The “most stressed” wellness CEO

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

DAVID KO: People will ask me at times, “What is it like to be the CEO of Calm? Do you meditate all day?” And I tell them, “Honestly, no. I am the most stressed-out CEO you will ever meet.” And the reason I say that is because every second of every day, someone is turning to us for help.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s David Ko of mental health and wellness app Calm, who just announced he’s stepping down as CEO. Today, David talks with me about this moment of transition, the mental health burdens of the workplace, and how to tell the difference between stress that builds you up and stress that burns you out. It’s a surprisingly upbeat conversation about some serious stuff, and there’s a lot to learn and apply. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with David Ko, who has run mental health and wellness platform Calm as CEO since 2022. David, thanks for joining us.

KO: Bob, thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to today’s discussion.

Copy LinkWhy David Ko chose to step down from Calm

SAFIAN: The big news here is that you’ve just announced you’ve stepped down as CEO. You’re becoming a senior adviser to the board. I have to say, I was surprised by this turn of events. How did this come about?

KO: I’m glad we’re starting with this.

SAFIAN: Going right at the elephant in the room.

KO: Bob, thank you for the question. I made the decision to leave because, as I took a step back, I saw that Calm is a brand today that, for those who don’t know, has had more than 180 million downloads of the product and is growing in more than 190 countries and seven different languages. We’ve really made strides in health outcomes. That’s where we’re going with Calm Health.

But at the same time, what’s become abundantly clear to me is that we’re in the midst of something so much bigger. It’s bigger because what we’re finding is that everything is much more interconnected than it was before. What I mean by that is there’s a reliance on employers, payers, providers, apps like ourselves, other apps being developed at lightning speed with AI, and real policy at both the federal and state level. So it’s really not just about one individual or one company. It’s more about how you create a movement.

For me, it felt like the right time to take a step back, zoom out, and really see if I could impact things at a larger scale. I don’t have all the answers on how I’m going to do it, because you’re catching me literally right after the announcement. But on a personal note, I feel more interconnected to Calm and Calm’s mission than ever before. I just wanted to try to do it at a scale that I think can really move this forward on a global basis.

SAFIAN: Calm’s business, as well as your book and your podcast, Recharge, focus a lot on managing stress. I’m curious how your stress is with this change, or in the Ko vernacular, how’s your battery?

KO: I’ve got to tell you, my battery today is great because, when I think about my own battery like my phone battery, I would tell you I feel fully charged. And I’m not just saying that.
I got a good night’s sleep last night. For me, the day always starts well when it’s not about the quantity of sleep. I don’t know if it’s the same for you, Bob, but it’s really about the quality of sleep I got. I’ve really focused on that. For me, it’s been nonnegotiable.

SAFIAN: And this change isn’t weighing on your head?

KO: It weighs on me. Like everything else, anytime you go through change, especially a life change, it’s going to weigh on you. But I just felt it was the right time, and I’m really looking forward to trying to do something that’s more focused on the mission and outcomes.

SAFIAN: During your tenure, Calm has grown its footprint, as you say, to 180 million app downloads and millions of Americans reached through health insurers. You’ve partnered on botanical beverages and sleep earbuds, and you helped pioneer so-called “calmtainment,” bringing celebrity voices into the app, right? Matthew McConaughey.

KO: That’s right.

SAFIAN: LeBron James, Harry Styles. Are there things about your time at Calm that you’re particularly proud of, that you look back on most strongly?

KO: Absolutely.  A couple of things. I think the conversation around mental health is the most approachable it’s ever been. Not in all countries, Bob, as we know, but here in the U.S., it’s probably the most approachable it’s ever been because people, like you just mentioned, are willing to talk about it.

I’m also very proud when I take a step back. I have two daughters, and they both use the app of their own accord. For someone who’s been in technology for so long, we don’t always have that opportunity where our kids, family, or friends get to use the things that we build. And I love the fact that they get to use it.

For myself, the brand was there before I got here, and I just helped continue to steward and shepherd that brand. We’ve really focused on the outcomes perspective, now covering almost 48 million lives across multiple payer partners that we didn’t have four years ago. I wanted to prove that it could actually resonate in health care, and we’re well on our way there.

Copy LinkWhy leaders need to stop treating mental health like a perk

SAFIAN: A lot of our listeners are business leaders, and sometimes I feel like they don’t always take mental health and wellness seriously. There’s this phrase, wellness-washing.

KO: Absolutely.

SAFIAN: I’m curious how much you see that, how much that’s going on, and whether maybe it doesn’t matter. It can be wellness-washing as long as it’s progress.

KO: I’ll give you a report we did just last year, and it really starts at the top for so many of us. We can have great HR teams, but if it’s not embraced at the leadership level, things can get muted or become just another benefit. So we went out and spoke to more than 250 C-suite executives.
What was really fascinating is that CEOs need this. They need the details and the numbers. We went out there and asked them, “How are you doing?” More than 80% of them said, “I’m good. We’re good.” When you ask that question again, because as you know, you have to ask C-suite executives the same question twice, they said, “Actually, I’m pretty stressed out.” More than 47% of them said, “I’m pretty stressed.” When we correlated even further, 28% said, “I actually feel I’m under major stress at this very moment.” And then when we pushed them even harder, almost 50% of them said, “I’m thinking of stepping down.”

What was really interesting was that, as we pressed further, we asked them, “Are you sharing this with your employees? Do they understand how stressed you are?” Many of them said no. They didn’t feel safe yet having these conversations in a more public format.

So when you ask me how CEOs are feeling and whether they believe in mental health, many of them do. In reports and studies we’ve done, it’s clear. It’s just that right now many of them, too, are feeling the stress.

SAFIAN: How much effort did it take for you to keep the Calm workplace calm? Just because you’re helping people with their mental state doesn’t mean your team is under any less pressure to grow and build and do.

KO: One hundred percent, Bob.  People will ask me at times, “What is it like to be the CEO of Calm? Do you meditate all day? Do you just sit there and meditate all day?” And I tell them, “Honestly, no. I am the most stressed-out CEO you will ever meet,” and it catches them by surprise.

The reason I say that is because every second of every day, someone is turning to us for help. And I feel that pressure, that wherever they are in the world or whatever moment they’re in, they’re asking us for help, whether it’s 30 seconds, five seconds, or 10 minutes. They’re looking to us for some type of help in the moment. It could be prevention or intervention. So I feel that pressure.
When you ask about a company that’s small and punches above its weight, we feel that pressure. I feel that pressure. I know my employees feel it. But I do try to practice what I preach. And the biggest thing I do is try to be very vulnerable in front of them. I don’t view vulnerability as a weakness. So I tell them when I’m feeling stressed. I tell them when things aren’t going well. I’m super transparent, and I wasn’t always that way because I used to view it as a weakness. Today, I view it as a strength.

SAFIAN: For some businesses, the cost of mental stress can be hard for them to measure, or they don’t have the facilities to do that. How much did you hear that in trying to get resources committed to it?

KO: I hear it all the time. It starts with CFOs. It starts with CHROs. We talk about the ROI, and now a lot of CFOs are getting involved and want to see the returns of all these different programs. A lot of times, you have to just look at the raw facts of what’s happening within your own organization. Do you see higher absenteeism? Do you see employees quitting at an accelerated rate? What is actually at the root of that? So much of what we’re finding is that stress and burnout are rampant in organizations today. The organizations that start to address them head-on and understand, “OK, it’s not just a benefit,” it’s really got to be incorporated within the company and adopted, we see those metrics start to go down.

Copy LinkThe difference between productive stress and burnout

SAFIAN: For all of us these days, things feel very burdened. War with Iran, tariffs, AI disruption, and economic uncertainty. People feel isolated. How much of Calm’s growth, and this whole category’s growth, has been because the world is getting worse?

KO: I was asked this question during our last election, and I was asked this during the holidays. I would say holiday stress is absolutely real. Election stress is real. In some organizations, financial stress will be at the top of the list. In some organizations, we’ll see they’re much more attuned to what’s happening from a global perspective. And we haven’t even spoken about AI yet, which I appreciate, but that, too, is causing a lot of stress in the workplace. So when you put all this together, all organizations will have some form of stress.

Stress is your body’s natural reaction to pressure, and that, in small doses, can actually be quite healthy. It can help build resilience. It can help bring the team closer together. Now, when this becomes chronic, that’s when you start to see burnout. And burnout, to me, is when you can think about it like a marathon. Stress is more like short sprints, and you can handle that. Burnout is like a marathon you don’t even want to start. When you start to reach that stage, you really have a problem, and we want to be more preventative there rather than just trying to intervene at that stage.

SAFIAN: There are folks who are so concerned about overall mental health decline, and I don’t know whether this is part of your motivation either, but they see meditation and wellness practices like Calm as just a Band-Aid for these bigger, more powerful structural drivers.

KO: Sure.

SAFIAN: How do you think about that?

KO: I think people aren’t thinking about it the right way. Here’s how I would think about it.
If you truly want to effect change in health care, it’s got to be on two fronts. So often when we talk about health care, we talk about intervention. At the point when someone has a problem, we figure out how to intervene, but we don’t really help in the preventative stage. How do you prevent the problem from ever occurring?

So I do think there are things that Calm really helps with, or companies like Calm and other apps that are out there help with, in the preventative stage. But those companies also need health care because it has the clinical programs with proven outcomes that show ROI. People just aren’t utilizing them, and that’s where the system needs to work together.

Copy LinkWhy prevention matters as much as treatment

SAFIAN: I know that Calm’s biggest competitor, Headspace, has leaned into virtual therapy with licensed professionals. That’s not something Calm has done in the same way. Is that something that might be changing? The idea that self-guided tools are more effective than therapy can be appealing, but it might also be criticized.

KO: Look, many companies do this in different ways. When you have self-guided tools, that’s one part of the equation. But actually, in Calm Health, we integrate with a lot of the payer and provider therapists that are out there today. Many of the payers out there today have their own provider networks. So we work with them to get you the right care within their own networks. What we’re trying to do here is not add more complexity to the system. We’re trying to add simplicity to a system that I think is overly complex at times and can sometimes give you too much choice. It’s really hard. Sometimes you just need to narrow that.

I’m not saying what our competitors are doing is wrong. I think everyone just has a different model. For me, the model isn’t about trying to add more people into the system. It’s really about trying to leverage who’s there and think about it from a more simplified standpoint, so people actually use those resources that are there.

Copy LinkHow much is social media to blame for our wellness woes?

SAFIAN: I wanted to ask you about the recent jury verdict that found that Meta and YouTube were negligent for their social media platforms in spurring social media addiction. How much is social media to blame for our wellness woes?

KO: It’s a complicated question.

We’ve seen that young children today can have addictive tendencies. I’ve seen it within Calm itself where, during COVID, for example, a large part of our user base grew among young adults. We had a lot of schools and universities reach out to us about working with them going forward. We’ve now started working with a lot of universities and middle schools, for example. Many of them were reaching out because they are finding that mental health isn’t something that turns on when you’re 17, 18, or 19, or when you’re an adult. It actually starts at a much younger age. Can it all be attributed to social media? Maybe. Are there other factors at play? Yes, for many.

I don’t think it’s a black-and-white answer, but I do think it is part of the problem. I think many people are trying to think through, “How do we solve the problem?” For me, it’s a recognition that education plus policy, as I zoom out myself, need to get more involved, and we need mental health programs. I’ll give you an example.

The link between mental health and physical health, everyone now sees that. Everyone says, “Yes, if you have mental health issues, you’re going to have physical health issues. If you have physical health issues, you’re going to have mental health issues.” Well, guess what? In school today, we have P.E. classes. We don’t have anything around mental health in many of the schools that are out there today. I’m not saying we should have it every day, but should we at least start to educate our youth and have more conversations about mental health at an earlier age? I believe we should, but it’s still in a very nascent stage today.

SAFIAN: David may be leaving Calm’s corner office, but he’s still clearly passionate about the mission of mental well-being. So do we need to unshackle from our phones in order to have more calm, even though Calm itself lives on our phone? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Calm’s David Ko talked about stepping down as CEO and his goals for what’s next. Now we talk about the role of smartphones in our mental health, the pros and cons of AI, plus some practical tools that David swears by for getting through a punishing day. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkNavigating the tension between smartphones, AI, and emotional well-being

There’s always been a paradox at the heart of Calm: You’re asking people to pick up their phones to get relief from what that phone is doing to them. Is that a contradiction you wrestled with?

KO: Absolutely.

It’s not lost on me that I’ll go out there, Bob, and tell people, “Don’t let the phone be the last thing you look at before you go to bed.” This goes back to our conversation about quality sleep at the beginning. But then I’m asking people to turn Calm on.

It’s nuanced. What I’m asking folks is this: Do things that you know may not cause you stress or anxiety right before you go to bed.

For example, if opening that work email stresses you out, it does for me. When I send a work email late at night or see a work email late at night, my quality of sleep falls dramatically because I’m thinking about it. And the first thing I reach for when I wake up is my phone to see if that individual responded or how that turned out. Today, the last thing I do is not send an email, and the first thing I do is not pick up my phone.

So what we’re asking is a little more nuanced: Use products or services, because we know technology is going to be around you, that may not cause you stress or anxiety right before you go to bed.

SAFIAN: You mentioned AI earlier, and I want to come back to it. What is AI doing to people’s mental health? I know you’ve talked about human-centered AI, which is a phrase that can feel like a buzzword to people. How is it changing us? Do we know yet?

KO: I think it’s evolving. Two years ago, at the explosion of AI, we were all asking the question, “When will AI replace us?” Many of us were having that conversation, and that was another thing causing stress and a lot of anxiety. Now I think the conversation is, “How can AI support us?” And I think it’s a conversation that’s going to continue to evolve.

SAFIAN: A lot of people have been gravitating to AI chatbots for mental and emotional issues, which is something you’ve resisted, at least so far, at Calm. Do you think that’ll be changing?

KO: I think we’re going to continue to evolve with where the market takes us. I’ve used different chatbots on a personal note. I’ve spent a lot of time on this. I think it’s something people are going to turn to because there’s a real access issue out there today.

Look, we don’t have enough therapists or coaches who can help us. Sometimes, when you need someone to turn to, they’re not available. So if this can help from an access perspective, and it’s done in the right way, I think that is still under interpretation.

SAFIAN: That’s still the question, right? Because people are using ChatGPT as if it’s a tailored mental health app, which it’s not, right? But it’s appealing to them. It’s providing something for them.

KO: It’s providing comfort, and for many folks, it’s immediate when they need it. Again, that goes back to the access issue. People aren’t always available, and they will turn to technology. There’s an affordability issue there as well. Let’s not gloss over the fact that there’s a real cost to this too.
Where it could be helpful is that today, a lot of times, there are people in therapy who might not necessarily need therapy, for example. They’re in what we call the green. For folks who are in the yellow, our job is to figure out how we keep them there or get them to green. And folks in the red obviously need to get to yellow, and so forth. For folks who are in the green, using an app like Calm or other services that are out there is probably good enough, and you may not need to speak to anyone. Folks in the yellow probably do need to speak to somebody, but they can also do that through more of a hybrid approach, between apps that are out there today plus talking to someone. And folks in the red probably need to speak to someone immediately.

Right now, the system can be a mush of everyone being in every lane. So we want to make sure the efficacy is there, and we want to make sure the advice you’re getting is the right kind of advice, that there is clinical advice out there. That’s why so many health care companies today are HIPAA- and HITRUST-compliant. That’s not just because those are fancy names around data privacy and how your data is being used and what it’s being used for. There’s a real difference between consumer apps and what is HITRUST and what is within HIPAA.

SAFIAN: The pause you’ve had around AI bots at Calm, you mentioned data. Is some of that due to trust issues around mental health data? Because it’s personal stuff: sleep patterns, anxiety levels, emotional states, and all of that.

KO: It’s really personal.  Look, I don’t think there’s a company out there that is not going to leverage AI going forward, but you have to be intentional and thoughtful.

I think if you’re a start-up with not many users and potentially nothing to lose, you may take more liberties. But when you’re a company like ours that has so many millions of users who trust and turn to you today, I think we have a real obligation not to be flippant in that conversation. That’s where I continue to say AI can help us scale, but humans are the ones who are really going to give it meaning going forward.

SAFIAN: If you’re up for it, I’d love to do a quick rapid-fire round, ask you some questions, maybe get some tips from you. Is that good?

KO: Fire away.

Copy LinkSimple daily habits that can lower stress in real time

SAFIAN: Alright.  Apart from downloading the Calm app, what’s one thing we can do with our phones to improve our mental health?

KO: Put it away when we have dinner conversations. One thing I do, not every dinner but at least multiple times a week when I’m with the family, is put that phone away and try to be present. So if there were one thing you could do, it would be to put that phone away and be present with the people around you.

SAFIAN: Alright. What’s the best way to de-stress during a long day when you don’t have much free time?

KO: Three Ws. This is what I do when I’m literally back to back.

I will look out the window if I’m in a meeting, just to reset a little bit, because sometimes you don’t have any time. You’ve got three seconds. What are you going to do in three seconds? One thing you can do, Bob, is look out the window. Two, I can grab a glass of water. That probably takes about 20 seconds. Or I could take a quick walk, which may be a couple of minutes, even if it’s just around the office. So if you don’t have any time, look out the window, shortest amount of time; go grab a glass of water, probably the second shortest amount of time; and the third is just take a quick lap around whatever floor it may be, your office, or your conference room.

SAFIAN: And that’ll be enough?

KO: That’s enough. It’s enough to reset, and sometimes you just need these little microbreaks throughout the day.

People often think you’ve got to do these 10- to 15-minute meditations, ring the bell, light the incense. No. You don’t have to do any of that. You can take these little microbreaks. Breathing is a form of meditation. You might just have to take a deep breath, hold it, breathe in, breathe out. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

SAFIAN: What’s one way business leaders could encourage employees to take an appropriate mental health break?

KO: Have them talk about what they do. Make it OK to even have the conversation. So often I’ll hear people say, “Take care of your mental health.” OK, how do you take care of your mental health as a leader? I think if you can be a little vulnerable and talk about how you take care of yourself, then you make it OK for others to take care of themselves. That’s why I so often say it starts at the top. You can’t put all the onus on your HR leaders to do it. You also have to support them in this conversation.

Copy LinkGood stress vs bad stress

SAFIAN: You alluded to this earlier, but I wanted to ask specifically: What’s the difference between good stress and bad stress?

KO: I think Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, who was in my book and is a really good friend, said, “Good stress is eustress.” It can bring you closer together. We all have stress in our lives, but it’s in small doses. Bad stress is when we go into distress, and that’s when we can start to fall. Too much of it, again, can lead to burnout. It’s when we find ourselves spiraling.

I’ve been to many companies, and they’ll say, “How do we just eliminate stress from the workplace?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, but if you figure it out, you should tell me.”
We’re going to have stress. It’s always going to be there. It’s really about how you handle that stress and how we have more good-stress moments than bad-stress moments.

SAFIAN: Right. Some stress in the workplace is not bad. It actually drives creativity, urgency, and outcomes, right?

KO: Teamwork. It drives teamwork. It hits purpose. It hits the mission. It’s good. It’s when we start to feel like we have back-to-back-to-back stress moments, when there’s not an understanding of the why behind the stress.

I go to a lot of companies today and ask, “Why are you stressed?” They say, “I have all these things.” And we as leaders sometimes just keep adding to their pile of things to do. If we did one thing as leaders and said, “OK, we’re going to add something to your pile, but we’re going to take something away,” that would help. A lot of times, all we do is add, and that just adds to stress. That’s when it leads to distress over good stress.

SAFIAN: Good stress adds to our meaning, makes our work more meaningful, and bad stress —

KO: More purposeful. That’s right.

Copy LinkThe future of workplace mental health

SAFIAN: Is Gen Z the most stressed generation ever? That’s something people talk about. And connected to that, is it unfair for older executives to be exasperated by younger employees pleading for accommodations?

KO: I think the question is very fair. Without naming the company, I’ll talk you through a real-life scenario.

I went to a company and spoke with a leadership team, and one of the leaders, an older gentleman, said, “Is our younger generation too soft?” While I really appreciated the question, I appreciated it because he felt safe in that room to ask it, and that’s on his mind. I asked him a question right back.

I said, “When you were younger and in the workplace, same as our Gen Z generation today, did you have a laptop or desktop?” And he said, “I had a big desktop.” I said, “Great. And did you have a phone that could be with you 24/7?” He said, “No.” And I said, “So you didn’t take your work home with you. You couldn’t physically carry that desktop home with you.” He said, “No, ridiculous.” I said, “Great. Well, guess what? Many of our youth today bring their work home with them, and there’s an expectation of 24/7.”

We just have to understand that technology has shifted the mindset of how we expect people to respond and how we expect people to work going forward. So their asks of us are different as well. Both sides need to recognize that things have shifted, but I also think they’re dealing with more complexity than ever before.

SAFIAN: Finally, how much of you leaving the CEO role is about you personally finding more calm, more balance?

KO: I don’t know if I’m going to find more calm or balance. I think I’m going to continue to throw myself into more stressful situations.

SAFIAN: Because that’s just you?

KO: No. I think it’s just the problem.  I think the problem is so large. What I’ve found is that you can have some of the best-intentioned companies out there today, but this market is so fragmented and so diverse. Meaning this: My parents live in Korea today. We don’t have conversations about mental health in Korea. It is still very taboo. It is still seen as a sign of weakness. Now, are the conversations starting? Yes. Would I love to go there and accelerate that conversation to where we are in the U.S.? Absolutely. So there are different conversations happening from a global perspective. For myself, I just think this problem is not going to get smaller. It’s going to get larger.
I think technology, too, is going to accelerate it. I think we have to figure out how we start to really work together going forward. And I just want to continue to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

SAFIAN: Well, David, I want to say that I really appreciate you coming on this show, particularly at this moment amid this change, and having this conversation. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

KO: Thank you, Bob.

SAFIAN: For someone who just left a CEO post without a clear next step, David is remarkably centered. But true to form, he’s using this moment to be transparent and open, to make mental health a conversation rather than a taboo topic.

I keep coming back to his parsing of good stress and bad stress. Good stress comes in modest doses and builds resilience, drives purpose, and pulls a team together. Bad stress is more continual and leads to burnout. The challenge these days is that external pressures like political uncertainty and AI are constant. So what can we do? If the world isn’t changing, then we need to build in pauses for our teams and for ourselves to maintain balance in an environment pushing us to the edge. As David says, taking a break isn’t weakness. It’s how you keep moving. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.