9 Quotes for Startups and Small Business from Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington has appeared on Forbes’ Most Influential Women list and Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list for her success in running the internationally recognized news and blog site, The Huffington Post. Her blog went live in 2005 and by 2011, AOL acquired the site for $315 million and made Huffington chair, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. She is a syndicated columnist and perpetual author. Her latest book (number 14) was just published last month: Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder.

Huffington is a huge proponent of sleep and never misses an opportunity to tout it as the main ingredient to success. She gave a TED talk on the subject, recounting her 2007 collapse of exhaustion when she broke her cheek bone on her desk on the way down to the floor. She summarized the same advice, in jest, to Ellen DeGeneres viewers by saying, “I have one piece of advice for you: sleep your way to the top.” Here are a few more quotes from the queen of the blogosphere on running your own startup:

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions—that we’ll screw up royally sometimes—understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

“Do what you dream of doing even while you’re afraid.”

“Being fearless means getting up one more time than you fall down. To live in fear is the worst insult to our true selves.”

“The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics—and our external ones too—the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices and to feel comfortable with who we are.”

“Creating the culture of burnout is opposite to creating a culture of sustainable creativity. This is something that needs to be taught in business schools. This mentality needs to be introduced as a leadership and performance-enhancing tool.”

“If you are not in touch with your intuition, you cannot be successful.”

“The essence of leadership is being able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic.”

“I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I’m here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is: getting enough sleep.”

—Arianna Huffington, Cofounder, President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post