Arianna Huffington discusses business and life advice for young people: don’t be afraid to fail (failure is a stepping stone to success), define success beyond money and power (including well-being, wisdom, giving, learning), and reject the cultural myth that burnout equals success. She emphasizes renewal and free time as strategic for thriving businesses and cites role models (e.g., Padma Warrior, Cisco CTO) who prioritize sleep, digital detoxes, and creative renewal practices.
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Well, first of all, I hope that I'm passing on that advice all the time. You don't have to wait for my deathbed.
Right. I just wanted that for dramatic reasons, like a headline, sort of, you know, pope to pope.
That was sort of because on my deathbed, I would totally just want them to know how loved they are. I think the deathbeds are too late for business advice.
You know, good thing you say it now. Maybe that's a reminder.
But what I say to everyone is the best business advice has to do with not being afraid to fail. Because so many business people, so many entrepreneurs don't even start on an idea because they're afraid may fail. And there's a good chance that it may fail. I mean, I, when we were ready to start the Huffington Post, you have no idea how many people were trying to dissuade me from doing it. And I mean, people who loved me. Forget the rest on the grounds that why do you need that? You know, the Internet is a young person's business, you successful author, why do you need to risk your success, et cetera. So being willing to fail and recognizing, as my mother used to tell us, that failure is not the opposite of success, it's a stepping stone to success that is key. And that for me, ultimately comes down to what is success? If you don't define just success in terms of money and power, but in terms of all the other metrics of your well being, wisdom, wonder, giving, basically learning, becoming who you are, are, then everything is greased for the meal.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, what's great is this day, being together here right now, was brought together to talk about thrive, which with a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs that are in the room. And in a few minutes, we're going to ask a few of them if they have any questions specifically for you about business and stuff, because that's a segment we're doing here. And you kind of answered a lot of it was with what advice you'd give here. But for people that are literally a young person who may hear this, what's the best advice you'd have for them on how they can lead a successful life? Build a company, build a business, build their career if they want, and simultaneously set it up so they thrive to live the type of life that you describe in the book.
What is essential here is to recognize that we are swimming in a culture built on a delusion, the delusion that burnout is the way to succeed. And for me, that's the first thing that an entrepreneur needs to dispel for themselves that myth and to recognize that on the contrary, as they tell us on airplanes, you need to put your own oxygen mask first. And that's not self indulgent. That doesn't mean you don't really care enough for your business. That means that you are taking the most important step towards having a thriving business. And that means, as Dan Sullivan, since we're all quoting Dan now, says, you know, free time, absolutely essential. You know, what is wonderful about this time we're living through is that for the first time, we have an enormous amount of scientific findings validating ancient wisdom about the importance of renewal, about the importance of free time. Going back to God taking the seventh day off, you know, after all, he worked really hard for six days. He built heaven and earth, and then he took one day off. It's an incredible archetype. It's an incredible truth, you know, that's built into our culture, and yet we ignore it. We think, hey, we can do better than God, right? We can work around the clock. And that's why now I try to collect role models for young entrepreneurs and young business people, role models who are doing it differently. I always talk about Padma Warrior, for example, who is the chief technology officer of Cisco, and she oversees tens of thousands of engineers. And she spoke at our Thrive conference, and she said, I sleep for eight hours on Saturdays. I do a digital detox, I write haikus, I paint. And I consider all these things the foundation of my success. And there are a lot of people doing that. We just need to surface their stories and inspire young entrepreneurs that there is another way to do it. Sam.
