10 years ago, Arianna Huffington was lying in a pool of blood in her New York apartment.

Her sister, Agapi, said “I was right there. I was in bed with a cold when I heard this horrendous thump. I hurried into Arianna’s office and saw her bleeding on the floor. I was so scared that I fainted.”

Arianna was rushed to hospital. She had broken her cheekbone after fainting from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. She was working 18 hour days, 7 day weeks trying to get her company, The Huffington Post, off the ground.

Arianna says “For me, that day literally changed my life. It put me on a course in which I changed how I work and how I live. It put me on a course of writing two books, ‘Thrive’ and ‘The Sleep Revolution’. And, not long after that, it led to me leaving a very successful company I co-founded and ran for 11 years to launch another one, Thrive Global.”

Arianna sold the Huffington Post to AOL in 2011 for $315 million, and then put the money to work on Thrive, to champion the “Third Metric.”

Arianna explains: “Over time our society’s notion of success has been reduced to money and power… Money and power by themselves are like a two- legged stool - you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over.”

“We need a Third Metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well- being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”

Are you working hard instead of smart?
Are you putting off living to make a living?

Arianna is No.3 in the Top 10 Most 2020-Ready Entrepreneurs because she’s been a voice against “Hustle” and “Grind” - Opting for working smart instead of working hard. And she’s made hundreds of millions in the process. Thrive Global just raised $43 million last month in fresh funding at a $121 million valuation.

Arianna is a role model for the new Entrepreneur 5.0 - Making a business case for the productivity that comes from being healthy and happy. Her Message: Technology has been a double edged sword, and the next 10 years will make or break us:

“Right now, a decade after the smartphone, we’re at an inflection point, one in which technology, as well as enabling many wonderful things in our lives, is fueling the stress and burnout epidemic.”

“We’re addicted to our devices and they are harsh taskmasters, mining our attention and our focus and keeping us in a permanent state of heightened stress and expectation.”

“No matter how much we’re aware of the science behind burnout and well-being, our ability to focus, to think, to be present, and to connect with ourselves has never felt more imperiled. This - our relationship with technology - is what’s going to be the protagonist of the next ten years of this story.”

“And my hope for what will happen long before the 20th anniversary of my wake-up call is that we’ll now move from knowing what to do to actually doing it. We now know stress and burnout are literally killing us. We know they make us worse, and not better, at our jobs.”

“We know that our relationship to technology is damaging and unsustainable. And we know about the many tools and strategies that can boost our well-being. The science is clear on all of it. The mission now is to heed the science and change the way we work and live.”

Arianna is on a mission to get us all to wake up - and without breaking our jaws in the process.

Crediting that moment a decade ago, she says: “Collapsing into a bloody mess might seem an odd thing to celebrate, but it was the seed of an amazing ten years for me. And, in fact, one of my goals with Thrive Global is to provide a softer wake-up call, to provide the catalyst for other people to get on a different course that can bring just as many positive changes to their lives without hitting the wall–or the floor!”

What's the biggest lesson from Arianna's story?

That she changed from hard work to heart work,
By turning her business from her work,
to her life's work.

You can too.