Women In Wellness: M’lou Walker of LifeStyles Healthcare On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
There are jerks in this world and you will encounter them in business — — but don’t be one of them and don’t let them get you down. I’ve learned that I can’t change someone else’s behavior or attitude, but I can change how I can react. And as I’ve gotten further along in my career, I’ve had the freedom to choose who I work with — — I avoid the jerks.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing M’lou Walker.
M’lou Walker is the CEO of LifeStyles Healthcare, a leading global sexual wellness company and the owner of the SKYN brand, among many others. With 30 years’ experience marketing and managing OTC healthcare and personal care products and raising 4 children, M’lou has become an expert in optimizing personal and professional well-being. M’lou balances her work with rounds of golf, tennis games, good books, and time with her family.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I grew up” in brand management, working on a number of well-known household brands (Listerine, Benadryl, Lubriderm, Mucinex, among many others). I loved this work as it allowed me to get a deep understanding of any number of different ailments, treatments, and paths to wellness, whether through the brands under my stewardship or by other means. All this background led me to create my own brand of personal care products that were formulated without any potentially harmful chemicals but were clinically proven to be effective. In 2008, this combination was a rarity but based on my deep desire to bring efficacious products to market with formulae that were better for our bodies and our environment. As a mother of 4, I’ve thought a lot about how to optimize human health as well as the health of our earth. Following this, I was the CEO of the company that makes and markets Zicam brand of homeopathic cold shortening products, and I have been the CEO of LifeStyles Healthcare since March 2020.
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?
Distilling down 30 years of a career to one single story is a tough one. Some fun stories include the times I was on the Rosie O’Donnell Show while leading the Listerine mouthwash business and the first time “Mr. Mucus” debuted on the Ellen show (in a commercial pod) for the launch of the Mucinex consumer campaign. The Listerine — Rosie O’Donnell Show relationship started on Valentine’s Day 1997. Listerine’s main branded competitor, Scope, had conducted a survey of the “most kissable/least kissable” celebrities as a PR stunt. It backfired on them when Rosie O’Donnell discovered that she was on the “least kissable” list. At the time, her show was the #2 rated daytime talk show. Rosie raised it on her show and announced (unprompted by us) that she preferred Listerine. She held our large bottle up to the camera and essentially read the entire front label to her audience. Upon discovering this, we swiftly placed full page ads in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today to thank her. We followed up by shipping Listerine for her studio audience the next week. She repaid our actions with a full week of product mentions on her show. We went on to collaborate with her to raise funds for her For All Kids Foundation while getting an additional 3 months of daily Listerine mentions on her show. This experience reinforced that I should trust my convictions, act swiftly, and think big. Had we not moved quickly (and without the approval of my senior leadership at the time), we would have missed the opportunity. I also knew that Rosie O’Donnell spoke often of her children so a partnership with her that benefited her charity would benefit everyone.
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?
When I was an assistant brand manager, I was charged with making sure that all of the details of our promotions were handled. This included in-store display programs. I needed to work with the Sales Operations team in order to get this done and time was often quite tight. In trying to keep one particular project on track, I needed the swift cooperation of a career Sales Op manager. He had decades of experience while I only had 2 or 3. He was clearly uninterested in the needs of my timetable, and when I pressed him, he raised his voice and made it clear that my success or failure was in his hands and at his discretion. I had clearly offended him by trying to “direct” someone with so many more years on the job than me, and he was going to hold my project hostage. It was a great lesson in the importance of everyone in an organization regardless of career trajectory or supposed “importance”. All deserve the utmost respect for their contributions and none should be considered “less than”, ever.
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?
Our work at LifeStyles Healthcare is all about health and wellness. First, we’ve been in the sexual wellness business since 1905 when the first condom was introduced. We now offer a broad range of condoms, lubricants, devices and other sexual wellness products that enable the joy of human connection. Sexual wellness, or intimate wellness, is an important part of overall adult wellness and self-care. This is true regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, orientation, or identity. Sexual wellness has been shown to contribute to a strong sense of well-being through higher serotonin levels, better overall health, and better connection to others. We have also always played a big role in improving sexual wellness literacy and promoting safe sex through our partnership with government and healthcare agencies, NGOs and charitable organizations. We believe that knowledge is not only power but it leads to safer, happier, more fulfilled lives for all.
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.
- I could hardly be the CEO of a global sexual wellness company without putting the joy of human connection at the top of the list! Taking the time to build, maintain, cultivate true human connections is vital to our overall well-being. For many, this will take the form of a loving, intimate relationship with another. However, we can develop intimate relationships with others that don’t involve the bedroom. These are just as important to our overall well-being. And don’t forget that self-love is the most important love of all and self-pleasure is an excellent way to support wellness.
- Put the social media feeds down and intentionally limit consumption of daily news. For years, I consumed the news nearly 24 hours/day. I’d find myself going down Twitter “black holes” or “doom scrolling”. I still stay on top of the daily news, but I do it once a day and limit the amount of time I’m exposed to news and social media. I found myself slipping back into old habits during the pandemic, and it affected my overall well-being. I realized that I cannot convince anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, insurgents, or anti-abortion voices to change their perspectives by pummeling them with facts on Twitter. Better to take a step back and make sure that I show up on Election Day.
- Exercise daily. It doesn’t have to consume a lot of time or be much more than a walk in the sunshine. I’ve been active all of my life, but exercise really took a back seat when I was commuting across the country each week for a job and then running a global company from my home office during the pandemic. With direct reports in nearly every time zone, it was too easy to be online from 5 am until 9 pm and let exercise fall down on the priority list. I’ve discovered a great service called “Future”. Through Future, I have an actual trainer (across the country) who provides me with regular work outs, tracks my progress via an app, and checks in with me. I have always known what to do but having another human hold me accountable has made all the difference. And that brings me to
- Guard your sleep. I try really hard to get 7–8 hours of sleep each night. My team knows that I’d prefer to engage with them in the early morning than late at night, and we schedule accordingly. I put my phone on “do not disturb” from 9 pm to 5 am every day and try to stick to a regular sleeping schedule. The exercise (#3) helps make the quality of the sleep better.
- Intentional eating. It can feel overwhelming to try to figure out the right balance of macronutrients every day. So we’ve got 3 or 4 “go to” meals that we make nearly every week. We know that these meals give us all we need and not too much (in terms of fat/calories). The other meals are more flexible, allowing us to go out to dinner, visit with friends or order in pizza without feeling like we’re out of control or crashing because we’re not getting all of the yummy nutrients that fuel our busy lives. By having some go to meals, we take a lot of the work and guess work out of healthy eating and leave room for enjoyment.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would set a time of day, or maybe 2 times of day, when the world stopped, stepped outside and greeted our fellow humans. Think of it as a global fire drill without the loud blaring sounds and lack of predictability. The best part of a fire drill is that it makes you look up and step away from whatever you’re doing, head outside (hopefully into the sun) and chat for a moment with those around you. If we did this every day, at the same time no matter where we find ourselves, we would connect with millions of new people over a lifetime, absorb some extra vitamin D, check in with each other and breathe a bit easier. I’m convinced that the break would help with respiratory and cardiac health (though I haven’t done the clinical studies yet) and build joy through human connection. The entire world would build wellness, step by step, each and every day while connecting with each other. I can’t think of a more sustainable way to promote wellness.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1) There are jerks in this world and you will encounter them in business — — but don’t be one of them and don’t let them get you down. I’ve learned that I can’t change someone else’s behavior or attitude, but I can change how I can react. And as I’ve gotten further along in my career, I’ve had the freedom to choose who I work with — — I avoid the jerks.
2) Set a list of things to do in a day that is achievable during that day. And then complete the list. I had a tendency to create overly ambitious lists and then end up either disappointing myself or burning myself out. With more reasonable expectations of myself, I’m able to focus on the highest priorities and achieve them with minimal self-flagellation.
3) Being a working mom can make you a better mom and a better worker. Sure, it’s a tough juggle and very tiring. But I know that my children have benefited from seeing me get it done every day. They saw me when it was a struggle to get through the day, and they saw me during moments of triumph. Most importantly, they saw me plan, think, execute, and face every day, whether good or bad. And the experienced how we could all have fun while we were figuring it out together. When they were small, there were many days when they were my help-mates in getting all of us out the door in the morning and getting settled again in the evening. They learned responsibility and the importance of helping each other out.
4) Seek to understand where everyone, at every level of the organization, is coming from. We all have a backstory, and our backstories color how we greet the world. Having some idea of the human side of work colleagues enables us to adapt our style and connect better with our teammates. This has been particularly helpful in my role at the top of a global corporation. It’s in my nature to be interested in the non-business side of people, but the myriad cultures represented in our organization has made it even more important that I “seek first to understand”.
5) No leader becomes a successful leader on his/her own. LifeStyles Healthcare is the 3rd company I’ve led as the CEO. It is really clear to me that I don’t actually do the work. I lay out the direction, strategy and goals, but we would not advance a single step without the daily efforts of our team around the globe. I may be at the top of the corporate food pyramid, but the best ideas come from others and the execution of those ideas is always done by others. We can only succeed together.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Which one? Oh boy. I’m going to cheat and combine them — — as they are all, in fact, interrelated. Veganism (I’m not currently vegan) is not only great for our health, but it can help reduce the impact that we have on the environment. It, therefore, helps with environmental change (producing animal sources of protein is damaging for the environment and not good for sustainability). Sustainability and environmental changes are 2 sides of the same coin. The more we embrace sustainability, the greater chance we have to slow the acceleration of global climate change. And mental health is both the outcome and the input for managing the others poorly. We have never done a good job helping those with mental health issues. We see this with appalling clarity every time there’s a mass shooting, excessive police violence, consumption of conspiracy theories, a report of a celebrity drug overdose or any number of horrific tragedies. Our disinformation, intentional misinformation, news as entertainment, and polarizing politics combined with the pressures of global climate change combine to make it somewhat miraculous that mental health issues aren’t an even bigger problem. We should look, however, at our younger people and see what we are doing to them with all of these issues. I don’t think this is a legacy that anyone is eager to claim.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
I’m on Twitter (@MlouWalker1) and LinkedIn
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: M’lou Walker of LifeStyles Healthcare On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.