Screw the competition – focus on good customer service.
It isn’t effective or productive to force your employees to do anything. Choice empowers people and makes for a more content workforce.
The important thing is that you’ve got a strong foundation before you start to try to save the world or help other people.
Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.
People have to decide on priorities if they want to get anywhere. The best lessons I learned was to just do it.
The companies that look after their people are the companies that do really well. I’m sure we’d like a few other attributes, but that would be the most important one.
Life can seem rather unreal at times. Alive and well and loving one day. No longer there the next.
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.