I just like to enjoy life and push myself. Of course, there is method to my madness. When you are entering into a new industry, for example, it helps to do something to get your name on the front pages.
If you want swashbuckling action in your life, become an entrepreneur and give it a go.
Put your passions to work to make this world a better place.
If you do something for fun and create the best possible product, then the profit will come.
Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.
Never go into business purely to make money. If that’s the motive you’re better off doing nothing.
Good people have always been at the heart of the Virgin business, and that’s largely because we have tried to keep our business small, and our management teams tight-knit. I feel that small, compact companies, are better run. That is partly because people feel more connected in small companies.
What’s the most critical factor in any business decision you’ll ever have to make? Basically, it boils down to this question: If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards? One business matra remains embedded in my brain – protect the downside.
The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me.
Sometimes I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I’ve just had the most incredible dream. I’ve just dreamt my life.
We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the Internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.
It’s so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you. Just drifting over beautiful rivers in a balloon is perfect.
Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.
I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.
Business is the force of change. Business is essential to solving the climate crisis, because this is what business is best at: innovating, changing, addressing risks, searching for opportunities. There is no more vital task.
In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics.
Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.
People flourish if they’re praised.
I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.
We’ll go into orbit. We’ll go to the Moon. This business has no limits.