Calm App Founder: From $0 To $2 Billion By Making The World Meditate: Michael Acton Smith | E117

Michael Acton Smith 0:00 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.

Steven Bartlett 0:11 Michael Acton Smith, he's the billionaire founder of the mindful meditation and sleep app, Calm.

Michael Acton Smith 0:18 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.

Steven Bartlett 0:54 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.

Steven Bartlett 2:32 Michael, you've been described in the press as this, uh, this kind of like entrepreneurial rock star character.

Michael Acton Smith 2:40 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 2:40 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?

Michael Acton Smith 3:00 Uh, I'm not sure. I was very impressively mediocre at school. (laughs) 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'd just devour 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.

Steven Bartlett 3:54 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? And-

Michael Acton Smith 4:00 Exactly. Yeah, so I think, you know, along with curiosity, I think, uh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 4:37 Sales. Your sister said that, uh, "I had a, 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 w- Was, was that apparent when you were younger, that you were, you had a talent for selling things?

Michael Acton Smith 4:52 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... (laughs) 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. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 5:19 Did, uh, did you fit, did you fit in?

Michael Acton Smith 5:22 Not really. No, if I, 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... ah, 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.

Steven Bartlett 6:03 Were you ever bullied in school? Did you ever...

Michael Acton Smith 6:06 I wouldn't, (sighs) 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, uh, in the center of, of-

Steven Bartlett 6:19 Mm-hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 6:19 ... everything that was going on.

Steven Bartlett 6:21 And then at university, that changed somehow?

Michael Acton Smith 6:22 It did. I kind of, you know, the beauty about university is you can reinvent yourself and, and you leave all the kind of, uh, sort of perceptions and, and views that people have of you when, when you get there. And, uh, so I 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, uh, at university during that period.

Steven Bartlett 6:48 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,

Steven Bartlett 7:04 at some point, that went on to starting Firebox later in-

Michael Acton Smith 7:08 Firebox.

Steven Bartlett 7:09 ... this was a bit later on, right? 1998?

Michael Acton Smith 7:11 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, uh, investment banks in London." And I didn't know anyone that worked in the City. Um, I did a geography degree, so there 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 two 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 (laughs) , 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 six months or so, uh, stepped away from that, and Tom had left to, he was programming breathalyzers in Wales, uh, (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 9:04 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 9:04 ... uh, which was quite a entertaining job. He'd have to drink cans of Stella to calibrate these breathalyzers-

Steven Bartlett 9:09 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 9:09 ... 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, you know, 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.

Steven Bartlett 9:33 So take me through that journey. So you, you hand in your resignation at some point or did you start while you were still at that company?

Michael Acton Smith 9:40 So it was a little bit of crossover-

Steven Bartlett 9:41 Okay.

Michael Acton Smith 9:41 ... as there usually is kind of, um, 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 were like, "Right, let's dive into the unknown, leap out of the airplane, and figure this out as we, uh, plummet-"

Steven Bartlett 9:57 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 9:57 "... to Earth." And, uh, Tom was living just outside of Cardiff, and, uh, I remember we were again walking around town chatting. We went into a bookshop, and we saw this book, uh, that was called, um, 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, uh, a lot of money for us- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 10:24 (laughs) .

Michael Acton Smith 10:24 ... 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 gonna 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 the, became our bible (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 10:43 Hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 10:43 ... to create, um, what was HotBox, which then became Firebox, the, uh, the gadget, the games, the sort of, uh, online retailer.

Steven Bartlett 10:52 Hmm. And so that was like, kind of like an obscure gift, um, gadget re- online retailer.

Michael Acton Smith 11:00 Yes. Yeah, we felt that, you know, again, this is the early days of, of the internet. It was, um, predominantly, uh, young, youngish people who were on it who were sort of figuring out how to, um, uh, connect. It, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world. AOL was just kind of getting going. The search engines weren't fully developed. Um, it was a lot more men than, 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?" Um, and, uh, it was sort of inspired by the Innovations Catalogue 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 (laughs) would then go and buy the product, uh, from whoever was selling it 'cause we didn't have the cash flow to, you know, hold anything in stock, and then, um, send it out to the individual. It certainly wasn't Amazon next day delivery. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 11:57 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 11:57 It was pretty clunky.

Steven Bartlett 11:58 And the payment systems, I mean-

Michael Acton Smith 12:00 Oh, boy.

Steven Bartlett 12:00 ... at the time?

Michael Acton Smith 12:01 Well, this is really interesting 'cause, you know, around this time when we told people we were gonna set up a business online, we got a few different reactions. One was that, uh, eye-rolling. People would tell us, "No one is gonna buy anything online. You know, you have to put your credit card in line and, you know, who's gonna 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." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 12:24 Uh-huh.

Michael Acton Smith 12:25 So, um, uh, 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, uh, built, uh, a website and, uh, we couldn't figure out how to take payments online. So, what we had to do was, um, if you wanted to order anything from our site, you had to find the product you wanted, then you had to print out a, an order form (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 12:56 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 12:56 Uh, 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, uh, take the money, and then I would put the product, uh, 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-

Steven Bartlett 13:23 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 13:23 (laughs) Uh, we c- we certainly, um, weren't in danger of setting any kind of, uh, commerce records. But it, it just, it was, it was a very interesting period. Many months this went on and, um, uh, 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 Shone, 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-

Steven Bartlett 13:51 Really?

Michael Acton Smith 13:51 ... 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 our, kept our energy and our, our spirits up as kind of we sat there waiting for orders to come in.

Steven Bartlett 14:03 Wha- what was the heights of that website? What was the highest moment?

Michael Acton Smith 14:07 Well, amazingly it's, it's still going now.

Steven Bartlett 14:10 I saw. I was on it earlier on.

Michael Acton Smith 14:11 Yeah, like a quarter of a century almost it's been going which is mind-boggling to think an inter- internet company... I think the real kind of, uh, tipping point for that business was when we made our own products. So instead of selling other peoples' products, uh, 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've 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 (laughs) , Tom and I were, um, uh, watching someone line up tequila shots across the bar and this turned into a conversation of, um, "They look like pawns on a chess board. You know, what if we could create chess but make it more interesting?" Turn it into the drinking person's thinking game. Uh, and you could have 32 glasses on a board and you fill them all with alcohol, red wine against white wine or whisky 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's sacrifice which would be like three shots, make your opponent very drunk and hopefully kind of, uh, 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 WHSmith one day and scribbled down all the addresses and the names of the editors and sent this out and the reaction was amazing (laughs) . 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. Uh, we created this story about this two broke ex-students who'd made this game, and we were in FHM and Loaded and Maxim and, uh, we made the local Welsh newspaper and we even made it to page three of The Sun which was quite exciting.

Steven Bartlett 16:07 Mm.

Michael Acton Smith 16:07 Not the, the main picture, uh, fortunately (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 16:09 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 16:10 No. Um-

Steven Bartlett 16:10 I was gonna say, you or Tom (laughs) .

Michael Acton Smith 16:11 Definitely. No one wants to see, to see us, but, uh, yeah, a little snippet, and suddenly the orders just started to pour in. It, it was, it was a real goosebump-inducing moment.

Steven Bartlett 16:23 And it's... So there's two things there that I want to just touch on the lesson you said you learned about PR and storytelling. I'm guessing that's a lesson that's stayed with you 'til today?

Michael Acton Smith 16:31 Oh boy, absolutely.

Steven Bartlett 16:32 And what are the principles of that lesson? What is, what's the principles of storytelling for you that you learned then?

Michael Acton Smith 16:37 Well, everyone is interested in the human angle, you know, if, if you look at every article about a business, it, 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 struggle, the resolution, the transformation at, 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, uh, the story and the struggle and those aspects and it, it makes it much more interesting.

Steven Bartlett 17:39 Mm. And at some point you decide to depart, uh, from this business?

Michael Acton Smith 17:44 Yes. Yeah, so, uh, this was many years in. The business was going well, we'd built a team, we'd moved from Wales to London, uh, we went to one of the first First Tuesday events. I don't know if anyone listening remembers but we read about this, uh, in The Guardian, this, this, um, 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, uh, um, we met with him and the team and they invested in the business and, and we were just like blown away. So yes, 5Ox grew for many years, 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, uh, important chats with Tom, and, uh, I- I stepped away and, uh, created Mind Candy, which was, uh, the next big adventure I was about to embark on.

Steven Bartlett 19:00 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? State- and stable, or-

Michael Acton Smith 19:12 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, uh, it was, uh, it was, uh, a challenging business to run, so we certainly... We were- we were stable. We were profitable 'cause we kind of had to be, but it- 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 AM, 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-

Steven Bartlett 19:50 Hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 19:50 ... 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 1.0 era. Web 2.0 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.

Steven Bartlett 20:14 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 sundae shelf in my mind where, like, new ideas come. I put them on the sundae shelf, and if they, like, nag me and if they stay at the front of the shelf and, like, "Steve," you know, then I'll pursue them. But if they kind of fade off into the background and collect dust and vanish-

Michael Acton Smith 20:42 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 20:42 ... 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?

Michael Acton Smith 20:48 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 a- 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 upfront. 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 documentaries. 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- 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 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.

Steven Bartlett 22:35 And to communicate to the world exactly what your direction and trajectory is.

Michael Acton Smith 22:38 Exactly. It's then a very crisp, very clear idea. Now, the- 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.

Steven Bartlett 23:09 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 'cause they always think that there is a real urgency to the challenge they're trying to solve or need-

Michael Acton Smith 23:21 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 23:21 They see it as they're- they're in a 100-meter sprint-

Michael Acton Smith 23:24 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 23:24 ... and they need to go now and go fast, which means raise tons of capital and l- start sprinting.

Michael Acton Smith 23:30 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 23:30 And it always feels... No- no matter what i- (laughs) industry, um, people are launching their businesses in, whether it's, like, someone launching cupcakes on Instagram in the pandemic 'cause sourdough exploded, they think it's now or never. What would you say to that?

Michael Acton Smith 23:45 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 'cause the- the race, the f- starting gun is 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... A great analogy, I think, is surfing. Um, when you're waiting for that wave, you don't want to be too late, obviously, 'cause 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, 'cause 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 whoom, you go. And there's nothing quite like that, being one of the first players riding a wave in- 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 (laughs) 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.

Steven Bartlett 25:05 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're 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.

Steven Bartlett 26:11 So after FireVox, you, you, you went on to Mind Candy.

Michael Acton Smith 26:14 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 26:15 Mind Candy.

Michael Acton Smith 26:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 26:16 And Perplex City?

Michael Acton Smith 26:18 Perplex City, indeed.

Steven Bartlett 26:19 Where does that fit? (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 26:21 Oh, wow. All right, this is going back, uh, (laughs) back, uh, a fair old way. The reason why I stepped away from, from FireVox, and the idea that I couldn't stop thinking about, was around games. And I've always loved games. You know, I mentioned chess. I love Scrabble and backgammon, video games like Dungeons & Dragons, created all my own games.

Steven Bartlett 26:39 Hm.

Michael Acton Smith 26:40 But I saw something really interesting happening just after the, the, the new millennium, and it was, could the internet revolutionize 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, there's an interesting theme here, watched a movie that I couldn't stop thinking about called The Game with Michael Douglas, where 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, £100,000 reward for the first person-

Steven Bartlett 27:52 Where is that? Is it still there?

Michael Acton Smith 27:55 ... that found it. It- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 27:55 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 27:55 It was found a couple of years later-

Steven Bartlett 27:57 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 27:57 ... 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... 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 reality 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- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 28:37 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 28:38 ... things I've worked on. And my goodness, I, I learned some really valuable lessons building that.

Steven Bartlett 28:43 So I, I read that it cost $9 million.

Michael Acton Smith 28:46 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."

Steven Bartlett 29:23 Because you hadn't figured out the bus- the underlying business model?

Michael Acton Smith 29:26 Correct.

Steven Bartlett 29:27 Or-

Michael Acton Smith 29:27 So we had a model. So, w- you would buy these trading cards, a bit like Pokemon cards. You'd get a random collection of six in a pack for a few pounds, and, uh, 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 bid- 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.

Steven Bartlett 30:06 When, when you say... So two points I wanna pick up on there. 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.

Michael Acton Smith 30:15 So just sitting there... (laughs) 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 gonna 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 being 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 the sole founder in that business, so it was kind of tricky. I had a, an amazing COO, uh, slash CFO, slash ev- C everything O, (laughs) Davinia 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.

Steven Bartlett 31:22 A- and 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?

Michael Acton Smith 31:29 There was, and I, I kept putting it off. Uh, you know, tha- 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'd painted for them all, and I basically just had to say, "This is not working. We're running out of cash. We're gonna 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. (sighs) And, um, I had been thinking of a new idea. (laughs) 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, uh, we were going from this very complex, fascinating, um, game, Perplex City, to a kids' game. (laughs) And I tried to explain it to people, and there were, there were 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 gonna 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, uh, they all got on board. And so yeah, we kind of, (sighs) oh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 33:48 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 33:48 Terrifying kids, giving them nightmares. But I just loved this concept. And, and so we were gonna create this new idea, this spinup 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.

Steven Bartlett 34:08 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 34:08 So that was the seed, uh, of, uh, of Moshi.

Steven Bartlett 34:13 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 gonna keep with me for the rest of my life"?

Michael Acton Smith 34:39 I think not getting sucked into and believing the hype. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 34:44 Mm.

Michael Acton Smith 34:44 It's wonderful to be written about in, in the press. Uh, it's wonderful to win awards. But, you know, that is not what a bus- 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 gonna 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, 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 an economic machine behind their crazy idea.

Steven Bartlett 35:41 Such a good point. And I think I wish someone had said that to me when I started my first business, Woolpack, 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 purs- so I got r- more romantic about my failing hypothesis.

Michael Acton Smith 35:59 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:59 Whereas really the clapping and the press is validation of an interesting story. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 36:04 Mm. There you go. That's very well said.

Steven Bartlett 36:06 Not, not the business model. Do you know what I mean? So...

Michael Acton Smith 36:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:08 Um...

Michael Acton Smith 36:08 How, how did that turn out?

Steven Bartlett 36:09 Failed. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 36:10 (laughs) There we go. We've both, we've both got the scars. I mean, my body is littered with scars of, of failures.

Steven Bartlett 36:17 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 36:17 But the great thing about business is you only need to get it right once to, to create a huge success.

Steven Bartlett 36:22 Um, I, I was well aware of Mos- Moshi Monsters for a variety of different reasons. Um, tell me about the, the, the growth in trajectory at the start of... I heard it was very slow for the first sort of two years, 18 months.

Michael Acton Smith 36:34 It was, yeah. You know, everyone thinks businesses that are successful just happen overnight. They don't. There's a, there's a lot, (laughs) a lot of grind and, and hustle getting to that point. Um, but, you know, the idea felt very strong. This, 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-

Steven Bartlett 37:04 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 37:05 ... like, characters were sold. 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? Um-

Steven Bartlett 37:13 Yes, and Neopets. I was-

Michael Acton Smith 37:15 Neo- Neopets was another great, great business.

Steven Bartlett 37:17 I loved Neopets. Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 37:18 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 gonna 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.

Steven Bartlett 37:47 Hm.

Michael Acton Smith 37:47 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, a year of trying to make that work, we decided, "Do 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 to 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-

Steven Bartlett 38:43 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 38:43 ... it was breathtaking.

Steven Bartlett 38:45 So the business rose, right? And then obviously there was a... It, it struggled-

Michael Acton Smith 38:49 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 38:49 ... because of-

Michael Acton Smith 38:50 It-

Steven Bartlett 38:50 The world changed.

Michael Acton Smith 38:51 That's a understatement. Uh-

Steven Bartlett 38:52 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 38:52 ... it struggled. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 38:53 Okay. T- tell me about that.

Michael Acton Smith 38:55 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 gonna be the next Disney. (laughs) 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. (laughs) And the summer of 2012 was when things just suddenly stopped, and I was like, "What on earth is going on? This is probably just an aberration." And we thought, "Oh, it's 'cause 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, uh, using the web as their primary place of kind of playing games and-

Steven Bartlett 39:51 Desktop, right?

Michael Acton Smith 39:52 Yeah, desktop web. Playing Moshi or Club Penguin or Stardoll or Neopets or 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 gonna 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, uh, through the App Store. And, uh, we, uh, yeah, spent several years trying to kind of right the, the ship and keep things going but, um, weren't, weren't able to, sadly. So that was a- an incredibly stressful, uh, period as well.

Steven Bartlett 40:47 Another stressful period.

Michael Acton Smith 40:49 Another. There's been quite a few. It's why I've got so many gray hairs.

Steven Bartlett 40:52 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 40:52 But, uh, again, learnt, learnt a lot during that period, but that was a, that was a tough time.

Steven Bartlett 40:57 Tough time as in letting people go, having to scale down the business, trying to find new product-market fit and-

Michael Acton Smith 41:02 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 41:03 Like, on a personal level, what was... 'Cause, 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-

Michael Acton Smith 41:20 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 41:20 ... 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. Te- tell me about that.

Michael Acton Smith 41:28 So true. Yeah, that, that was exactly it. You know, when, when things are going well, you (laughs) , 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 s- uh, stressful. The flip from being I was pr- sort of one of the, the poster boys of the-

Steven Bartlett 41:48 Celebrity. You were-

Michael Acton Smith 41:48 ... boom. Yeah, in Shoreditch.

Steven Bartlett 41:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 41:50 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, my self was just so entwined 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.

Steven Bartlett 42:37 How did you cope with that?

Michael Acton Smith 42:40 (exhales deeply) Um, I'm lucky in that I have a, a, a very supportive family and I have some great friends who are also entrepreneurs. And we've kind of all (laughs) , 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, uh, give each other important pep talks. So I think having that community, uh, 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, uh, bad state. But to put things in perspective, again, I- I did try and kind of be realistic that there were people in the world (laughs) going through much trickier things than that, 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.

Steven Bartlett 43:50 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 medica- like medicating yourself with some kind of escape? And the secondary question was about the topic of men's health broadly. When did you discover that it was a thing?

Michael Acton Smith 44:13 So wow, yeah. I, um, I think when we are struggling in life, we (laughs) instead of addressing the issue, uh, 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'd take myself off to coffee shops. I suppose caffeine is, is not as serious a, a kind of drug as some, some other ones. But, um, I also used to take, um, uh, painkillers every morning just 'cause 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, 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 Chu, 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 F-ing off." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 45:37 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 45:37 That's the last thing I need. Look-

Steven Bartlett 45:38 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 45:38 ... 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 w- 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 'cause I'd, I'd heard about it. And, uh, 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." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 46:45 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 46:45 'Cause he'd been... he kind of knew this. And this was all around the, the time where we'd been talking about, um, creating a, a new business. Um, 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 he said, um, "It's about a million pounds." And I said, "Right." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 47:14 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 47:14 "Right."

Steven Bartlett 47:14 Fuck off. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 47:15 Uh, yeah, we don't have money, uh, to, uh, to buy that. But about a year later, we're playing video games again, uh, a consistent theme here-

Steven Bartlett 47:22 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 47:23 ... 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.

Steven Bartlett 47:30 Hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 47:30 I'd earmarked this money to put a deposit down on a house, um, but thought buying calm.com might be a more sensible thing to do, even though my parents (laughs)

Narrator 47:38 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 47:38 ... and I thought it was the silliest idea. Uh, but, um, yeah, so we bought calm.com.

Steven Bartlett 47:43 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 47:43 And that was, uh, that was kind of the starting acorn that was planted for, for that business.

Steven Bartlett 47:49 So here is where mine and Alex's paths kinda crossed.

Michael Acton Smith 47:53 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 47:53 So I had left my company, Woolpack, the one 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, uh, followers across multiple Facebook, Instagram, like Twitter pages, whatever.

Michael Acton Smith 48:15 Wow.

Steven Bartlett 48:15 And I was helping them scale their products using social media. And as I landed, ph- um, Sean, who is the CEO there, said to me, "Oh, a kid just left called Alex."

Michael Acton Smith 48:25 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 48:25 He said, "He's gone to do this meditation app." And I swear to God, I thought, "What a fucking hippie."

Michael Acton Smith 48:31 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 48:32 I thought like, (laughs) "What a... what a weird guy." He left here to go do med-... 'cause at the ti-... it's different now. At the time, meditation was like, "Pfft-

Michael Acton Smith 48:42 So true.

Steven Bartlett 48:42 ... hippie hocus pocus nonsense."

Michael Acton Smith 48:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 48:45 I remember thinking it, which is how I feel now. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 48:48 Do you know what? You weren't, you weren't the only person-

Steven Bartlett 48:50 I know, yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 48:50 ... that thought that. People would back away from us at parties when we said-

Steven Bartlett 48:52 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 48:52 ... we were building a meditation company. And, uh, it was, um... a- and I remember other people like thinking I'd had a, a nervous breakdown 'cause of my previous business, and now I was setting up a meditation company

Narrator 49:03 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 49:03 ... and they're, "Oh, good, good luck with your nonprofit, mate."

Steven Bartlett 49:05 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 49:07 (laughs) "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 gonna shift. We didn't think it would take as long as it did, but we felt there was change coming.

Steven Bartlett 49:24 The actual story, um, about how I felt when Shawn told me that, and then watching what that company became, this multi-billion dollar just business that everybody knows, that I, everyone that I know 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... A- again, I, the analogy I use is the wave coming in to shore. Like, you guys were really early with the surfboard, and you were betting on that wave coming in to shore.

Michael Acton Smith 49:53 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:53 And ev- when, a- so now I look for, I wanna play in spaces where there's high levels of skepticism, but I feel like it's inevitable.

Michael Acton Smith 50:00 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 50:00 And I always think about that convers- that when, the, I always think about Calm, because I was skep- a skeptic, the wave came in, and I was like wildly wrong. And I just wish (laughs) I'd left with Alex.

Michael Acton Smith 50:12 I think you've done quite all right. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 50:14 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 50:14 There's multiple, multiple routes to huge success-

Steven Bartlett 50:17 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 50:17 ... 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 meditations for free on YouTube, and, and if, no one is gonna pay for this. And mental health is something that isn't talked about. Mental health has stigma around it. How on earth are you gonna 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 gonna 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, uh, 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 w- has mental health.

Steven Bartlett 51:20 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 51:20 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 bec- can become masters of their, 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 yeah, it's, uh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 52:23 I agree. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 52:25 Thank you. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 52:25 I can't think of a more important one other than maybe climate change, but-

Michael Acton Smith 52:28 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 52:28 ... you know, survival and happiness seem like the two fundamentals. I mean, happiness is maybe not the right word, but, um, 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.

Michael Acton Smith 52:46 Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 52:46 Um...

Michael Acton Smith 52:47 Helping people not just survive, but to thrive-

Steven Bartlett 52:50 Hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 52:50 ... in life. And, and why not? And the human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe, you know, 90 billion neur- 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 s- 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 unhappiness 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, um, 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 a, it's a, an important starting point to then build upon.

Steven Bartlett 53:42 It's a great way to upgrade your operating system, you said. So how-

Michael Acton Smith 53:46 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 53:46 ... does that work from a neuroscience perspective? How is it upgrading my OS? What's, what's happening?

Michael Acton Smith 53:52 Well, so this is, this can get quite complex, but at a sort of basic level, uh, the amygdala, it w- (sighs) the amygdala is the, the oldest part of our 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, (sighs) 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, it's, we have so much stimulation in life, so many things happen, and most of us react. You know (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 54:52 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 54:52 ... your first thought, someone cuts you off 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 your (laughs) , 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, the- the strength, um, in our body. Meditation is like going to the mental gym. It's a way of building up the- (laughs) 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- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 55:46 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 55:46 ... 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.

Steven Bartlett 56:09 That is a dying art.

Michael Acton Smith 56:10 It is.

Steven Bartlett 56:10 Are you optimistic about our ability to correct course?

Michael Acton Smith 56:17 This is a (laughs) ... 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, uh, 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- or saying-

Steven Bartlett 57:08 You're a crazy person.

Michael Acton Smith 57:09 ... it would've been cr- you probably got fired.

Steven Bartlett 57:10 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 57:11 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.

Steven Bartlett 57:20 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 (clicks tongue) no?

Michael Acton Smith 57:34 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 (laughs) . Um, and we couldn't... We found it very difficult to raise money. We- we were able to get some seed money, uh, 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- 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. Um, and there was a lady in the audience, uh, Venetia from Penguin, and she emailed me afterwards and said, "Oh, your story's fascinating. Could we make a book about Calm?" And I was like, um, "Well, it's not really core. It's not our key focus at the moment, but okay, could we talk about an advance?" (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 58:41 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 58:42 And literally our cash amounts were- were dwindling and, um, she said, "Sure." And the money that came in from that offer, um, kept the business going.

Steven Bartlett 58:51 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 58:51 So a very unusual way to- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 58:53 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 58:53 ... to keep the lights on at a startup. So we're very grateful to- to Venetia and the Penguin team. And then we had a subscription business model, so, uh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 59:12 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 59:12 So we started to make more money and 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- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 59:28 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 59:28 ... uh, the ice cold, uh, winter to just holding onto the rocket ship-

Steven Bartlett 59:32 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 59:32 ... for dear life.

Steven Bartlett 59:33 Trying to stay on the surfboard (laughs) .

Michael Acton Smith 59:34 Exactly. Yeah. Mixing metaphors there, but yeah-

Steven Bartlett 59:37 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 59:37 ... the rocket ship surfboard was- was away.

Steven Bartlett 59:39 Yeah. Okay. And then that, it presents a whole nother set of challenges. You've got to hire people, you've got to raise more money, scale up.

Michael Acton Smith 59:48 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:48 How was that for you?

Michael Acton Smith 59:49 We were... We were underway there and, um, again, the business was starting. It was a- an extraordinary place to be 'cause we were bringing in a lot of, um, downloads and we were generating a lot of revenue. I think we got to about eight million downloads before spending any money on marketing.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:04 Wow.

Michael Acton Smith 1:00:04 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 Done, 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:43 And when I looked at the App Store, you now have the word sleep in the title as well-

Michael Acton Smith 1:00:47 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:47 ... of Calm. So it 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?

Michael Acton Smith 1:00:58 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 a..." (laughs) "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...... thing of, uh, a bedtime story, which we all love (laughs) . 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 story, we call it a story slope. Um, Chris, who runs our sleep stories, kind of, uh, 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 (laughs) at work that day-

Steven Bartlett 1:02:03 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 1:02:03 ... 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 e- 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:02:32 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:02:32 ... every single night of their life.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:34 Or try.

Michael Acton Smith 1:02:35 Whew. Or try (laughs) . Exactly.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:37 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:02:37 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:55 There's a lot of misconceptions around sleep and m- s- 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?

Michael Acton Smith 1:03:14 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 (laughs) . 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, a sort of different amount of sleep depending on our genes. Somewhere between seven and nine hours sleep

Michael Acton Smith 1:03:55 every night. Uh, for me, I need about eight and a, a quarter, uh, to feel good. I don't know if you know your level-

Steven Bartlett 1:04:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:04:01 ... you can probably cope on about three hours, I imagine-

Steven Bartlett 1:04:03 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:04:03 ... given how much you do, but (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 1:04:06 (laughs) I need to f- figure that out. But I've, I've, I mean, I've, yeah. It's g- I 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 neg- neglect like the fundamentals of being a human being.

Michael Acton Smith 1:04:19 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:20 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-

Michael Acton Smith 1:04:33 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:33 ... and it's like, I, I, I write about it 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.

Michael Acton Smith 1:04:54 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:54 Talk to your friends (laughs) . It's like there's no like pre- there's no like pre- 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 shit, whereas really they appear to be so simple.

Michael Acton Smith 1:05:07 Well said. We always look for the overcomplicated solution, don't we?

Steven Bartlett 1:05:12 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 1:05:12 We, we think it has to be, but fundamentally those are the basics that you just mentioned.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:16 Mm-hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 1:05:16 Johann Hari talks about it in his book. Lost Connections is one of my favorite books where 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:05:39 Yeah.

Michael Acton Smith 1:05:39 ... 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 tr- sleep with respect I think is one of the most important things we can do.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:53 Quick one. As many of you know, I've been trying to make my life a little bit more sustainable as it relates to energy ever since I sold my Range Rover Sport and bought an electric bicycle. And MyEnergy as a sponsor of this podcast is one of the brands that make that transition much, much easier. They are at the forefront of British renewable eco smart technology and their products are really, really changing the game. If you're on YouTube, you can see what I'm holding in my hand. This is called the eddi, right? It's the UK's number one solar powered diverter. So what is a solar diverter? It's a device for people like you and me. That means you can divert your excess energy back into your home rather than back into the grid, which will save you power and money. It's super user friendly and easy to install, and you can control it using the MyEnergy app on your phone. To find out more about this product and more products like it that will help you make that sustainable transition, head over to myenergy.com and, um, I highly recommend you check out the eddi. It's, um, it's a real game changer of a product and one that I'm gonna be installing in my home soon.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:54 Tough times, sleepless nights. Let's talk about that then. This year-

Michael Acton Smith 1:06:57 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:57 ... difficult for everybody.

Michael Acton Smith 1:06:59 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:00 Um, f- for everyone's own reasons. 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 was this, how has this last year and this tumultuous pandemic been for you?

Michael Acton Smith 1:07:26 It's been a...... very challenging time. Uh, the pandemic, as you say, has affected everybody (laughs) on Earth in, in many, many different ways. It, it has been extraordinarily difficult. So, my perspective is, is more, you know, a, a personal, (laughs) uh, 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, there was a lot of anxiety, uh, but this was, uh, we were in this together and there was a lot of, uh, 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:19 Mm-hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 1:08:19 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, hunched over my laptop like everybody else, has taken its toll. And I didn't treat my posture with respect. I didn't, I didn't look after my mental health the way I should, and I started to... this started to compound, and I, I had quite a serious back problem. I had a, a, a herniated disc, um, because of all the hunching, and that pushed on a nerve which meant I couldn't walk, and I had very serious pain every day. Um, which meant, (laughs) uh, uh, I couldn't sleep very well. Um, I saw multiple physios. I started to take painkillers which stopped the pain, but then filled my head with cotton wool. And so... but I still had to work and I still had to kind of, um, communicate with my team and lead the company, and I couldn't do exercise. And so for many, many months, I was not in a great place. It was a, a very, very difficult, uh, summer and beyond this year. Um, so yeah, 2021 has been tricky. Uh, I'm in a much better place now but it, it, it has been very, very challenging, and I'm very fortunate in that, you know, I haven't lost any loved ones and it, it's... we've got to put things in perspective. But from a health and, and work, uh, angle, uh, this has, I think, been one of the, the toughest, if not the toughest years that, that I've, I've personally been through.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:53 So many people, as you've described there, staring at the screen every day, end up burning themselves out. What's your experience with burnout as a topic? And is that what you're describing happened this year?

Michael Acton Smith 1:10:06 I think it was a combination of things. I think it was burnout connected to chronic stress, connected to the back pain and, um, again, all these things start to negatively compound. The lack of exercise. Uh, I was living on my own and, and didn't have, uh, much, kind of, uh, human connection. Um, all these things kind of came together and, and created a, a perfect storm. And we have over 300 people at, at Calm now, and the team were going through their own versions of, of that. It certainly-

Steven Bartlett 1:10:38 (laughs) .

Michael Acton Smith 1:10:38 ... wasn't just me struggling. And we do this survey every six months called Culture Amp, where the whole team kind of answers a bunch of questions and they can leave anonymous comments. We had thousands of anonymous comments in the last one we just did. And we've never seen anything like it in, in the data. The, the, the, the number of people talking about stress and burnout is way beyond anything I've ever seen in my career. And so I think it is just now we've been in this situation for 18 months, and it has just gone on and on and on. It's, it's really affected everyone, and we're seeing this now across pretty much every company. At the start of the, the lockdown, going back, I think what companies were seeing was a real surprise. Instead of people bunking off and taking it easy and putting their feet up and watching Netflix all day, people were working harder. We saw this at Calm. Um, and I think many companies have. I think there was a Harvard study done recently showing that the average work day has increased by almost an hour when people are working from home. So, people are working harder, they, they can't really switch off. There's no boundary between work and, and non-work, and it's creating this, this compounding, um, toll on the minds and, and bodies of, of everybody. So, it's a crisis. It, it's a very, very serious, uh, issue. We are taking this very seriously at Calm. Obviously, we are. Uh, we want to support, uh, our own team and other companies around the world, and just a few things that we've tried to do. We're still figuring this out ourselves, figuring out what the best way to work and support our teams are. So one thing is we have, you know, unlimited holiday but teams don't take them-

Steven Bartlett 1:12:14 Mm-hmm.

Michael Acton Smith 1:12:14 ... 'cause (laughs) it's very hard to do. I've taken a few breaks, uh, during the pandemic, but I don't think I've had a single break where I wasn't on at least one Zoom call (laughs) , or I didn't check Slack or email at least once or twice a, a day. And we made the decision back in October to do a mental health week. We've done a few mental health days where everyone sort of steps away, and previously, I'd have said, "What a ridiculous idea. Who on earth gives the whole company a, a week off? You know, we are in such a competitive space. We can't afford to do that." And we did it, and we agreed it would be the right thing to do, and I think it's one of the smartest decisions we've, we've made in the, in the history of the company because it gave the whole company a chance to properly step away and recharge their batteries knowing that there wasn't any calls they were missing or any important things going on. And you know what? We came back a week later and everything was fine. The business was still there. We... fortunately, we had a few colleagues that stayed to make sure everything stayed up and could support our audience. But yeah, that was one of the smartest things, uh, we did to support the mental health of the team.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:16 What

Steven Bartlett 1:13:17 changes have you made now in your life based on the last year, which you describe as being the hardest of your, your life, um, to make sure that you are taking better care of yourself as you've, as you've alluded to?

Michael Acton Smith 1:13:31 Yes, and so there were a few other reasons why it was a very hard year, sort of beyond work, which, um, uh...... were compounding all, all the different challenges. I just think I've learnt a lot about being, uh, a better leader by developing kind of a meditation practice and, and being more mindful of so many different things. One is just not getting sucked into the, the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey, you know. Nothing is ever amazing or as disastrous as it seems, and I think teams want to follow calm leaders who are stable and, you know, celebrate the wins, but, but don't get sucked into the vortex of, of neg- negativity when things go wrong. I don't go to bed anymore doing emails- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:14:14 (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:14:14 ... and waking up in the middle of the night with a phone glued to my face. I don't reach for my phone first thing in the morning anymore, as something like 60% of people do. Because suddenly, uh, instead of gently coming into the day and letting your mind kinda calibrate with the, the world, you're, you're throwing yourself into Twitter and Instagram and the news cycle and everything else. I think that's been a, a really, really important thing. Um, four areas that I, that I really think about that are the foundations to, uh, being healthy and looking after yourself, which then enables you to look after your friends and family and your, your company and employees. Um, one is nutrition, what you put into your body. Number two is exercise, how you move your body. Um, uh, so important, number three is your mind, taking care of that, you know, developing a, a practice that works for you. And number four is sleep and making sure you get that right. Sounds very simple, but you keep those things in balance, you respect them, and again, going back to this idea of a foundation, that is a very powerful foundation to stand on to, to do everything else you want to do in life.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:18 Amazing. I couldn't agree more.

Michael Acton Smith 1:15:20 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:15:20 That, that philosophy, again, about being, being a little bit more human. One of the things that, um, wasn't on that list is in- like, meaningful connections.

Michael Acton Smith 1:15:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:30 And one... It's interesting 'cause when I was reading through your story... And if I'm being nosy here, just tell me to fuck off. Like I'm feeling like- (laughs)

Michael Acton Smith 1:15:35 Uh-oh.

Steven Bartlett 1:15:36 I couldn't see-

Michael Acton Smith 1:15:37 Here we go. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:15:37 Yeah, yeah. I couldn't, I couldn't, um, I couldn't see you speak openly much about your, your