What Billy Beane, Brad Pitt, & Arianna Huffington Have In Common – Plus, Get 10% Off Smart Talk Women Tickets to See/Hear Arianna Huffington This Wednesday!

It’s not everyday you can take a deep thought provoking message from a Brad Pitt movie. Not that Benjamin Button didn’t leave your mind wandering. Like, why is that baby old? Anyhow, the point I’m trying to make is that after staying up late last night to celebrate our presidents (or watch Moneyball), I was struck by an epiphany. For those who are still Oprah fans left searching for the OWN channel, let’s just call this my ‘Aha’ moment.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt’s character) changed the way baseball was played. Rather than using a majority of his budget to replace one player who happened to get traded to the Yankees and/or some other wealthy team after a successful season, he relied on statistics to buy cheaper players with certain strengths that could add up to the replacement of one all star player within his small budget. Long story short, he did the “Steve Jobs of baseball” and began to “think different.”

Now you might be wondering why I feel the need to spill the details about a random sports movie I recently watched. Well, this Wednesday I have the opportunity to meet the “Steve Jobs of blogs”, Arianna Huffington, which in turn has nothing to do with meeting Brad Pitt or playing baseball. Honestly though, I am more excited to meet Ms. Huffington than Mr. Pitt who happens to be making an appearance in Cincinnati this upcoming Wednesday the 22nd.  She, similarly to Billy Beane, took the “think different” approach back in the day when she founded a little think known as The Huffington Post. While politics were tied into her beginnings, she still changed the way media operated and the way we received it. Lets just say she re-branded the blogger in the basement to the blogger in the high rise. Alright, so maybe it’s more like the blogger in the cubicle. Either way, she took the blogger out of the basement, gave him or her money for clothes other than pajamas (so I’d like to think), and made them a legit news source.

The Huffington Post who recently got bought out by AOL for $315 million isn’t exactly a small liberal blog with one objective anymore. Instead, it scales beyond politics into style, women in tech, and topics you probably didn’t even know existed. Disrupting a market whether that be in fashion or in baseball can change the social landscape in which we interact today. Can you remember the first time you read a blog? What about the first time you got an ipod? It’s unlikely you thought about anything other than the content you were reading or the song you were listening to, but in reality you were changing the way things had been done & will be done for future generations. So the next time you order take-out, buy shoes online, or read Reality Chic on your ipad think about the action you’re taking and person behind the idea. Then be inspired to “Think Different.”

For those wanting to hear Arianna Huffington speak at the Aronoff Center downtown Cincinnati, click on this link for 10% off single tickets!