It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.
Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.
Cover the downside.
Screw it. Let's do it.
You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.
Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.
The time to go into a new business is when it’s badly run by others.
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.
If I were a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.
I am prepared to try anything once.
The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.
You never know with these things when you're trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.
Having a personality of caring about people is important. You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.
Right now I'm just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.
The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.