The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Arianna Huffington: I Was Lying In A Little Pool Of Blood! The Huffington Post, A $1 Billion 'Flop'!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly, to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

Starting point is 00:00:37 thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. The biggest success of The Huffington Post happened after I collapsed and hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone and came to in a little pool of blood. That was the beginning of a journey to find out what was wrong with me. Arianna Huffington is one of the world's most powerful business leaders in media and the co-founder of the Huffington Post, which under her innovative leadership became the second most popular news site in the world before being sold for $315 million. What are the most important things I should be thinking about to be successful? One is when you overcome that fear of rejection,

Starting point is 00:01:13 that fear of failure, we are much more likely to take bold moves. I mean, that's the story of your life. You got into Cambridge when only three colleges accepted women. You become the president of Cambridge Union and the third woman ever to lead the debating society. And also coming to New York and launching the Huffington Post that happened

Starting point is 00:01:28 because a man wouldn't marry me. Good to remember that. The next point, our culture makes us think that I have to achieve everything before 30. But I launched the Huffington Post at 55, Thrive Global at 66, and now launched a new company with Open ai at 74. It's never too late I want to talk to you about mistakes that you made I had bought into this delusion that in order to be super founder and super mom I didn't have the luxury to take care of myself and then I was literally diagnosed with burnout. It was unnecessary suffering But as I talked to a lot of scientists it became very clear that there are five daily behaviors that makes everything you're doing even more successful. And the first is...

Starting point is 00:02:09 This is a sentence I never thought I'd say in my life. We've just hit 7 million subscribers on YouTube. And I want to say a huge thank you to all of you that show up here every Monday and Thursday to watch our conversations. From the bottom of my heart, but also on behalf of my team, who you don't always get to meet, there's almost 50 people now behind the diary of a CEO that work to put this together. So from all of us, thank you so much. We did a raffle last month, and we gave away prizes for people that subscribe to the show, up until 7 million subscribers. And you guys loved that raffle so much that we're going to continue

Starting point is 00:02:43 it. So every single month, we're giving away Money Can't Buy prizes, including meetings with me, invites to our events and £1,000 gift vouchers to anyone that subscribes to the Diary of a CEO. There's now more than 7 million of you. So if you make the decision to subscribe today, you can be one of those lucky people. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Let's get to the conversation. Arianna, what do I need to know about you and your earliest years to understand the woman that sat in front of me today? What was those formative early experiences that shaped you most profoundly? The most important formative experience was my mother. And so we lived, my mother, my sister and I,

Starting point is 00:03:29 in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece. We had very little money, but she always made us feel abandoned, partly by cooking. She was constantly cooking. I think she really believed that if you didn't eat every 20 minutes, something terrible would happen to you. And she created that sense of life as an adventure. And one story that kind of captures her is I was walking home from school one day and I saw a magazine that had a picture of Cambridge University on the cover. Something immediately connected with me and I got home and I threw the magazine on the kitchen table and I said, I want to go there. And my mother said, oh, let's see how we can go visit. I said, no, no, no, I want to go study there. And everybody else I said that to said, don't be ridiculous. You don't speak English.

Starting point is 00:04:32 We have no money and it's hard for English girls to get into Cambridge. My mother said, let's find out how you can go there. And the most amazing thing that sums her up and defines so much about my life is that she never made it seem onerous. She never made it seem like, oh, you must get there. You know, this is something that absolutely has to happen. It was more like, this is an adventure. We're going to give it a hundred percent. But if you don't get in, there's going to be another adventure. And I'm not going to love you any less because at the heart of everything was this unconditional loving that made us feel, my sister and I, that we could aim for the stars, but if we failed, it was fine. Were you ambitious at that age? Yes, I was ambitious, but also I was willing to fail because she used to say failure is not the opposite of success.

Starting point is 00:05:32 It's a stepping stone to success. So I was never afraid of failing. And I think so often people are reluctant to try something, to risk something, because anything really ambitious, anything really important you want to achieve, there are no guarantees. So if failure seems something overwhelming, you are less likely to try it. I mean, that's the story of your life in many respects, taking quite audacious leaps forward into the unknown.

Starting point is 00:06:08 I mean, as I went through your career, you ended up getting into Cambridge, which is pretty incredible because it's not only difficult to get into Cambridge, but back then, sort of pre-1970s, only three colleges at Cambridge actually accepted women. And you got into one of those colleges. So from a very early age, you were kind of breaking the rules. It was the most amazing thing. Like if you look back on your life, I'm sure there's an event, something that happened that led to a lot of other good things happening. And for me, if there was one thing, it was getting into Cambridge. Because then I became president of the Cambridge Union, which led to my being offered a contract to write a book when I had no intention of being a writer. So there was a cascade

Starting point is 00:07:00 of positive events in my life and my career that happened because I got into Cambridge. It's quite remarkable to me that you got into Cambridge because, you know, back in Greece, I think it was, that was just after the civil war. You didn't have money. You're in a one bedroom apartment. Your father had left and you set your sights on Cambridge because you saw it in a magazine. You then get into Cambridge. You become the president of the student union? Cambridge Union. Union. How?

Starting point is 00:07:28 How did you become the president of the union? So the thing that I loved from the beginning, you know, there are so many clubs and places you can get involved in at Cambridge. I immediately gravitated to the debating society, which is what the Cambridge Union is. I just was fascinated by the spectacle of people's hearts and minds being moved by words. And I had a few obstacles to overcome. I spoke with a heavy accent. I still speak with a heavy accent, but at the time it mattered more. And there was a lot of snobbery at Cambridge about accents and there was a lot of ridicule. And it was super hard because on top of everything else, I had this voice in my head that I now call the obnoxious roommate living in my head that would put me down, judge me, the kind of negative self-talk. So it wasn't just that I wasn't successful as a speaker when I

Starting point is 00:08:36 started. It was also that my own inner monologue was kind of devastating. But something made me persevere and learn and keep learning and learning and seeing some of the best speakers in the world speaking there. Your own inner monologue was devastating. Yes. I suppose I'm a ruminator. I've worked on it and I've dealt with it. But when I started in my career, being a ruminator was super hard. Like anytime I would make a mistake, I would ruminate on it. But when I started in my career, being a ruminator was super hard. Like anytime I would make a mistake, I would ruminate on it and overthink it and beat myself about it. And now it's so much better because that voice, the obnoxious roommate, only makes guest appearances. And most of the time, I'm really good about making mistakes, learning from them and moving on.

Starting point is 00:09:34 And you overcame the skill of public speaking, which is a pretty important skill to overcome for anybody. But that also is something that I think really shines through your career, is that you learned very early how to stand up and speak. And that I loved it. I mean, I've written a lot of books, but I love nothing as much as speaking. Because there's that connection, that direct connection with an audience. And being able to see their eyes and being able to respond in the moment. And I found this picture that you might recognize of you with all of these men.

Starting point is 00:10:14 I believe that might be... Do you know that picture? Yes, this is what they call like the standing committee of the union. Ah, okay. So that was before each debate, there would be a picture. And at the time, Rajiv here was the president and, you know, the treasurer, the secretary, and then behind there were members of the standing committee. And that's how I started. You know, you go up the ladder, standing committee, secretary, treasurer, president, if you're lucky. It's striking because you're the only woman in the image. And, you know, for much of your career, you walked through doors that mainly men walked through.

Starting point is 00:10:58 And becoming the president of the debating society is a role that very few women had ever occupied. I was the third. You were the third ever um what was it about you at that age that was already showing early signs of being able to break through doors that weren't supposed to be meant for women in particular at that time like getting into Cambridge University when there was only one college that three colleges that would accept it or becoming the third woman ever to lead the debating society? Stephen, I really think it goes back to being willing to fail. There was absolutely no guarantee at all that I would get elected. But I was willing to fail and there was no guarantee that I would get into Cambridge. So I like repeating that because often, you know, I have two daughters. And part of the

Starting point is 00:11:56 thing that I've tried to impress on my daughter is that they can go for their dreams. And if they fail, there will be another dream. One of your first, I guess, dreams, but one of your first aspirations was in writing, because you met someone who, a guy called Reg Davis. I had not met him, actually. He was the publisher of Germaine Greer's, who had written a book called The Female Eunuch. And he happened to see the debate, which was televised, that I participated in when I was president of the union, on the topic of women's rights and the changes in women's rights. And he sent me a letter and asked if I would write a book on the views I'd expressed in the debate.

Starting point is 00:12:50 What was the message, the central message that you were trying to communicate in this book? The central message was that you had to remember what life was like at the time. It was that women had to have a career. That was the movement. That was the time. It was that women had to have a career to be respected. That was the movement. It was a reaction to women not having careers and being stuck at home. So my message was really what's pretty much accepted now, but was pretty radical at the time, which is, yes, if you want to have a career, fantastic. Everything should be open to you. Equal opportunities, equal pay, everything. But if you want to bring up your children and you can afford to do it on one salary,

Starting point is 00:13:44 that should also be given equal respect. The world has changed a lot. And it's funny because the world has kind of come back, especially in the last couple of years, it seems that there's been a real counter-movement towards people thinking more deeply about the trade-offs. Yes. I think that's the best way to say it.

Starting point is 00:14:07 The trade-offs of pursuing a, you know, really, really intense career for 40 years, then deciding in your early 40s that you want to start thinking about children. It's funny because I was reading some stats around things like IVF. IVF is exploding now. Lots of the conversations I have on my podcast are about the fertility issues people are facing because we're waiting later

Starting point is 00:14:28 and later and later and later to have kids because I think we kind of think we can have it all. Yes. So where do you sit now on these issues of feminism, but also, you know, this idea of can you have it all? I believe you can have it all, but maybe not at the same time. And I believe that there isn't one right way to do it. Like you may want to focus on your career and then have children later, or you may want to have your children and then focus on your career. That's really what's changing. that there isn't one way to find fulfillment and contribute how do you know which way is right for you though because with so much noise outside you know it's hard isn't it to really sometimes listen to that voice inside you that's telling you what you want well that's why it's so important to to build that pathway to your heart, to your own knowing yourself. I mean, in your book, you write about these four pillars and you start with the self,

Starting point is 00:15:35 right? And you quote Leonardo da Vinci. And so many of the wise men and women we admire talk about that, you know, know thyself. The unexamined life is not worth living. These are all ways of reminding us that if we are not connected with our own center, then we're at the mercy of every new fad and whatever is in social media that we're affected by. If we build that connection and strengthen that trust, then everything changes. What did you want to be in terms of, you know, your career and your profession

Starting point is 00:16:22 at that age when you met that young man and he asked you to write this book? know, your career and your profession at that age, when you met that young man and he asked you to write this book, what was your, what were your career aspirations? I wanted to be a journalist. And I had studied economics. And I think of everything I was taught in my economics degree, the thing that has still stayed with me is the concept of the opportunity cost. That any time you do something, you are foregoing doing something else. Interesting.

Starting point is 00:16:55 That's a term that my investment fund use a lot. Really? I've never heard anybody really use it in the context of life. Yeah. And it's so important in the context of life, like friendships, relationships, obviously career choices. Therefore, there are choices about what you're not doing while you're choosing to do this. And I mean, that's what makes them all so special, right? Because they come at the expense of something else that you could have done. Absolutely, yes.

Starting point is 00:17:26 And you can't keep all your options open forever because then you have too many plans. I mean, I love what you said in your book about go all in to plan A. Don't kind of keep a back door open for plan B. You talked a second ago about how life is about choices. You know, relationships, everything is about choices. And one of the choices that you made was, I guess it wasn't a choice, but was to be in a relationship in your early 20s with a guy called Bernard Levin. He is a special character in your life, your life story, isn't he? For many, many reasons. Yes, I fell in love with him before I met him. He was a famous columnist for the London Times.

Starting point is 00:18:15 And I used to cut his columns and literally underline them, read them by heart because he was a phenomenal writer. He really taught me how to write. I mean, even before he knew me. And he was twice my age and half my size, but love is blind. And then there was a show on the BBC called Face the Music. And when I was elected president of the Cambridge Union, I was invited to take part. I was a classical music buff. So was he. And that's where we met. And he invited me to dinner

Starting point is 00:18:55 two weeks later, and I prepped for dinner. Like, I read everything he was writing about Northern Ireland and the Soviet Union. Trust me, we didn't talk about any of that, but I had done all my prep. And we were together for seven years. Wow. And I definitely wanted to marry him and have children with him. He wanted to have cats. Cats.

Starting point is 00:19:21 He had no intention. He didn't want to get married. He would have been happy to stay with me for the rest of his life. But I really wanted to have children and he didn't. How do you do that? How do you leave the situation where you're in love with someone? So you were with him from 23 to 30. Yes.

Starting point is 00:19:37 And at 30, you leave him because he doesn't want to have children with you. I was very clear that I wanted to have children. I have a lot of great friends who don't want to have children. you? I was very clear that I wanted to have children. I have a lot of great friends who don't want to have children and they're perfectly happy. Not everybody wants or should have children, but I knew I wanted to have children. I knew that this was part of a fulfilling life for me. Did you try and persuade him? I did. Failed. What was his reason? He just didn't want to have children. He just, he really, he was very stuck on his life, you know, writing, opera, travel, a lot of things we love doing together. So I took the decision.

Starting point is 00:20:25 And because I didn't trust myself to stay in London, I knew I wouldn't stay away. I literally left London and moved to New York. To get away from him. To get away from him. And again, you know how sometimes something in life that goes wrong leads to a lot of amazing things that go spectacularly right. And that's what happened with me. I mean, obviously it was incredibly hard and painful. I'm not minimizing it, but coming to New York led to meeting my husband, having my children, launching the Huffington Post, you know, launching Thrive. So basically, so much that happened to me, so many great things that happened in my life happened because a man wouldn't marry me.

Starting point is 00:21:20 Good to remember that. Were you kind of grieving the relationship when you came to New York? Yes, definitely. He passed away of Alzheimer's. Yes. Which is a particularly evil disease. Yes, the last time I saw him when I was in London, I arranged to see him and it's a terrible disease because no matter what I said, there was absolutely no recognition.

Starting point is 00:22:02 He didn't recognize you? No. Absolutely no recognition. He didn't recognize you? Mm-hmm. How does that feel? You know, it has gotten me extremely interested in any form of cognitive decline and learning a lot about it because millions of people are suffering from it. And it's affecting everybody they love and who loves them. And what is so interesting is to see the impact that how we live has on cognitive decline.

Starting point is 00:22:39 Obviously, there are genetic factors. But behaviors, how we live, how we sleep, the stress levels in our lives, what we eat, also have a huge impact on dementia, Alzheimer's, any form of decline. Michael Huffington, he's the man you met when you went to New York, that became the father of your two wonderful daughters. Yes. And our marriage lasted for 11 years. Nora Ephron, you know, who was this wonderful writer

Starting point is 00:23:16 who was also an editor at the Huffington Post, she used to say, marriage comes and goes, but divorce is forever. And what she meant by that is that if you have children, the relationship never ends because you are still parenting together. And our marriage didn't work, but we have a great divorce. Like we go on vacation together. We are really good friends. we are close as a family so i i think this is kind of really important given that 50 of marriages end in divorce

Starting point is 00:23:56 and the hardest thing is what happens to the children and And so anything we can do to give up our grudges and resentments, because obviously if there were no grudges and resentments and problems, we would still be married. It's so interesting, Stephen, to look at the science of forgiveness. When we forgive, our stress levels go down.

Starting point is 00:24:27 Can you believe our cholesterol levels go down? You know, the connection between forgiveness and our physical and mental health is enormous. And that's why I'm so much against cancel culture because it's a culture that gives up on forgiveness, on redemption, on giving people a chance to learn from mistakes and evolve and grow, which is, after all, what life is about.

Starting point is 00:24:56 While you were in New York, before you, I guess, discovered and started leveraging the internet with that website, which I think your first website was resignation.com. What were you doing in New York? What was your job? I was writing books. I've written 15 books altogether.

Starting point is 00:25:12 I mean, I've got a few, 10 of them here or something. But yeah, sort of 10 of them on the three of them on the table and seven of them with me on the floor here. What was, you know, you're a writer, you're writing physical books. And at the time, I think you're you're a writer you're writing physical books and at the time i think you're 55 years old yes and the internet is this fairly kind of new thing that's starting to take off what it just seems to me to be slightly unusual for someone who's writing physical books to make the decision to investigate this new technology called the internet because most

Starting point is 00:25:43 people are scared of new technologies they run away from it they criticize it they say it'll never work they attack it and they bury their head in the sand but for some reason you leaned in because all my life i've been fascinated by what we call the zeitgeist like the spirit of the times. And I could see that everything was moving online and that conversations were moving online. And yet people were making fun of it. You remember, it was the early days when people were joking about people who couldn't get a job blogging from their parents' basements. And I wanted to bring my friends, people who were writing physical books who could be published by the New York Times or the London Times, I want to bring them online.

Starting point is 00:26:37 And so I actually wrote an email to 500 friends, close and not so close, and invited them to write a blog on the Huffington Post. And I said, on any thought you have, any idea you have, you wake up and you want to react to the news of the day, you can just publish it on the Huffington Post. And we promise that we're going to treat it with respect. We had moderators from the beginning so that people couldn't just trash each other. What happened with the internet down the road? And so when we launched day one, we had Larry David and Ellen DeGeneres and Nora Ephron and Walter Cronkite, who had like an incredible lineup of people on the news of the day,

Starting point is 00:27:31 on things they cared about. And also on the same day we had a review, which was so devastating. I learned it by heart. It said, The Huffington Post is an unsurvivable failure. It is the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar, and Heaven's Gate rolled into one. I don't know if you know any of these movies, but they were all flops. So that was kind of the opening review. A year later, the writer of this review emailed me and said, I was wrong. And the Huffington Post changed how we consume news and I would like to write for you. And again, going back to no grudges, no resentments, I said, we would love you to. When they wrote that review, how did it feel when you read it here's the thing it felt bad

Starting point is 00:28:27 and it felt really bad but i think it's okay to feel bad again going back to your book we want to be comfortable all the time so what's wrong with feeling bad occasionally i love the way children are do you notice how a child is upset about something it could be as important as not being allowed to have this ice cream cone or as equally important as falling, whatever. They cry, they rage, and two minutes later, you look at them and it's over. I don't believe in growing a thick skin. I want to be permeable. Something bad happens, something upsetting happens,

Starting point is 00:29:22 experience it, feel it. Don't do what I call a spiritual bypass. You know, people who consider themselves spiritual, as I do, often act as though nothing is bothering them. And that's not true. That's not human. So experiencing it, feeling it, and moving on. You know, Roger Federer gave a commencement speech recently. I don't know if you saw it, and moving on.

Starting point is 00:29:48 You know, Roger Federer gave a commencement speech recently. I don't know if you saw it, which was amazing. I saw it on your LinkedIn. Yeah, because he talked about how he only made half the shots, half the points, you know, and here's this great tennis player. And you're not going to get them all right. He said the most important thing is to be 100% focused on the point and then the next point, not to carry it with you. It was so powerful that actually saved it.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Yes, it's really powerful. It's really powerful when it comes from a master, somebody who's so incredibly successful at his game. It was shocking to me because he says he won 80% of the matches he played in tennis, but only 54% of the points. And I found that really, really interesting. My brain almost like struggled with the numbers there. You're winning 80% of the matches, but you're only winning 54% of the points which means you're only you're basically still winning half of the points but you win the match but you win the match because you just now that's

Starting point is 00:30:53 mindset but you win the match because you don't carry the points you missed with you to the next point you are playing and a lot of the best athletes, we have a lot of athletes who are investors in Thrive because I believe athletes are a great role model for what we are teaching, which is that recovery is part of peak performance. And like Andre Uguidala, who is an investor, he talks about the same thing that Roger Federer talks about.

Starting point is 00:31:32 It's very important when he makes a mistake, when he misses something, not to ruminate about it. Because when you ruminate about it, then you are not fully present. For the next opportunity. For the next opportunity. For the next opportunity. So you're more likely to miss it. Huffington Post, was that your first big foray into business?

Starting point is 00:31:55 Yes. I think this is one of the things that, you know, from speaking to a lot of people in my life that they find exceptionally inspiring about you was typically, and this is being very intentionally stereotypical people that build tech companies which is what you did do it in their 20s and their men the young men in their 20s typically especially at that time you know it's changing a little bit now which is great but it but especially at that time um which was 2005

Starting point is 00:32:21 it was very atypical for a 55-year-old woman to build a tech company. Did you see that as, did you feel that resistance at all? I didn't actually. I think what happened is that we made it work, we showed it worked very quickly,

Starting point is 00:32:46 despite that bad review. And we kept experimenting. I think the mistake often is you build something successful and you stay there, and we never stayed there. Like we launched with politics and news, but very quickly we had a dozen other verticals, including sleep. We had a vertical on sleep. We had lifestyle verticals. We had sports verticals. We had a gay vertical. So we kept expanding. And then we built our journalism operation we won a pulitzer we launched in 18 countries

Starting point is 00:33:30 so it was a constant expansion and what happened is that again you know the clay christensen book the innovators dilemma yes one of my favorite books it's amazing so you know if the new york times had done then what it's doing now so successfully you know having a great digital presence there would have been no room for the huffington post so basically that's the innovators dilemma super successful incumbents miss the moment because they're super successful incumbents yeah and you were young you were scrappy as a company so you could you weren't encumbered by an old way of doing things and old revenue models you could come into the market with a fresh new idea and off it went and it went so far went to the uk and i was 18 years old when i applied to write on the Huffington Post. Yes. I got accepted

Starting point is 00:34:29 and I submitted how many articles, maybe four or five articles that got published on there. But I want to talk about business. I want to talk about building a business and what you learned about building a business from the rise of the Huffington Post. What are the most important, if I was one of your daughters and I came to you and I said, mum, listen, I want to build a business and I want it to be even bigger than the Huffington Post grew to be, what are the most important things I should be thinking about to be successful? with the founder or the CEO, which is put your own oxygen mask on first. Very often, you know, you're a founder,

Starting point is 00:35:16 you think I need to stay up. Stephen, is that you? No, what are we talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. I get to sleep every day. I need to stay up all day and night, sleep with my phone in case something happens in the middle of the night. And all the science now makes it very clear that when we are depleted, we are going to make bad decisions. It's so funny because one night I was at a dinner and Jeff Bezos, that was when I was writing my book on sleep. And so I was asking everybody about their sleep habits.

Starting point is 00:35:51 So I asked him about his sleep habits. And he said, I sleep eight hours a night. I said, you do. Tell me about it. Why? He said, because I'm judged by the quality of my decisions, not the quantity of my decisions. And I have noticed the difference because he's very data-driven.

Starting point is 00:36:11 When I have six hours of sleep, my decisions are not as good. So I said to him, you must write about it. He said, which I used to say to everybody. And he said, no, no, no, no. He said, I'm a private man. I don't need to write about it. I said, please write about it. It's not for you. It is going to help so many people who want to be you to realize that they don't need to be sleep deprived and exhausted. So I literally bugged him, texted him for like three months until finally he wrote about it, I think to get me off his back.

Starting point is 00:36:49 And it was amazing. He wrote about it on Thrive that we had just launched Thrive. It was everywhere, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal. He was one of the first CEOs to write about sleep as a performance multiplier, a productivity multiplier. Since then, you know, Satya Nadella has written about it. A lot of CEOs have written about it. A lot of founders in Silicon Valley now.

Starting point is 00:37:17 People have gone from bragging about how sleep-deprived they are. I'm wearing my Oura ring. Yeah, I was looking now, yeah. You're wearing your hoop and you're an investor. I love hoop. Hashtag ad. It's fantastic. So everything has changed, but it's changed very fast.

Starting point is 00:37:34 2016, when I wrote the book, people were still bragging about sleep deprivation. You know sleep deprivation well. I do. I mean, I collapsed, but from sleep deprivation. You know sleep deprivation well. I do. I mean, I collapsed, but from sleep deprivation and from buying into this collective delusion that in order to succeed, it was two years into building the Huffington Post. I was the divorced mother of two little girls. And I had bought into this delusion that in order to be super founder and super mom, I didn't have the luxury to take care of myself.

Starting point is 00:38:08 Take me into that moment. If I was a fly on the wall, what would I have seen in that moment? So I literally woke up that morning, went to CNN to do a news hit, came back, sat at my desk, felt cold, got up to go get a sweater and collapsed and hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone and came to in a little pool of blood. And that was the beginning of a journey of going from doctor to doctor, from echocardiogram to MRI

Starting point is 00:38:55 to find out what was wrong with me. Because literally people thought that she had a heart defect, a brain tumor? Why did she just collapse? And then I was literally diagnosed with burnout. Now, 2007, burnout was not a term much in use. But it turned out to be an incredible gift because I decided that I really now wanted to make this part of my life, help the world see that this epidemic of burnout that I started seeing was everywhere,

Starting point is 00:39:36 was completely unnecessary. It was unnecessary suffering that we didn't need to buy into this collective delusion in order to succeed. Could you have become successful without that high-intensity work? Absolutely. I think the biggest success of the Huffington Post actually happened after that. And let me just make that very clear, Stephen. Taking care of yourself doesn't mean you don't work with intensity. In fact, when we launched Thrive and we're interviewing people to hire, we realized early on that there are people who thought, oh, they could go work for Thrive and it would be like chilling under the mango tree. So we had to explain to them, no, no, we're a very ambitious, high-charging company.

Starting point is 00:40:27 And if you want to chill under the mango tree, that's not a good place to be. And we tell everybody there will be times when you have to deliver a product or meet a deadline and you may have to work late or work a weekend. But what we do then, we give people thrive time immediately after. Like if you've worked extra hard to meet a deadline, then take thrive time to recharge. And you know, Stephen, that's actually good for the business because very often people get sick or make their biggest mistakes when they are completely depleted. So it's not about lack of intensity.

Starting point is 00:41:11 It's about taking time to refuel, recharge, and be at your best. Do you think this collective delusion that you describe, which I'm defining as this notion that you have to sacrifice your well-being to be successful. Yes. Who is it letting down more, men or women? Okay. Obviously, there are more men who've succeeded and therefore there are numerically more men who believe and practice that. But I think a lot of women, too, who want to make sure they're not seen as being on the mommy track

Starting point is 00:41:51 or not being as passionate or intense about their work have bought into the delusion. But what I found very interesting is to try and see what was the beginning of that delusion. And I trace it back to the first industrial revolution when people started revering machines and after machines, software. And what is basically the essence of machines and software? No downtime. You know, you have Salesforce bringing out a new piece of software

Starting point is 00:42:32 and saying 99.99999% uptime. Well, the human operating system is different. For the human operating system, downtime is a feature, not a bug. And the science is so clear and unequivocal about it. Is that why you came up with this notion called the third women's revolution? What is the third women's revolution? The first women's revolution was about giving us the vote. The second women's revolution? The first women's revolution was about giving us the vote. The second women's revolution was about equal pay and equal opportunities. The third women's

Starting point is 00:43:13 revolution was about making it clear that we can succeed without burning out, that we don't have to sacrifice our well-being, our relationships on the altar of success. And I believe that as we're doing it now, we're in the middle of it, and a lot of men are a big part of it, that it's good for everybody. I mean, look at the number of men who end up with heart attacks,

Starting point is 00:43:47 high cholesterol, hypertension, all because they think that's the only way to succeed. The traditional models don't work for women because women burn out faster than men. Is that true? I don't think women burn out faster than men. Is that true? I don't think women burn out faster than men. Most women, first of all, still do the bulk of work at home

Starting point is 00:44:11 in terms of children and child. That we theoretically believe that men are equally engaged, but the data doesn't bear that out. But what I was saying in Thrive, I see you're holding, the Thrive book, is really about that third metric of success. I obviously like thirds. You know, if you think of the first two metrics of success, money and power slash status, and most people think that's life, but it's not. It's like trying to sit on a two-legged stool. Sooner or later, you fall off.

Starting point is 00:44:55 The third leg of the stool is everything else. It's our health and well-being. It's our capacity to connect with ourselves and our wisdom. It's our capacity for a sense of wonder and the mystery of life and the small joys of life and then giving. So these four other areas are what make a complete and whole life. In Thrive, there's a stat which stood out to me. It says women in stressful jobs have a 40% increased risk of heart disease and a 60% greater risk of diabetes, which is a pretty shocking stat. Yes.

Starting point is 00:45:32 And it begs the question, why? One of the reasons is that women internalize mistakes more. What I said about myself is true about many successful women. We are ruminators. We tend to go over and over in our minds any mistake we made. And men have a much easier time just moving on. They have a much easier time being Roger Federer. So that's a big problem. The other is this perfectionism and the fact that they still have a larger percentage of work at home. And even if they get a lot of help from their partner, the mind share, you know, they still are thinking, oh,

Starting point is 00:46:26 my partner is picking up the child for the doctor's appointment, but I still think about it. You're still holding that burden, whereas maybe men don't always hold it in such a way. It's interesting that you reference giving as being one of the most important elements of the third metric. I read a study in the book that says, a 2013 study by the University of Wisconsin found that employees who give back to society, for example, through volunteering, are less likely to quit their job, which I thought was really interesting

Starting point is 00:46:59 as an employer, as a way to drive retention in the team. But I also pondered why that might be. Why is it that when people give, they're more likely to stay in their job? Well, if you think of what makes a fulfilling life, what gives you meaning and purpose and all the things that make it more likely that a company culture will succeed. If you're in a company culture that encourages giving,

Starting point is 00:47:27 I mean, at Thrive, we have giving days, we match donations, and this creates a kind of giving culture which makes it more likely that people working in that company are going to feel fulfilled because fulfillment is not just a function of your job, it's a function of everything around it. Yeah, and so if you feel fulfilled, you'll just be happier in your life and you'll be less likely to want to change things. Exactly, because very often,

Starting point is 00:47:57 if you are unhappy in your life, changing the job might be the easiest thing that you think may change outcomes. When you had your burnout diagnosis, did that change anything for you? Everything. How quickly did it change? So quickly. Really? You know, it's pretty dramatic when you break your cheekbone. And it's equally dramatic when you spend a lot of time in doctor's waiting rooms wondering what's wrong with you.

Starting point is 00:48:26 So yes, it changed a lot of things. The keystone habit that it changed was sleep. Okay. And then as I started the phenomenon of burnout and talked to a lot of scientists and wrote the sleep book it became very clear that there are five critical behaviors five daily behaviors that affect our health both physical health and mental health sleep, what we eat. Again, just keeping it simple. Can we reduce ultra-processed foods? Can we reduce sugar? Movement, exercise, stress management,

Starting point is 00:49:18 and connection. Connection to ourselves, connection with each other. So these five behaviors now, Stephen, are seen, are more critical to our health and our longevity than genes and medical care. Genes, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. Medical care obviously is imperative when we're really sick, but health is really what happens between doctor visits. Like what we do every day, because just think of it, the idea that you have your annual physical and that's your health care,

Starting point is 00:50:06 what are you doing every day? Are you stressed out? Are you sleep deprived? Are you eating junk? It's interesting because you're speaking from a place of someone who was wildly successful in a monetary sense as well, because you have that sort of breaking point i think it was in april 2007 when you collapsed and then the huffington post continues to grow and continues to become successful all over the world it expands across the world um i think in the year when you had the you collapsed on the desk you had 3.5 million users accessing the website roughly around that time. It expands around the world.

Starting point is 00:50:48 It's ranked as the most powerful blog in the world. In 2008, by 2009, Huffington Post integrated into Facebook. And by 2011, you sold Huffington Post to AWOL for $300 million. $315. Oh, and the rest. $315 million and became president and editor-in-chief of the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group. Now at that point, that's a lot of money, right? However much money you made from the deal, that's a lot of money. And you get the forbidden fruits that many people in their lives right now think they're chasing you get that you know that big financial freedom windfall

Starting point is 00:51:29 what does it change um nothing really because um my books have been very successful and um i feel there is a certain amount of money that changes your life. And after that, there isn't really much change. I mean, I remember the first time I felt rich was when I could go into a bookstore and buy a book without looking at the price. You know, when you would go to a bookstore and look, oh, you know, I'll wait for you to come out and pay for the book.

Starting point is 00:52:12 There are different levels like that. Are you happier now than you were then in that bookstore when you didn't have to look at the price? Oh, I'm definitely happier, not because of money. I'm happier because I'm much more connected to myself because I'm constantly growing as a human being. And that's, for me, the key, you know, that sense of evolution and growth

Starting point is 00:52:34 is ultimately what defines my life. It's not my work. I think that's so key, Stephen, because so many people stay in jobs they no longer love because they are big jobs. They have a big title and they feel if I give up that job, who am I going to be? I mean, listen, when I left the Huffington Post, I left a very successful multimedia company all around the world with 850 journalists to start again, literally, to raise money, hire people. But I was so clear that what I wanted to do is to help people lead

Starting point is 00:53:20 healthier lives. What age were you when you left Huffington Post? I launched, as you said, I launched Huffington Post at 55 and I launched Thrive Global at 66. And now, I'm now 74, we launched a new company with Sam Altman and OpenAI that is Thrive AI Health to help democratize everything we've brought to Thrive, you know, about these five behaviors. Yeah. Because that's kind of the ultimate inequality. Like, as you kind of were alluding, people with resources know about these five behaviors. They may not know all the science behind it, but now we see it. We see people prioritizing their sleep, what they're eating, exercise, stress management, listening to Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman. And we need to democratize this knowledge

Starting point is 00:54:28 and also help people adopt these healthier habits. And over the last seven years that I've been building Thrive, working with a great group of scientists, I really believe we've cracked the code on behavior change. You know, behavior change is supposed to be very hard, right? But the way to make it achievable is through what we call micro steps. And interestingly enough, you write in your book about making everything small. The progress principle and yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:08 And the one percents, yeah. Kind of small little improvements. If you think of it, behavior change in our culture was seen as New Year resolutions. Yeah. I'm going to go to the gym an hour a day. I'm going to give up all sugar. Two to three weeks later, these resolutions are abandoned. People have a sense of failure. They feel shame. So the alternative is what we're doing, which is micro steps, too small to fail. We'll never tell people meditate for 20 minutes in the morning.

Starting point is 00:55:46 No. We say when you wake up in the morning, can you take 60 seconds before you go to your phone to breathe consciously or to remind yourself what you are grateful for or to set your intention for the day? The point is can you break it down into the smallest possible component? And what happens, people build a sense of success. And we see that, you know, working with Walmart.

Starting point is 00:56:16 Walmart is one of our customers. They have 1.6 million associates, as they call their employees, in the United States alone. And we work with them. And they actually give us also a million dollars a year to spend in financial rewards to help people have another incentive, because incentives are superpowers. And we've had people reverse diabetes, reverse hypertension, but it was all one little micro step at a time. It's remarkable how small steps done continuously can really change your life, but nobody believes in them because you don't see huge rewards from

Starting point is 00:56:58 a micro step in life. Cumulatively you do. Yeah. Yeah. Which requires faith. Faith, but also what helps is when you see other people having achieved it. Yeah. So we, part of it is the storytelling. So we take all the stories and all the companies we work with and publicize them. We put them on the platform. So if you see that somebody who has a similar job to you can do it, you feel more optimistic that you can do it. And also removing judgments, you know, often self judgments get in the way of behavior change. And if we say this is a judgment-free zone, you're going to fall off the wagon. You're going to make mistakes. But one little step at a time. B.J. Fogg, who is the chair of our scientific board from Stanford, he wrote a book called Tiny Habits. And it's the same idea. Tiny habits, micro steps,

Starting point is 00:58:03 making small progress that becomes cumulatively healthier habits. I want to talk to you about mistakes. The Huffington Post becomes, I think at its peak, and correct me if I'm wrong here, the second biggest news website on the earth. Is that correct? I don't know it sounds good i read in 2014 when you were 64 years old the huffington post became the second most popular news site in the world that was an article written by the guardian that it said that in um but it sounds i mean it sounds great but i'm i'm sure along the way you know you said you talked about failure earlier there was a lot of mistakes made in that journey now as a person in business and i'm 31 so I'm I'm in my in my think what you're going to build by the time

Starting point is 00:58:51 you're 66 if I'm still alive if I start putting that phone away um what are the mistakes that you made in that in that business I don't think there are bigger mistakes for a founder than Bounder than hiring mistakes. So I've kind of created a little rule book about hiring. Like number one, never interview when you're tired. I find that when I interview and I'm tired, I just really want to say yes. I want to just kind of cross one more thing of my to-do list. I don't want to go interview one more person. So that's subconscious. It's not that you are consciously thinking that.

Starting point is 00:59:37 But so increasing the chances of not making hiring mistakes is huge. Also, there were times when I kind of knew instinctively that there was something wrong about this hire. But mentally, I could not give myself reasons. You know that time when you feel, that's not quite right, but the resume is amazing. The references are incredible. My board likes them. But something in me, no. Follow that. Because it's so much more important not to hire the wrong person than to miss someone yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean there's the phrase isn't there that a bad apple spoils the

Starting point is 01:00:35 barrel or something yes and that's certainly the case in business that one bad apple can really ruin a great culture of people yes and and, when I was on the board of Uber during the height of the bad culture problems, I saw how a culture is really the company's immune system. You know, there are always going to be bad apples. You know, it's humanity. But if you have a good thriving culture, the bad apples can be removed without infecting the culture.

Starting point is 01:01:13 If the culture is not strong, it's the other way around. Are there any other decisions that if you could go back in time with the Huffington Post, you would have made differently outside of just purely who you hired? I would say that... You're hesitating. No, I'm hesitating because what came to me is an amazing decision that I was... that everybody thought I was wrong on.

Starting point is 01:01:48 And I want to say that because it's also something else that's very important, I think, for anyone starting a business, which is my incredible belief in partnerships. You know, very often when you are building a company, you think that you have to do everything. But speed is incredibly important. Being a first mover is incredibly important. And it's very hard to do that if you want to do everything yourself. Yourself as a company. So when the Huffington Post was bought by AOL. The CFO, the board, everybody wanted us to go internationally alone.

Starting point is 01:02:32 And I wanted to do it through partners. I felt that we're going to be able to move so much faster. And if we go as we did to France in partnership with Le Monde, that means we don't have to learn about French labor laws, we don't have to find an office space. You know, we kind of, there's so much the partner would bring, plus, of course, their reputation. So I prevailed, which was touch and go.

Starting point is 01:03:07 And within just over a year, we were in 18 countries. That would never have happened. Everybody who wanted to do it after us, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, it was too late. We had already established ourselves in these countries. Did you sell the Huffington Post at the right time? Absolutely. Absolutely. Look at what's happening now. I would say that I sold too soon, but I'm a bigger believer in selling too soon rather than too late.

Starting point is 01:03:44 Yeah. You know, if you're going to pick something, sell too soon. And also, I'm a big believer in good acquisitions. You know, a lot of acquisitions fail. The acquisition by AOL was a huge success because we suddenly had all these resources to grow a lot faster. What have you come to learn that the point of life is? Because you've lived such a varied life.

Starting point is 01:04:14 You've traveled all over the world. You've climbed many, many mountains. And I wonder now as you sit here, like what is the thing that you know that I don't know? I'm 31, so there's clearly some things that you really, really know well, that I'm going to unfortunately have to find out through failure, painful failure, that maybe I can avoid if you tell me. Okay, just a few things. Okay, I'm going to get my, I'm going to write down so I don't forget. But one is not to look over our shoulder for approval, not to indulge in unnecessary worries and negative fantasies.

Starting point is 01:04:52 When I look back at my journals, you know, I like to journal a lot, and when I look back at my journals, so many of my worries were truly negative fantasies. Negative fantasies. Meaning imagining the worst about the future. And one other little saying I have on my desk is by the French philosopher Montaigne, who said there were many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened. So that's just as depleting, believe it or not,

Starting point is 01:05:29 as things, really bad things that do happen because that's how we process information. And so trust. One of the things that my mother totally instilled in my sister and me was the sense that we're living in a benevolent universe. What does that mean? It means that life is on our side. You know, there are people who go through life and think that at best we're living in an indifferent universe.

Starting point is 01:06:07 That the higher power or God or whatever you want to call it, you know, the order of the universe doesn't care. Yeah. There are people who think it's a hostile universe. I believe profoundly that it's a benevolent universe. I believe profoundly that it's a benevolent universe. I trust that whatever happens has a reason and a purpose. And that's the Rumi quote, live life as if everything is rigged in your favor. Now, that doesn't mean only good things happen. Absolutely not. A lot of bad things happened in my life, starting with losing my first child that was born stillborn. You know, so it's not like bad things didn't happen, but it's like, what is it teaching us? Like life is a schoolroom and we are constantly learning. And that's, for me, in the survival, sex, and status slash power.

Starting point is 01:07:28 The fourth instinct being an instinct for meaning, purpose, transcendence. And that's something which, when it's integrated in our lives, gives life so much more depth and richness. That first moment of struggle you cited there when your child was born still, how old were you? 36. 36. How does one process that?

Starting point is 01:08:03 Well, it's enormous pain and grief and staying with it and living with it. And also, I was 36. I didn't know if I could have a child. You know, nobody quite knew why I lost that child. But also that trust again. Underneath the grief, there was that sense that I would have a child, that I would move beyond this pain,

Starting point is 01:08:42 that the pain would not define me. Is it hard to have that faith and that perspective in the moment? Well, the people that I most admire, you know, the writers that I learned so much from are writers who have that faith. I mean, look at Holocaust survivors. Wasn't your father? My father was in a concentration camp because he was publishing an underground newspaper during the German occupation of Greece,

Starting point is 01:09:22 and he was arrested and spent the war in a concentration camp in Germany. My mother was in the Red Cross hiding Jewish girls during that occupation. So they both had this kind of extraordinary life and faith, you know, that kept them going in the middle of incredible horror. Your mother. Yes. She's beautiful. And strong.

Starting point is 01:10:12 She definitely brought us up with this fearlessness, but she would always say, fearlessness is not an absence of fear. It's like going ahead and doing what you think you should do, even while you're afraid. It's like a muscle that you exercise. She passed away before the success of the Huffington Post. Before it existed, yes. She passed away in 2000.

Starting point is 01:10:42 There's not a single day that I don't feel my mother's presence with me. Quote you, wrote onto the Huffington Post. What do you think she would have thought of the Huffington Post had she been able to see the success that it became? You know what is interesting, Stephen? When people would say to her, are you proud of your daughter? She would always say, I don't use that term. I'm not proud. I just love what she's doing

Starting point is 01:11:08 and contributing. You know, she didn't see it as pride. She saw it more as that journey. And that's kind of really important to understand what I learned from her, that it isn't just about achieving. It's about joy while you're achieving. And now that's kind of my barometer. Like it's not just about being productive. Kind of I prove to myself that I can be productive. But if I don't feel that joy, it means there's something off that i need to recalibrate it's interesting because that's kind of what the the mission of of thrive is about from what i was reading when i was on the website um it's not the idea of becoming unproductive which is sometimes

Starting point is 01:11:59 associated with well-being it's sometimes thought that if you focus on your well-being, you become an unproductive person. Which is completely false. I mean, scientifically false. And that's what I'm so passionate about convincing more and more people about. And that's why I love using examples of athletes who prioritize their well-being because it improves their performance. So if we see well-being as a productivity multiplier, if we see what we are doing now, for example, is optimizing the health of executives in companies. You know, we talk about longevity. We talk about health span.

Starting point is 01:12:49 If these are optimized within a company productivity is going to increase she was a very interesting woman um your mother from everything that i read and researched about her um on the day that she died she demanded that you leave the hospital to go to a food market to prepare lunch for the family and um i read that she fell over in the evening but didn't let anyone call an ambulance yeah she um in the evening you know after she had prepared this feast for everybody um she fell and she said let's all gather around with her on the floor. And she said to me with this incredible authority, do not call the paramedics. And she said it with such authority that I didn't.

Starting point is 01:13:40 I called the nurse who had taken care of her at home and we sat around and she said, let's open a bottle of wine. And we opened a bottle of wine and we sat there and talked. And my two daughters were scootering around inside the house. And then she keeled over and died. She had told her housekeeper earlier that she knew the time had come and she wanted to die at home surrounded by her family. How did she know? I believe we know. I believe

Starting point is 01:14:19 when we are connected with our own truth, we know. So she fell. She told you not to call the paramedics and the ambulance. She asked all of you to gather around and to bring some champagne. Red wine. Some red wine. And she passed away shortly after there on the floor.

Starting point is 01:14:43 Yes. And the way she said to me, do not call the ambulance, made me not call the ambulance. You know, there was so much authority behind it that that's what she wanted. And of course, I didn't know she would die. Had you have known, would you have called the ambulance? I would.

Starting point is 01:15:07 Even though she told you not to? Yeah. It's hard not to. How did that change things for you? What's the aftermath of the loss of a woman that meant so much to you like? It was incredibly painful because she really was the foundation of my life. And, you know, she lived with me. She helped me bring up my children.

Starting point is 01:15:34 She was an integral part of everything in my life and my sister's life. But what you just read is true. I mean, I do feel her presence so much. And I really feel that when we integrate death in our lives, it enriches our lives. You know, Socrates said, practice death daily, not in a morbid sense, but in the sense that the Romans would carve MM, memento mori, remember death on statues, on trees, not in order to be obsessed with death, but in order to put life in perspective. So often we just worry about trivial things.

Starting point is 01:16:32 We get upset about minor things. And if we kind of remember that life is a terminal condition and that death is the one certainty, it just changes how we perceive what happens in our lives. What else then for me? So you gave me two pieces of advice there for my life. I think you're going to be a great dad, Stephen. I really do. And I think having children

Starting point is 01:17:03 also puts everything in perspective because there's something magical about these little beings and the continuity of life. And, I mean, you are so creative and constantly launching new projects, which is fantastic. But learning also to disconnect from that and fully connect with yourself, your loved ones, your children when you have them, I think is game-changing. And I believe it also makes us better at our jobs because it gives us that perspective. You have these moments, these flashes of intuition and new ideas that are so much easier when we are recharged and not running on empty. In terms of those different seasons of life that we go through,

Starting point is 01:18:15 how have you had to show up differently in the different seasons of your life? And I've been thinking a lot about this lately because someone said to me when they likened it to doing a triathlon they said in a triathlon what you want to do because there's 400 people you know jumping in the water for the initial part is you want to swim like crazy at the start to just get ahead and then you can kind of calm down a little bit once you've got away from the crowd and he was making the analogy that this is very much like life in your early 20s you kind of want to go for a little bit say yes to a lot of things and then as you kind of go through these different seasons of life you play a slightly different game i don't know if you can relate to any of

Starting point is 01:18:51 that really at the heart of what i want to know is you know it's it's it's a it's atypical for a when did you launch your most recent company you mean the the Thrive AI Health? Thrive AI Health was like this week, wasn't it? I saw it online. Yeah, like two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, right. So you're launching an AI company at 74 years old. I was 73 at the time. 73. Big difference. Which is atypical, right? And this is what I want to get to is you're in a different season of life. Yes, but in whatever season of life, you can keep creating. And that's partly what I'd love people to look at. There is definitely something in our culture that makes us think that we have to achieve everything before we are 30 or maybe before we are 40.

Starting point is 01:19:47 You know, you have the 30 under 30s and the 20 under 20s, and soon we are going to have the five under fives. And the fact is that if you take care of yourself, and that's the big if, you know, if you focus on these five behaviors and your health is sustained and you feel vital, then you can keep creating until the end. because I love what I'm doing and because I love building. And there's no end to when you build. So the one thing that I don't think I've convinced you about, but I want to have one more go, is that you really think that taking care of yourself is kind of a luxury for later in life. It's like a little bit of a luxury for when you're not like launching new companies and

Starting point is 01:20:58 being all in swimming really fast. And what I, I want to at least take on trust for a minute, but explore it, is that that's not true. That I a thousand percent believe that when you prioritize these five behaviors, not in any dogmatic way. We're all works in progress. I mean, I talk about it all the time and am I doing it perfectly? Of course not. Nobody is. But if you really prioritize these five behaviors, how you sleep and what you eat and how you exercise and how you manage your stress and how you stay connected with yourself and your loved ones, I promise you that everything you're doing will be even more successful. That is an absolute guarantee. It doesn't mean that you wouldn't be successful the other way.

Starting point is 01:22:10 Of course, I mean, there are a large number of burnt-out people who have succeeded. But what else could they have done if they were more connected with their creativity, their intuition, if they didn't spend as much time ruminating over mistakes or making bad hiring decisions as I did or making bad decisions generally or refusing to delegate. That's another issue. Definitely, when you ask me about mistakes, I think it took me a long time to learn to delegate. And that's partly because we feel nobody can do it as well. And maybe that's true. But then there was one day when I realized, you know, if somebody does it 60% as well, and I can be freed up to do higher order things, fantastic. Let them do it 60% as well and learn two more things on the business side. If you are going to build this culture that I know you believe in,

Starting point is 01:23:14 that can be game changing for the success of a company, one thing that we recommend is the first day of somebody's new job in your company, have the manager conduct an entry interview. An entry interview? We conduct exit interviews. But what about entry interviews? And it doesn't have to be long. It can be 15 minutes. And the first question of the entry interview, Stephen, welcome. What's important to you outside of work and how can I

Starting point is 01:23:55 support you? Suddenly, you hear about what matters to them. They feel if what matters to them is to take their kid to school at eight in the morning, or they have an elderly parent they're taking care of, or whatever it is, or they have a flute lesson they want to go to at seven on a Thursday, they don't have to hide. It can be baked into the job. The manager knows. It creates more intimacy. It creates more connection, especially since so many of us are in hybrid environments. And the other thing is compassionate directness is our number one value at Thrive, which means encouraging people to speak up when they are not happy, when something is a problem. So often people sit on that and it festers. And if they have permission to express

Starting point is 01:24:55 it, to express dissatisfaction, to express something that's not working, it's so much easier to solve the problem. Amen. Amen. You're an icon for many, many people. And specifically when I spoke to some of the people in my company that you were coming and I was going to speak to you today, there was a lot of excitement from everybody, but particularly a faction of women who are high-performing businesswomen and are doing exceptionally well in their careers.

Starting point is 01:25:32 And I spoke to one of those women and she said that she really looked up to you because you were able to achieve so much in spite of prejudice. Prejudice that is inevitably there. It's funny, interesting that you say you didn't really think about it or notice it like in that way, but a prejudice towards women in business that is still prevalent today, but was certainly more prevalent when you launched the Huffington Post. Is there anything at all that we should be thinking about? Whether it's because I was a young

Starting point is 01:26:02 black kid or whether it's because I'm a woman that's building a technology company, what relationship should we have with our prejudice? Well, there is no question that even though none of that stopped me, the language used towards me or towards some of the women I'm sure that you are talking to who are building successful businesses is different. Like a man is much more likely to be called bold or audacious when a woman is going to be called pushy or aggressive or bossy. And these are definite prejudices in our culture. The question is, are we going to let them stop us? While we are trying to change the culture for everybody,

Starting point is 01:26:57 how can we move on and not let these things derail us? You don't strike me as a person that spends much time caring about things that might stand in your way. Well, that's what I said earlier about not looking over our shoulder for approval. You know, it's been very easy historically for women, to be liked and admired if they didn't try to build something, if they were kind of pretty and well-dressed and didn't break with conventions. But is that something that we want to do I think I don't really know any young women who want to be in that place now what kind of leader are you in business if I asked your team members if I said what is she like if I because I got some of them

Starting point is 01:27:58 in the back there we're actually interviewing them as we speak so we're going to get their answers then we're going to play it against your answers okay okay so they're being interviewed right now what do you think they're saying in there i i feel that um we're a bit of a family um which means that i'm going to express what i'm going through they will express what they're going through. We work hard. We celebrate small victories. I think that's really important. We don't wait for just the big breakthroughs. And because everybody is so much younger than me, I do have that maternal sense for the people I'm working with. And a lot of the people I'm working with.

Starting point is 01:28:45 And a lot of the people I'm working with have been with me since the Huffington Post. Like our chief brand officer joined me as an intern from Princeton at the Huffington Post, helped me build the Huffington Post, came with me to Thrive. So these are sort of very long relationships. You said family. I can confirm in my earpiece, they've likened it to Guantanamo Bay. I'm joking. I'm joking.

Starting point is 01:29:17 But they love it, right? They have no choice. But it's Guantanamo Bay, but great food. Great food. Was there luck in your journey? Was there moments of luck that you look back on and say, that was truly outside of my control? But if that hadn't have happened,

Starting point is 01:29:35 I wouldn't have been the success that I am. Oh my God, so much luck. What is the piece of luck that comes to mind? So after my first book, which I wrote when I was 23 and was a big success, I wrote a book on leadership. I was 27. I took a lot of time writing it and I ran out of money, all the money I had made from The Female Woman, my first book. But I was determined not to write another book on women. After that first

Starting point is 01:30:15 book, everybody wanted me to keep writing on women. And trust me, I had said everything I needed to say, everything I knew and beyond on women. And I wanted to move on. As you can see from the topics of my books, I like to move on because I learn through writing a book. And that's very important to me. So I ran out of money. And so I remember being really depressed, walking down St. James Street in London and

Starting point is 01:30:44 thinking, well, you know, maybe my first book was a fluke. This book has been rejected by 37 publishers. So... 37 publishers rejected your book? Yes. Rejection after rejection after rejection. Why didn't you give up? I said, maybe it's time to give up and go get a real job. And I went, I was going by Barclays Bank in the corner of St. James Street.

Starting point is 01:31:13 I don't know if it's still there. And something made me get into the bank and ask to see the bank manager. And the bank manager, whose name was Ian Bell, came and I told him my story, and I asked for an overdraft. I had no assets, and he gave it to me. Now, that's luck, right? He had no earthly banking reason to give me that overdraft. I still sent him a holiday card every year, but it reminded me of fairy tales, you know, when the hero or the heroine is stuck in a dark forest and then these helpful animals come out to guide them out of the forest.

Starting point is 01:31:56 Well, that's back to trust. I believe in life there are these helpful animals in the form of a bank manager or whatever. And you can call it luck. But I also call it part of the benevolent universe we live in, Stephen. Can you influence the benevolent universe? Because you point at these moments and say luck, but in there I see so much intention. And I also see someone who I imagine, from meeting you today, and there we've spent two hours together,

Starting point is 01:32:26 has an ability to win people over. I want to know how you can influence the benevolent universe. Absolutely. You influence the benevolent universe by taking action. Like I took action. I went to the bank.

Starting point is 01:32:44 The bank didn't come to you. The bank didn't come to you. The bank didn't come to me. But beyond that, it was out of my hands. And very often people don't go to the bank because they're afraid of rejection. So when we've overcome that fear of rejection, that fear of failure, we are much more likely to take bold moves. And also, if you look at your life, and if I look at mine, there are so many so-called coincidences, serendipity, you know, somebody you meet. I mean, I loved your conversation with Whitney Wolfe. She was at a dinner and they offered her a job. Sure, she called them to follow up on the job, but that you could say was just a coincidence that

Starting point is 01:33:35 she met that person at a dinner. And I call coincidences the miracles that God performs anonymously. And if you don't like using the term God, it doesn't matter. Whatever term you use, it's basically that benevolent universe. There is a phrase, there is a verse in the Bible that I love, which is not a spiral falls, but God is behind it. Like nothing happens. Nothing happens, however trivial, that doesn't have some divine purpose behind it. Do you believe that?

Starting point is 01:34:14 I do. Actually, Stephen, I don't believe. I know. How can you be so sure? I bet there are many things you're sure of aren't you sure of the impact you are having with your work don't be modest am i sure of the impact no i don't think it's possible to be i know that we're doing good work for sure for sure because people come up and tell me well isn't that impact yeah yeah yeah i'm sure yeah i'm sure

Starting point is 01:34:52 that that's a positive force for sure yeah but that's because someone's come up and told me right but nobody's come up to me and told me that you know there's divinity there's something divine in everything that happens. Because the minute you say that, I think of all the bad things that happen. I think it is, I'm just going to be honest, one of the first things that I thought about was what happened in Nazi Germany. Of course. I thought about the suffering.

Starting point is 01:35:14 Absolutely, there is an enormous amount of suffering. But the question is, do you trust that it's not because there is an indifferent or malevolent force in the universe, but because so much of what happens is beyond our understanding that we cannot comprehend the mystery of the universe just through our minds alone. I do trust that. And so the more we can connect with our spirit, our soul,

Starting point is 01:35:45 the more we can be in touch with meaning and purpose. But if we try to comprehend everything through our minds, they're so limited. What was the advice that you wish you'd got when you were that young woman who wrote her first, you know, around the age, in your early 20s, when you wrote your first book, what is the advice that you wish someone had given you that you weren't given? Definitely, definitely not to worry so much. Was that really the sort of bane of your? because so many of my worries were so unnecessary and so depleting.

Starting point is 01:36:30 It seems that you took a lot of action in spite of your worries, though. I did. Kind of comes back to your mother's advice. Yeah. Fail in spite of fear. There would have been more joy if I had worried less, acted as I did. But the rumination that I mentioned and the negative fantasies about the future, these are the things that most depleted me when I was young. When you're trying to build something, the problem that we all face is we need talent and skills that we don't have ourselves. And we can waste so much time trying to learn a new skill when really what we should be doing is using a platform like fiverr.com where you have

Starting point is 01:37:17 global access to reviewed, tried and tested world-class talent at your fingertips that you can access in a flexible and affordable way. Fiverr for me when I was starting out in business was a real unlock. It was a bit of a hack because I used to think that the only way for me to add skills to my project was by hiring full-time staff and bringing them into the office. Fiverr.com changes that. And if you're in that position now where there's a skill you're missing for a project that matters to you, here's what you have to do. Visit Fiverr.com forward slash diary to learn more. And here's the great thing. If it doesn't go well, Fiverr offer a pretty amazing money back guarantee. So what are you waiting for? Thrive.ai has just launched in partnership with OpenAI and you've worked closely with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, on this.

Starting point is 01:38:05 So I highly recommend everybody goes and checks it out. I was rummaging around the website earlier on, and I found it to be truly, truly fascinating. It is an AI-powered health app that encourages people to make healthy habits across the five areas that you talked about, from connection to sleep, distress management, and food, and so on. A really, really interesting application of AI. There's so much negativity around AI,

Starting point is 01:38:25 so it's so wonderful to see people doing positive things with the technology, a technology that does stand a chance of really changing our lives. Ariana, what is the most important thing that we haven't talked about that we should have talked about? The one thing we haven't talked about is what you alluded to right now, which is we have the opportunity now to use technology for our good. You know, technology, so much of technology through algorithms and the early, more primitive forms of AI has led to bringing the worst out in us. Well, I actually have this, which I found. Do you know what this is?

Starting point is 01:39:13 It's from the... It's the Cambridge Union Society 7th debate on Tuesday, the 12th of May, 1970 at 8pm. It's a little flyer. And it says, the quote is, this house believes that technological advance threatens the individuality of man and is becoming his master.

Starting point is 01:39:34 And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, there you are. Pretty sure I was speaking. Proposed by Ariana Stasinopoulos. Very good, Stephen. Thank you so much. So that was a leaflet from the 1970s where you were proposing that...

Starting point is 01:39:51 Good research. ...that technological advancement threatens individuality of man and is becoming his master. Yes. That was your proposal. I've changed my mind. You've changed your mind.

Starting point is 01:40:02 You're building an AI company. 50 years later, you're building... isn't it funny that you had prince charles speaking from the cross benches meaning um neither side because that was the royal prerogative his royal highness the prince of Wales, will be in attendance. He actually spoke. Oh, wow. But because he was at King's College at the time when I was there. But I actually believe that we now have the opportunity to use what AI makes possible, which above all, in terms of health, is hyper-personalization. Like it can have what they call a context window of billions and billions of data points. So it can know everything about Stephen, not just your biometric data, your lab data, your medical data, but your preferences, what foods you like, how you like to sleep with your phone and how we're going to change that.

Starting point is 01:41:11 But also what poems do you like to sleep with your phone and how we're going to change that but also what poems do you like are there any sacred texts that you like is there any music that you love any nature and at the right moment give you the right nudges and recommendations to move you towards the best version of yourself and one of the things I'm focusing a lot now at Thrive, this company I founded after I left the Huffington Post, was how to help people make that connection. And one of the ways we're doing it is through the 60-second resets. 60-second resets. Stress is an unavoidable part of life. Like there is nobody who doesn't have stress in their lives. But cumulative stress is avoidable. And the way to avoid cumulative stress is to read the neuroscience that tells us that

Starting point is 01:42:06 in 60 to 90 seconds, we can go from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic is fight or flight. Yeah. In 60 to 90 seconds, Stephen, that is kind of amazing. And the reason that is true is because we all have that place in us on our platform that focus on conscious breathing gratitude images but my favorite thing is creating our personalized reset well as you say that i am i've actually found your personal reset i I have it here on my iPad, which is a video that I guess,

Starting point is 01:43:08 which is this video here. I can put it up on the screen for anybody that doesn't have it. This is the video, right? And it's 60 seconds, exactly. 60 seconds long. Yes. Did you make this video yourself? Yes.

Starting point is 01:43:17 We can make it very easily on our platform. It takes five minutes because everybody has pictures they love, stored together, music they love and we also offer different quotes if you want to use quotes so i'm going to put this video on the screen so everybody can see it that's watching one video but this video could you explain it to me then what is it so basically it's uh it has pictures of my children at different ages, my dog. It has favorite quotes, like,

Starting point is 01:43:49 be willing to be a beginner every single morning. That means something to me. It has music that I love. And it ends with my absolute favorite quote, which is Rumi, live life as if everything is rigged in your favor. Love that quote. And how many times have you watched this video? I would say hundreds and hundreds.

Starting point is 01:44:17 It could be a thousand times. And it never fails to have that impact on me. Now, a lot of people create multiple videos, you know, different music, different moods. But the point is bringing together things you are grateful for and based on the science that gratitude and stress and anxiety cannot coexist. Interesting. So what I love about this is that it may sound like a warm and fuzzy thing,

Starting point is 01:44:52 but it's based on hardcore science. And that's very important to me because if we are going to help people adopt these healthier habits, we need to convince them that they're based on rigor and data and they are not just random things that we came up with. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest,

Starting point is 01:45:18 not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question left for you is, when was the last time you were so proud of yourself that you could have thrown a parade? What an amazing question. I think actually very recently, and we talked about it, but I was proud that we were addressing a big, hairy problem, which is health care. That so often this problem seems so intractable

Starting point is 01:46:00 that we shy away from looking at solutions. And so the fact that we brought together a great team, the fact that we found a great CEO and that we convinced him to leave Google to run this project, that he's building an amazing rock star team and that we may be able to have a real impact on the lives of people who don't have the resources to actually take care of themselves in a way that so many people with resources are already doing. I'm just really excited about it. I don't know if my mother would like me to use the word

Starting point is 01:46:46 proud because she didn't like that word, but I'm really excited and I want to devote the rest of my life to that. I'm so excited to watch that journey play out and for you to be the spearhead of such an exciting project. At 74. Is the most incredible thing. And I want everybody listening and watching to realize how much time, guys, you have left. And how much you can do during this time. You don't think people realize that? I think a lot of people feel that there are deadlines. That I have to achieve X by 30 and y by 40

Starting point is 01:47:27 and and that creates a certain pressure and i know you say pressure is okay and pressure is okay but not when it comes with a lot of stress and not when it robs us of joy. I'm going to ask you to finish on your favorite quote. Of all the quotes that you've, because you're a fan of quotes, I can tell, but you can't use any that you've used thus far. It can't be the one about life being rigged in your favor by Rumi. It has to be a different one. What is your favorite quote? We'll end there.

Starting point is 01:48:01 So it can't be Rumi, and it can't be Montaigne. So it's got to be, be a beginner every single morning. The fact that we can start every morning fresh. So, you know, every day is a mixture of good things and bad things. And often we wake up in the morning and we carry the burden of the bad things that happened the day before. So if we can wake up every morning and have that sense of new beginnings, you know, like the first morning of creation, whatever term you want to use, fresh.

Starting point is 01:48:43 Arianna, thank you. Thank you for being such an inspiration to me and so many other people. Thank you for your wisdom. And thank you for your unrelenting energy towards solving some of society's biggest issues and maybe society's biggest issues, which is our health and our happiness, which is exactly what you're doing through the work you've done with Thrive and continue to do with Thrive AI now. And it's a service to humanity that is very much needed at this particular time as we find ourselves in society.

Starting point is 01:49:09 So thank you so much, Arianna. You're an absolute wonderful force in the world. And I'm so honored to have met you today. Thank you so much, Stephen. And thank you for all you are doing to have this remarkable impact. Every single time you eat, you have an opportunity to improve your health and that's why i love zoe because zoe helps me to make the smartest food choices for me and my body and as you guys will know by now zoe is a sponsor of this podcast and i'm an investor in the company and if you haven't tried zoe i highly recommend you do because zoe combines my health data with Zoe's world-class science. And using those two things, Zoe guides me to better health every single time I make a food choice and eat, which means that I have more energy, better sleep, better mood, and I'm less hungry. And the most important thing is

Starting point is 01:49:56 Zoe actually works. It's backed by their recent clinical trial, something called the method study, which is the gold standard of scientific research. I started Zoe just over a year ago now, and I've been able to track my progress week after week so I can learn how to be even smarter the following week. And if you haven't joined Zoe yet, I'm giving you 10% off when you join Zoe now. Just use the code CEO10 at checkout. Thank you.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Arianna Huffington: I Was Lying In A Little Pool Of Blood! The Huffington Post, A $1 Billion 'Flop'!

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