Replay: Banishing burnout, with Arianna Huffington
To scale sustainably, founders must not neglect their mental health. Arianna Huffington learned this the hard way after collapsing from burnout while leading The Huffington Post. She talked with host Reid Hoffman about how that wake-up call sparked her next venture, Thrive Global, which helps companies build cultures that prioritize well-being. With work wellness insights from Huffington, Chris Yeh and Dr. Matt Walker, this 2018 episode feels more essential than ever.
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Arianna Huffington: I Was Lying In A Little Pool Of Blood! The Huffington Post, A $1 Billion 'Flop'!
3 world-leading companies, 30 years of never-ending evolution: there is only one Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington is the founder of The Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and Thrive AI Health. She is also the author of 15 books such as, ‘Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success’ and ‘The Sleep Revolution’.
In this conversation, Arianna and Steven discuss topics such as, Arianna’s burnout breakdown, why she sold The Huffington Post, the benefits of redefining success, and the dangers of social media and phones.
(00:00) Intro
(00:00) Childhood Experiences That Shaped My Success
(01:18) Having Ambition From A Young Age
(03:04) My Journey To Becoming Cambridge's 3rd Female Student Union President
(04:49) Overcoming Overthinking
(05:42) Breaking Gender Norms Without Fear Of Failure
(08:46) The Core Message Of 'The Female Woman'
(09:45) Balancing Career And Family: Is It Possible?
(11:06) The Power Of Listening To Your Inner Self
(12:15) My Early Career Aspirations And Dreams
(13:40) How Bernard Levin Influenced My Career
(17:31) Bernard's Death
(18:55) The Impact Of Michael Huffington On My Life
(20:15) The Transformative Power Of Forgiveness
(20:57) The Story Behind The Huffington Post's Creation
(23:51) How The Huffington Post Overcame Terrible Initial Reviews
(25:46) Lessons From Roger Federer's Commencement Speech
(27:44) Launching A Tech Company In My Fifties
(30:03) Business Mistakes To Avoid As A Startup Founder
(33:38) The Serious Health Risks Of Sleep Deprivation
(35:44) The Importance Of Self-Care While Working Intensely
(37:17) Is Sacrificing Your Wellbeing Worse For Men Or Women?
(38:49) The 3rd Women's Revolution
(39:54) Do Women Experience Burnout Faster Than Men?
(41:16) The Health Impact Of Stressful Jobs
(42:28) Why Volunteering Reduces The Likelihood Of Job Quitting
(44:01) How My Life Changed After A Burnout Diagnosis
(46:11) How A Large Financial Windfall Changed My Life
(49:18) How Small Improvements Lead To Big Positive Changes
(54:06) The Biggest Mistakes I've Made In Business
(57:15) The Most Important Lessons From My Career
(01:00:02) What's The True Meaning Of Life?
(01:03:47) Coping With The Loss Of My First Child
(01:04:44) How To Keep Faith During Tough Times
(01:05:52) My Partner's Heroic Endeavors During World War II
(01:06:35) What My Mother Would Have Thought Of The Huffington Post
(01:07:45) How Increasing Wellbeing Boosts Business Productivity
(01:08:50) The Day My Mother Passed Away
(01:11:00) Life After My Mother's Death
(01:12:45) The Most Important Life Lessons I'd Share With You
(01:19:03) The Importance Of Entry Interviews In Hiring
(01:20:59) How To Address And Overcome Your Own Prejudices
(01:23:50) Key Leadership Qualities That Drive Success
(01:25:03) The Role Of Luck In Achieving Success
(01:28:09) Is It Luck, Hard Work, Or Intentionality That Drives Success?
(01:31:55) The Best Advice I Wish I Had Received
(01:33:56) Using Technology And AI For Positive Change
(01:39:39) The Final Question Every Guest Must Answer
Follow Arianna:
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You can buy Arianna’s book, ‘Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/jIsyETRYeMb
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My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook
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What great founders do at night, w/Arianna Huffington
To survive your entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn to recharge. Knowing when to turn the lights out may be the only way to keep the lights on. Few know this better than Arianna Huffington, who dramatically scaled the Huffington Post – and then experienced profound physical burnout. Her venture, Thrive Global, scales the idea of balance across an organization. With cameo appearances from Chris Yeh (co-author, Blitzscaling) and Dr. Matt Walker (author of Why We Sleep).
Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Leading in an age of burnout, w/Arianna Huffington & Padmasree Warrior
How do you nurture human talent in today’s AI-obsessed, pressure-cooker business climate? Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive and Huffington Post, and Padmasree Warrior, founder of Fable and former chief strategy officer at Cisco, offer actionable advice on avoiding burnout—for yourself and your teams. Arianna and Padma explain how productivity and positive business outcomes are directly linked to employees’ health and wellbeing. Recorded live at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, they share with host Bob Safian their personal experiences with burnout as well as simple tips, including how even a brief 60-second break can be a powerful tool to de-stress.
Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com/
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20Sales: How to Scale a Career While Scaling a Family, Strategies and Specific Tools To Help Maintain Work-Life Balance, What Companies Can Do To Empower Parents To Be Their Best Selves & How to Prevent Parental Leave Being an Inhibitor To Your Career
Today's 20Sales is a special Mother's Day edition where we are joined by 6 of the best sales leaders who also happen to be rockstar mothers.
The Profiles
Maggie Hott is on the GTM Team (Go-To-Market) at OpenAI. Before OpenAI, Maggie was Director of Sales @ Webflow and before Webflow spent an incredible 6 years at Slack.
Stevie Case is the CRO @ Vanta. Prior to Vanta, Stevie spent an immensely successful 6 years at Twilio as VP of Mid-Market Sales.
Renu Gupta is an advisor and sales consultant to some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies today. Previously she has held sales leadership roles at Slack, Thrive and Dropbox.
Lauren Schwartz is the VP Enterprise Sales @ Fivetran. Before Fivetran, Lauren spent 4 years at Segment as Senior Director of Enterprise Sales leading to their acquisition by Twilio.
Julie Maresca is the Head of Global Accounts at Atlassian. Prior to Atlassian, Julie spent an immensely successful 6 years at Slack in numerous roles including Head of Enterprise Sales for North America.
Jessica Arnold is the VP of Global Sales Development @ Amplitude. Before Amplitude, Jessica was the Senior Director for Inside Sales North America at Dropbox for close to 6 years.
In Today's 20Sales Mothers Day Episode We Discuss:
1.) How have you navigated growing in your career at the same time, growing your family?
2.) How do you balance your career and being a mother - when do you lean in and out?
3.) What are some specific strategies or tools that have helped you maintain a work-life balance?
4.) How do you prioritize your mental health and wellbeing while juggling your responsibilities at work and at home?
5.) How do you handle the guilt that many working mothers experience when they have to focus on their career?
6.) What are the unique challenges and advantages of being a mother in a sales leadership role?
7.) How has your experience as a mother influenced your leadership style and decision-making?
8.) How have you navigated going out on maternity leave without it having an impact on your career?
9.) America has one of the worst parental leaves of any country in the world. How can you advocate for parental leave if the existing policy isn't up to par?
10.) What are some ways that companies can create a more inclusive and supportive environment for working mothers in sales leadership roles?
#87 Founder & CEO Thrive, Arianna Huffington: Life Is About More Than Money and Power
Thrive CEO Arianna Huffington is best known for the pioneering online publication she founded, the Huffington Post, which she left in 2016. The experience of running the site awakened her to the most important problem she would tackle in her career: The intersecting crises of stress, burnout, poor sleep, and lack of focus, which Thrive teaches businesses how to manage.
In this episode, Arianna and Joubin discuss how she went from a poor family in Greece to president of the elite Cambridge Union debate society; what she learned from both her parents, and the big lessons she has tried to impart to her own daughters; the hardships she faced professionally and personally before starting the Huffington Post; how she fell in love with online media, and how running the Huffington Post awakened her to the burnout epidemic; how Thrive is changing the conversation around stress; and the need for resilience-plus and the “obnoxious roommate in your head.”
In this episode, we cover:
Being present in every interaction is “one of the greatest gifts we can give each other” (02:23)
Arianna’s parents, and abundance as a function of your attitude to life (08:08)
How she became the first foreign-born president of the Cambridge Union, which led to her first book (18:00)
An “incredible gift”: Discovering at a young age that money and fame aren’t always fulfilling (25:12)
Running in the California recall election against Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a digital media epiphany (31:10)
Burning out en route to Huffington Post’s $300 million acquisition by AOL (36:53)
Why Arianna launched a second startup in her 60s, and the mainstreaming of stress relief (41:35)
The meaning of her 2022 word of the year, “resilience-plus” (48:22)
How she has constantly re-invented herself, and metabolizing new experiences (55:04)
Links:
Connect with AriannaTwitter
LinkedIn
Email Thrive’s head of recruiting, Keith Pescosolido: keith@thriveglobal.com
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
What great founders do at night, w/Arianna Huffington
To survive your entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn to recharge. Knowing when to turn the lights out may be the only way to keep the lights on. Few know this better than Arianna Huffington, who dramatically scaled the Huffington Post – and then experienced profound physical burnout. Her venture, Thrive Global, scales the idea of balance across an organization. With cameo appearances from Chris Yeh (co-author, Blitzscaling) and Dr. Matt Walker (author of Why We Sleep).
Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com
Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
CRO Thrive, Renu Gupta: Building Positive Personal and Professional Habits
Take one look at Renu Gupta’s resume and it’s immediately clear that she is a talented — and successful — sales leader.
With experience at companies such as Google, Dropbox and Slack, Renu has led large sales teams and produced results. Now, Renu serves as Vice President of Sales at Thrive Global, a company founded by CEO Arianna Huffington, that seeks to end workplace burnout with behavior change technology.
On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Renu discuss personal and professional habits, the importance for sales reps to practice “proactive communication,” and Thrive Global’s lead generation strategy.
In this episode, we cover:
What Renu's one-year tenure as an account executive at Google taught her about different styles of management. (4:04)
Why Renu was apprehensive about transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager at Dropbox — and why she hasn't looked back since. (7:06)
Thrive Global: How Renu's current company is helping businesses empower employees to build positive life habits and reduce burnout through technology. (9:16)
Personal and professional habits: The habits Renu never misses — and the lessons about hard work and gratitude she teaches her children. (16:03)
'We're all human': The aspirational habit Renu has that she often breaks — and how she works to make up for it. (20:32)
Why 'proactive communication' is a common habit among successful sales reps. (23:35)
'Multi-year enterprise-wide deals': Thrive Global's B2B sales strategy. (26:53)
‘Brand recognition’: How Thrive Global generates sales leads through referrals. (32:35)
The recruiting benefits of having a powerful mission. (35:30)
What the word grit means to Renu. (38:45)
Guest: Renu Gupta, VP of Sales at Thrive Global
Links:
Connect with RenuEmail: renu@thriveglobal.com
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
Bonus: Recharge your brain with a Meditative Story by Arianna Huffington
As an entrepreneur, you have to find a way to recharge. This new podcast, from the creators of Masters of Scale, is designed to create calm amid an always-on schedule. The episode was inspired by Reid’s interview with Arianna Huffington, where she told a sliver of this story: it starts in the tiny Athens apartment where she grew up, and takes her to the University of Cambridge. Listen for the lesson she learned from her mother, about embracing life’s journey without being attached to the outcome — a lesson every founder needs to hear. Interspersed with the story, you'll hear prompts from a guide to help you center your mind; after the story, your guide leads you on a quiet meditation to help you recharge and refresh. If you like the effects, you can subscribe to Meditative Story on the app you're using now.
Read the transcript of Arianna Huffington's Meditative Story at: https://meditativestory.com/ariannahuffington/
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What great founders do at night, w/Arianna Huffington
To survive your entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn to recharge. Knowing when to turn the lights out may be the only way to keep the lights on. Few know this better than Arianna Huffington, who dramatically scaled the Huffington Post — and then experienced profound physical burnout. Her new venture, Thrive Global, scales the idea of balance across an organization. With cameo appearances from Chris Yeh (co-author, Blitzscaling) and Dr. Matt Walker (author of Why We Sleep).
Read Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder by Arianna Huffington: https://amzn.to/39IFfCx
Read Why We Sleep by Matt Walker: https://amzn.to/2Xfxi2w
Read Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh: https://amzn.to/39IFfCx
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/arianna-huffington-what-great-founders-do-at-night/
Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
#274: Arianna Huffington, Media Maven
Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global and founder of The Huffington Post. She has been named to Time magazine's list of the world's 100 Most Influential People and Forbes' Most Powerful Women list.
Originally from Greece, Arianna moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge with an M.A. in economics. In late 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that quickly became one of the most widely read, linked to, and frequently cited media brands on the Internet. In 2012, she won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. In August of 2016, she launched Thrive Global with a mission of ending the stress and burnout epidemic by offering companies and individuals sustainable, science-based solutions to well-being.
Arianna serves on a lot of boards -- including Uber and The Center for Public Integrity -- and she is the author of 15 books, including Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.
This is a wide-ranging conversation, and we get into plenty of tactics. Arianna is an expert storyteller and very funny -- enjoy!
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a16z Podcast: Sleep!
Sleep, productivity, and creatively are intimately linked, for better and for worse. And "we are living under a collective delusion that burnout is the way to succeed," observes Arianna Huffington, author of The Sleep Revolution.
Not only does this affect our health and resilience, she argues, but the data shows that even though we are working longer hours than ever, we lose 11 days of productivity a year per employee due to sickness or diminished capacity. (It also hurts our ability to work in teams.) This isn't just a problem in the tech industry, either. BuzzFeed News senior writer Nitasha Tiku observes that "Any business book that's valorizing or diving into the life of a CEO is going to talk about how much he or she sleeps."
But sleep isn't just a biological act, it's also a psychological (insomnia, anxiety, TV binge-watching?) as well as a socioeconomic one when you consider who gets to sleep (people higher or lower in the workplace hierarchy, other demographic factors?). And where does tech and the tech industry come in here? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Huffington and Tiku discuss the hard realities of sleep -- everything from tech and culture to labor and the evolving nature of work.
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Episode 88: Arianna Huffington
Arianna is the founder of The Huffington Post, board member of Uber, and author of "The Sleep Revolution". Order the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011G3HC0U/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 We talk about all things sleep, (i.e why we glamorize burnout), what inspired her to write the book, and what she’s doing to spark a sleep revolution. We also we talk about the story behind her joining Uber, her background and how she got into tech, and her long-term ambitions and thoughts on legacy. Edited by @alexkontis Lavish Praise to @ariannahuff Constructive Criticism to @eriktorenberg
Recode Decode: Huffington Post Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington
Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington talks with Kara Swisher about why journalism is going mobile, but she won?t take her phone to bed. Later on: is 4K TV the future, or just hype?
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