Arianna Huffington: "Don't Hire Brilliant Jerks"

Arianna Huffington spoke this week in New York to a crowd of entrepreneurs and admirers at CNBC's Iconic Tour about her business successes and failures, and why neither matter unless you're getting a good eight hour sleep.

Huffington, former Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, left the post last year in a move that shocked the global media. A serial entrepreneur, she wanted to move on and create a website that focused solely on health and wellness, which would in turn take the form of Thrive Global. Speaking about her entrepreneurial pursuits, Huffington bore a serious smile for much of her talk with CNBC's Andrew Sorkin. While Sorkin tried unambiguously to elucidate the failures and mistakes Huffington had made throughout her years as an entrepreneur, from investments to hiring faux-pas, she effortlessly bounced off all negativity to provide solid, positive advice for those aspiring entrepreneurs in the crowd. Hire well, nap well, and don't let a mistake (or multiple mistakes) get in the way of future success. Below are our five takeaways from the talk that you can watch here.

Of the 75 people at Thrive Global, not one got into their position without first facing down the eponymous Huffington herself. While building her team, as with everyone, she's very careful to hire people that ultimately she wants to work with, rather than needing to work with. One of her pet peeves are people that talk behind their co-workers backs, so she tries to eliminate them from the process early on. Her favorite interview question is "Where do you see yourself in five years?" because, you can then identify where their heart is and whether or not they view the job as a stepping stone rather than a permanent, long-term position. She also advises to "only interview when you're recharged," otherwise, there's no telling who might hire in a half-awake state.

"I have an interesting relationship to risk and failure," Huffington began, before telling the crowd that it was her mother who instilled this sense of security with failure rather than against it - for, she insists, it's the failures that make a business. "Failure is not the opposite of success, it's a stepping stone to success," she said nodding to the start-ups that fail because of their inability to look beyond a bump or a setback in their road. Although she couldn't (or wouldn't) recall many of her failures for the hungry crowd, she was very humble about the fact that all of her mistakes had made her businesses that much richer today.

Andrew Sorkin and Arianna Huffington. Iconic Tour 2017

"The no dumb jerks rule is easy, the harder rule is no brilliant jerks," Huffington remonstrated with Sorkin, continuing, "often you come across people who are brilliant who you know are going to be great, but you know they are going to be toxic for the culture." She is completely opposed to the culture of "top performers" whereby a singular person excelling in their position can often be detrimental to the team because of a pompous and/or braggadocios attitude that inevitably creates a muddied team atmosphere. #teamwork is a Huffington essential.

Huffington at 66, posited that when you're older, in fact, "it's a great time to launch something new." Having the opportunity to start over with Thrive Global, she positively jumped, knowing that her name was on the door at The Huffington Post, and all too aware of how often media start-ups fail. Her age was not a factor at all, and incidentally it is this, and her years of experience that she attributes to how well Thrive Global is doing today.

Huffington was adamant about this one above all. Sleep, she said, was a prominent factor to her success, and she is currently hoping to extend this Huffpo/Thrive Global ethos into her involvement with Uber. Ironically, it was announced at press time today that Travis Kalanick, who Huffington spoke of at the talk as needing meditation and help getting into a meditation cycle, is indeed stepping down from his position as Uber CEO,

The nap rooms that The Huffington Post became famous for years ago, are going to be as common as conference rooms soon, Huffington believes. Nap rooms and meditation rooms, she posits, are essential to boost productivity and help alleviate workplace stress because you can remove yourself from the office environment, from emails and phone calls in order to "recharge" and recuperate before returning to tackle the rest of your workload.

Huffington said that it was "amazing" how differently Kalanick would make decisions after he'd had a decent night of sleep, and a happier CEO would correspond to a happy company. Would it be so bold as to attribute Huffington's sleepy influence to Kalanick's stepping down? Who knows..