This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Julie Chapon, the 39-year-old CEO and cofounder of Yuka, who is based in New York. The app rates food and cosmetics based on their ingredients and campaigns for bans and reformulations. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Some CEOs have very strict agendas, but I don’t like my day to be too defined.
I used to work at a consultancy firm where I had no choice in what I did. When I started Yuka in France around 10 years ago, I thought, “OK, now no one’s going to tell me what I have to do.”
Yuka grew very quickly, and I learned to say no, in a very polite way, to 80% of the emails I receive. Yuka has a yearly road map that I’m in charge of. If I spend my time doing other things, I can’t deliver.
I also used to put up barriers because I didn’t feel like the right person for certain opportunities, even if I was. Now I just act, and legitimacy comes. Otherwise, you can get easily crushed when you’re up against big companies with a lot of money and resources.
I used to live in Paris, and I moved to New York three years ago when Yuka started growing in the US. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and my daughter, who is 4, and my son, who is 5 1/2. I’m very close with my cofounders. We support each other in all that we do. I don’t think I could be a solo founder.
Here’s what a typical day in my life in New York City looks like.
I wake up at 6:30 a.m. to hang out with my kids
I’m definitely a morning person. I wake up very early, at 6:30 a.m., and get ready.
From 7 a.m. I wake the kids, dress them, and prepare their breakfast, backpacks, and lunchboxes. At 7:30 a.m, I wake up my husband, who drops the kids off at school at 8:15 a.m.
For years, I haven’t eaten breakfast because I’m not hungry in the morning. I don’t have time, anyway, because I want to be with my kids before leaving for work. It gives me a lot of energy.
When I cycle to work at around 7:30 a.m., my ideas flow
My schedule doesn’t allow me to spend a lot of time commuting, so I chose an office close to my apartment, which takes about 15 minutes to cycle to. I get all my best ideas when I bike or run, and my mind is free.
I arrive at our coworking space between 7:30 and 8 a.m., grab a coffee, and write down my thoughts. Even in the middle of the night, I might think about something and wake up and write it down so I don’t forget.
I can’t start my day without a big coffee. In our Paris office, we invested in a very good coffee machine, but the coworking space in New York serves Americanos. They’re not the best, but I take what I can get.
The office is usually empty when I arrive, giving me time to meet with the Yuka team in France, followed by the US team. In France, I would focus and write in the mornings and have meetings later. I had to reverse my routine, but I learned to be efficient in the afternoon.
My afternoons are totally free of meetings, unless I have no choice. I let myself feel the moment and what I want to work on.
Adélaïde Chantilly
When I’m in the office, I go to the gym at 12 p.m., then have lunch at 1 p.m.
I don’t want a boring lunch. In summer, I’ll have salad. In winter, I want something hot, but healthy and comforting, like lentil or chickpea pasta. As a child in France, I often ate lunch at my grandparents’ house, who lived across from my school and prepared homemade food.
When I moved to New York with my French cofounders, we booked seats in the shared area of our coworking space to get to know Americans. We looked forward to enjoying lunch with them until we realized that people don’t eat lunch here or eat it at their computers. That was a culture shock.
In France, at 1 p.m., everybody goes to lunch, gathers around a table, and can stay there for one hour, even two. It’s great because you don’t talk about work, but about your personal life, and what you did on the weekend.
My cofounders went back to France, and now I have lunch with the two other people on the US team. Once or twice a week, we take a two-hour lunch. Sometimes we go to the gym for one hour, and then have lunch for one hour.
Next summer, I’m turning 40 — maybe I’m having my 40s crisis — and my husband and I are planning a one-week trek around Mont Blanc in France. Finding time to train is complicated. I try to go to the gym across from the office space at lunch. On days I work from home, I run in the park at around midday.
I’ll listen to podcasts, including ones with other CEOs, and take a lot of inspiration, but I don’t have a particular role model. I follow my own instincts. Sometimes I listen to them and think, “I don’t want to be like this, planning my day hour by hour, having no free time.”
I leave the office at 5:30 p.m. to be with my kids
I try to leave the office at around 5:30 p.m. because being with my kids is super important to me. Generally, my husband picks them up, I arrive home at 6 p.m., and spend two hours with them before they go to bed.
I switch off my brain and can just be with them, unless we’re launching a big campaign or something, but that doesn’t happen a lot. When I’m with them, I’m really with them, not on my phone or computer. Around every two days, I work while they’re sleeping, but as a morning person, I’m not as efficient after a certain hour.
I try to eat as healthily as possible, but obviously, sometimes my husband and I want to enjoy a pizza, so we have one. I end dinner with something sweet, like dark chocolate I buy in France. I haven’t found chocolate that I like here.
A goal I’ve set for myself is learning to cook because I want my kids to enjoy vegetables. At the moment, I assemble rather than cook, relying a lot on frozen and canned vegetables like chickpeas, because I don’t have a lot of time. For instance, on Thursdays, I make them a special pizza with a crust of cauliflower, egg, chickpea flour, and cheese.
Adélaïde Chantilly
I go to bed at 10:30 p.m. and read for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the book
I really love reading all sorts of novels. It helps me sleep. This summer, I read “The Housekeeper.” I don’t read books related to my work or about personal development in bed. I used to spend a lot of time on my phone, but then I decided to delete the Instagram app.
Every night, once the kids are in bed, I write in a five-year journal, just a few lines about the day. I also keep another notebook, a “Tell Me Your Story, Mum,” where I write about myself and my life, to give to my children later on. Writing has always been something I love, and these two habits are small offline rituals that ground me at the end of the day.
I’ve learned not to compare myself to other CEOs. For Yuka’s first three years, I worked very late and on weekends. It was the beginning of the company, so it was very exciting. Now I have a family, which is a choice, and I want to see my children. We all have our own ways of managing our companies and family lives.
