Founder of The Huffington Post shares both business and life advice for entrepreneurs
What woman entrepreneur doesn’t look up to Arianna Huffington, or at least to the successes she’s achieved? Now you have a rare chance to look inside her mind and find out how she comes up with ideas, uncovers the best people to hire and maintains her drive to succeed.
Read about Arianna Huffington’s role model
Huffington’s friend, Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, sat down with her to find out the secret to her success and the first lesson she offers, is probably the hardest one for most business owners:
“Think differently from other entrepreneurs by accepting failure and learning from it. “There are a lot of failures along the way,” Arianna said. “I always stress that. I have two daughters, one just graduated from college, the other a junior, whom I always talk to about my failures.” Entrepreneurs need to address the possibility of failure, she said, “because so often, I think, the difference between success and failure is perseverance and not giving up after one or two or three failures. Just keep connecting to that place where failure doesn’t matter,” Arianna said. “If we become so dependent on things always being a success, then we’re in a very vulnerable position — because we’re not in control of how the world is going to receive something.”
Something else busy wives and moms may find challenging is finding time to relax. But for Huffington that’s the best way to get great ideas.
“A lot of my ideas come in moments of peace, relaxation, hiking and reading. Something completely unrelated. Not in moments of dealing with my email or cleaning out my inbox,” she said. “There is a great book by Arthur Koestler called The Act of Creation that tracks where great scientists get their ideas, not just the ones that we all know about. Again and again you come across the fact that creative ideas come in moments of relaxation, not in moments of stress. That’s why if you talk to the people who’ve achieved great breakthroughs, whether it’s Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, they all talk about how they manage their life. Bill Gates taking time to go in a cabin away from everything and read.”
Read all of Huffington’s lessons of being and becoming a successful entrepreneur here.