US entrepreneur with $100 million company champions work-life balance for employees: ‘They didn’t sign up for…’

Nicole Bernard Dawes’s approach is shaped in part by her childhood spent working in her mother’s health-food store and watching her father build a $4.87 billion snack business.

After decades of building brands, Dawes says genuine enthusiasm makes the long hours feel less like a burden (Image source: Bristol Farms/Website)

A Boston entrepreneur who has built a $100 million brand says that while she personally can’t disconnect from work, she’s determined to ensure her employees can. She created a buzz after advocating for the most-talked-about debate on the Internet: work-life balance.

“I think I probably am a little bit of a hypocrite, because I don’t unplug. I never do,” Nicole Bernard Dawes told Fortune. “I never want to be the person who’s holding up a member of our team.”

Dawes previously built Late July into a $100 million organic snack company before selling it to Campbell’s in 2017. The following year, she launched Nixie, a sparkling water brand, the report in Fortune said. She admits the nonstop nature of being a founder means she’s always on call.

“I signed up for this. I am the entrepreneur, I did this to myself—a self-inflicted situation. (My employees) didn’t sign up to be entrepreneurs,” she said. “I am very comfortable taking downtime, but also making sure I’m available,” she said.

“I feel very strongly that it should not extend to the team,” she added.

Dawes’s approach is shaped in part by her childhood spent working in her mother’s health-food store and watching her father build a $4.87 billion snack business, the report highlighted. Although she admits she never fully switches off, she still carves out time for what matters, like family dinners, regular walks, and exercise. “You have to choose what’s the most important thing in that moment. I’ve never really, truly, been able to shut off completely,” she told the publication.

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After decades of building brands, Dawes says genuine enthusiasm makes the long hours feel less like a burden. “Sometimes when I wake up in the morning like, ‘I can’t even believe I’m this lucky that I get to do this job.’ … it doesn’t feel like working,” she said.

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With Nixie now available in more than 11,000 stores and buoyed by $27 million in investment, Dawes continues to grow the company while promoting work-life balance for her employees.