Solving the global mental health crisis,

it's a first-order problem. One in three

of us will experience depression or

anxiety.

And I realized that this could be one of

the biggest opportunities and businesses

in the world. Michael Acton Smith, he's

the billionaire founder of the mindful

meditation and sleep app, Calm. Everyone

thought we were crazy. The bridge

between the seed money we raised and

getting to a series A took years and

years. And then that was where the point

was like, we're taking off. It's

happening. Never have we been assailed

with more noise and stimulation from

social media to billboards to TV. It's

coming at us constantly. One of the most

valuable skills in the 21st century is

to be able to decide where and how and

when we put our attention. The human

brain is the most complex thing in the

known universe, and yet it doesn't come

with an instruction manual.

Quick one, can you do me a favor if

you're listening to this and hit the

subscribe button, the follow button,

wherever you're listening to this

podcast. Thank you so much.

Michael Acton Smith, he's the

billionaire founder of the mindful

meditation and sleep app, Calm. For the

last 10 years, Michael has been one of

the great UK entrepreneurial success

stories. But the really staggering thing

about Michael's story is how many

successes he had that turned quickly

into failures. And honestly, how he rose

time and time and time again from those

ashes to rebuild an even more successful

business.

Most people would give up, and you

almost wouldn't blame them when you hear

what Michael's been through. His most

recent success, Calm app, is worth

billions and billions of dollars. And it

helps people who are going through hard

times or any pain at all reach

mindfulness. It teaches them the

importance of slowing down, stopping,

and meditation. So, one would think

Michael had an easy life and he was the

master of his mind.

But he goes through the same battles as

everyone else. And he describes this

last year as the hardest of his entire

life. Michael, thank you for being so

honest on this podcast. Thank you for

your vulnerability because I know this

conversation is going to help everybody

that takes the time to listen to it. So,

without further ado, I'm Steven

Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a

CEO. I hope nobody's listening. But if

you are, then please keep this to

yourself.

Michael, you've been described in the

press as this uh this kind of like

entrepreneurial rockstar

character. And when I when I read

through your story, I was surprised and

inspired and blown away by how early

that entrepreneurial bug appeared in

your life. When you look back at your

younger years,

are you able to pinpoint what you were

good at, the thing that made you

different from your peers in terms of

skill your skill set or talent? Uh

I'm not sure. I was

very impressively mediocre at school.

Like right right in the middle.

Definitely not uh

uh in the top set uh for anything. But I

think I if I had to pin down one

characteristic, it would probably be

curiosity. I was just fascinated by lots

of different things. And my dad was a

librarian. He used to bring books home

for me and my sister all the time on all

sorts of random subjects. And I just

devoured them. And so, I think that kind

of sparked uh this interest in in

different areas of life. And I think

when you start

when you're curious, um everything

becomes interesting in life. Everyone

you chat to, every magazine you pick up,

every country you go to. And uh you

start to kind of connect dots between

different things. And I think that's a

really important part of the

entrepreneurial mindset.

That inspires creativity then, right?

Because if you're if you've got so many

dots to pick from, you can create new

things, right? Exactly. Yeah, so I

think, you know, along with curiosity, I

think creativity is uh is part of it as

well. I love

ideas. I love taking the the random

things that are kind of rattling around

my head, putting them onto a sheet of

paper, playing around with them,

thinking about them from different

angles, and then

taking the best ones and putting them

out there in the world. And this is the

beauty of being an entrepreneur. You

know, you can talk about stuff

endlessly, but only when you meet the

market do you find out whether there's

any merit to your ideas. And you can see

whether people actually resonate and use

or buy or talk about whatever it is that

you're creating. I just love that.

Sales. Your sister said that uh I had an

a little story she told about you going

to car boot sales and being a really

remarkable seller when you were younger

at car boot sales. What role has was was

that apparent when you were younger that

you were you had a talent for selling

things?

I don't know if I I've ever thought of

myself as a good salesperson. I think I

get very animated and energized and and

passionate about things I really really

believe in, which I think is probably a

a key part of of being good at at

selling things. Um yeah, we used to it

was one of the many many uh uh endeavors

when we were younger going to car boot

sales and selling things and trying to

match them with the the people that were

walking by. So, interesting she said

that. I never knew that. Did Did you fit

Did you fit in?

Not really. No, if I'm if I'm honest, I

was a little bit of a um

a square peg in a round hole at at

school. Um

was quite small for my age. And uh just

didn't quite

it's hard to describe, but didn't quite

click or understand the the cool kids

and and kind of what was going on. I

think maybe that sort of

forced me to kind of retreat into myself

a little bit. I became very passionate

about reading, as I mentioned. Kind of

went down the path more of um uh

sort of social pursuits rather than

going to parties and events. And I was

pretty introverted and and shy uh until

I got to university. Were you ever

bullied in school? Did you ever

I wouldn't I wouldn't describe it as

bullied, but I I would certainly not

class myself as one of the kind of um

the cool kids, sort of on the on the

periphery looking in rather than in the

center of of everything that was going

on.

And then at university that changed

somehow. It did. I kind of, you know,

the beauty about university is you can

reinvent yourself. And and you leave all

the kind of

sort of perceptions and and views that

people have of you when when you get

there. And uh so met some amazing

friends. And I just decided to kind of

lean into everything, joined every club

going, chatted to everyone I could. It

was a big kind of flip. And some of my

best friends now, you know, I met at

university during that period.

And on that point of um identity, when

you got to university you could you

could finally start I guess exploring

your who you who you actually were and

you shed that identity from school, shed

a lot of the maybe limiting beliefs

about

public perceptions of who you were. And

um

at some point that went on to starting

Firebox later in

Firebox

later on, right? 1998?

Exactly. Yeah, so um Tom, who I met at

at university and I

uh were always talking about business

ideas. But when we left university, we

both got sensible jobs. You know, we

were in debt uh and needed to um

make some money. And so, my passion at

that time was I wanted to become a

trader uh in an investment bank. I'd

watch Wall Street and thought it was the

most interesting world ever, you know,

snapping the red braces and just kind of

buying and selling and dealing.

And I lived in a little town called

Marlow. And I saw in the newspaper that

there was a job ad uh for a leasing

company uh company cars. And it it said

you will be working with investment

banks in London.

And I didn't know anyone that worked in

the city. Um I did a geography degree,

so that wasn't I couldn't go in through

the front door to get a job in a bank.

So, I thought this could be my route in.

So, I got the job and uh just uh worked

as hard as I could, tried to get

noticed, and I got put on the Goldman

Sachs account. And I thought this is

amazing. Uh I traveled up to London 2

days a week and got to work in their

offices in the HR department. And uh

I remember reading um the FT and the

Economist. And and when I'd meet the

traders, I'd like throw in kind of

random tips about things I'd read. Um

hoping I'd get noticed and invited to to

join the company. Of course, that that

never happened.

And what I realized was that this

probably wasn't the the world for me. It

it didn't kind of click. It was great to

kind of try on that uh that uh jacket

for size to see what it was like, but it

it just it didn't kind of speak to my

soul. It just felt uh a bit false. There

was no creativity to it. And so, um

after uh about 6 months or so,

uh stepped away from that. And Tom had

left to he was programming breathalyzers

in Wales.

Uh

which was quite an entertaining job.

He'd have to drink cans of Stella to

calibrate these breathalyzers he was

working on. They were used by the

police. Um but we both weren't uh we

both weren't clicking with what we had.

And yeah, we'd meet up and talk about

business ideas. And the internet was

just starting to kind of really gain

momentum sort of around '97, '98. And uh

it was during one of our chats in the

pub that the light bulb went on and we

we realized uh maybe we should leave and

set up our own business.

So, take me through that journey. So,

you you hand in your resignation at some

point or do you start while you're still

at that company? So, it was a little bit

of crossover as there usually is, kind

of thinking about the the idea. But um

once the idea that Tom and I were

chatting about just became so

all-consuming, that was the moment when

we like, right, let's dive into the

unknown, leap out of the airplane, and

figure this out as we are plummet to

earth. And uh Tom was living just

outside of Cardiff and I remember we

were again walking around town chatting.

We went into a bookshop and we saw this

book that was called

doing business on the internet and we

knew we were both aware Tom did AI and

computer science at university. So we

knew something was going on in this in

this world but we clubbed together. We

put 10 pounds in each to buy this book

which was a a lot of money for us

living pretty much hand to mouth and I

just remember reading it and just having

my mind blown by you know what felt like

what was coming. This was going to

change everything. How we did commerce,

how we connected with each other, how we

were entertained and Tom was just

fascinated by this book as well. So that

was kind of that became our Bible to

create what was Hotbox which then became

Firebox the

the gadget the games the sort of online

retailer. And so that was like kind of

like an obscure gift um gadgets

online retailer.

Yes. Yeah, we felt that you know again

this is the early days of the internet.

It was predominantly

young youngish people who were on it who

were sort of figuring out how to

connect. It wasn't the easiest thing in

the world. AOL was just kind of getting

going. The search engines weren't fully

developed.

It was a lot more men than women on the

internet at this time and we thought

what if we could sell unusual toys and

gadgets and games kind of quirky stuff

and uh it was sort of inspired by the

Innovations catalog and Sharper Image in

America and so that was the idea and we

would find products that we thought were

quite cool. We would list them online

and then when someone bought them we

would then go and buy the product from

whoever was selling it cuz we didn't

have the cash flow to you know hold

anything in stock and then

send it out to the individual. It

certainly wasn't Amazon next day

delivery.

It was pretty clunky. And the payment

systems on the time.

Well this is really interesting cuz you

know around this time when we told

people we were going to set up a

business online we got a few different

reactions. One was that

eye rolling. People would tell us no one

is going to buy anything online. You

know you have to put your credit card in

line and you know who's going to do that

far too risky and dangerous. So that was

the prevailing wisdom. The second

feedback we got was that the only people

making money online are kind of porn

barons.

So

but we were like no we think there's a

revolution happening here. We think look

at all the mail order catalogs. Look at

the money being made. The internet is a

much more efficient way of doing this.

And this is long before Shopify long

before stripe. So Tom was the technical

genius. He kind of built a website and

we couldn't figure out how to take

payments online. So what we had to do

was if you wanted to order anything from

our site you had to find the product you

wanted then you had to print out an

order form.

Then you had to fill it in with all your

details. Then you had to write down your

credit card details. Then you had to fax

that to us using JFAX. I would print it

out type all the details in. We had a

PDQ machine from the bank that I would

manually type in and then that would

take the money and then I would put the

product once it arrived in a package and

and send it out. It was incredibly

inefficient and fortunately we only had

about one order a month so it was

we we certainly weren't in danger of

setting any kind of commerce records but

it it just it was it was a very

interesting period. Many months this

went on and

it just allowed us to kind of sort of

test the systems and figure out what was

going on and day by day just get a

little bit better and we had an amazing

friend called Matt Shown who we also met

at university and he would use secret

names to order from the site to kind of

cheer us up and and let us feel that

there were people out there buying these

products. He only admitted that to us a

a little bit later but that kind of

kept kept our energy and our spirits up

as kind of we sat there waiting for

orders to come in. What was the heights

of that website? What was the highest

moment? Well amazingly it's it's still

now

a quarter of a century almost it's been

going which is mind-boggling to think an

internet company.

I think the the real kind of

tipping point for that business was when

we made our own products. So instead of

selling other people's products

where the margins were just very thin

and you could buy from other places we

developed our own IP and that was a real

kind of light bulb moment for me

recognizing that to do anything in

business you really got to

create something yourself. You know make

something that hasn't existed before.

So during one of our many board meetings

and creative sessions in the pub Tom and

I Tom and I were

watching someone line up tequila shots

across the bar and this turned into a

conversation of um they look like pawns

on a chessboard. You know what if we

could create chess

but make it more interesting. Turn it

into the drinking person's thinking

game. And

you could have 32 glasses on a board and

you fill them all with alcohol red wine

against white wine or whiskey against

vodka if you're very hardcore. You move

the pieces as normal but every time you

capture a piece you have to drink it. So

you could make a queen sacrifice which

would be like three shots make your

opponent very drunk and hopefully kind

of balance things and we just thought

this was a really unusual idea and we

sent out a press release for it to a

bunch of magazines. We didn't know about

PR companies. We went into WH Smith one

day and scribbled down all the addresses

and the names of the editors and sent

this out and the reaction was amazing.

We suddenly had all these magazines

wanting to hear about this incredible

shot glass chess set and so the other

light bulb moment there was

storytelling. You know do something

different. We created a story about

these two broke ex-students who had made

this game and we were in FHM and Loaded

and Maxim and we made the local Welsh

newspaper and we even made it to page

three of the Sun which was quite

exciting. Not the the main picture.

Unfortunately no.

Was it you or was it you or Tom?

Definitely

no one wants to see to see us

but yeah a little snippet and suddenly

the orders just started to pour in. It

was it was a real goosebump inducing

moment.

And it's so there's two things there. I

want to just touch on the lesson you

said you learned about PR and

storytelling. I'm guessing that's a

lesson that stayed with you till today.

Oh boy. Absolutely.

And what are the principles of that

lesson? What is what's the principles of

storytelling for you that you learned

then?

Well

everyone is interested in the human

angle. You know if if you look at every

article about a business it almost

always centers on on the human angle.

The stories of people using that

products, the lives that have been

transformed. You know storytelling

is such a powerful way of of of

communicating and and connecting with

other people. The the the the struggle,

the resolution, the transformation at

the end. There's a an amazing book by

Will Storr called The Science of

Storytelling which kind of talks about

this in in great great detail and I

think about it with every business I

create every time I'm pitching my

business to investors or trying to

encourage someone to join. So it's a key

piece I think of the the entrepreneurial

journey.

And so yeah we realized that you know if

if we could instead of putting out press

releases saying this is our business and

this is how much money it makes and this

is our margin you talk about the the

human angle and the story and the

struggle and those aspects and it makes

it much more interesting.

And at some point you decided to depart

from this business.

Yes. Yeah, so

this was many years in. The business was

was going well. We'd built a team. We'd

moved from Wales to London.

We went to one of the first first

Tuesday events. I don't know if anyone

listening remembers but we read about

this in the Guardian this this

networking event where entrepreneurs and

and investors came together to do deals

and yeah we were living in this attic in

Cardiff and we thought oh my goodness we

need to be in London the promised land

where the streets are paved with gold.

So literally within a few days we just

piled up a van and drove to London and

went to this event. And the very first

one we went to we met an investor who

met with him and the team and and they

invested in the business and and we were

just like blown away.

So yes Firebox grew for many years got

got much much bigger but after a while I

decided I I wanted to try something new.

You know the entrepreneurial brain had

been whirring away. There was a a new

concept I was incredibly excited about

and I had some very honest and important

chats with Tom.

And

I I stepped away and created

which was the next big adventure I was

about to embark on.

What why why did you step away though?

So you're you're saying there that you

kind of ran out of love or excitement

for the business ultimately. Were you

were you at this point personally

financially free

and stable or No. No, quite a a long way

from it. You know we'd been building the

business. We hadn't sold any shares. We

hadn't taken any money out of the

business. We were paying ourselves a

very modest salary and it was a it was a

a challenging business to run. So we

certainly we were we were stable. We

were profitable cuz we kind of had to be

but it certainly wasn't throwing off a

lot of cash but I just felt that I was I

there was a new idea that I just

couldn't stop thinking about that was

waking me up every single night at 4:00

a.m. And I just felt I had to answer

that call and I certainly didn't want to

leave Firebox or Tom or the team in the

lurch. So again we had some very

important conversations, as I mentioned,

but

uh

yeah, I felt I had to go and do

something new. And the internet had

evolved quite a bit since the first, you

know, the web one era. Web two was just

gathering pace. You know, it was not

just the read web, it was the read write

web. People were creating,

crowdsourcing, and it just felt like I I

had to yeah, I had to answer this call.

That's really interesting you describe

it as a call. I was I was trying to

think about a way to um

give advice to entrepreneurs that have

lots of ideas, as all entrepreneurs and

creatives do, um how to filter out the

ones worth pursuing. And I was I was

saying one of the things I think I've

done over the years in hindsight is

there's almost this someday shelf in my

mind where like new ideas come, I put

them on the someday shelf, and if they

like nag me

and if they stay at the front of the

shelf and they're like, "Steve, you

know, then I'll pursue them." But if

they kind of fade off into the

background and collect dust and vanish,

yeah, then I don't pursue them. It

sounds like you're talking about a

similar mental system where if it nags

you long enough you pursue. Very very

very true. And I think this is a really

important point. There's a lot of

entrepreneurs, many listening to to this

podcast,

who probably have uh a great idea. Maybe

they've started, maybe they're still

thinking about it. And what I think is

fascinating about this current moment in

time is it's very easy to start a

business. You know, there are so many

tools out there to use and build upon to

get going on day one.

There's a lot of investment uh chasing

great deals. And I think that's a

positive thing and a negative thing.

And I see this. There are too many

people that just launch before they

fully bake their idea. They haven't

built the foundation of the skyscraper

they want to build. And so, they raise

the money, they build the team, but

they're being blown around like a a

paper bag uh as soon as they get new

information. And that's a scary place to

be, spinning around once you've got a

team, once the clock is ticking, once

the investors are on board. What I would

strongly urge, and I've done this with

every business I've set set up, is go

slow to go fast. Do the work up front.

Spend months, sometimes years,

researching what it is that you're

intrigued about. Marinate yourself in

this idea. You know, go to the

the business conferences, read every

book you can, the documentary, speak to

people in the space. And a really

interesting thing starts to happen.

You start connecting these dots. This

invisible work that no one else may be

aware of is you

finding the the magic, finding the

secret to this industry, discovering

where the the opportunity is, where the

alpha is. And once you've done that, you

get to a point, as you say, whether it's

the front of the shelf or whether it's

for me it's the idea that just wakes me

up every single night. That's at the

point where you're like, "Right, let's

go. This is it." It you can't hold it

back any longer. And you have those

strong foundations to then build upon

going forward.

And to communicate to the world exactly

what you're Exactly. It's then a very

crisp, very clear idea. Now, that the

key here is it can change over time, but

um you start from very strong

foundations. And and then uh you you

have that conviction. And that is very

magnetic for other people to to be

around, the first wave of employees, the

investors that you bring on board, the

journalists that you chat to. So, yeah,

that's my my philosophy, not rushing

into new ideas, taking taking time to

let them fully fully get ready before

before you move.

The problem entrepreneurs have in their

mind, I think, and I'm thinking people

listening to that, why don't they heed

that really great sound advice, is cuz

they always think that there is a real

urgency to the challenge they're trying

to solve. And they see it as they're

they're in a 100 m sprint. Yeah. And

they need to go now and go fast, which

means raise tons of capital and start

sprinting. Yeah. And it always feels, no

matter what industry um people are

launching their businesses in, whether

it's like someone launching cupcakes on

Instagram in the pandemic cuz sourdough

exploded, they think it's now or never.

What would you say to that? Yeah, it's a

really good point. It It feels like that

if what you're doing is surface level.

If what you're responding to is

just other companies you're seeing doing

well or an article you read last week uh

and you haven't done that deep work, it

does feel like urgent and you have to

run cuz the the race the starting gun

has already gone. If you do the deep

work,

you recognize that you can go a little

bit slower because the market hasn't

fully formed yet. It's almost one great

analogy I think is surfing. Um when

you're waiting for that wave, you don't

want to be too late, obviously, cuz

everyone's caught the wave and away they

go.

And you don't want to be way way too

early uh while you're paddling there,

you know, in the freezing cold waiting

for the sun to come up cuz you'll freeze

to death. You need to be a little bit

early um

where you feel a little bit of the cold,

and then suddenly the sun comes up and

you see that big wave coming and you're

ready for it and you catch it and woo,

you go. And there's nothing quite like

that, being one of the first players

riding a wave in a in a new market. And

it felt like that for for Calm and, you

know, meditation and mindfulness.

Alex and I were out there paddling in

the freezing cold waters waiting for

that wave for years. And everyone

thought we were a little bit crazy. Um

but we weren't laying the foundations.

We were doing the the deep work and the

research. And then uh we were ready when

that wave hit.

Quick one. At this time of year we

always see a huge spike in the amount of

people that are buying Huel and joining

the Hueligan camp, I guess.

Um and I think that speaks to the role

that Huel plays in my life, but also the

role it plays to a lot of people's

lives, which is as we start to get a

little bit busier, typically we fall

into the trap of going for convenience

food. And convenience food for a lot of

us means like junk food or lots of

sugary stuff. Whereas Huel kind of

safeguards us in that part of our lives.

It's completely nutritionally complete,

as you'll know from listening to this

podcast, and I say it every single time.

I've had more tags on Instagram of

people joining Huel in the last, I'd

say, couple of weeks of January than I

have in the whole last quarter of the

year. So, if there was a time where you

were thinking about giving it a shot,

here's my recommendation. Try the salted

caramel flavor. That's my personal

favorite. We all have different

preferences. The banana flavor I

absolutely adore. I love the cinnamon

swirl flavor. And also the protein

powder, the salted caramel flavor again,

that sits on top of my fridge over

there, is um incredibly useful if you

are working out and you're trying to get

high levels of protein into your body.

Give it a go. Tag me on Instagram. Let

me know what you think.

And come and become a Hueligan with me.

So, after Firebox, you you you went on

to Mind Candy. Yes. Mind Candy. Yeah.

And Perplex City.

Perplex City, indeed.

That's

Oh, wow. All right, this is going back

back a a fair old way. The reason why I

stepped away from from Firebox, and the

idea that I couldn't stop thinking

about, was around games. I've always

loved games, you know, I mentioned

chess. I love Scrabble and backgammon,

video games like Dungeons and Dragons,

created all my own games.

But I saw something really interesting

happening just after the the the new

millennium.

And it was could the internet revolution

lies how we play games? Instead of games

being, you know, uh just you and your

mate playing on a Nintendo or

or whatever, could games be

for three or four people or 10 people or

hundreds? What if games could be played

by millions of people? You know, the the

massively multiplayer online gaming boom

that that was just getting going there

with World of Warcraft and some of the

ones coming out of the Far East. So,

that was what I I couldn't stop thinking

about. And so, Perplex City was this

idea, what if we could create a game

that didn't just live online, it lived

offline as well, that it would it would

be all around you. It would be you would

be a hero in sort of part game, part

story, part movie. Um I'd watched uh the

interesting theme here, watched a movie

that I couldn't stop thinking about

called The Game with Michael Douglas,

this person doesn't know whether it's

real life or a game that they're part

of. And I I just wanted to to bring that

to the the world. So, that was the

starting point of Perplex City. Um we

raised some money, we buried a treasure

somewhere in the world that was worth uh

a 100,000 lb reward for the first person

that found it. It

It was found a couple of years later um

by the very passionate audience and

community that was playing this game.

But we released clues uh we hid clues in

classified sections of newspapers, we

had skywriting,

uh we um

uh you'd get messages on your phone. Uh

it was that we had helicopters at live

events. I mean, it was just this

extraordinary experience, very very

expensive to do.

And it was called an alternate game. Uh

and so,

basically, that was uh Perplex City. And

it was probably one of the most creative

things I've ever worked on. We had a an

incredible team and a very passionate

audience playing it. Unfortunately, it

was one of the most commercially

disastrous

things I've worked on. And my goodness,

I I learned some really valuable lessons

building that.

So, I read that it cost $9 million?

About $9 million. Yeah, we raised um

roughly $10 million. And we'd burnt

through almost all of it, uh about $9

million. And uh I was going back to

waking up in the middle of the night.

This time was I was waking up in the

middle of the night in a cold sweat

thinking, "This is not working. This is

not right." And the problem was

the outside world was saying, "What a

brilliant idea this was." We were

winning awards, we were in the press all

the time. It looked like we were

geniuses, but in reality, deep in my

kind of pit of my stomach, I was like,

"Oh my goodness, we are heading

towards a cliff very very fast, and uh I

need to do something urgently." Because

you hadn't figured out the the

underlying business model?

Correct. So, we had a model. So, you

would buy these trading cards, a bit

like Pokémon cards, you'd get a random

collection of six in a pack for a few

pounds. And

these puzzles then played into a a

larger puzzle. There were 256 of them to

collect. There were all sorts of hidden

clues within them.

And

we sold a fair few, we made a a bit of

money, but it was nowhere near enough to

cover the costs of this very expensive

game we were running. So, the just the

the the economics and the business

business model didn't make sense.

And so, yeah, as I say, we were running

out of money fast. I didn't think we'd

be able to raise another round, and I

was just very stressed, extremely

worried about what to what to do. When

when you say so, two points I want to

pick up on that. When you say I was

extremely stressed, give me a a clear

picture of what that means in real terms

on a day-to-day basis.

So,

just

sitting there

I I still can remember sitting at the

office in Battersea, just looking at the

the team kind of working away,

um

everyone happy and smiling, and me

staring at my screen knowing where our

bank balance was and how fast we were

burning money, and thinking that in a

couple of months

this whole thing is going to be have to

shut down. We'll be declared bankrupt. I

may never be allowed to be a director

again. You know, it was quite

terrifying.

And not almost paralyzed and frozen with

fear, not knowing what to do next. Like,

how do I solve this? Who do I speak to

about it? Um I was a sole founder in

that business, so it was kind of tricky.

I had an amazing COO uh {slash} CFO

{slash} every C everything O, Divinia

Knowles, who worked closely with me.

But, um yeah, I I just didn't really

know how to solve this conundrum we were

in. And it manifested in

high blood pressure, sleepless nights,

uh not eating well, um just yeah, all

the classic signs of um stress and and

burnout. Was there a day where you had

to make that tough decision to wind the

company down and to bring it to an end?

And how was that? What was that moment

like? There was, and I I kept putting it

off. Uh you know, that was a horrible

thing to do, but one morning, I um

invited the whole team, there was about

25 of us, into our conference room, sat

everyone down. I was shaking like a

leaf.

Um and uh you know, these people had

believed me. They they followed me to

this company, this big vision that I

painted for them all.

And I basically just had to say, this is

not working. We're running out of cash.

We're going to have to stop and and kill

this game. And it was partway through

the second season, and there were just

gasps of shock and horror.

Uh

and um

I had been thinking of a new idea.

So, it was very different to the current

idea, and so this was what I thought was

the best thing we should do.

We had, as I say, less than a million

dollars left. We had two options. We can

continue down the path we're on

and hit the brick wall and just end,

or we can pivot, do this dramatic pivot

to this new idea with the cash we've got

left, and and see if we can save the

company.

And

we were going from this very complex,

fascinating um game, Perplex City, to a

kids game.

And I tried to explain it to people, and

they they

people shaking their heads and

scratching their heads and not knowing

what I was talking about.

Amazingly, a couple of people got it and

uh wanted to stay on. Uh we had to let

many people go. Many self-selected out.

Um it was also quite a stressful board

meeting uh telling my board that we were

going to do this almighty pivot. And to

be fair, and to give my board credit

back then,

they were like,

fair enough, Michael. You know, we we we

let's do it. You know, there there isn't

really another option. This I described

it as a a final roll of the dice. And

they all got on board, and so, yeah, we

kind of

uh took a very different new direction,

and we had some cards, some some of the

puzzles in Perplex City.

Um we created these little characters

called Puzzle Monsters, and the story of

Perplex City was one of the many stories

was that um uh it was this world of

mystery and puzzles. Parents would tell

their kids if they didn't do their

homework and their puzzles, the Puzzle

Monsters would get them in the middle of

the night. It's quite quite serious

thinking about it now.

Terrifying kids, giving them nightmares.

But, I just love this concept, and and

so we were going to create this new

idea, this spin-off called Puzzle

Monsters for kids, stealth education,

help them learn, play games while being

educated. And so, that then uh we

changed the name to Moshi Monsters

because it just sounded a bit more cool

and alliterative. So, that was the seed

uh

of of Moshi.

As you look back on Perplex City and

that journey,

that strikes me as your first real

probably significant business fail

failing to to some degree where you you

have people's jobs and careers on the

line, and you have capital a high big

amount of capital on the line. What are

the top-line lessons where you reflect

in your when you're on your own and you

think, I'll never do that again. I'll

never do that thing again, and this is

the key lesson that I'm going to keep

with me for the rest of my life.

I think not getting

sucked into and believing the hype

is wonderful to be written about in in

the press. Uh it's wonderful to win

awards, but you know, that is not what a

bit successful business is built on. It

can help. It can give you a little bit

of momentum,

but you've really got to um understand

the the fundamentals, and you've really

got to understand the business model and

the economics. There's no point creating

something extraordinary if you don't

know how it's going to uh monetize and

and how you're going to create something

and sell it for more than you create it

for. So, you don't need to be profitable

from day one. You can build an audience,

absolutely, but you do need to know how

at some point this is going to uh become

a successful business. And this is why I

think successful businesses are so rare

because you do need founders that are

that are creative and they can see the

future and where the puck is going, but

also have strong commercial instincts

and sense and, you know, understand

margins and and how to kind of build the

economic machine behind their crazy

idea.

Such a good point, and I think I wish

someone had said that to me when I

started my first business with Park when

I dropped out because I think I thought

people clapping and me being on

Newsnight and like being in the press as

this 18-year-old entrepreneur was

validation of my business. So, I So, I

got more romantic about my failing

hypothesis, whereas really

the clapping and the press is validation

of an interesting story.

There you go. Very well said.

model, you know what I mean? So.

How did that turn out?

Failed.

There we go. We both we both got the

scars. I mean, my body is littered with

scars of of failures, but the great

thing about business is you only need to

get it right once to to create a huge

success. Um I I was well aware of Moshi

Monsters for a variety of different

reasons. Um tell me about the the the

growth and trajectory at the start of

that. I heard it was very slow for the

first sort of 2 years, 18 months. It

was. Yeah, you know, everyone thinks

businesses that are successful just

happen overnight. They don't. There's a

there's a

a lot of grind and and hustle getting to

that point. Um but, you know, the idea

felt very strong. It's uh the the idea

of creating these little monsters that

would live online that kids could adopt

and look after. And um I didn't know

much about the kids entertainment space,

but I'd seen Tamagotchi a few years

before, and I thought, wow, what a

business. Tens of millions of those

little beeping

characters were sold. And I thought,

there's something here. Could we take

that concept? And before that, there'd

been the Pet Rock, which I don't know if

you ever came across that. Yes, and

Neopets. Neopets was another great great

business. I think there's something

kids, in fact, most of us love nurturing

and and looking after things. And so, I

thought in the era of Flash and uh the

the web, could we create these little

monsters? And

so, that was the idea. We didn't really

know how we were going to monetize it,

and um we decided uh to

create these little phone charms that we

would sell in shops, and you bought a

phone charm for about 10 pounds, and

then inside would be a code that you

type into our website to adopt your

monster.

Disastrous idea. I think we've still got

thousands of these phone charms sitting

in a warehouse somewhere.

And it was just too much friction. It

was just too

too many steps, too complicated. Um and

so, after about a year of trying to make

that work, we decided, you know what?

Let's just make it free. Forget the

physical product. Forget trying to

monetize it at the start. Any child

could come along and just adopt a

monster, give it a name, start kind of

um tickling it and feeding it and uh

customizing its room. And instantly, it

was just like, wow, that was the the

trigger point. Took away all the

friction, and we were away. So,

suddenly, we went from one or two

sign-ups a day to dozens of sign-ups a

day, then hundreds of sign-ups a day,

then

thousands. Um I think, you know, our

peak days were over 100,000 um

children around the world were adopting

a monster. It was it was it was

breathtaking. So, the business rose,

right? And then obviously there was a

it it struggled. Yeah.

the world changed. That's an

understatement. It struggled. Okay. Tell

me about that.

Well, we thought we could do no wrong.

We were now just the usual curve of slow

growth and then rocket ship. And we

thought

uh we were going to be the next Disney.

And uh we had off opportunities to sell

the business for hundreds of millions of

dollars, and I was like, no, thank you.

You know, we are taking this all the way

to the moon. Uh and everything was just

compounding. Almost everything we did

seemed to just get bigger and bigger

until it suddenly didn't.

And the summer of 2012 was when things

just suddenly stopped. And I was like,

what on earth is going on? Sure, this is

probably just an aberration. And we

thought, oh, it's cuz it's a hot summer

or because of X Y Z. You know, you kind

of make excuses.

But, what what had happened was that

there was a a shift, a platform shift

taking place and kids were moving from

using the web as their primary place of

kind of playing games.

Yeah, desktop web playing Moshi or Club

Penguin or Stardoll or Neopets all these

other games to

iPads and the mobile revolution. And we

kind of had our head in the sand for a

little bit and thought, you know, this

this isn't really going to take off in a

in a huge way. And then we started to

lean into it and figure out how we could

adapt Moshi for this new world.

But it was very very difficult and

the just the the economics and the way

kids would play with devices and and it

was much harder to create a monthly

subscription service. It just started to

to unravel and as fast as we'd grown the

revenue started to to come down and kids

were playing all these new free games

through the App Store and we

uh yeah, spent several years trying to

kind of right the ship and keep things

going, but weren't weren't able to

sadly. So, that was a an incredibly

stressful period as well.

Another stressful period. Another

there's been quite a few. It's why I've

got so many gray hairs, but again,

learned to learned a lot during that

period, but that was a that was a tough

time. Tough time as in letting people

go, having to scale down the business,

trying to find new product market fit

and

Yeah. On a personal level, what was cuz

I mean, that is an even higher high to

to come down from, right? In terms of

your identity is in like intrinsically

connected to this company and

I've been there where

when your company falls, it's like your

self self-esteem is falling with it or

your self-worth or your, you know, your

identity is falling with it because

you're intrinsically connected. Tell

tell me about that. So true. Yeah, that

that was exactly it, you know, when

when things are going well, you

it's a great thing. You feel wonderful

and

the the tricky thing was that um

it was the flip that I think was so uh

stressful. The flip from being I was

sort of one of the the poster boys of

the the boom. Yeah, in short it I was on

the front cover of

um Wired magazine. Uh the press were

just writing about us and me in glowing

terms all the time.

I just thought I could do no wrong. And

again, the ego just got got out of

control. And then to have that flip, to

suddenly be running a business that was

falling apart. We did five rounds of

layoffs.

Uh so difficult for again, the team that

had followed me and joined this business

having to to to be let go. Revenue

started collapsing, board meetings

became very stressful, press started

writing negative articles. It was really

really really tough. And as you say, you

know, like like you mentioned, my ego,

my worth, myself was just so intertwined

with my business. And now the business

was failing, I was a failure and and

worthless. And so it was a a really

really difficult time and that lasted

for years. How did you cope with that?

Um

I'm lucky in that I have a

a very supportive family and I have some

great friends who are also entrepreneurs

and we've kind of all

we've all had successes and and failures

and at one point some of us are doing

well and some are not. So, we kind of

pick each other up and and give each

other important pep talks. So, I think

having that community was very very

helpful.

But, you know, I I wasn't

when you're struggling like that, again,

you you create these vicious circles.

So, you don't sleep very well and you

wake up the next day just more tired

than you were when you went to bed and

you're irritable and your body is filled

with cortisol and adrenaline and

you don't eat well and put nutritious

food in your body and you forget to

exercise. So, yeah, all these negative

things start compounding. I was in a

pretty

bad state.

But to put things in perspective again,

I I did try and kind of be realistic.

There there were people in the world

going through much trickier things than

their business falling apart. But when

it's you and it you built your whole

self-worth around it, it feels like

everything is falling apart and the

world is ending.

There's two questions I wanted to ask

you, which was about when you were going

through those stressful moments and at a

time when men in particular didn't

really understand the concept of mental

health, did you find yourself turning to

escapes or medicate like medicating

yourself with some kind of escape? And

the secondary question was about the

topic of mental health broadly, when did

you discover that it was a thing?

So, wow, yeah. I am

I think when we are struggling in life,

we instead of addressing the issue,

we mask it, don't we? We we seek things

that avoid whatever the challenge is.

And for some people it's drugs, for some

people it's alcohol. For me, I just I

became distant from the business. I I

just couldn't face going into the office

every day. I take myself off to

coffee shops, I suppose. Caffeine is is

not a serious kind of drug as some some

other ones, but

um I also used to take um

uh painkillers every morning just cuz I

woke up with such a headache and my body

ached. I felt like I was hit by a truck

every morning. So, these painkillers

would kind of help me get started in the

day.

It was a very tricky time. So, not

addressing the fundamental issues with

the business or trying to, but not doing

a very good job.

For me, this is what led to Calm because

I could see it so clearly having been

through it. You know, one of the best

businesses to ever set up is one where

you're scratching your own itch and you

understood. And I didn't know what

meditation was or or mindfulness, but my

very dear friend Alex Chew had been

meditating with CD-ROMs he bought when

he was a teenager, a very unusual

teenager. And he would often say to me,

"Look, dude, you need to to try

meditation." And I'd be like, "You need

to try effing off."

That's the last thing I need. Look, um

give me something practical. But slowly

but surely the the penny started to to

drop and I kind of got it and the key

breakthrough for me was when I did

something I'd never done before. I took

myself off on a solo holiday.

I went away to the Austrian Alps to this

kind of um resort

where I played tennis in the morning, I

scribbled in my notebook, I read books

and I I started to try

to meditate cuz I'd I'd heard about it

and it was just incredible. The fog

started to clear. I'd been had my face

pushed up against the the cliff and

couldn't see a way out of this problem

that I was facing with my business and

just taking a step back and getting

perspective was hugely valuable. And I

read a bunch of books

and research papers and and I realized

that, you know, this is science.

Mindfulness is a way of rewiring the

human brain.

What if we could make this simple and

relatable and accessible to everyone?

This could be one of the biggest

opportunities and businesses in the

world. And I came back. I remember

chatting to Alex about it and he's like,

"Right, dude, you finally get it. Let's

go."

Cuz he'd been he kind of knew this and

this was all around the the time where

we'd been talking about

creating a new business.

He found

a person that owned calm.com, the

domain. And I remember we were playing

video games in our house in Soho and he

said, "This domain calm.com is

available." And I said, "Oh my god, what

a great domain. What a business we could

build there helping the world become

more calm."

And I said, "How much is the domain?"

And then he said, "Um it's about a

million pounds." And I said, "Right."

Uh yeah, we don't have money to to buy

that, but about a year later, we're

playing video games again,

a consistent theme here.

And he said the guy that has calm.com

wants to to sell it and he's willing to

to do a deal. We were

able to buy it for much much less. I

earmarked this money to put a deposit

down on a house, um but thought buying

calm.com might be more sensible thing to

do even though my parents and thought it

was the silliest idea. Uh but um yeah,

so we bought calm.com and that was that

was kind of the starting acorn that was

planted for for that paths kind of

crossed. So, I had left my company, all

packed when I described there. Um and

this was in the transition of me

starting Social Chain. So, I knew I had

this thesis about social media. I moved

out to San Francisco to work at a place

called Monkey Inferno and I was helping

them with growth using social media. I

still had like millions and millions of

followers online, maybe 10, 20, 30

million followers across multiple

Facebook, Instagram, like Twitter pages,

whatever. And I was helping them scale

their products using social media. And

as I landed,

um Sean, who is the CEO there, said to

me, "Oh, kid just left called Alex."

He said, "He's gone to do this

meditation app." And I swear to god, I

thought, "What a [ __ ] hippie." I

thought like, what

I thought, "What a what a weird guy. He

left here to go do med" cuz at the time

it's different now. At the time,

meditation was like

hippie hocus pocus nonsense. Yeah. I

remember thinking it. I don't know how I

feel now.

Do you know what? You weren't you

weren't the only person that thought

that. People would back away from us at

parties when we said we were building a

meditation company. And uh it was um and

I remember other people like thinking

I'd had a a nervous breakdown cuz of my

previous business and now I was setting

up a meditation company that they oh,

good good luck with your nonprofit,

mate.

With all the healing and like wearing It

had such negative connotations for

something that is so valuable and

transformational. It's extraordinary. As

an entrepreneur, you look for those

moments. And we both felt society was

going to shift. We didn't think it would

take as long as it did, but we felt

there was change coming. The actual

story um about how I felt when Sean told

me that and then watching what that

company became, this multi-billion

dollar just business that everybody

knows that I everyone that I I speaks

to, has taught me a very profound lesson

about life, which is when you play at

that kind of like intersection of

disbelief

and belief where you're like again I the

analogy I use is the wave coming into

shore like you guys were really early

with the surfboard and you were betting

on that wave coming into shore and every

when so now I look for I want to play in

spaces where there's high levels of

skepticism

but I feel like it's inevitable. And I

always think about that when I always

think about calm because I was a skeptic

the wave came in and I was like wildly

wrong.

And I just wish I'd left with Alex.

I think you've done quite all right.

There's multiple multiple routes to huge

success but that's so interesting you

said that yeah it I'm thinking back now

to again that time when it was so

non-obvious. I remember the

number of meetings we had with investors

where they were like well this is so

niche you can get meditation for free on

YouTube and and if no one is going to

pay for this and mental health is

something that isn't talked about mental

health has stigma around it. How on

earth you're going to build a business

and get people to talk about their

mental health and we're like no the

world is changing this is important.

What is more important than our minds?

Look at all the people suffering all the

clinical depression the anxiety the PTSD

surely at some point we're going to wake

up to this and the the penny will flip

and the light bulb will go on in

society. Again it took years but

eventually it happened and now thank

goodness we get it. You know if people

often say that there's a an often quoted

stat that one in four people will suffer

from mental health issues in their life.

It's not one in four it's one in one.

Anyone who has a mind

has mental health and some days it's

great and some days it's not. Anyone who

has a body has physical health and some

days you can run up a mountain and other

days you can't get out of bed and

we have to understand this and we have

to respect and learn about our minds

because there is nothing more important.

Solving the global mental health crisis

which is the mission of calm I think is

one of the most important challenges in

the world. It's a first order problem

because if we can end all this

unnecessary suffering if people become

masters of of their mind

instead of controlled by their minds

everything starts to change. You know we

can start to tackle

the climate change and inequality and

racism and homelessness and all these

other problems that stem from people

having healthy minds with greater

resilience and empathy and compassion

and gratitude. So

it's it I get very passionate about this

as Alex and the team do but we think

it's a very important mission that we're

working on.

I agree.

Thank you.

think of a more important one other than

maybe climate change but you know

survival and happiness seem like the two

fundamentals. I mean happiness is maybe

not the right word but

survival and um

enjoying life. So like making sure we

have life and then enjoying the life we

do have feels like that must be the the

two sort of foundational challenges and

opportunities of our time. Exactly.

Helping people not just survive but to

thrive in life and and why not?

And the human brain is the most complex

thing in the known universe. You know 90

billion neurons trillions of connections

between them

and yet it doesn't come with an

instruction manual.

We're not taught this in schools or we

certainly weren't when we were growing

up. It's starting to change thank

goodness but we're just

left to to get on with life and no

wonder there's so much suffering and and

unhappiness and and mental health issues

and

it doesn't need to be that way and I

think

meditation and mindfulness is it's

almost like a way of upgrading your OS

your your mind. It enables you to

to see and the world differently and and

to think differently. And it's not a

silver bullet but it's

it's a an important starting point to

then build upon.

It's a

great way to upgrade your operating

system you said. So how does that work

from a neuroscience perspective? How is

it upgrading my OS? What's what's

happening?

Well so this is this can get quite

complex but at a sort of basic

level

the amygdala it would

the amygdala is the the oldest part of

brain and most people operate from there

and in very very simple terms what

building a meditation practice and

becoming more mindful does is it changes

our

our reliance from the amygdala to more

prefrontal cortex thinking where we're

able to to plan a little bit more to

think into the future to put things into

perspective.

One way of thinking about it and a real

kind of key moment for me

as I developed my meditation practice

was I now

respond to situations in life instead of

reacting.

And that seems like what is he talking

about but when you stop and think about

it is we have so much stimulation in

life so many things happen and most of

us react. You know your first thought

someone cuts you up in traffic you honk

your horn. Your partner says something

slightly passive-aggressive you snap

straight back at them into a big

argument.

What if

there was a slight pause a fraction of a

second where

you held and you thought and you kicked

in

you your awareness enabled you to

respond to that stimulation rather than

reacting.

Another is you know a good analogy is

going to the gym. We talked about the

physical and and the mental and our

minds and our bodies are very

interconnected.

But we go to the gym and we lift weights

and that that resistance builds up the

the muscle that the strength

in our body.

Meditation is like going to the mental

gym. It's a way of building up the the

strength of your mind. It enables in

in everyday life to be more aware to

improve our attention and my goodness we

need that muscle of attention in this

modern age because never have we been

assailed

with more noise and stimulation from

social media to billboards to TV. It's

coming at us constantly and one of the

most valuable skills in the 21st century

is to be able to decide where and how

and when

we put our attention.

That is a dying art. It is. Are you

optimistic about our ability to correct

course?

This is a

this is a big question. I am optimistic.

I'm I'm very very glass half full person

and I do

despite the many many challenges we see

in the world it feels like the world is

in inflamed and in crisis if we listen

to the news and we look at traditional

media. I think the world is actually

getting better in many many different

ways. You know there's a wonderful book

factfulness which talks about the data

of how the world is getting better. As I

say it doesn't always seem it. So I am

optimistic and I'm optimistic also

because

we're seeing this incredible shift in

society where people are taking more

care of their minds that it is okay to

be vulnerable and to talk about your

mental health to your partner to your

friends to your boss. Can you believe

that? A few years ago the idea of asking

your boss for a a mental health day off

or saying

it would be crazy you'd probably got

fired and now

not all companies but but most companies

are starting to recognize how important

that is and I think that is fantastic

for society.

The trajectory of calm has been just

phenomenal.

Um was there a tipping point as such?

Was there a moment where you thought oh

my god this is actually going to work?

And also conversely was there a moment

where you thought

no.

So when we were out there on our

surfboards and it was freezing cold and

everyone thought we were mad waiting for

that wave to come.

Yeah we did feel as if this this wasn't

working. Alex and I had some very kind

of difficult stressful conversations

wondering how many more years we need to

wait but

um and we couldn't we found it very

difficult to raise money. We were able

to get some seed money in the early days

but the bridge between the seed money we

raised and getting to a series A took

years and years and we had no choice to

make the business profitable. We had to

have an incredibly lean team. There was

only about six or seven of us for for a

long time

and we were running out of money and I

remember I think this is around

sort of 2015 we had to get very creative

with how we kept the lights on in the

business and I gave a talk

and there was a lady in the audience

Vinisha from Penguin and she emailed me

afterwards and said

your story is fascinating could we make

a book about calm?

I was like um

well it's not really core it's not

key focus at the moment but okay could

we talk about an advance?

And literally our cash amounts were were

dwindling and she said sure and the

money that came in from that offer

kept the business going. So a very

unusual way to

to keep the lights on at a startup. So

we're very grateful to to Vinisha and

the Penguin team and then we had a

subscription business model. So

we put the price up from $10 a year to

$40 a year which was a key tipping point

because we didn't see any drop off in

sign-ups which was just amazing. So we

started to make more money we realized

this service that we were offering these

meditations were valuable for for

people. They they were really getting

something out of it. And then that was

where the point was like hang on a

minute

we're taking off it's going it's

happening. That was then you shift from

kind of

the ice cold winter to just holding on

to the rocket for dear life. Trying to

stay on the surfboard. Exactly. Yeah,

mixing metaphors there, but yeah, the

rocket ship surfboard was was away.

Yeah, okay. And then that it presents a

whole another set of challenges. You've

got to hire people, you've got to

raise more money, scale up. How is that

for you?

We were we were underway there and um

again, the business was starting to It

was a an extraordinary place to be cuz

we were bringing in a lot of um

downloads and we were generating a lot

of revenue. I think we got to about 8

million downloads before spending any

money on marketing. And this is an

important lesson that I that I always

say to to entrepreneurs,

don't pour gasoline on the fire until

the fire is is going. You know, the

gasoline is is the marketing. Get to

product market fit first. Kind of

don't don't turn on those afterburners

until you really understand your

business. And we did. We knew we had

something. It was away. We were really

really roaring and so a lady joined us

called Dun uh who's just brilliant at

user acquisition and she understood

Facebook marketing inside out and that

was the kind of the next sort of uh

piece of the puzzle that really started

to to take the business to the next

level.

And when I look to the app store, you

now have the word sleep in the title as

well

of Calm. So started with predominantly

meditation and now you've kind of

branched out into sleep and I'm sure

that's just another step in many steps.

So sleep, why why is sleep important?

Where does that fit? Yeah, well, we'd

seen something interesting in the data

about 11:00 every night all around the

world. We saw this big spike in usage

and we realized that people were

listening to Tamara's voice to help them

fall asleep. And we were like, "What?

Don't do that. That's not what

That's not how you meditate." And uh we

were like, "Well, hang on, maybe there's

something here." And so that led to

sleep stories. We took this age-old

uh thing of a bedtime story, which we

all love,

um and we kind of modernized it and we

created a sleep story and it's a mix of

a a beautiful soothing voice with sound

effects, with music and it starts in a

really sort of interesting engaging way

and then gradually becomes more

soporific. So instead of your

traditional three-arc

uh structure of a a story, we call it a

story slope. Um Chris, who runs our

sleep stories, kind of has pioneered

this. And so before you know it, you're

listening, your your brain is engaged

instead of wondering about your to-do

list or what someone said to you at work

that day, you're engaged in the story

and then before you know it, we've taken

you into a a state where you're half

awake, half asleep, that liminal mode,

and then you're fast asleep. And very

few people get to hear the end of the

story. And this was just huge. Hundreds

of millions of them have been listened

to. We've had massive amounts of press.

Lots of celebrities have reached out to

us wanting to read them. And uh

uh the final thing I'll say on this is

the great thing about sleep is what a

market. 7.8 billion people go to sleep

every single night of their life. Or

try. Or try, exactly. Um so if you can

create something new, if you can create

a new habit around bedtime, if you can

make

your evening routine a little more

interesting and entertaining um and help

solve a problem, oh my goodness, you can

build something huge. And that's what

sleep stories has been for Calm. So that

was the next massive massive growth

area.

There's a lot of misconceptions around

sleep and

insomnia.

And I've I've seen you talk about some

of them online. What are some of the big

misconceptions that you've discovered

during your work with sleep and insomnia

that people tend to believe about sleep

that are most harmful or least conducive

with being a successful sleeper?

Well, sleep has gone through a similar

kind of metamorphosis in society as

mindfulness has. You know, just a few

years ago uh it used to be a badge of

honor to show off how little sleep you

got.

For something we spend a third of our

life doing, people gave it very little

thought and and respect. And uh that

shifted. You know, Matthew Walker's book

Why We Sleep has has played a huge part

in that.

Hopefully Calm has has played some part

in of that as well. So I think the

biggest thing is people just recognizing

how important it is. Everyone needs a

sort of different amount of sleep

depending on our genes, somewhere

between 7 and 9 hours sleep every night.

Uh for me, I need about 8 and a a

quarter uh to feel good. Don't know if

you know your level. You can probably

cope on about 3 hours, I imagine, given

how much you do.

I need to figure that out. But I've I've

I mean I've yeah. It's It was thinking

about something you said earlier about

how in your toughest times, you you

know, when uh Mind Candy was struggling,

you started to neglect like the

fundamentals of being a human being.

Yeah. Like nutrition and water and

sleep. These These These things have

become like as you said, I mean it's

changing slowly now, but they became

like disregarded as as being important

things. It's like we got further from

being human beings. Yeah. And it's like

I I I write about in my book as well

that it's so it's so um

inspiring and amazing that a lot of the

cures to the ailments or the mental

health ailments in our lives or the

problems we encounter are just like

going back to being a human being. Like

drink water instead of Coke. Like try

not to drink too much caffeine. Sleep.

Yeah. Talk to your friends. It's like

there's no like There's no like And but

the problem is as well,

there is a culture of trying to make the

solutions feel complex so I can sell you

some [ __ ] Whereas really they appear to

be so simple. Well said. We always look

for the overcomplicated solution, don't

we? We think it has to be. But

fundamentally, those are the basics that

you just mentioned. Johann Hari talks

about in his book. Lost Connections is

one of my favorite books. We're we're

disconnected from what made us human as

our brains and bodies evolved over

100,000 plus years. And it's so basic.

So sleep is one of those key things. And

if we're not getting enough good sleep,

if we're disrespecting it, if we're

drinking alcohol before we go to bed, it

affects every aspect of our life and

we're more irritable. We're less

creative. Our memory gets shot. We

we just go into a negative compounding

situation. And uh so yeah, treating

sleep with respect I think is one of the

most important things we can do.

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Tough times, sleepless nights. Let's

talk about that then this year.

Difficult for everybody.

Uh for everyone's own reason. Some

people lost their jobs. Some people lost

family members. Some people lost their I

guess their purpose in life generally.

And and a lot of people because we're

all

now, you know, we were pushed to live

our lives through glass screens more

than ever before,

lost a lot of other things and um

how is this How is this last year and

this tumultuous pandemic been for you?

It's been

a

very challenging time. Uh

the pandemic, as you say, has affected

everybody on earth in in many, many

different ways. It it has been

extraordinarily difficult. So my

perspective is is more,

you know, a personal perspective, but I

think stepping back a little bit, if we

go back to 2020, you know, when this

first hit, it was all unknown. There was

a lot of anxiety. Uh but

this was

uh we were in this together. And there

was a lot of

intrigue about what was going on. We

didn't have to commute into the office

anymore. We could work from home. Zoom

was this incredible opportunity.

And so 2020 for for myself uh and the

whole company, I think generally was was

um

not too bad. You know, it was it was uh

it was all bearable. 2021 for myself

personally has been pretty challenging.

I think months and months and months of

staring into a tiny little screen