Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington and Salesforce Co-CEO Marc Benioff on Trust and Wellbeing in the Workplace

Michael Rivo: From Salesforce Studios, this is Blazing Trails.

Laura Woods: Welcome to the Blazing Trails Podcast presented by WordPress VIP. I'm Laura woods, head of the Salesforce blog. And today we have another highlight from Dreamforce 2019 and one of my personal favorites, Arianna Huffington. You might know her as the founder of HuffPost or from her book On The Sleep Revolution, or even from her focus on ending the stress and burnout epidemic with her company, Thrive Global. Before we get to Arianna, a word about WordPress VIP, who is making this show possible. WordPress VIP is the digital publishing solution that powers the world's top media companies, as well as marketing platforms for some of the best known brands like Time and Facebook. Later on in this episode, you'll hear more of our conversation with their CEO, Nick Garner. And now here's Arianna Huffington speaking with Salesforce co- CEO, Marc Benioff.

Mark Benioff: Please welcome my good friend, Arianna Huffington. Welcome Arianna.

Arianna Huffington: Great to be here.

Mark Benioff: We're so happy to have Arianna, and Arianna and I bump into each other on a regular basis all over the world. So it's nice to have her at Dreamforce so we can talk about all the things that she is doing in the world. And Arianna is amazing because not only is she a phenomenal entrepreneur, but she's also a phenomenal visionary, especially in many different areas, not just in journalism. And of course, everybody knows the Huffington Post. How many people have heard of Huffington Post? Everybody. And her new company Thrive. How many people have heard of Thrive? Yeah, exciting. But in many other areas, including her pioneering work in sleep, and meditation and physical health. And this is not your first Dreamforce that you've been at, right? crosstalk.

Arianna Huffington: The first Dreamforce was 2014. When actually, I was sitting next to you before you introduced me. And I said to you, " Mark, I would like to sit on the cloud stage and have a five minute meditation. What do you think?" And you said, " Go for it." So that was my dream was to sit on a cloud meditating, and we did it.

Mark Benioff: Yeah. We should all be sitting on a cloud meditating.

Arianna Huffington: We should be doing it at least a few minutes a day.

Mark Benioff: I agree. Absolutely.

Arianna Huffington: That's why the Plum Village is great.

Mark Benioff: Yes, yeah. Well, I'll just tell you that yesterday was obviously a long day for me, probably for everybody. And then around five o'clock last night, I ended up down in the bottom of Moscone, I guess it's South. And the monastics who now, this is their fifth year coming from their monastery, had asked that they could have a little bit more of us structural approach, because every year they're in slightly different place. We try different places. And they're like, " We need a village like we have back home." And I'm like, " What do you mean a village?" They said, " Well, a village." And I'm like, " Well, you're going to have to explain that to me." Well, drawings have started to arrive. We want it to look like this, we want these kind of pictures. And we've tried to bring their energy of where they live which is near Bordeaux, France down into Moscone South and you can on the Dreamforce app ... How many of you have loaded the Dreamforce app on your phones? You can book time with the monastics and learn how to meditate one on one. But also, you can just go down there and there's seminars and programs, and I ended up down there. And there was a phenomenal program. And there was incredible healings happening where people... We're all going through life. So trauma that we're all experiencing, issues that we're having. And just by sitting and having a quiet moment, I was witnessing some incredible healing. So it was quite a powerful way to end the day yesterday. So I encouraged everyone. In fact, I mentioned Arianna, the first leg today I said, " Well make sure you get a chance to go down there"

Arianna Huffington: I'm going tomorrow. I said to him, " I'm going tomorrow." He said, " You should go today too." And I love that. I love that passion for recognizing that in fact, when we take that little time to pause, reconnect with ourselves and recharge, we are actually more effective at everything else we're doing. Everybody here is part of a business. So, obviously you are here to learn how to do this better. But I think what you're not going to get at any other conference is the recognition that you're actually going to be better at work if you take a time to reconnect with yourself. For me, that's the key message of our times. And it's an uphill battle to make sure everybody recognizes it. But for me, that's why I left hospice to launch Thrive because I wanted to spend the rest of my life helping people see the data. Here's what is ironic, the data is so clear and unequivocal. Elite athletes the first to recognize that recovery is part of peak performance. But for some reason, it's been harder in the fourth industrial revolution for business people to recognize it, and you are helping because you show the connection between enormous success and the recognition that to have an enormous amount of wisdom in us that we need to tap into.

Mark Benioff: One of the nice things that's been around you for so many years Arianna is... And it's reflected very much at least monastic set, whenever I noticed the monastics around even here at the conference, there's more than one. They travel together. And why is it that there's always two or three or four, whatever it is or if they're coming to the conference, they have to come as a group, and why is that? They said, " Well, it's important to do things together."

Arianna Huffington: Yes.

Mark Benioff: It's important to do things together. And that's been a big word. And even as we've been doing these focus groups for the keynote yesterday, that was the word that our customers really now for some time, this is very important, that we're all together, we're all one and that we're going through all of this together. And in our mindfulness, and in our meditation and in our spiritual pursuits. That idea that we're coming together through our mindfulness is very powerful. And I think being with you on that journey has been very powerful for me. So how do you feel about that? How do you feel about community is in a relationship to this?

Arianna Huffington: I think it's absolutely key. And what is ironic is that when we reconnect with ourselves, that's when community really flourishes. Because in the deep part of ourselves, we are all one. I mean, every spiritual tradition, whether it's the Taos, Zen, the Bhagavad Gita, the Stoics, the Greeks, they've all said the same thing. We all have a place in us of wisdom, peace, strength. When we connect from that place, we are all together. And Thich Nhat Hanh has said that it has never been easier today to run away from ourselves. And that's really both the incredible power and the incredible tragedy of our times, that technology has allowed us to do amazing, magical things. But also it has accelerated this disconnection from ourselves. And that's why now we are working to change that. Do we actually even use technology to help us reconnect? I mean, at Thrive, we just bought an AI feedback neuro- scientific company called Boundless in order to be able to help us personalize better the micro- steps for behavior change that we feed to our users. So you can use technology to actually help you augment humanity. But I feel that's the big journey that I'm excited to be on and that you are on.

Mark Benioff: Now, when I first met you, you didn't hand me a book on meditation. And you didn't hand me a book on sleep. You handed me one of your first books which was on history. And I think it was on the Greeks, was it? Or it was-

Arianna Huffington: Yes. crosstalk.

Mark Benioff: Is that right if remember that correctly?

Arianna Huffington: Yes, I've written 15 books.

Mark Benioff: What was the first book?

Arianna Huffington: My first book was on the changing role of women. I wrote it when I was 23 as soon as I left Cambridge. And then everybody wanted me to write more about the subject of women, but I told them that I had said everything I knew at 23. And for me, writing books is a way for me to learn. So then I wrote a book on the crisis in political leadership, it's even worse now. And nobody wanted to publish it. And it was rejected by 37 publishers. And it taught me a lot about failure because at that moment, I had to tap into my own perseverance. And also something that I love happened which is... I was living In London at the time. And I was walking down St. James's street depressed, having run out of money from my first book. And I see a Barclays Bank in the corner and I go into the bank and armed with nothing but a lot of Greek chutzpah, I ask the manager for a loan. And the manager for some reason gave it to me. And it changed the outcome because I was able to keep it together for another 12 rejections until finally somebody published it. And I still send Ian Bell that was the name of the manager a holiday card every year. But it reminds me a little bit in fairy tales, you have a hero or a heroine lost in a dark forest. And then some helpful animals come out to help guide them out of the forest. Well, often in our lives, they're helpful animals disguised as bank manager, so whatever, to help us through the dark moments. And that leads to one of your favorite words in your bookmark, which I love, which is trust. Trust is so key in business, in the culture, business bales, but also in our personal lives. I fundamentally believe that we live in a benevolent universe. And I trust the universe, even when things are not going my way. I trust that there is something there that I don't see now. But that's going to become known to me in the future.

Mark Benioff: When you think of trust, what does trust mean to you?

Arianna Huffington: Well, it starts with trust in a benevolent universe, which is very different from a lot of modern philosophy that we live in an indifferent universe, I don't believe that. And then in business, it's really the foundation of culture. At thrive, we believe that culture is a company's immune system. Every company has viruses. Human behavior, bullying, despite all the effort on psychological safety, there are people who create psychologically unsafe environments. But if employees trust, then the first thing that happens is they express themselves. The number one cultural value at Thrive is what we call compassionate directness. If people are direct and express, then everything can be resolved. If people sit on resentments and problems without expressing them, that's when they mutate and they affect the overall culture.

Mark Benioff: What's more important to you personally? Compassionate directness or trust?

Arianna Huffington: I think they're connected. I don't think you can have compassionate directness without trust.

Mark Benioff: So if you had to pick one, what would it be?

Arianna Huffington: Well, trust is first. But you know, what? Why are you being so binary?

Mark Benioff: Because everything is important, nothing is important.

Arianna Huffington: I know.

Mark Benioff: But we have to choose, we have to be aware of what our hierarchy is.

Arianna Huffington: Absolutely. But we also need to move away from a sense that everything is a trade off. Because often it's not either of its end. And I agree with you that trust has to be foundational, because without it, people want to express themselves. But then what does it lead to?

Mark Benioff: What else does trust mean to you?

Arianna Huffington: So for me, and trust is really the understanding that we have infinite possibilities ahead of us, both individually and as a company or a collective community. And it also means recognizing that, who we are in the world, no matter how magnificent is less magnificent than who we are, in our essence. And that is an incredible sense of trust. And I think one of the most moving things in your book, was the way you describe in detail, how you made the decision to ask to inaudible be your co- CEO. That is a very profound passage for any leader. Because very often what stops people from taking decisions that are best for themselves, for the business, for their biggest impact in the world is their lack of trust in what is their identity. If your entire identity was I'm the CEO of Salesforce, you would not have ceded control to someone who now reports to the board and not to you. And that for me is key because I know far too many people who hate their jobs. But they would never change. They would never take the risk of changing because then they would lose the title of SVP of this or that, or CEO of this or that. And yet, if you look at our eulogies, I'm a little bit obsessed with death because I think death teaches us so much about how to live life. And if you look at the eulogies, any eulogy-

Mark Benioff: I feel a book coming on here.

Arianna Huffington: Actually, I wrote that book, it's called Thrive. If you've been to a memorial recently, and we all lost Bernard Tyson, whom we loved, and whom I last saw at crosstalk conference. So quite a eulogy always makes clear that our LinkedIn values are not our eulogy values. Have you ever been to a memorial?

Mark Benioff: Not only LinkedIn values like LinkedIn.

Arianna Huffington: I don't mean the company. No, we love LinkedIn values. I mean, our resumes values, are not our eulogy values. Have you ever been to a memorial and heard somebody say, " George was amazing. He increased market share by one third."

Mark Benioff: I have heard that actually.

Arianna Huffington: You have? I'm amazed.

Mark Benioff: I have heard that.

Arianna Huffington: You have?

Mark Benioff: Mm- hmm(affirmative).

Arianna Huffington: That must have been some awful eulogy. People focus on how they made people feel, what they did for their community. All sorts of other values. So I love the idea of living our lives remembering to also live our eulogy values. And that's why I love that in Rome, they used to carve, MM, Memento Mori, on trees and statues, remember death and not that of morbidity. But because it puts everything in perspective in life. And as the only on headline put it recently, death rate held steady at 100%.

Mark Benioff: Let me ask you about some of those early books. So you were working on these books, but you did bridge into these historical books, because that seemed to become interesting to you. And that surprised me. I didn't understand that you had this depth of knowledge of history. So where did that come from? And where did that interest come from in you?

Arianna Huffington: Well, I started economics in history at Cambridge. And I always felt that we learn a lot from history. But you said something really, that I love in your book, which is leaders need to be steeped in history, and know how to project into the future. But in order to do that, effectively, they need to learn to be in the present. And I've always been obsessed with leadership, and what do we learn from leaders. And if you think of it, it has a lot to do with leaders... Are always a little bit ahead of the Zeitgeist. They can tap into where the world is going, and be a little bit ahead of it. And then when they're able to actually bring to the world what it needs. I mean, you did that with Salesforce. But you're also now doing it with helping people make bolder decisions. And my mother... I was very lucky to have an amazing mother who taught me to take risks, because she made me unafraid of failure. The truth is that if you are afraid of failure, you're not going to take risks.

Mark Benioff: My mother's right there. Stand up, mother.

Arianna Huffington: Congratulations. What a son.

Mark Benioff: There we go. She's so happy now.

Arianna Huffington: It goes back to the mothers.

Mark Benioff: It all goes back to the mother.

Arianna Huffington: Yes. In fact, I did a story about my mother in a podcast.

Mark Benioff: My mother would like to just come up now here.

Arianna Huffington: Would you like to come up?

Mark Benioff: I can exit back to the-

Arianna Huffington: Can you come up and Mark and go back and talk to the monastics and you and I can continue the conversation?

Mark Benioff: That sounds good actually. That sounds good.

Arianna Huffington: And so I talked about my mother in a meditative story, which is a podcast that we did, thanks to Salesforce that's sponsoring it. And I'm delighted to say we're just agreed to do a second season together.

Mark Benioff: Oh, wow, great, wonderful.

Arianna Huffington: And my meditative story is about my mother. So the point of the podcast is for people who are daunted by meditation. We want to reach everybody. And there are people who haven't meditated ever because they feel it's something difficult. So we hook them through storytelling. And then we give them mindfulness prompt throughout the storytelling. So my story is about how we were living in a one bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece. And coming home from school, I saw a picture of Cambridge University on the magazine cover. And I told my mother, I want to go there, everybody else I said that to, said, " Don't be ridiculous. You don't speak English. We have no money. And it's hard even for English girls to get into Cambridge. My mother said, " Let's find out how to do it." But at the same time, she made me feel that even if I didn't get in, it didn't matter. Because her whole sense was that life is an adventure. And so if you fail at something, there is something else. And that was her biggest gift to me. And she used to say, " Failure is not the opposite of success. It's a stepping stone to success." But today, we just released an amazing episode that I'd really love you to hear. I want everybody in the world to hear it because I think it will change how people live their lives by Keith Yamashita, who was the speechwriter to Steve Jobs, Opera, Howard Schultz, etc. And he had learned to optimize every second of his life. Many people here in Silicon Valley, like cheating time, multitasking, that whole approach. And in the story starts with him being in a dealership about to buy a car, and telling the guy, " I only have one hour, I don't want to haggle. I don't have time. And then I need to do a video conference call." So he buys the car, he goes to do a video conference call in a room they give him. He goes to drink some water while the video call is going. And he drips down his face. Bottom line, he's having a stroke. So it's really that moment when his whole life has been about optimization. And then life intervenes. And it changes how he lives the rest of his life. And it's incredibly powerful and moving. Because it helps all of us come to terms with what matters now, not because we had a stroke, or in my case collapse from burnout, or whatever the incident is.

Mark Benioff: Well, let's talk about that. So you were experiencing burnout, you had been working a lot, you had done so many things in your life. Everything was in front of you. And yet everything was also behind you, at the same time. But then there you were in the present moment, and you were burned out. What did you do?

Arianna Huffington: Well, I actually collapsed, hit my head on my desk broke my cheekbone. That is 2007, two years into building HuffPost. The divorced mother of two teenage daughters. And that was probably the best thing that happened to me. Because being a data driven person, I wanted to understand what happened to me. And in the process, I understood that what happened to me was happening to hundreds of millions of people around the world. And that my doctor actually was a bit of a philosopher called it civilization's disease burnout. And that started me covering all these issues at the Huffington Post, writing Thrive, writing The Sleep Revolution, and in 2016, I decided to leave HuffPost to launch Thrive in order to help people, not just be aware of these problems, but give them micro- steps to change behavior. The key Mark now is around behavior. And 100 years ago, most people were dying from infectious diseases. Today, it's our behaviors that are killing us. If you include the mental health crisis, 90% of healthcare problems and health care costs, 90% are lifestyle and behavior related and stress related. So think of the opportunity. And that's really one of the problems with the Democratic primary debate. If we can talk about politics for a minute, that they're not talking about it, they're only talking about how to pay for disease care. And that's really never going to work. There is never ever going to be enough money either in this country or anywhere in the world to arrest the increase in chronic diseases, diabetes, heart disease, stress, mental health problems, without helping people change behavior. So that's really what we do at Thrive. We've built a product, which is a SaaS product, because we only work with enterprises and brands. We don't go directly to consumers. We learn from Salesforce. And the product gives you micro- steps to change whatever area of your life you want to start with, whether it's sleep, gratitude, meditation, mindfulness, movement, nutrition, but it also gives you storytelling and new role models to touch your heart and inspire you, so that it really is a combination of data and wisdom. And then we also launched the Thrive Academy, which is 90 minute modules on all these issues. And everything is science based. That's one of my big obsessions, to redefine the wellness category from being warm and fuzzy, to being hardcore and performance based.

Mark Benioff: Well, I'm very interested, going back to 2007, you've had this situation with burnout, and you've suffered this trauma. And I'm sure a lot of people who are watching us or who are in the audience, maybe they've had a similar situation, or they've experienced burnout. What's the first thing that you recommend people do if they are experiencing something like that? What's the first step?

Arianna Huffington: Well, the first step, ideally, is to catch it before you collapse and find yourself coming to in a pool of blood, right? I mean, that's the first thing. And now, in May, the World Health Organization acknowledged burnout as an actual disease and gave us a lot of symptoms to be watching out for. And one of them is negativism and cynicism about work or and no longer being engaged in what you're doing. And once you begin to identify the symptoms, what is so amazing, is that we can take these micro- steps to course correct them. I would say, the first thing, let me give you my favorite micro- step. If you have any sense of burnout in your lives, and if you don't. And we have over 700 micro- steps but this is my favorite. Pick your time at the end of your day-

Mark Benioff: I'm going to get through all 700 inaudible.

Arianna Huffington: Okay, perfect. No problem. We'll be here until Friday night. So the first is, so you pick a time at the end of your working day that you declare the end of your working day. Because the truth Mark, is that there is no end to our working day, as you have found out, right? Anybody here could keep working through the night. If anybody here has a natural end to your working day, I recommend you change jobs because it means your job is not sufficiently interesting. Right? crosstalk. So let's assume here that everybody has an interesting job, no end to your working day. So you have to declare it. You have to pick an arbitrary end. And because human beings learn through ritual, you mark the end of your working day by taking your phone and charging it outside your bedroom. How many people here sleep with their phones? What about you, Mr. Benioff?

Mark Benioff: I don't sleep with my phone.

Arianna Huffington: Great. I'll check with crosstalk.

Mark Benioff: I don't know, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Arianna Huffington: I'll check with Leanne afterwards. And so it is absolutely critical that you don't sleep with your phone. Because your phone, my phone anybody's found is their inaudible of every problem, every project and everything we're excited about. So we need to disconnect from that in order to be able to deeply recharge. And then in the morning, be ready to be fully present in our lives and then addressing any challenge. And you write beautifully about that in your book about how, when you are stressed and burnout and not fully recharged, you're distracted, you are not as empathetic. You are not as good at solving problems. And you are not as joyful. And I want to talk about joy. Because for many, many years in my life, I used to think that all that matters was to kill it and crash it and be incredibly effective and productive. And now I don't think that's enough. I think that's table stakes.

Mark Benioff: Yeah. Well, I completely agree. And that's something, I think that actually a guide. Were just mentioning the monastics downstairs, there's actually a monastic down there, named Kai Lee, who I recommended that you go to visit. And his thought is to nurture your joy. To nurture it. And that's something that I have been thinking about for quite a few years even before I met him, which is that, of course, we want to enjoy every moment. So if there is a moment that we're experiencing, that we don't have enjoyment, then right then pay attention to why that is, because that is a guide. Because if you want to understand how to have more enjoyment in your life, make a list. On the left, the 10 things that you enjoy, on the right, the 10 things you do not enjoy. Do more on the left, do less on the right, you will have more enjoyment.

Laura Woods: We're going to take a quick break now to bring you a conversation with the CEO of WordPress VIP, Nick Gernert. WordPress VIP is the leading provider of enterprise WordPress. And they power companies like Facebook, Spotify, and more. My colleague Matt Jaffe sat down with Nick at Dreamforce, to discuss how his company is grappling with topics like the future of work, digital transformation, and more.

Matt Jaffe: So you mentioned Capgemini, I think that's a really interesting case study. Tell me what you guys did with them.

Nick Gernet: Yeah. We were just talking about News Corp, a lot of what we saw in WordPress is early success for WordPress VIP, was success through media or organizations that really had an emphasis on a publishing workflows and getting content to an audience. And what we're seeing just broadly in the industry is that the importance of content and content marketing is just, it's never been more important than it is now in terms of driving audience, getting folks to your products and aware of your products, a lot of that's happening in content.

Matt Jaffe: It's all about eyeballs.

Nick Gernet: It is. And it's driving traffic through what people are interested in. And so Capgemini was an interesting one for us because what they needed to do was really have a reckoning internally around, what is the current state of marketing? And marketing is really... Look, the organization as a whole. We're all contributing to marketing in some way from sales teams to product teams. There is domain expertise, there is information and the more we can start extracting these things and share that externally, the more people are able to find us and find the great things that we're doing. And they were on a platform that just wasn't really facilitating that there was four people and they were in an organization of 200, 000 that actually knew how to manipulate the platform that was behind their global web property.

Matt Jaffe: Crazy.

Nick Gernet: And so you got four people managing that. And what happens is, it takes days to get minor changes out to the world. And then it takes weeks or months to do changes of any significance beyond that. And so what we see in organizations is then, now people just start working around that like, okay, the existing system is slow, it's cumbersome. I'm just going to go spin up something over here to get my job done that I need to do.

Matt Jaffe: They take it onto themselves, find a work around.

Nick Gernet: That's it. And you're just like, okay, I'll... And that creates a governance nightmare for an organization, because now you've got different providers doing things... The parts have different PnL. So they're empowered to do it like, look, I'm going to take my own budget, just do it, because what you're providing me centrally is not allowing me to do the job. So they went out and did a big search like, where should we be going on this? And really the importance of content marketing and content in an audience engagement for an organization like Capgemini was critical. And they looked at WordPress and said, " This could really be a great fit for us." And so went through a major discovery process with them, unpacked everything, they published somewhere around 40,000 jobs a year, they manage 20, 000 plus pieces of content across their site. And so we're unpacking all these things across 38 different Geos. I think they run on site. So there's massive networks. How does all this come through in a WordPress context? And the end result of that is, we help them guide through how to see that, how to see Capgemini through the WordPress construct and how WordPress approaches this. And it's really like, how can we take things like roles and responsibilities across the organization and empower people to actually get into the software? Not have to go through chains of command just to get out to the audience. How do we create people in local offices that have the power to go right out to the market with content and serving that? And again, so it took an organization that had four people that knew how to run it internally. Now they've got just a product team of 70 alone that are just iterating and building new functionality on their primary site. And then they've literally got now thousands across the organization that are contributing content into this in real time.

Matt Jaffe: Sounds a little bit better than four.

Nick Gernet: Sounds a lot better than four, right? And we're talking hours now or minutes to get stuff out instead of days or weeks and months to do this-

Matt Jaffe: The whole workflow.

Nick Gernet: And then it allowed them to go back out to the businesses and say, " Okay, now all these other pads you've worn to work around the old system, we got to get to clean that up." And so clean up the governance nightmare, do all of those pieces here too. Now we're running on a consistent platform with consistent approach, and everyone's just more empowered to do the job more successfully now.

Laura Woods: That was Nick Gernert, CEO of WordPress VIP. To find out more visit wpvip. com. And now back to Arianna Huffington and Mark Benioff.

Arianna Huffington: But what is amazing is that also you can find joy, even during the challenges, because joy is a birthright. So a feature that we are launching in December... I know how excited you get about launching new features. So I'm really excited about this feature because it's based on the scientific fact, which is an incredible cause for optimism that it takes 60 to 90 seconds to course correct from stress. Stress is unavoidable, nobody can create a life of no stress. And it's not a problem in itself. The problem is stress becoming cumulative.

Mark Benioff: Yes.

Arianna Huffington: So we are launching this feature called Reset, which asks the user to identify images, quote, music that gives them joy. And then we put it together in a 60 second video.

Mark Benioff: Great.

Arianna Huffington: So let's say right now my Reset guide, if I played it for you, now I wish you could put play, has pictures of my daughters when they were young and unproblematic. My favorite landscapes, my favorite quote, including Rumi live life as though everything is rigged in your favor. And my current favorite song which I can change and which I do change about every couple of weeks, my current favorite song is Taylor Swift, You Need To Calm Down. So if I'm feeling stressed, I just play it, it's 60 seconds. And what I love about it is that it has amazing applications like we're working with Lopi. Lopi is courier service in Latin America. Their over 400, 000 couriers are incredibly stressed. We are putting reset on the courier app. So let's say you are stuck in San Paolo traffic and you get stressed, you play your guide. And what I love also that it builds community because I want to see your guide, or you want to see your coworkers' guides and share and remind each other that we have the power to course correct from stress just by pausing and taking literally one minute. And think of it, we're going to be using it with call center operators. Microsoft has big operations in Nicaragua, in Vietnam stressed out, burned out operators. And we've tested it. What it happens when... Through machine learning, you know when the operator has gotten a particularly nasty call, which is going to affect the customer experience they provide going forward. So we feed them a Thrive call that asks them to remember three things they're grateful for or get up and stretch or breathe consciously, one minute. I love the fact that so much of modern science, Mark is validating ancient wisdom. The monastics know that. They know that without knowing that Stanford scientists have actually proven it. They know it because that's what ancient wisdom is based on.

Mark Benioff: You mentioned breath. What is the role of breath in your life and when you go to take a moment or go to meditate or to stop your day, where is breath in your practice?

Arianna Huffington: Breath is huge of course. In fact, I forgot to mention that Reset has a breathing Pacer. So while you are watching and listening, you can also breathe more consciously. And for me, anytime I'm feeling stressed, just stopping for a second to breathe consciously changes everything. And it may not happen the first time but we get better and better at it or if you can't sleep, to focus on your breathing. Inhale and exhale consciously a few times, and you see how everything slows down, and you're able to relieve some of the stress. That's actually my second favorite step, which is in the morning, when you wake up, can you take one minute before you go to your phone? Just literally one minute. Most people go to their phone before they're fully conscious, before they have touched the ground with their feet. And you may get a stressful message. And suddenly, the cortisol hormone is coursing through your body before you're fully conscious. So you see these steps are so small, we call them micro- steps too small to fail. Because they're the opposite of New Year's resolutions which don't work. Maybe they work for two to three weeks. But for us, it's like don't say that you're going to go to the gym an hour a day, because you won't after two weeks. Just say that you're going to do two push ups a day and maybe make it three or take the steps instead of the elevator or whatever it is that is doable and a repeatable act.

Mark Benioff: Coming back to that moment in 2007 when you were experiencing the burnout, you've now realized that there's actions you need to take. Was there someone who came into your life, then that became your mentor or guide or supporter to influence this direction that has unfolded for you?

Arianna Huffington: And a lot of people that I either sought out, because I love their books, and are people who talked about their wake up moments, more people have had wake up moments than they talk about. And I actually would always encourage people to tell their stories because it helped so many others.

Mark Benioff: What does that mean, a wake up moment?

Arianna Huffington: I mean, for me, collapsing was a wake up moment.

Mark Benioff: Oh, I see.

Arianna Huffington: It's like living my life more unconsciously and then having a wake up moment. But also in terms of the change in my career, it was actually Jack Ma, who invited me to speak in Hangzhou at his first women's conference right after I had written my book Thrive. And it was the first time anybody had invited me to speak about how to live a good life, as opposed to the media world. So, that is my first speech on this theme of how to go from surviving to thriving. And Jack was in the audience. And that night, he had a speaker's dinner. And he said to me, " Listen to your speech. And if I were you, I would leave the Huffington Post, and launch a company about the things you discussed today." Because he said, stress is going to become a bigger and bigger problem around the world. He had all the data he said, " In China, now we have 100 million people suffering from stress related mental health issues, etc." And he said, " There is no market leader, you should leave and do that. And if you do it, I will invest in you." At the time, I thought he was crazy because I had no intention of leaving HuffPost. I don't know if you ever could look back and say you had no intention of leaving or a call probably at some point, or maybe not. Okay, you can tell us later.

Mark Benioff: You have to read my book.

Arianna Huffington: I want the world to know. But then it was as though he had planted the seed. And in 2016, when I decided to do it, I told him and he did invest in it. And thank you, Mark, because you invested in the series B. And it was really amazing to meet somebody who saw something ahead of you saying something about your own life. And that for me is the ultimate mentorship when somebody can guide you into the next chapter that you had not even recognized as a next chapter.

Mark Benioff: And does he continue then to give you that vision and guidance around what Thrive can be or that was that his role crosstalk.

Arianna Huffington: In many ways, as you know, you had him in Davos many, many times. Talk about these issues. He talked about how that somebody asked him what he loses sleep over. And he said, " Actually, the bigger my problem, the more important is to get real sleep, because then it's easier for me to solve it in the morning." He also talked about how we are moving from a century who a muscle was the dominant winner take all approach to wisdom being dominant. And I think the idea that we are drowning in data, and starved for wisdom is like a key part of what in many ways he has spoken about.

Mark Benioff: So he is a very important part of everything that is unfolded?

Arianna Huffington: Definitely.

Mark Benioff: Yeah. And so now here we are, you're going you've entered the enterprise software industry congratulations.

Arianna Huffington: Thank you.

Mark Benioff: You have your products, you're using it now to create more wellness, mental health inside companies. What's your dream? Where would you like to be now? Let's say five years from now, what? Where would Thrive be? And where would you be?

Arianna Huffington: So my dream, as you encourage us always Mark is to think big, right? And dream big. So I'm definitely dreaming big. I want to end the stress and burnout epidemic, which is going to have huge consequences on mental health, on chronic diseases, I feel so passionate about it, because I feel there's so much suffering in the world that we cannot immediately solve. I mean, look at how much you are doing around homelessness. But here is something that we can solve simply by changing the collective delusion that in order to succeed, you have to burn out. And once we change that delusion, everything we're doing starts with a shift in mindsets. Once you change that mindset, and you begin to adopt certain micro- steps, you can actually recognize that success and performance and well being are not on opposite sides. Success and performance should be based on a foundation of health and well being. And that's my dream. That we can give people not just the content and the awareness and the data and the science, but the steps to take this action so that they can experience it for themselves. Because that's why you brought the monastics here because you want to give people a taste of what is our birthright so that we don't live life in this breathless way of being perpetually overwhelmed in a state of time famine, but we can accept instead, the fact that we have it in us to live life in a way that has both peak performance and joy. And so my favorite little admonition is upward, onward and inward. Upward and onward is not enough, without taking the time to go inward. And also, I profoundly believe and I hope to have more and more people recognize it, that when we go inward, we can go upward and onward faster, with less cost to our health, to our loved ones, and to our experience of life.

Mark Benioff: Well, I strongly believe that. I mean, it's one of the reasons why I'm here at the conference, but also every floor of every building that Salesforce has worldwide, the three buildings we have here in the city or Indianapolis or New York or Chicago or London. If you're on a Salesforce floor, you can say" Where is the meditation room?"

Arianna Huffington: Yes.

Mark Benioff: And you'll find a room that is set up for you to be able to close the door and a pillow. And that's it. And you have the ability to take a breath, relax, calm down, reboot, reframe, rethink, and it's on the floor because it represents that it has to be an integrated part of your life. Your work life and your home life. And that's why it's also at the conference, because how could we have a conference without having that, if that was actually something we believe? It has to be an integrated part of the program, that yes, there's 2700, sessions at Dreamforce, on all these amazing technologies, but many of those sessions are also on these topics, like mental health. And that's something that we have to open ourselves up to, and be willing to as you said, talk about. I think, maybe for a long time, some of these topics have been taboo, so that the mind, body and also that your mental health is part of your physical health. So this idea that we can talk about it, we can practice it, we can experience it, that this can be part of what we're doing to, as you say, so beautifully thrive.

Arianna Huffington: But also Mark what is so important and why you're a Trail Blazer, to coin a phrase is that you are saying that from a foundation of a novel success. And that is very important, because people need to be given permission to recognize that you can both succeed and achieve all your dreams. And that, in fact, is going to be easier and more sustainable if you take the time to pause, to reflect, go inward.

Mark Benioff: Yes.

Arianna Huffington: And that's why we need to collect these stories. And I just really would love everyone here to share your story. At Thrive, the media platform, we collect these stories. It could be stories of burnout or stories of what you do to help you achieve sustainable success. And I'm going to make it very easy for you and give you my email address, you can send it to me. And then we'll give you a password and you can post anytime you want, ah @ thriveglobal. com and share your stories. We can also put you on meditative story. The great sales first team, Stephanie Boucher, me and Christina Jones and their teams are here and working with us on collecting these stories and sharing them with a world because that's how we're going to accelerate the shift.

Mark Benioff: Yeah, I think that if people hear that this is something that they can cultivate, and practice, and that some of the basic ideas like breath, it turns out, a lot of us are already breathing, that's very good news. And then how to actually be able to cultivate our breath to become more mindful, and that it will increase our mental health. That's a very powerful thought. And then they've actually meet people who are the facto- experts almost in this is I think, so interesting that they exist and that they can help guide us. And then there's people like yourself, who have linked that, to even business. I have several apps on my phone, that are meditation apps, even my watch that I wear, like this one that you have, there's a button where it turns into a meditation mode. So I think that when I first started meditating, which was back in 1992, that I would never have thought that the technology would be augmenting or training or extending that the things that I was hearing, I thought were quite different and unusual, not mainstream. I don't think I could have imagined that there would be a day that we would be on a stage like this, speaking to an audience here in the room and online, about the importance of cultivating their mental health and to avoiding like you said, beautifully burnout. But also to be able to listen to your voice inside just like you did as well as Jack Ma's voice to direct your future and define the steps to go forward.

Arianna Huffington: And you had this great conversation with Tim Cook yesterday. And he has been very instrumental in that shift at Apple towards encouraging people's health. And Breath is a feature of the watch. And encouraging people to sleep is a feature of the watch. Again, that's a very, very new development.

Mark Benioff: And I noticed you have a sleep ring that you're wearing, and so do I too.

Arianna Huffington: Are you wearing that too? Which do you prefer? Mine or... Because I've different-

Mark Benioff: Mine's pretty scratched up. So I think I like yours better actually.

Arianna Huffington: This is the Oura Ring. O- U- R- A because I have a bit of an accent. And it's great because as you know in the morning, it gives you not just the amount of sleep you got, but how much deep sleep, how much REM sleep, what got in the way of you getting deep sleep. I love it.

Mark Benioff: Yeah, my ring was very upset with me. Monday, we went to Bernard Tyson Memorial, which was at the Chase Center. It was three and a half hours in the afternoon. And of course we've dedicated the entire conference to his memory. He was a very important part of my life, very close friend, a member of our board, we also traveled very extensively together. I'm obviously still grieving because just a week last Sunday, we received the call that that morning he had not woken up. And so then being with his family and then spending the week contemplating his life and being in prayer for him, and then attending the memorial on Monday, I didn't sleep very well Monday night. And when I woke up Tuesday morning, I only had the Dreamforce keynote to do. So I checked my ring, my ring was very unhappy with me. But I also have to have some compassion for myself that of course this is going to be difficult. But I have to bring it all into my heart to be able to move forward. And I think that's crosstalk.

Arianna Huffington: And you did it. And that's when... It's so important to realize you have a lot of reserves. So no matter what our best intentions are, sometimes you have to draw to these reserves to give the keynote after not getting a good night's sleep.

Mark Benioff: Well, I'll give you a thought that a friend of ours, Jane Goodall, who's the incredible primatologist. She sent me an email really just about a month ago. And in her email, she talked about how when she is called to do a major presentation or she is going to speak, and she has not had the sleep or the rest of that she deserves, she takes a moment to meditate. She makes sure that she has her mindfulness every morning. And then she just opens herself up. And then lets that come through her. And I think that was so beautiful. And I think that on Monday and on Tuesday when I woke up, I realized I needed to take a few minutes before the keynote for sure. And even this morning, I need to take half an hour to be able to sit and collect my thoughts and come back. Because how else will I be able to give back today and also to be able to open up, to be able to listen, to be able to have an interview with you or the ones we did yesterday with the CEO of Gucci or the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook that you mentioned or the keynote? And I think that this is something that we can all do. It can be augmented with technology or monitored by the technology like we talked about the ring, the watch, this, that. But the number one thing is there is no technology when I'm just sitting there and I'm just paying attention to my breath for a half an hour. And that's why I do like having the monastics here because they're helping just to show how that basic idea had such a huge impact on people's life and giving them the ability to have performance even during a very stressful time. That of course, there's going to be moments when you're going to have to be able to do both. And this is one of the key ways to accomplish this.

Arianna Huffington: And that's why it's so important for people to know that because Harvard did a study recently. They asked individuals to choose between having 15 minutes by themselves without technology or anything or getting electric shock. And 67% of the men chose electric shock. Among the women, high women in the room, 25% chose electric shock. But that shows that we have a long way to go to convince people that being alone with yourself is actually powerful. It's actually a way to recharge and be more fully present in anything you're doing. And you don't have to start with 15 minutes, we say start with one minute and build.

Mark Benioff: What are some of the other things that you think are useful techniques that we can bring out of our tool chest that help us during stressful times?

Arianna Huffington: So another thing... And it's particularly important. Let's say if you had a day like the day you had with Bernard Tyson's Memorial, is to create a transition to sleep. Because very often, we don't have a transition to sleep. Most people, literally there's data here are on the phone until the last moment handling texts, emails, they put their phone on their nightstand, turn off their light. And they fall asleep because they're physically exhausted. But their brain has not come down. So it wakes them up in the middle of the night and then they have a hard time going back to sleep. So creating a transition to sleep. Anybody here who has children knows that you don't just drop your young children to bed, right? You sing them a song, you read them a good night moon, you put them in their PJs, etc. So we need to create a similar transition for us. I recorded a parody of good night moon that you can download from Audible called Good Night Smartphone. Then I highly recommend a hot bath or a hot shower and prolong it, the more stressed and wired you are. Not for cleanliness but simply to slow down your brain. Then I love to read only physical books in bed. And nothing to do with work like philosophy, poetry, read the monastics. I love reading Thich Nhat Hanh. And all my favorite spiritual leaders, that's when I read them before I go to sleep. And then remembering at the end of everything what I'm grateful for. Just three things I'm grateful for. Definitely our conversation will be top of the list tonight. But it can also be something really small. It could be your cafe latte, it could be a pet you saw in the street, anything. So that you end the day on the positive note, then our survivalist default position, which is wearing or ruminating.

Mark Benioff: Well, Ariana, I could keep going for hours. I want to thank you so much for being here. And I do want to encourage you to go and visit crosstalk village, Moscone, it's really cool. And I just want to thank all of you for being here at Dreamforce. And I look forward to being with you tonight. Thank you, Arianna.

Arianna Huffington: Thank you so much.

Laura Woods: Arianna Huffington, such a visionary who can teach us all about the importance of mindfulness and well being, about taking a minute to pause and check in with our bodies, instead of getting swept up in the stress of life and work. I loved what she said about technology. How it's done so much to connect us but also to disconnect us, and how high performance and really success actually depends on taking the time to connect with ourselves, our families, our co- workers, basically everyone around us. It's such a great message. Finally, it came up in our conversation with Mark but if you haven't listened to the meditative story podcast yet, I think you should. It's produced by Thrive Global, sponsored by Salesforce, and I am a new subscriber myself and already really enjoying its great mix of storytelling and mindfulness prompts. That will do it for another Blazing Trails. Thank you for listening. And thank you to WordPress VIP for presenting the show with us. We'll be back next week with another great conversation from Dreamforce 2019, featuring chefs, Samin Nosrat and Dominique Crenn. Whether you're a foodie or not, you will want to tune in and see what they have to say about our food systems and climate change.

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