November 24, 2020 • 35 mins
Michael Acton Smith is the co-founder and co-CEO of Calm, the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation, with over 2 million subscribers and 85 million downloads. They were an Apple 'best of 2018' award winner, and in 2019, Calm became the World's First Mental Health 'Unicorn' – valued at more than a billion USD.
In 1998, Michael co-founded the online gadget and gift retailer Firebox.com which became the UK's 13th fastest-growing private business and in 2004, he founded the entertainment company Mind Candy, which built Moshi Monsters into a global online brand with over 80m registered users, later expanding offline into books, magazines, toys, music albums, trading cards, and a movie.
He joins us to talk about how meditation can strengthen your mind, how his team differentiated Calm in a field with thousands of competitors and his aspirations for turning Calm into the Nike of the mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
(00:23):
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my dear friend Michael Acton Smith. Michael is the
co founder and co CEO of Calm, the number one
app for sleep, meditation and relaxation, with over two million
subscribers and eight five million downloads. They were an Apple
Best of Award winner and in twenty nineteen, Calm became
(00:43):
the world's first mental health unicorn, which is a company
valued it more than a billion U S dollars in
Michael co founded the online gadget and gift retailer firebox
dot Com, which became the UK's thirteenth fastest private growing business,
and in two thousand four he founded the entertainment company
mind Candy, which built motion monsters and do, a global
(01:04):
online brand with over eighty million registered users, later expanding
offline in the books and magazines and toys albums and
trading cards and even a movie. He joins us to
talk about how meditation can strengthen your mind, how he
and his team differentiated Calm in a field with thousands
of competitors, and his aspirations for turning Calm into the
Nike of the mind. So please enjoy my conversation with
(01:26):
Michael Acton Smith. Thank you, frankly for being on the podcast. Well,
thank you for inviting me. I'm excited. We've we've had
chats and all sorts of unusual places around the world,
so let's add another to the list. It's true, where where?
Where is the unusual place for you right now? Well,
(01:48):
I am currently on the west coast of Island in
a beautiful city called Galway, and the wind is whipping
around my house. The Atlantic is wild, and uh it's
a pretty blustery evening, but yeah, I love it here.
How about you. I'm in mar Vista, California and like
the Venetian suburbs. And where did you where? Where did
(02:12):
you grow up? I grew up in a little town
outside of London called Marlowe, which is on the River Thames.
And yeah, very peaceful, very quiet, very green. Couldn't wait
to get out of there when I was a kid,
and now I can't wait to get back. Where was
the first stop when you got out of there? I
went to um University. I went to a place in
(02:37):
England called Birmingham, which is the second city in the
middle of the middle of the UK. Had a brilliant time,
met lots of friends, kind of spread my wings a
little bit, and and then I moved back to London
to set up my first business. And I lived in
Soho for many years, which is kind of the the
dirty beating heart of London, a very creative, bohemium, fun
(03:00):
place to live. I love that. And were you particularly
talented anything? Were you exceptional something at that phase of
your life that gave sort of a precursor to what
you would end up going on in the building and doing.
Do you know? I wish I could say I was
a child prodigy or a genius at something. I sadly
I don't think I was. I I was always cooking
(03:21):
up random business ideas and driving my parents and neighbors
around the bend. I don't tell many people this, but
I was very obsessed with chess for a while. I
wanted to be a grand Master and I'd sit in
my bedroom learning all the different openings and and then
I drifted away from that when I got a bit older.
And what was what was the first business in London? Well,
(03:44):
the first business when I was a kid was I
used to put on BMX stunt shows in my back
garden and you charge. This wasn't just for fun, this
is a business. It was a business. I did charge
no no one, No one came, which was quite sad.
But I used to spend our practicing all my moves are.
And then I had a computer game magazine I used
(04:05):
to have as an X Spectrum and would would write
these reviews of games for my friends at school. And
then my first proper business when I left university was
a company called hot Box, which I set up with
my friend Tom Boardman. And this is I think. So
the Internet was just bubbling away and getting going, and
(04:28):
we decided to sell gadgets and games and toys online
and yeah it was. It was very rand and there
were hardly any customers online at that time. We had
to build everything ourselves. There was no shopify. We if
someone wanted to place an order, they would have to
print out an order form fill it in facts it
to us and then I would type in their credit
(04:50):
card number into our PDQ machine and and then type
out their address label and send them their their product.
So it was very unscaled. Both did you feel like
a like a tech startup entrepreneur more at this time
or was did you feel more like an artist at
this time living in Soho and building these messy startups.
Well this this was actually just a little bit before Soho.
(05:13):
This was in Wales, in just outside of Cardiff, where
my friend Tom lived and his parents. We couldn't afford
an office, so his parents let us use their attic
as our office. Yeah. I don't know quite what we were.
I don't think we were artists. I don't think we
knew what was going on. We we just we just
felt this internet thing was like really exciting and we
(05:34):
just loved tinkering around and playing it with it. This
company called Amazon was just getting going in America. Google
had just launched, and we thought this was a big
exciting adventure. And yeah, and that's where it all began.
How long after this phase did mind Kendy come along?
(05:54):
So hot Box changed its name to Firebox because slight
Segway but we had the domain hot box dot co
dot UK, and hot box dot com turned out to
be one of the world's first and biggest porn sites,
so that was all a little bit awkward. Uh So
we changed the name of that business. We grew, and
then I switched to Mine Candy in about two thousand
(06:18):
and four, I think it was, and fire Box is
still going great sort of purveyor of all sorts of
weird and wonderful gifts and toys and gadgets. But yeah,
my other big love was games, and so I set
up Mine Candy to kind of explore what would happen
if you could create games that hundreds of thousands, even
(06:38):
millions of people around the world played together. What work
platforms were you designing for in the first games, Well,
this was before the kind of the the iPhone revolution,
so our platform was basically the real world. We created
these games called alternate reality games that you would play
(06:59):
across if and mediums. So we'd hied clues in to
this puzzle that we created. We buried a two hundred
thousand dollar treasure and we put clues in newspapers. We
had helicopters sending weird messages to people, We had actors
at live events. It was a bit like the game
(07:20):
that Michael Douglas movie. And then obviously there'll be websites
and and all sorts of things online where the community
could play and swap clues and tips, and so that
game was called Perplex City, which was creatively amazing, but
commercially it didn't work out quite so well. It just
didn't quite work it. We we we made the mistake
(07:41):
of making something for ourselves and not making something for
the mainstream, and it just had this very passionate but
niche audience. So we had we had a little less
than a million dollars left in the bank. We were
running out of cash quickly and we had to pivot,
and so we came up with this idea to create
an online world for children called Mushy Monsters, and it
(08:04):
was a bit like the evolution of of Tamagotchi, but
you know, made in flash. My board were a little confused,
but to their credit they said, you know, give it
a go, rolling the dice, see what happens. And after
a lot of tinkering and tweaking, that business really really
took off, and we caught lightning in a bottle and
that just grew like crazy over the next few years. Yeah,
(08:25):
you had a pretty remarkable journey in that phase of
your career that taught you a lot of the lessons
that were the foundation for calm. Would you agree, definitely, Yes, Yeah.
I I've been on the entrepreneurial roller coast stuff and
have have got a few things right and made a
lot of mistakes along the way. But Mushi was a
(08:46):
fascinating business. I mean, working with kids is is extraordinary.
They're very honest and raw. They'll tell you exactly what
they think. We were growing rapidly. We had tens of
millions of users, we had toys and books and magazines
in a movie. We thought we were going to be
the next Disney. And the really valuable lesson I learned
was that, you know, in kids entertainment and entertainment of
(09:07):
all nature, you are, you know, only as good as
your your last hit. And things moved so quickly, and
so we went from being the coolest thing in the
playground to not the coolest thing in the playground, and
that business sort of when went south very quickly. So
that was very tough and stressful, and like literally you
had you know, read that roller coaster of of expanding
(09:29):
two hundreds of people to ratcheting all the way back
down to the core that like ended up carrying out
the venture. Correct. I just remember that being for you
something that was like it was almost polar opposite to
the to the feeling of the years prior, which made
you not really believe in the hype in the future.
You've never been a guy to like, you know, read
(09:50):
your own press per se. Yeah, I think I think
that was a good point. It's very easy to get
caught up as an entrepreneur and all the buzz that
surrounds wrapper lead growing businesses, the awards and the press
and so forth. But I would wake up every night
at four am in a cold sweat, just going, what
the hell am I doing? This business is not working.
(10:11):
It's just that that very strong gut feeling that this
was not right, And so I wrestled with it for
a little bit, and then I pulled the plug and
decided that I just needed to to to do something new.
That So that was you know, with perplexity. When we
pivoted to Moshi and then more was very stressful when
you know, as you say, having to let hundreds of
(10:32):
people go and kind of restructure the business and revenues collapsing.
But I had a great team there and again a
very supportive board, and we brought a brilliant new leader
into to run that business, and and it's still going
strong now, many many years later. But that was the
time when I stepped away and set up Calm because
I realized I'm better at building and creating businesses rather
(10:54):
than you know, the restructuring and the downsizing and all
those very very difficult complex parts. It sounds like you
didn't really have a space between the two. You set
up Calm pretty soon after leaving Wash. Yes, I've been
thinking about it, and I have a very dear friend,
Alex to who I set Calm up with, and we've
(11:15):
been talking about something similar for for a while. So yes,
I went. I went pretty much straight from from Mohi
to Calm, which are two very very different businesses. They
have no No. Alex also for a decade and realized
you guys were all friends. Yeah, we um. He did
the million dollar homepage which I remember reading about, which
was he was this broke student and decided to create
(11:38):
a website with a million pixels and four months later
became a millionaire. I remember reading about it and thinking,
oh my god, that guy is a genius or completely mad,
but or a mix of the two. And I was
lucky enough to meet him at a party in London,
and we became really good friends and shared a house
together in Soho and through great events and parties and
(12:00):
festivals and and and then set up Calm together. And
why why Calm? What was what was the foundation? Why
did you guys start this business? Well? I think we
felt there was a shift happening in the world that
we were getting more and more stressed as as a society,
(12:23):
and we had these devices that were always on, and
things just seemed to be getting faster and faster. And
so this idea of buying a domain name cam dot
com and building a brand around this concept of Calm
just felt like the most natural, exciting, brilliant, beautiful, wonderful business.
We just thought it could be one of these very
(12:43):
rare businesses that is not only commercially very successful, you know,
we thought we could build a billion dollar empire with it,
but crucially is also genuinely so good for the world,
something that that people really really need, you know. We
feel calm as a superpower and we wanted to help
spread that around the world. So so that was kind
(13:05):
of the the initial seed of the business. And yeah,
it's it's been an amazing adventure. Did you guys have
mindfulness practices personally? So Alex did. He had been practicing
meditation for for many, many years, and I was a
little bit late to the party. I didn't fully understand
it until I went away on my own when I
(13:27):
was super super stressed and spent a week reading about
the neuroscience behind mindfulness and reading books and research papers,
and this light bulb went on my head that you know, wow,
this isn't weird or woo woo, this is neuroscience. This
is a way to rewire the human brain in a
really powerful positive way. This felt like a skill that
(13:49):
every single human being on earth could benefit from. From
that moment onwards, I've I've been so deep and passionate
in this. What sticks out when you when you reflect
back on those original sort of crossover realizations that you
know it was neuroscience and you know, Google Arc, do
you recall any of the initial sort of inspirations or
(14:13):
the ideas that that really captured you. Yes, yes. So
some of the books I read that that we're very valuable.
U Search inside Yourself from Google an engineer's perspective on
mindfulness was fascinating. Ten percent happy it was. It was
a great book. I think one of one of the
kind of light bulb moments for me was that, you know,
meditating was almost like going to the gym. We we
(14:35):
go to the gym and we lift weights, and that
resistance builds up the muscles in our arms, and meditation
is like doing the same for our minds. When we
sit and we meditate bills with thoughts and we acknowledge
those thoughts and we moved them aside, and we go
back and focus on a constant such as our breath,
and then another thought will come into our head and
(14:56):
we will do the same and again and again, and
those repetitions build up the the strength of our mind,
our our awareness, and that is so valuable for everyday life.
I think one of the biggest things in meditation practice
has has done for me is change the way I
respond to stimulus in life. So I respond instead of react.
(15:20):
You know, most of us react with our amygdala when
whenever something happens to us. We honk o horn in traffic,
or what we shout at our partner if they do
something unexpected. But if you just respond and you take
that fraction of a second longer to think how how
you will respond, it changes everything. So that was a
real valuable moment for me. We'll be back with more
(15:44):
out of the hustle after the break. The idea that
you guys are like civilizing meditation, You're making it more accessible.
Is that evident the way that you guys were thinking
about setting up the company. I know it's how you
guys think about it today in the way that you
(16:05):
build these amazing you know, partnerships with thought leaders in
different spaces for content, ETCETERA. Very very conscious yes. It
was one of the first things we talked about when
we realized how valuable this practice is. You know, it's
it's been around for thousands of years, but but it
had so much baggage associated with it, so many people
(16:25):
were dismissive of it, and we were like, how can
we reframe this? How can we make it simple and
accessible and relatable to folks in the modern world. And
so that was that was a key foundation that we
built the business on and Tamara is fantastic as as
(16:46):
a teacher, and you know that the daily Calm is
short and simple, it's only ten minutes long, but there's
a different lesson or there's something new every day you
take away from it. So we made the apps super
simple and the ux is is is amazing. So all
these little things came together to create something that really
caught fire. And now a few years later, we've got
(17:08):
almost a hundred million downloads around the world. More than
one person every second somewhere around the world downloads Calm.
It's it's quite extraordinary how how far it's come. It
really is. But tell us, so what's with some of
the hardest parts. Well, Calm has done very well, as
as has Headspace, but there are thousands of meditation apps
(17:29):
in the app store, and sleep apps and health and
wellness apps. So part of what got us here is
a little bit of luck and the right timing, but
then just absolute obsession and passion with all the tiny
little details that go into making a successful product and business.
So it's everything from you know, our world class user
(17:51):
acquisition team, the way we think about branding, uh, the
way we create and obsess over content, the way we
look at data and we mix it with think there's
just so many little pieces that have come together, and
so each of those is a challenge. And you know,
I think we we did create fantastic meditation content, but
but if we'd stopped there, we wouldn't have built a
(18:12):
successful business. So the challenge is always figuring out what
is the next layer to to put on top? Where
do you go next? So after meditation, we went to
sleep and we experimented there and again caught lightning in
a bottle for a second time. And I'm I'm so
passionate about sleep. It's you know, a big market, seven
(18:33):
and a half billion people do every night of their life.
And we we wanted to reinvent the bedtime story, and
we felt, how could we create beautiful stories that mix
music and sound effects and soporific voices and create poetic
language and reduce the volume and the pacing of the
words to create these kind of magical stories. And they've
(18:56):
been phenomenal, hundreds of millions of these sleep stories to
listen to, you know, with everyone from Harry Styles to
Mattew McConaughey reading them. And so yeah, that was our
second act, which which propelled the business forward again. You know,
it's such a funny thing to like think we were overlooking,
because it's sort of commonplace now, like at least among
certain circles to be considerate of your sleep and your
(19:20):
health and wellness in a way that like thirty six
months ago is not nearly as much on the register
of radar. Yeah, that's so true. And as you say,
just a few years ago, it was almost a badge
of honor to show off how little sleep you got
at night. And that's just madness. The science has advanced
so much showing us how you know, sleep is vital
(19:40):
not just in the short term for our next day
memory and energy levels, but our immune system and then
over our entire life over decades, you know, in lack
of sleep increases the chance of getting diseases such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So it's unbelievably important, I have to say,
you know, like it's it's rare where you get to
(20:02):
like work on something that you care so much about,
like you guys do. And I think it's even rarer
where you have like the capacity to technologically build um
what you can sort of envision as a brand, like
you'll find amazing brand designers or thinkers who can envision
a beautiful future, they don't typically have the wherewithal or
(20:25):
talent also in how to actually build this stuff. So
when you talk about, you know, the technical components, where
you extra UI or user acquisition or brand in particular,
which is where I love for you to extrapolate this
a little bit further, because I know, yeah, you know,
it's surprising sometimes when people hear how you envision the
brand and then it makes a little bit more sense.
Why you know it's differentiated itself, you know, as far
(20:48):
and away the market leader. Yeah, well, well we're very
passionate about brand at Common. Brand isn't always respected um
in Silicon Valley, which was something Alex and I found
quite interesting when we went there. So that was a
that was a big interesting learning. But when you're building
something like this, brand is so important. We needed to
(21:09):
create something that felt simple and beautiful and accessible and
there I say cool because we had to shake off
the baggage from from the past. And so, yeah, a
lot of thought has has gone into it. We've still
got a long way to go. We we often talk
about building the Nike of the mind, and you know,
(21:30):
Nike surfed the wave around the physical fitness boom over
the last half century, and we think mental wellness mental
fitness is the next huge boom, and so we want
to build calm into as I say, the Nike of
the mind. I love that, and you know Nike the
way that they would express it internally in their marketing leadership,
(21:50):
and I think that in their in their campaigns as well.
But if you have a body, you're an athlete. You know,
if you're alive, you have a mind, and if you
exercise your mind you get better results from it. That's
sort of the basic bath correct. Yeah, absolutely, I mean,
but it is crazy to think mental health has been
something that was so stigmatized until very recently. You know,
(22:13):
you couldn't talk about it with your boss or friends,
and no wonder so many people are suffering in silence
and depression and anxiety and PTSD and suicide has has
been a huge, huge issue in Western societies. So I
think it's fantastic that that stigma is now starting to
fade away and people are comfortable to talk about their
(22:35):
mental health. But and if you think about it, if
you just step back, what is more important than looking
after and understanding our minds. It is the frame in
which we see everything. We can make a heaven of
hell and a hell of heaven. And we don't get
taught any of this at school or very little until
(22:56):
recently that's starting to to change fortunately, But yeah, the
brain is the most complex thing in the known universe,
yet it doesn't come with an instruction manual and products
like Calm we hope can help people just better understand
themselves and who they are and how they relate to
other people, and we hope help them live more joyful,
(23:16):
happier and healthier lives. Amazing. I'm just so for you.
I mean, I'm sure that you must have like some personal,
you know, stories with this where you've seen this you
know work truly work firsthand. But then I'm curious, are
you guys thinking about this from a scaled perspective, because
I imagine, you know, it would frankly save ensures, taxpayers
people tons of money if we were minding, you know,
(23:40):
the foundational aspects of our mental health to end up
resulting in so many different manifestations of our physical and
financial poor well being. It's it's so true, and this
is what is exciting about what we're doing. We we
still feel like we we barely scratch the surface of
the potential here. You know, we have about three and
a half million paying subscribers, but we want to reach
(24:02):
everybody on on earth and and bring this valuable skill.
So one of the interesting growth areas for us is
connecting with companies and health insurers. And so to your point,
you know, if people have Calm, hopefully using it like
going to the gym for your body, will reduce the
downstream need for therapists or psychologists or expensive medication. So
(24:28):
that is valuable to to ensure us. But second, could
using a product like Calm help people live healthier physical
lives as well? Could developing a meditation practice make you
more conscious about what you put in your body, reducing
the incidence of heart disease or diabetes, or enabling you
to take more exercise. So if this is true, which
(24:49):
which we believe it is, this is an enormously valuable
opportunity for for many many people. And where are you
going from here? What kind of stuff are you guys
building right now? Is it new la whages? Is it
new you know partnerships? Where where is just manifesting? Yeah,
we're We're juggling a lot at the moment, trying to
be careful that we don't chase every single shiny object,
(25:10):
you know, I I often talk about us wanting to
take the brand offline. Could Calm be clothing and books
and magazines and hotel and island one day? Maybe? But
in in the near term, it's creating more amazing content
for our audience, creating more teachers, um creating new types
of sleep stories, expanding into the kids realm because so
(25:32):
many kids struggle with with anxiety and sleep challenges. International
is a big area where we have translated Calm into
six languages, but we've got many, many more coming. And then, yeah,
as I touched on earlier, the biggest area is probably
the B two B bringing Calm into corporations and working
with healthcare insurance because most companies offer some kind of
(25:55):
gym membership to their employee base, but very few offer
mental health. And that's changing rapidly, and we don't see
why every company in the world shouldn't offer some kind
of mental health support to their important employee base totally.
And it is that a huge that a huge growth
area for Calm. Right now, you're saying that's a place
(26:16):
where you know, people are really shifting or thinking in
the present moment. Yes, yeah, we're We've built a team
there and we saw a tremendous acceleration during the pandemic
as companies look for ways to support their employees working
from home, and that that acceleration has continued. So yeah,
(26:36):
we were investing very heavily in that side of the business.
All of us, you know, are going through you know,
trauma right now. It's TSD, it's any a PTSD at
the moment. So you know, anything that we can do
any moment that we can take to sort of reward
ourselves and be you know, thankful to ourselves. Um and
just meditate or take a minute to breathe or you know,
(26:57):
walk slowly or what is the thing that allows you
to find calm? To your point, And what's amazing about
the term is that it's like and this is what
I've been thinking about recently, and like that my reasons
for it, you know, the reasons I gave myself to
have a practice in a sense is like if you
are in fight or flight, it's impossible to be creative
(27:19):
in imaginative. Yes, it's so so true and so many
of us are, you know, our sympathetic nervous systems are
just constantly engaged, and we're we're flooded with quartison and
adrenaline and no wonder people are just razzled and burnt
out and stressed and unable to to think deeply and
(27:40):
get into a state of flow. So yeah, tapping into
calm as a superpower. Just being conscious and aware of
it is so so valuable. Um you mentioned breathing. I
think that's such an important one that most of us
just barely give a second thought to. Yet it's something
we do, you know, more than half a billion times
during a lifetime. I find whenever I'm just anxious or
(28:03):
or stressed, just focusing on my breath for a few
seconds is so valuable, so quick to change that that
state of mind you know about the eight second breath, bro,
is that going? Is that when you un uh no
idea of the lineage. But somehow I have in my
(28:24):
practice someone at some point it taught me to like
just count my inhale and exhale and try to build
up to eight seconds in the sense in each direction,
and it has like a pretty immediate effect for me.
Um And and in terms of sleep stories. You know,
like it was you know, for for my wife, like
after enduring like the pregnancy, you know, like that was
(28:44):
a huge, huge benefit to her um in terms of
helping her relax, helping her fall asleep, which I don't
know if that's something that you guys have been doing
thoughtfully as well around like maternity. But I mean, these
are these amazing Like we're talking about them as like
quote categories like you would as adventure capitalist or an entrepreneur.
But the reality is this is these are the things
that every single human does and would love to do
(29:06):
more peacefully or better. So true. Another one is you know, gratitude, Um,
how how simple but valuable that is as a practice.
And again, we just get so overwhelmed, we we get
lost in our own thoughts and courts loops. And when
you can just consciously snap out of that and just
(29:27):
focus on something you're grateful for, whether you're trying to
fall asleep or in the middle of the day, I
think that's a really powerful way of changing one's state
as well and resetting art of the hustle. Will be
right back after this short break. Do you have any
(29:49):
thoughts on you know, calms place in you know, this
this moment that we find ourselves. I know that it's
enough to like fight the battle that you're focused on,
which is you know, for writing my bankfulness and calmed
aw um, But I also imagine that you're really fucking
curious to your thoughts. Yes, yeah, we we take our
(30:10):
responsibility very seriously to help and support where we can. So,
you know, when the pandemic first hit, we created a
site at calm dot com forward slash together and put
a lot of our content and made it free for
for anyone around the world. We are very passionate about
changing the world and one of the best ways to
(30:31):
do that is starting with the younger generation. So we
have a program called Calm for Schools where teachers around
the world can get Calm for free and bring a
little bit of peace and calm and mindfulness into their classrooms.
So those those are a few areas, and then we
want to explore how can we help other groups as well,
(30:51):
you know, from first responders fighting these just unbelievable fires,
to prisoners, veterans, you name it. That there's so many
people we'd like to reach and support. So as a site,
we it just goes like we barely scratched the surface
of this big journey ahead of us. And if I
can just ask more like fifty thousand square like fifty
(31:11):
thousand foot questions to close out. You know, you had
this incredible journey, you know, like you're you know, from
at least over our friendship, you know, over the last
like ten years where you know, with having you know,
the startups that are just like almost for fun more
than for anything else or for passion, right and you know,
then growing and building a company that raises venture capital
(31:32):
and pivots into success, going through such a you know,
rial roller coaster, and then to you know kind of
I think arrive at a place that you know, you're
stewarding a company that's really generationally representative, right, Like I
don't know that there's many other calms out of the
last decade in our generation, but like, you know, what
(31:52):
are some of the things that like you wish you
had known earlier in the journey or the lessons that
you learned that like you know, you keep front of mine. Now,
it's a good a good question. Um. I mean I've
definitely made a lot of mistakes along the way, but
but I don't beat myself up about them, because we
can only make the best decision we can at the
time with the information we have. In hindsight, everything looks
(32:15):
completely different. And I think those were stakes and dead ends.
It got me to this point where I am now.
And the other way of looking at it is, you know,
the world is so competitive business and startups so tough
that to do anything new you really have to be
playing around at the edges, and it's dangerous. At the
edges you're gonna fail and screw up a lot more
(32:36):
times than than you succeed. So yeah, just being comfortable
with getting things wrong. But but I think one of
the biggest things is having that fast cycle to be
able to place lots of little bets quickly, to try
things that doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, that works,
then you do a little bit more of it. That's
how you kind of edge your way to to the big,
big successes. And you've just got to be very disciplined
(32:59):
and refocused and uh and also a bit of a cliche,
but just make sure you really enjoy what you're doing.
Um And I've always done that for every business I've
been involved in. It's it's been something that I personally
super excited and passionate about. It sounds to be a
bit like a mad scientist approach. You have a science
(33:20):
method and you're you know, truly enthused about the thing
that you're building, so you're always thinking about it and
you can be creative with it. And I always found
that to be really interesting, and even like people that would,
I still don't fully get it because I'm not a developer,
but you know, people that are at work with them
regularly tell me that the best developers are the most
(33:40):
creative ones, right. It's it's like always finding the art
and the thing that you're doing in a sense. But
I love that. I love that you have, you know,
a lab to work with and tanker with to continue
to create these innovations that you know make our lives better.
So thank you, Oh absolutely no, thank you for saying that.
I think you know a lot the big breakthroughs in
(34:01):
in life, whether they are a business or an invention,
come from people that just go very deep on on
one thing. That deep deep focus is so important because
the killer ideas, the killer step forwards, don't just happen
when you're sitting at your desk, you know, typing away
your brain unconsciously, unconscious part of your brain or the
subconscious needs to be worrying away the whole time. And
(34:24):
so that only comes with with that depth of focus.
So I think that's that's a big, probably the single
most important advice I'd give to anyone trying to trying
to crack anything. Just go deep and remove as many
kind of distractions as you can. Well, Michael, thank you
for being on the podcast. You're a great friend and
an inspirational leader and entrepreneur and an incredibly generous guy.
(34:47):
And you always have been with everyone that's you know,
had the pleasure of coming through your life. And thanks
again man, you know for for the listeners. It's just
calm dot com right, anything else that we should check
out or any other info that we should go and about. No,
I think I think com dot com is great. And yeah,
thank you for that that lovely ending there. I'm blushing
(35:08):
here in Galway, and thank you for your friendship over
this decade. I still remember when we when we met
for the first time, when I'd heard about these crazy
guys buying a mountain and has huge, wild, ambitious plans,
I thought, Wow, I need to meet those folks, and
so yeah, I'm very grateful for the friendship that we've
had over these many, many years. Thanks Michael, thanks for
(35:30):
listening Out of the Hustle, and see you next time.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
(35:53):
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
(00:23):
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with my dear friend Michael Acton Smith. Michael is the
co founder and co CEO of Calm, the number one
app for sleep, meditation and relaxation, with over two million
subscribers and eight five million downloads. They were an Apple
Best of Award winner and in twenty nineteen, Calm became
(00:43):
the world's first mental health unicorn, which is a company
valued it more than a billion U S dollars in
Michael co founded the online gadget and gift retailer firebox
dot Com, which became the UK's thirteenth fastest private growing business,
and in two thousand four he founded the entertainment company
mind Candy, which built motion monsters and do, a global
(01:04):
online brand with over eighty million registered users, later expanding
offline in the books and magazines and toys albums and
trading cards and even a movie. He joins us to
talk about how meditation can strengthen your mind, how he
and his team differentiated Calm in a field with thousands
of competitors, and his aspirations for turning Calm into the
Nike of the mind. So please enjoy my conversation with
(01:26):
Michael Acton Smith. Thank you, frankly for being on the podcast. Well,
thank you for inviting me. I'm excited. We've we've had
chats and all sorts of unusual places around the world,
so let's add another to the list. It's true, where where?
Where is the unusual place for you right now? Well,
(01:48):
I am currently on the west coast of Island in
a beautiful city called Galway, and the wind is whipping
around my house. The Atlantic is wild, and uh it's
a pretty blustery evening, but yeah, I love it here.
How about you. I'm in mar Vista, California and like
the Venetian suburbs. And where did you where? Where did
(02:12):
you grow up? I grew up in a little town
outside of London called Marlowe, which is on the River Thames.
And yeah, very peaceful, very quiet, very green. Couldn't wait
to get out of there when I was a kid,
and now I can't wait to get back. Where was
the first stop when you got out of there? I
went to um University. I went to a place in
(02:37):
England called Birmingham, which is the second city in the
middle of the middle of the UK. Had a brilliant time,
met lots of friends, kind of spread my wings a
little bit, and and then I moved back to London
to set up my first business. And I lived in
Soho for many years, which is kind of the the
dirty beating heart of London, a very creative, bohemium, fun
(03:00):
place to live. I love that. And were you particularly
talented anything? Were you exceptional something at that phase of
your life that gave sort of a precursor to what
you would end up going on in the building and doing.
Do you know? I wish I could say I was
a child prodigy or a genius at something. I sadly
I don't think I was. I I was always cooking
(03:21):
up random business ideas and driving my parents and neighbors
around the bend. I don't tell many people this, but
I was very obsessed with chess for a while. I
wanted to be a grand Master and I'd sit in
my bedroom learning all the different openings and and then
I drifted away from that when I got a bit older.
And what was what was the first business in London? Well,
(03:44):
the first business when I was a kid was I
used to put on BMX stunt shows in my back
garden and you charge. This wasn't just for fun, this
is a business. It was a business. I did charge
no no one, No one came, which was quite sad.
But I used to spend our practicing all my moves are.
And then I had a computer game magazine I used
(04:05):
to have as an X Spectrum and would would write
these reviews of games for my friends at school. And
then my first proper business when I left university was
a company called hot Box, which I set up with
my friend Tom Boardman. And this is I think. So
the Internet was just bubbling away and getting going, and
(04:28):
we decided to sell gadgets and games and toys online
and yeah it was. It was very rand and there
were hardly any customers online at that time. We had
to build everything ourselves. There was no shopify. We if
someone wanted to place an order, they would have to
print out an order form fill it in facts it
to us and then I would type in their credit
(04:50):
card number into our PDQ machine and and then type
out their address label and send them their their product.
So it was very unscaled. Both did you feel like
a like a tech startup entrepreneur more at this time
or was did you feel more like an artist at
this time living in Soho and building these messy startups.
Well this this was actually just a little bit before Soho.
(05:13):
This was in Wales, in just outside of Cardiff, where
my friend Tom lived and his parents. We couldn't afford
an office, so his parents let us use their attic
as our office. Yeah. I don't know quite what we were.
I don't think we were artists. I don't think we
knew what was going on. We we just we just
felt this internet thing was like really exciting and we
(05:34):
just loved tinkering around and playing it with it. This
company called Amazon was just getting going in America. Google
had just launched, and we thought this was a big
exciting adventure. And yeah, and that's where it all began.
How long after this phase did mind Kendy come along?
(05:54):
So hot Box changed its name to Firebox because slight
Segway but we had the domain hot box dot co
dot UK, and hot box dot com turned out to
be one of the world's first and biggest porn sites,
so that was all a little bit awkward. Uh So
we changed the name of that business. We grew, and
then I switched to Mine Candy in about two thousand
(06:18):
and four, I think it was, and fire Box is
still going great sort of purveyor of all sorts of
weird and wonderful gifts and toys and gadgets. But yeah,
my other big love was games, and so I set
up Mine Candy to kind of explore what would happen
if you could create games that hundreds of thousands, even
(06:38):
millions of people around the world played together. What work
platforms were you designing for in the first games, Well,
this was before the kind of the the iPhone revolution,
so our platform was basically the real world. We created
these games called alternate reality games that you would play
(06:59):
across if and mediums. So we'd hied clues in to
this puzzle that we created. We buried a two hundred
thousand dollar treasure and we put clues in newspapers. We
had helicopters sending weird messages to people, We had actors
at live events. It was a bit like the game
(07:20):
that Michael Douglas movie. And then obviously there'll be websites
and and all sorts of things online where the community
could play and swap clues and tips, and so that
game was called Perplex City, which was creatively amazing, but
commercially it didn't work out quite so well. It just
didn't quite work it. We we we made the mistake
(07:41):
of making something for ourselves and not making something for
the mainstream, and it just had this very passionate but
niche audience. So we had we had a little less
than a million dollars left in the bank. We were
running out of cash quickly and we had to pivot,
and so we came up with this idea to create
an online world for children called Mushy Monsters, and it
(08:04):
was a bit like the evolution of of Tamagotchi, but
you know, made in flash. My board were a little confused,
but to their credit they said, you know, give it
a go, rolling the dice, see what happens. And after
a lot of tinkering and tweaking, that business really really
took off, and we caught lightning in a bottle and
that just grew like crazy over the next few years. Yeah,
(08:25):
you had a pretty remarkable journey in that phase of
your career that taught you a lot of the lessons
that were the foundation for calm. Would you agree, definitely, Yes, Yeah.
I I've been on the entrepreneurial roller coast stuff and
have have got a few things right and made a
lot of mistakes along the way. But Mushi was a
(08:46):
fascinating business. I mean, working with kids is is extraordinary.
They're very honest and raw. They'll tell you exactly what
they think. We were growing rapidly. We had tens of
millions of users, we had toys and books and magazines
in a movie. We thought we were going to be
the next Disney. And the really valuable lesson I learned
was that, you know, in kids entertainment and entertainment of
(09:07):
all nature, you are, you know, only as good as
your your last hit. And things moved so quickly, and
so we went from being the coolest thing in the
playground to not the coolest thing in the playground, and
that business sort of when went south very quickly. So
that was very tough and stressful, and like literally you
had you know, read that roller coaster of of expanding
(09:29):
two hundreds of people to ratcheting all the way back
down to the core that like ended up carrying out
the venture. Correct. I just remember that being for you
something that was like it was almost polar opposite to
the to the feeling of the years prior, which made
you not really believe in the hype in the future.
You've never been a guy to like, you know, read
(09:50):
your own press per se. Yeah, I think I think
that was a good point. It's very easy to get
caught up as an entrepreneur and all the buzz that
surrounds wrapper lead growing businesses, the awards and the press
and so forth. But I would wake up every night
at four am in a cold sweat, just going, what
the hell am I doing? This business is not working.
(10:11):
It's just that that very strong gut feeling that this
was not right, And so I wrestled with it for
a little bit, and then I pulled the plug and
decided that I just needed to to to do something new.
That So that was you know, with perplexity. When we
pivoted to Moshi and then more was very stressful when
you know, as you say, having to let hundreds of
(10:32):
people go and kind of restructure the business and revenues collapsing.
But I had a great team there and again a
very supportive board, and we brought a brilliant new leader
into to run that business, and and it's still going
strong now, many many years later. But that was the
time when I stepped away and set up Calm because
I realized I'm better at building and creating businesses rather
(10:54):
than you know, the restructuring and the downsizing and all
those very very difficult complex parts. It sounds like you
didn't really have a space between the two. You set
up Calm pretty soon after leaving Wash. Yes, I've been
thinking about it, and I have a very dear friend,
Alex to who I set Calm up with, and we've
(11:15):
been talking about something similar for for a while. So yes,
I went. I went pretty much straight from from Mohi
to Calm, which are two very very different businesses. They
have no No. Alex also for a decade and realized
you guys were all friends. Yeah, we um. He did
the million dollar homepage which I remember reading about, which
was he was this broke student and decided to create
(11:38):
a website with a million pixels and four months later
became a millionaire. I remember reading about it and thinking,
oh my god, that guy is a genius or completely mad,
but or a mix of the two. And I was
lucky enough to meet him at a party in London,
and we became really good friends and shared a house
together in Soho and through great events and parties and
(12:00):
festivals and and and then set up Calm together. And
why why Calm? What was what was the foundation? Why
did you guys start this business? Well? I think we
felt there was a shift happening in the world that
we were getting more and more stressed as as a society,
(12:23):
and we had these devices that were always on, and
things just seemed to be getting faster and faster. And
so this idea of buying a domain name cam dot
com and building a brand around this concept of Calm
just felt like the most natural, exciting, brilliant, beautiful, wonderful business.
We just thought it could be one of these very
(12:43):
rare businesses that is not only commercially very successful, you know,
we thought we could build a billion dollar empire with it,
but crucially is also genuinely so good for the world,
something that that people really really need, you know. We
feel calm as a superpower and we wanted to help
spread that around the world. So so that was kind
(13:05):
of the the initial seed of the business. And yeah,
it's it's been an amazing adventure. Did you guys have
mindfulness practices personally? So Alex did. He had been practicing
meditation for for many, many years, and I was a
little bit late to the party. I didn't fully understand
it until I went away on my own when I
(13:27):
was super super stressed and spent a week reading about
the neuroscience behind mindfulness and reading books and research papers,
and this light bulb went on my head that you know, wow,
this isn't weird or woo woo, this is neuroscience. This
is a way to rewire the human brain in a
really powerful positive way. This felt like a skill that
(13:49):
every single human being on earth could benefit from. From
that moment onwards, I've I've been so deep and passionate
in this. What sticks out when you when you reflect
back on those original sort of crossover realizations that you
know it was neuroscience and you know, Google Arc, do
you recall any of the initial sort of inspirations or
(14:13):
the ideas that that really captured you. Yes, yes. So
some of the books I read that that we're very valuable.
U Search inside Yourself from Google an engineer's perspective on
mindfulness was fascinating. Ten percent happy it was. It was
a great book. I think one of one of the
kind of light bulb moments for me was that, you know,
meditating was almost like going to the gym. We we
(14:35):
go to the gym and we lift weights, and that
resistance builds up the muscles in our arms, and meditation
is like doing the same for our minds. When we
sit and we meditate bills with thoughts and we acknowledge
those thoughts and we moved them aside, and we go
back and focus on a constant such as our breath,
and then another thought will come into our head and
(14:56):
we will do the same and again and again, and
those repetitions build up the the strength of our mind,
our our awareness, and that is so valuable for everyday life.
I think one of the biggest things in meditation practice
has has done for me is change the way I
respond to stimulus in life. So I respond instead of react.
(15:20):
You know, most of us react with our amygdala when
whenever something happens to us. We honk o horn in traffic,
or what we shout at our partner if they do
something unexpected. But if you just respond and you take
that fraction of a second longer to think how how
you will respond, it changes everything. So that was a
real valuable moment for me. We'll be back with more
(15:44):
out of the hustle after the break. The idea that
you guys are like civilizing meditation, You're making it more accessible.
Is that evident the way that you guys were thinking
about setting up the company. I know it's how you
guys think about it today in the way that you
(16:05):
build these amazing you know, partnerships with thought leaders in
different spaces for content, ETCETERA. Very very conscious yes. It
was one of the first things we talked about when
we realized how valuable this practice is. You know, it's
it's been around for thousands of years, but but it
had so much baggage associated with it, so many people
(16:25):
were dismissive of it, and we were like, how can
we reframe this? How can we make it simple and
accessible and relatable to folks in the modern world. And
so that was that was a key foundation that we
built the business on and Tamara is fantastic as as
(16:46):
a teacher, and you know that the daily Calm is
short and simple, it's only ten minutes long, but there's
a different lesson or there's something new every day you
take away from it. So we made the apps super
simple and the ux is is is amazing. So all
these little things came together to create something that really
caught fire. And now a few years later, we've got
(17:08):
almost a hundred million downloads around the world. More than
one person every second somewhere around the world downloads Calm.
It's it's quite extraordinary how how far it's come. It
really is. But tell us, so what's with some of
the hardest parts. Well, Calm has done very well, as
as has Headspace, but there are thousands of meditation apps
(17:29):
in the app store, and sleep apps and health and
wellness apps. So part of what got us here is
a little bit of luck and the right timing, but
then just absolute obsession and passion with all the tiny
little details that go into making a successful product and business.
So it's everything from you know, our world class user
(17:51):
acquisition team, the way we think about branding, uh, the
way we create and obsess over content, the way we
look at data and we mix it with think there's
just so many little pieces that have come together, and
so each of those is a challenge. And you know,
I think we we did create fantastic meditation content, but
but if we'd stopped there, we wouldn't have built a
(18:12):
successful business. So the challenge is always figuring out what
is the next layer to to put on top? Where
do you go next? So after meditation, we went to
sleep and we experimented there and again caught lightning in
a bottle for a second time. And I'm I'm so
passionate about sleep. It's you know, a big market, seven
(18:33):
and a half billion people do every night of their life.
And we we wanted to reinvent the bedtime story, and
we felt, how could we create beautiful stories that mix
music and sound effects and soporific voices and create poetic
language and reduce the volume and the pacing of the
words to create these kind of magical stories. And they've
(18:56):
been phenomenal, hundreds of millions of these sleep stories to
listen to, you know, with everyone from Harry Styles to
Mattew McConaughey reading them. And so yeah, that was our
second act, which which propelled the business forward again. You know,
it's such a funny thing to like think we were overlooking,
because it's sort of commonplace now, like at least among
certain circles to be considerate of your sleep and your
(19:20):
health and wellness in a way that like thirty six
months ago is not nearly as much on the register
of radar. Yeah, that's so true. And as you say,
just a few years ago, it was almost a badge
of honor to show off how little sleep you got
at night. And that's just madness. The science has advanced
so much showing us how you know, sleep is vital
(19:40):
not just in the short term for our next day
memory and energy levels, but our immune system and then
over our entire life over decades, you know, in lack
of sleep increases the chance of getting diseases such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So it's unbelievably important, I have to say,
you know, like it's it's rare where you get to
(20:02):
like work on something that you care so much about,
like you guys do. And I think it's even rarer
where you have like the capacity to technologically build um
what you can sort of envision as a brand, like
you'll find amazing brand designers or thinkers who can envision
a beautiful future, they don't typically have the wherewithal or
(20:25):
talent also in how to actually build this stuff. So
when you talk about, you know, the technical components, where
you extra UI or user acquisition or brand in particular,
which is where I love for you to extrapolate this
a little bit further, because I know, yeah, you know,
it's surprising sometimes when people hear how you envision the
brand and then it makes a little bit more sense.
Why you know it's differentiated itself, you know, as far
(20:48):
and away the market leader. Yeah, well, well we're very
passionate about brand at Common. Brand isn't always respected um
in Silicon Valley, which was something Alex and I found
quite interesting when we went there. So that was a
that was a big interesting learning. But when you're building
something like this, brand is so important. We needed to
(21:09):
create something that felt simple and beautiful and accessible and
there I say cool because we had to shake off
the baggage from from the past. And so, yeah, a
lot of thought has has gone into it. We've still
got a long way to go. We we often talk
about building the Nike of the mind, and you know,
(21:30):
Nike surfed the wave around the physical fitness boom over
the last half century, and we think mental wellness mental
fitness is the next huge boom, and so we want
to build calm into as I say, the Nike of
the mind. I love that, and you know Nike the
way that they would express it internally in their marketing leadership,
(21:50):
and I think that in their in their campaigns as well.
But if you have a body, you're an athlete. You know,
if you're alive, you have a mind, and if you
exercise your mind you get better results from it. That's
sort of the basic bath correct. Yeah, absolutely, I mean,
but it is crazy to think mental health has been
something that was so stigmatized until very recently. You know,
(22:13):
you couldn't talk about it with your boss or friends,
and no wonder so many people are suffering in silence
and depression and anxiety and PTSD and suicide has has
been a huge, huge issue in Western societies. So I
think it's fantastic that that stigma is now starting to
fade away and people are comfortable to talk about their
(22:35):
mental health. But and if you think about it, if
you just step back, what is more important than looking
after and understanding our minds. It is the frame in
which we see everything. We can make a heaven of
hell and a hell of heaven. And we don't get
taught any of this at school or very little until
(22:56):
recently that's starting to to change fortunately, But yeah, the
brain is the most complex thing in the known universe,
yet it doesn't come with an instruction manual and products
like Calm we hope can help people just better understand
themselves and who they are and how they relate to
other people, and we hope help them live more joyful,
(23:16):
happier and healthier lives. Amazing. I'm just so for you.
I mean, I'm sure that you must have like some personal,
you know, stories with this where you've seen this you
know work truly work firsthand. But then I'm curious, are
you guys thinking about this from a scaled perspective, because
I imagine, you know, it would frankly save ensures, taxpayers
people tons of money if we were minding, you know,
(23:40):
the foundational aspects of our mental health to end up
resulting in so many different manifestations of our physical and
financial poor well being. It's it's so true, and this
is what is exciting about what we're doing. We we
still feel like we we barely scratch the surface of
the potential here. You know, we have about three and
a half million paying subscribers, but we want to reach
(24:02):
everybody on on earth and and bring this valuable skill.
So one of the interesting growth areas for us is
connecting with companies and health insurers. And so to your point,
you know, if people have Calm, hopefully using it like
going to the gym for your body, will reduce the
downstream need for therapists or psychologists or expensive medication. So
(24:28):
that is valuable to to ensure us. But second, could
using a product like Calm help people live healthier physical
lives as well? Could developing a meditation practice make you
more conscious about what you put in your body, reducing
the incidence of heart disease or diabetes, or enabling you
to take more exercise. So if this is true, which
(24:49):
which we believe it is, this is an enormously valuable
opportunity for for many many people. And where are you
going from here? What kind of stuff are you guys
building right now? Is it new la whages? Is it
new you know partnerships? Where where is just manifesting? Yeah,
we're We're juggling a lot at the moment, trying to
be careful that we don't chase every single shiny object,
(25:10):
you know, I I often talk about us wanting to
take the brand offline. Could Calm be clothing and books
and magazines and hotel and island one day? Maybe? But
in in the near term, it's creating more amazing content
for our audience, creating more teachers, um creating new types
of sleep stories, expanding into the kids realm because so
(25:32):
many kids struggle with with anxiety and sleep challenges. International
is a big area where we have translated Calm into
six languages, but we've got many, many more coming. And then, yeah,
as I touched on earlier, the biggest area is probably
the B two B bringing Calm into corporations and working
with healthcare insurance because most companies offer some kind of
(25:55):
gym membership to their employee base, but very few offer
mental health. And that's changing rapidly, and we don't see
why every company in the world shouldn't offer some kind
of mental health support to their important employee base totally.
And it is that a huge that a huge growth
area for Calm. Right now, you're saying that's a place
(26:16):
where you know, people are really shifting or thinking in
the present moment. Yes, yeah, we're We've built a team
there and we saw a tremendous acceleration during the pandemic
as companies look for ways to support their employees working
from home, and that that acceleration has continued. So yeah,
(26:36):
we were investing very heavily in that side of the business.
All of us, you know, are going through you know,
trauma right now. It's TSD, it's any a PTSD at
the moment. So you know, anything that we can do
any moment that we can take to sort of reward
ourselves and be you know, thankful to ourselves. Um and
just meditate or take a minute to breathe or you know,
(26:57):
walk slowly or what is the thing that allows you
to find calm? To your point, And what's amazing about
the term is that it's like and this is what
I've been thinking about recently, and like that my reasons
for it, you know, the reasons I gave myself to
have a practice in a sense is like if you
are in fight or flight, it's impossible to be creative
(27:19):
in imaginative. Yes, it's so so true and so many
of us are, you know, our sympathetic nervous systems are
just constantly engaged, and we're we're flooded with quartison and
adrenaline and no wonder people are just razzled and burnt
out and stressed and unable to to think deeply and
(27:40):
get into a state of flow. So yeah, tapping into
calm as a superpower. Just being conscious and aware of
it is so so valuable. Um you mentioned breathing. I
think that's such an important one that most of us
just barely give a second thought to. Yet it's something
we do, you know, more than half a billion times
during a lifetime. I find whenever I'm just anxious or
(28:03):
or stressed, just focusing on my breath for a few
seconds is so valuable, so quick to change that that
state of mind you know about the eight second breath, bro,
is that going? Is that when you un uh no
idea of the lineage. But somehow I have in my
(28:24):
practice someone at some point it taught me to like
just count my inhale and exhale and try to build
up to eight seconds in the sense in each direction,
and it has like a pretty immediate effect for me.
Um And and in terms of sleep stories. You know,
like it was you know, for for my wife, like
after enduring like the pregnancy, you know, like that was
(28:44):
a huge, huge benefit to her um in terms of
helping her relax, helping her fall asleep, which I don't
know if that's something that you guys have been doing
thoughtfully as well around like maternity. But I mean, these
are these amazing Like we're talking about them as like
quote categories like you would as adventure capitalist or an entrepreneur.
But the reality is this is these are the things
that every single human does and would love to do
(29:06):
more peacefully or better. So true. Another one is you know, gratitude, Um,
how how simple but valuable that is as a practice.
And again, we just get so overwhelmed, we we get
lost in our own thoughts and courts loops. And when
you can just consciously snap out of that and just
(29:27):
focus on something you're grateful for, whether you're trying to
fall asleep or in the middle of the day, I
think that's a really powerful way of changing one's state
as well and resetting art of the hustle. Will be
right back after this short break. Do you have any
(29:49):
thoughts on you know, calms place in you know, this
this moment that we find ourselves. I know that it's
enough to like fight the battle that you're focused on,
which is you know, for writing my bankfulness and calmed
aw um, But I also imagine that you're really fucking
curious to your thoughts. Yes, yeah, we we take our
(30:10):
responsibility very seriously to help and support where we can. So,
you know, when the pandemic first hit, we created a
site at calm dot com forward slash together and put
a lot of our content and made it free for
for anyone around the world. We are very passionate about
changing the world and one of the best ways to
(30:31):
do that is starting with the younger generation. So we
have a program called Calm for Schools where teachers around
the world can get Calm for free and bring a
little bit of peace and calm and mindfulness into their classrooms.
So those those are a few areas, and then we
want to explore how can we help other groups as well,
(30:51):
you know, from first responders fighting these just unbelievable fires,
to prisoners, veterans, you name it. That there's so many
people we'd like to reach and support. So as a site,
we it just goes like we barely scratched the surface
of this big journey ahead of us. And if I
can just ask more like fifty thousand square like fifty
(31:11):
thousand foot questions to close out. You know, you had
this incredible journey, you know, like you're you know, from
at least over our friendship, you know, over the last
like ten years where you know, with having you know,
the startups that are just like almost for fun more
than for anything else or for passion, right and you know,
then growing and building a company that raises venture capital
(31:32):
and pivots into success, going through such a you know,
rial roller coaster, and then to you know kind of
I think arrive at a place that you know, you're
stewarding a company that's really generationally representative, right, Like I
don't know that there's many other calms out of the
last decade in our generation, but like, you know, what
(31:52):
are some of the things that like you wish you
had known earlier in the journey or the lessons that
you learned that like you know, you keep front of mine. Now,
it's a good a good question. Um. I mean I've
definitely made a lot of mistakes along the way, but
but I don't beat myself up about them, because we
can only make the best decision we can at the
time with the information we have. In hindsight, everything looks
(32:15):
completely different. And I think those were stakes and dead ends.
It got me to this point where I am now.
And the other way of looking at it is, you know,
the world is so competitive business and startups so tough
that to do anything new you really have to be
playing around at the edges, and it's dangerous. At the
edges you're gonna fail and screw up a lot more
(32:36):
times than than you succeed. So yeah, just being comfortable
with getting things wrong. But but I think one of
the biggest things is having that fast cycle to be
able to place lots of little bets quickly, to try
things that doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work, that works,
then you do a little bit more of it. That's
how you kind of edge your way to to the big,
big successes. And you've just got to be very disciplined
(32:59):
and refocused and uh and also a bit of a cliche,
but just make sure you really enjoy what you're doing.
Um And I've always done that for every business I've
been involved in. It's it's been something that I personally
super excited and passionate about. It sounds to be a
bit like a mad scientist approach. You have a science
(33:20):
method and you're you know, truly enthused about the thing
that you're building, so you're always thinking about it and
you can be creative with it. And I always found
that to be really interesting, and even like people that would,
I still don't fully get it because I'm not a developer,
but you know, people that are at work with them
regularly tell me that the best developers are the most
(33:40):
creative ones, right. It's it's like always finding the art
and the thing that you're doing in a sense. But
I love that. I love that you have, you know,
a lab to work with and tanker with to continue
to create these innovations that you know make our lives better.
So thank you, Oh absolutely no, thank you for saying that.
I think you know a lot the big breakthroughs in
(34:01):
in life, whether they are a business or an invention,
come from people that just go very deep on on
one thing. That deep deep focus is so important because
the killer ideas, the killer step forwards, don't just happen
when you're sitting at your desk, you know, typing away
your brain unconsciously, unconscious part of your brain or the
subconscious needs to be worrying away the whole time. And
(34:24):
so that only comes with with that depth of focus.
So I think that's that's a big, probably the single
most important advice I'd give to anyone trying to trying
to crack anything. Just go deep and remove as many
kind of distractions as you can. Well, Michael, thank you
for being on the podcast. You're a great friend and
an inspirational leader and entrepreneur and an incredibly generous guy.
(34:47):
And you always have been with everyone that's you know,
had the pleasure of coming through your life. And thanks
again man, you know for for the listeners. It's just
calm dot com right, anything else that we should check
out or any other info that we should go and about. No,
I think I think com dot com is great. And yeah,
thank you for that that lovely ending there. I'm blushing
(35:08):
here in Galway, and thank you for your friendship over
this decade. I still remember when we when we met
for the first time, when I'd heard about these crazy
guys buying a mountain and has huge, wild, ambitious plans,
I thought, Wow, I need to meet those folks, and
so yeah, I'm very grateful for the friendship that we've
had over these many, many years. Thanks Michael, thanks for
(35:30):
listening Out of the Hustle, and see you next time.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
(35:53):
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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