Who Are You & Why Are You Here?
Jerry Levin, the former CEO of Time Warner turned Executive Chairman of StartUp Health, has something to say to CEOs
Knowing yourself and telling your story — even the hard parts — is the secret to building a company that can change the world.
Startup Health talks a lot about having a ‘Moonshot Mindset.’ How would you describe that mindset?
The aspiration here is to go to the ultimate point of health, wellness, happiness for everybody in the world. It’s not geographically local. It’s not taking one step and saying that that disruption is sufficient. What’s the ultimate objective? For people to be disease free, emotionally free and have access to care without any cost. And we’re not just talking about one particular community, but all people. It’s not traditional entrepreneurship. It’s magnificent transformation through what seem like impossible goals. But that’s the whole idea — the impossible dream. There’s nothing else quite like it because it’s also assembling a community, an army of transformers as we’re describing them, who have the same purpose, the same mindset and they want to come together on a permanent basis. It’s not a quick fix, looking for a quick exit.
Nowhere in that explanation did you talk about return on investment.
Of course it’s about financing and return too, but in the context of blowing up the system, not merely changing it. And it’s long-term thinking, not a couple of years but 20 years, however long it takes to get to this ultimate position where everybody has the comfort of being healthy so they can enjoy their lives. And when we say everyone, that’s the Moonshot aspect — everyone on the planet.
StartUp Health has identified 10 Health Moonshots, like the Cancer Moonshot and the Children’s Health Moonshot. Is there one of these missions that particularly inspires your work?
The first is providing access to healthcare for everybody on the planet at no cost. Every woman, man and child is entitled to live a life that’s free of all the things that hamper our ability to have self-realization. The idea that we might accomplish this at no cost seems almost impossible. And yet we look at what’s happened with smartphones and the availability of zero-cost opportunities — information, entertainment — it’s happened like a thunderclap. There’s no reason why it can’t be tooled to do the same thing for health and wellness.
How would you put these moonshot initiatives into historical perspective, as someone who listened as President Kennedy staked his claim on traveling to the moon in 1962?
Traveling to the moon had been in science fiction. It had been that craving that seemed outside of all possibility. And yet JFK put it in inspirational terms. And once you do that, all the resources are highly directed towards that goal. As a result, the excitement at the end of that decade with the transmission of someone actually stepping out of a manmade vehicle and walking on the moon for the first time had a catalytic effect which is hard to dramatize.
I was in Manhattan in 1969, getting ready to launch HBO. I sat in front of a television set with a lot of family and friends. Watching the moon landing, it was as though we had transcended a dream. And that’s why words are important. Kennedy made his clarion call and then we fulfilled the word in ways that seemed impossible. The galvanizing effect of that is enormous.
That process of setting a goal that seems impossible but had been part of the human aspiration is very similar to what we’re talking about at StartUp Health. It seems impossible. Health, happiness, wellbeing — they seem too fundamental. But we’ve seen men walk on the moon. I recall the large computers of IBM and now that same processing power is around my wrist. That too would have seemed impossible at the time.
Recognize that a meeting isn’t just about a protocol. There’s an emotional backdrop.
How do you help young entrepreneurs — who didn’t witness that shattering of the impossible with the first moonshot — embrace impossible dreams like bringing health and wellness to every human being?
It comes down to stories. There’s a story behind everybody’s change and aspirations. The story of StartUp Health is really the personal stories of entrepreneurs’ lives. It forms them, it unlocks their value system. It unlocks their passion and gives them a mindset that’s not just giving lip service. It’s the power of those individual stories that informs their self-realization and what they want to accomplish. And so they come together with others who have not the same story but similar background stories.
Most of my adult life was in the storytelling business through the media, journalism, movies, television and music. And now I see the reality of the stories of people’s lives. If you can provide an environment where they can manifest a solution to the stories that drove them in the first place, that’s the highest form of coming together to make change.
A focus on storytelling can sound more like group therapy than business development. How does that shake out in practice as each company actually seeks to grow and expand in the market?
Usually the stories that people have, which actually form their identity, remain unexpressed. Business is not typically a safe place for exposing my story and sharing why I’m motivated in a certain direction. Usually in business there’s one objective — disrupt and make money.
In our case, it’s all about self-realization. You as an individual can accomplish more if you know the source of your inspiration. The only way you bring wellness to others, including developing the technology, is if you understand yourself and have a life that’s open, authentic and purposeful. Then you can not only have a business plan that helps others but you can run a business that goes beyond the bio to making fundamental connections. Understanding your story isn’t therapy. It’s the way a business ought to be organized to serve the public interest as well as to give a return. If you have that dual mindset, and the team that you’re working with has that mindset, and the money that came in to drive it has that mindset — that’s a uniform capacity that I don’t think exists in too many places.
You’ve talked about the importance of introducing transparent storytelling into business in order to better understand and direct the company’s motivations. What does that look like in a cold, corporate world?
It’s all a question of being open. It can even come out in the structure of a meeting or a video conference. You can jump right in to the agenda and the cash flow reports and the business plan. Or, you could start the meeting with, “Let’s hear what’s going on for you today and how can we help?” Recognize that a meeting isn’t just about a protocol. There’s an emotional backdrop. If that can be addressed in a way where people are joining together — that’s just a healthy way to live. Most people draw a line between their business life and their personal life and that shouldn’t exist. It’s all one authenticity. Of course you can get to the six-month financials and all the things that make your organization work. It’s all in how you approach it.
Your message of self-realization might sound like a departure from your days as CEO of Time Warner. Walk us through that transformation.
Well, my story gets very personal. It is tragic for me, but it helps people, including CEOs, to understand that life has twists and turns and you have to be emotionally and philosophically integrated. I lost a son who was very close to me. We had the same birthday and loved all the same things. He taught in the roughest school in the Bronx and I was very proud of him, took him to all our events. One day he was murdered by one of his students looking for drug money.
The fact is that I was ill-prepared for this trauma and I made the enormous mistake of going back into business. I should have left at that time. What happened was that I put a steel trap over my emotions. Nothing could get to me. It was after 9/11 that those feelings were rekindled and I couldn’t take business anymore.
I’ve given more than a few talks to groups of CEOs and the message is obvious: Make sure you know what’s important. Don’t have a division between your personal life and your business life. Make each day count.
I didn’t share my story for the longest time. But opening myself up to these emotions and sharing my story has helped others to open up.
Do you find any irony or conflict in the idea that you’re talking about the importance of future wellness being so tied to our internal wellbeing and yet the thrust of medical tech innovation is to find a technological solution to health problems?
Sometimes you get consumed by the technology, but I don’t see a conflict. The question is: Why are we adapting algorithms and data? It’s to provide healthy living — that’s the objective. The story behind the “why” becomes very important.
The two concepts actually go hand in hand. If a tech company is self-realized and in a mindset community, the team is going to operate much more successfully, just like an individual operates better if they understand who they are. If you look at the stories and the solutions across the portfolio in StartUp Health, you’ll see the use of technology to solve a problem, but the underlying motivation and the reason for it and where it’s going, what track it’s on, that’s the difference.
StartUp Health talks about building an army of health transformers, about breaking down walls between disciplines. Why is it so important to create a broad-based collaboration? How do we get there?
A lot of thought and care was given to using the word “army.” I come from a highly competitive business world, and today’s tech world is no different. There’s legal protection for what I own and I don’t share a lot of secrets. What if you reverse the mindset and say: Sure, you’re coming up with a business plan that might overlap with some- body else’s business plan. If you’re on the same global track and have the same universal aspiration, then you’re going to look at the exchange of information and you’re not going to hold back just so you can gain leverage over someone else.
We have to change the operating premise. Yes, there are going to be overlaps and different ways of approaching some of the same objectives. It’s okay to share because you have a mindset of coming together for a common goal. The reason why “army” fits, although it sounds harsh, is that it’s serving a distinctive, understood purpose, with tremendous collaboration. It’s a life and death collaboration. And I have a relationship with my team that goes beyond having each other’s backs. We’re brothers and sisters in achieving a goal. That’s a very powerful organizing premise.
What does the future of healthcare look like in your crystal ball?
Healthcare currently has a disease model. When somebody appears in a hospital setting, it’s to cure a disease. I’ve got this notion that the hospital of the future will involve a comfortable environment for people to disclose who they are, what their story is, what their life has been like. If you start with that, then you’re not just treating the person, you’re enhancing who they are. So much of enhancing wellness really comes down to understanding the person. If the person feels seen, heard and understood, then they’re open to whatever comes next.
A version of this article appears in print in the StartUp Health Magazine, Issue 1|Subscribe
