Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a British business magnate, best known as the founder and chairman of Virgin Group of more than 400 companies.
His first business venture was a magazine called Student at the age of 16.
Richard Branson Quotes on Business
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.
Richard Branson Quotes on Entrepreneurship
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.
Other Famous Richard Branson Quotes
And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.
And you know, 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.
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
Richard Branson Quotes on Failure
Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.
I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.
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.
I don’t think so, in that Virgin is already a global brand. Brands like Amazon have had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds you know, building their brands, whereas Virgin is already well-known around the world.
I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.
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.
I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
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.
I’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.
If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.
My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’
Richard Branson Quotes on Life
My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.
My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.
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.
One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.
So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.
The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.
The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh no, it’s on the house.’
The jet stream is a very strong force and pushing a balloon into it is like pushing up against a brick wall, but once we got into it, we found that, remarkably, the balloon went whatever speed the wind went.
The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.
We’re introducing separate rooms with double beds in all of our planes so people can actually go with their partner and have a proper night’s sleep.
We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.
With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.
You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.
You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.
