think you know, I, of course, we can supplement, we have nutrition, we have sleep, but I think the most important thing that a woman can do for their brain health is to grab a friend, go for a walk, and talk about their problems. You know, we suffer from this big lack of connection, and it’s so important that we’re connecting with people and talking about how we’re feeling, and so I think that number one, it, that’s the number one thing, like us women need to stick together and take care of each other, and so I really like to lean in there, because there’s nothing more important than that, and then I think also, just really, this one in five statistic is really an important thing for everybody to know. Please share the message, because one out of, I think, now it’s one out of nine women have breast cancer, that you know more women are are susceptible to cognitive decline is so important, and we as just a group can make such a difference if we start talking about

Kara Goldin 24:06
it.

Kara Goldin 24:06
You and Emma Hemi Willis have a podcast as well, so great. So, can you talk a little bit about that and what you’re most excited about?

Helen Christoni 24:17
Yeah, I mean, like, look, like the brand’s called Make Time, so it’s very little vignettes of little 15 minute where we bring in experts, and we have them give us actionable ways on how women can make time, and it can be for yoga, meditation, how to food prep, how to connect, how to grieve, all kinds of things to just help women and give them quick tips on how to better get through their day, so that’s been very, just, you know, when you have these podcasts, you learn so much, you know, so it’s been very insightful and meaningful for us to bring this to to our community in the Make Time movement.

Kara Goldin 24:58
I love it, so. Colin Cristoni, co-founder of Maketime Wellness. For everyone listening, be sure to check out Maketime Wellness, incredible products, and follow along on social as well. Listen to the podcast, so many incredible interviews that you’re doing. So I agree that it’s sometimes just taking time to actually go and learn through podcasts that are really focused on topics that are going to help you is is so so key. So, thank you, Helen, for coming on and sharing with us. And thanks, everyone, for listening. Until next time on The Kara Goldin Show. Thanks, Kara. Make time. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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