Branson Business Quotes

Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.

The brave may not live forever – But the cautious do not live at all

Throwing yourself into a job you enjoy is one of the life's greatest pleasures!

I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive then I believe you are better off not doing it. 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.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

Most "necessary evils" are far more evil than necessary.

Do you know great minds enjoy excellence, average minds love mediocrity and small minds adore comfort zones?

Business isn't about ties, suits and briefcases. It's about adventure.

to be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running

Good brands reflect the histories of the time and the group of people that made them. They can not be copied. They can not be recycled.

When you walk in silence your excellence will always speak for you.

You need to choose your association according to your vision.

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.

When you walk in distinction, even the photocopying machine can’t replicate your unique quality.

I have always believed that the only way to cope with a cash crisis is not to contract but to try to expand out of it.

What the average call excellent, the excellent call average.

How you react when your back is against the wall will determine if you see what's actually over the wall.

the best motto to follow is ‘Nothing ventured; nothing gained’.

You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.

There have been times when I could have succumbed to some form of bribe, or could have had my way by offering one. But ever since that night in Dover prison I have never been tempted to break my vow.. My Parents always drummed into me that all you have life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name you'll never be happy.

A person who values their goals actually values their achievements.

In five minutes you should know if people have confirmed, calculated & considered your vision.

Richard Branson likes to say, is that “business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another coming around.

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.

Throughout my business life I have always tried to keep on top of costs and protect the downside risk as much possible. The Virgin Group has survived only because we have always kept tight control of our cash. But, likewise, I also know that sometimes it is essential to break these rules and spend lavishly.

how slim the line is between genius and insanity and between determination and stubbornness.

When you walk in distinction, you don’t compete with anyone but competition wants to compete with you.

Writing and achieving your goals is not failure, not having a goal to write in the first place is the start of failure.

With the world now a global village, your vision has to transcend different races and faces in different places around the world.

Do you know invisible determination and effort will always accomplish visible distinction and excellence?

Live for the present –’ I heard my parents’ old maxim in the back of my head ‘– and the future will look after itself.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

What we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we've got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September - which hurt the airline industry - it would not bring the whole group crashing down.

You have to grab the goal, visualise your vision, excel in excellence and then become distinct in distinction.

Entrepreneur, don't just read history, write it so people can see the future in the present.

I like the circus, because they make a business out of being a clown show. But I hate The Chamber of Commerce, because they make a clown show out of business.

Capitalism – which in its purest form is entrepreneurism even among the poorest of the poor – does work; but those who make money from it should put back into society, not just sit on it as if they are hatching eggs.

Entrepreneur, if your going to start up, make sure you start up with excellence in mind.

Entrepreneur, your either raising the bar of excellence or your exhaling at the bar which is expensive.

Entrepreneur, if your're going to start up, make sure you start up with excellence in mind.

If you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong. If you feel like getting up in the morning to work on your business is a chore, then it's time to try something else.

Success for me is whether you have created something that you can be really proud of.

No matter how tired or afraid you are, you have to figure out how to keep going.

We call this the spirit of Ubuntu, that profound African sense that we are human only through the humanity of other human beings.

I don’t believe it can be taught as if it were a recipe. There aren’t ingredients and techniques that will guarantee success. Parameters exist that, if followed, will ensure a business can continue, but you cannot clearly define our business success and then bottle it as you would a perfume. It’s not that simple: to be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running; and, if you have a good team round you and more than your fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can’t guarantee it just by following someone else’s formula. Business is a fluid, changing substance.

Branson likes to think big. He sums it up as follows: “I sometimes think in life you’ve got to dream big by setting yourself seemingly impossible challenges… If you don’t dream, nothing happens. And we like to dream big.

You fail if you don’t try. If you try and you fail, yes, you’ll have a few articles saying you’ve failed at something. But if you look at the history of American entrepreneurs, one thing I do know about them: An awful lot of them have tried and failed in the past and gone on to great things.” —RICHARD BRANSON, FOUNDER OF THE VIRGIN GROUP

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your co-workers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is in fact far more conservative than sticking with the status quo. Richard Branson doesn’t work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Ballmer or Carly Fiorina. Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells—and helped the company trounce Kmart—probably worked fewer hours than you do in an average week. None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they’re not smarter than you either. They’re succeeding by doing hard work. As the economy plods along, many of us are choosing to take the easy way out. We’re going to work for the Man, letting him do all the hard work while we put in the long hours. We’re going back to the future, to a definition of work that embraces the grindstone. Some people (a precious few, so far) are

Hardy reinforces his narrative with stories of heroes who didn’t have the right education, the right connections, and who could have been counted out early as not having the DNA for success: “Richard Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student. Steve Jobs was born to two college students who didn’t want to raise him and gave him up for adoption. Mark Cuban was born to an automobile upholsterer. He started as a bartender, then got a job in software sales from which he was fired.”8 The list goes on. Hardy reminds his readers that “Suze Orman’s dad was a chicken farmer. Retired General Colin Powell was a solid C student. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was born in a housing authority in the Bronx … Barbara Corcoran started as a waitress and admits to being fired from more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime. Pete Cashmore, the CEO of Mashable, was sickly as a child and finished high school two years late due to medical complications. He never went to college.” What do each of these inspiring leaders and storytellers have in common? They rewrote their own internal narratives and found great success. “The biographies of all heroes contain common elements. Becoming one is the most important,”9 writes Chris Matthews in Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero. Matthews reminds his readers that young John F. Kennedy was a sickly child and bedridden for much of his youth. And what did he do while setting school records for being in the infirmary? He read voraciously. He read the stories of heroes in the pages of books by Sir Walter Scott and the tales of King Arthur. He read, and dreamed of playing the hero in the story of his life. When the time came to take the stage, Jack was ready.

a living. Without Jonny, Student almost fell to pieces.

Когда вы впервые загорелись новой идеей, очень важно не застопориться на трудностях. Стремление усложнять вещи — это ваш враг. Создать что-то сложное может каждый. Но трудно сделать что-то простое. Очень сложно мыслить простыми и ясными категориями. Для этого нужна концентрация, практика и самодисциплина.

This is the new paradigm. Everything is changing! You cannot deny that the world is changing at such a fast pace and that what the children learn this year is already becoming outdated next year. The children who are allowed freedom to pursue their own interests (also known as the “rebels and troublemakers”) are creating the business structures of this new paradigm. You know who I am talking about. Steve Jobs, Richard Branson…

For those who think business exists to make a profit, I suggest they think again. Business makes a profit to exist. Surely it must exist for some higher, nobler purpose than that’ - Ray Anderson, founder of Interface Inc.

Entrepreneurial business favors the open mind.

Although she has a tendency to be overly impressed by those with academic qualifications, Diana admires people who perform rather than pontificate. Richard Branson, the head of Virgin airlines, Baron Jacob Rothschild, the millionaire banker who restored Spencer House, and her cousin Viscount David Linley who runs a successful furniture and catering business, are high on her list. “She likes the fact that David has been able to break out of the royal mould and do something positive,” says a friend. “She envies too his good fortune in being able to walk down a street without a detective.” For years her low intellectual self-esteem manifested itself in instinctive deference towards the judgments of her husband and senior courtiers. Now that she is clearer herself about her direction, she is prepared to argue about policy in a way that would have been unthinkable several years ago. The results are tangible. Foreign Office diplomats, notoriously hidebound in their perceptions, are beginning to realize her true worth. They were impressed by the way she handled her first solo visit to Pakistan and subsequently discussed trips to Egypt and Iran, the Islamic republic where the Union Jack was routinely burned until a few years ago. This is, as she would say, a “very grown-up” part of her royal life.

Sir Richard Branson Sir Richard Branson is the founder and chairman of the Virgin Group of companies. An immensely successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, and television star, Sir Richard was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. In 2002, Sir Richard was voted one of the “100 Greatest Britons” in a poll sponsored by the BBC. She was a very loyal friend. When British Airways tried to drive Virgin out of business, I took them to court and won a celebrated victory. Lord King, BA’s chairman, stepped down, and later a handwritten note from Diana was delivered to me. It was just three words: “Hurray! Love, Diana.” She also named one of our planes Lady in Red. We took a flight in Lady in Red with Diana commentating from the cockpit with William on her lap. As we flew past Windsor Castle, her voice came over the loudspeaker: “On our right, you have Grandma’s house!” Everyone on the plane fell about laughing.

The best advice I could give anyone is to spend your time working on whatever you are passionate about in life.” ―RICHARD BRANSON

To launch a business means successfully solving problems. Solving problems means listening. - Richard Branson

Making life or death decisions for family requires the same skills as making crucial business decisions, but, of course, it feels so much more intense. As an entrepreneur you are better equipped than anyone to question things, listen and learn and ultimately make a call. But there is always another company – there is not another wife, son or daughter. It doesn’t matter how much money you earn; nothing is worth more than your family’s health.

Why did the sheep bells of the Falkland Islands ring louder than the church bells of Jerusalem?’ —

I would have loved to have spoken to these fishermen. Probably they were as stressed about their money and families as anyone else, but their life seemed so tranquil and rooted in such an ancient tradition that I felt they must have come to terms with time in a way I never had.

On impulse, Joan and I decided to fly down to the Virgin Islands. We had nowhere to stay and not very much money, but I heard that if you expressed a serious interest in buying an island the local estate agent would put you up for nothing in a grand villa and fly you all around the Virgin Islands by helicopter.

Our wedding on Necker. A week later Sam said of a friend’s wedding, “But they can’t be getting married. They haven’t had any children yet.” Private Collection.

I wrote on the envelope that it was not to be opened until the following day but then gave it to a boy who I knew was far too nosy not to open it immediately.

I called up Coca-Cola and told them that Pepsi had just booked a big advertisement but that the back page was still free. I called up the Daily Telegraph and asked them whether they would prefer to advertise before or after the Daily Express. Another tack was to ask an innocuous question that they couldn’t easily deny: ‘Are you interested in recruiting the highest-calibre school-leavers and university graduates?’ No personnel manager would ever admit that they were looking for mediocre recruits. ‘Then we’re publishing just the magazine for you …

If I had refused to contemplate skydiving, hot-air ballooning or crossing the Atlantic in a boat, I think that my life would have been the duller for it. I never think that I am going to die by accident, but if I were to die then all I can say is that I was wrong, and the hardened realists who kept their feet on the ground were right. But at least I tried.

Convention also dictates that ‘big is beautiful’, but every time one of our ventures gets too big we divide it up into smaller units. I go to the deputy managing director, the deputy sales director and the deputy marketing director and say, ‘Congratulations. You’re now the MD, the sales director and the marketing director of a new company.’ Each time we’ve done this, the people involved haven’t had much more work to do, but necessarily they have a greater incentive to perform and a greater zest for their work.

One of the things I’ve learned over my years in business is that, once you have a great product, it is essential to protect its reputation with vigilance. It’s not just a question of getting it into the marketplace. As a result, every day I receive a bundle of press cuttings – everything that mentions Virgin. These – and staff letters – are the first things I read in the morning.

The second was that I could also clearly see a vision of the future and answer many people’s questions: why does space really matter; and why have you got involved in it? Many people seemed to think that Virgin Galactic was some kind of challenge, a personal plaything, albeit an enormously expensive one. The truth is that space is the future of mankind. Everybody, from Dr Tim Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Institute, who is one of the fathers of space science, right the way through to Professor Stephen Hawking, the father of modern physics, agrees that better access to space and the utilisation of space is going to be crucial to the reorientation of the world’s industries in coping with climate change.

Helium-3 is made under extreme pressure and extreme heat. It was made when the moon ripped out of the Earth and flew into orbit around it, and continues to be made by solar winds down countless millions of years. Scientists can make only minuscule amounts, at a cost of billions of dollars, in the accelerator at Cern. Getting it from the moon – where it would be ‘mined’ from the dust and then heated to release the gas itself – would not be wildly expensive, nor beyond our ability. Helium-3 could supply all of the Earth’s energy needs way into the future by using fusion, which is both clean and safe.

Soon a number of journalists from the national papers came to interview me to see what all the buzz was about. We developed a foolproof way of impressing them. I sat at my desk, the telephone at my elbow. ‘Great to meet you. Take a seat,’ I would say, waving the journalist down into the beanbag opposite me. As they shuffled around trying to retain their dignity, get comfortable, and remove the drips of houmous and piles of cigarette ash from the folds, the telephone would ring. ‘Can someone take that, please?’ I would ask. ‘Now –’ I turned my attention to the journalist ‘– what do you want to know about Student?’ ‘It’s Ted Heath for you, Richard,’ Tony would call across. ‘I’ll call him back,’ I’d say over my shoulder. ‘Now, what did you want to know about Student?’ By this time the journalist was craning round to watch Tony tell Ted Heath that he was sorry but Richard was in a meeting and he’d call him back. Then the telephone would ring again, and Tony would pick it up. ‘David Bailey for you, Richard.’ ‘I’ll call him back, but will you ask if he can change that lunch date? I’ve got to be in Paris. OK –’ I’d flash an apologetic grin at the journalist ‘– now, how are we doing?’ ‘I just wanted to ask you –’ The telephone rang again. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Tony would apologise, ‘but it’s Mick Jagger for you and he says it’s urgent.’ ‘Please excuse me for a minute,’ I’d say, reluctantly picking up the phone. ‘Mick, hello. Fine thanks, and you? Really? An exclusive? Yes, that sounds great…’ And on I went until Jonny couldn’t stop laughing in the call box opposite or the pips went. ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d say to the journalist. ‘Something’s cropped up and we’ve got to dash. Are we finished?’ The journalist would be ushered out in a daze, passing Jonny on the way, and the telephone would stop ringing.

The beginning is the most important part of any work,’ while the Chinese say, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The era of procrastination is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences,

In effect, 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth’s carrying capacity,

If you go around the world saying that, in order for the world to survive you have to make huge changes in your way of life, it does help if you yourself walk the walk and talk the talk.

band,

When asked on retirement what advice he would give to budding entrepreneurs, Conrad Hilton, founder of the eponymous hotel chain, told them to sweat the small stuff with a memorable one-liner: “Don’t forget to tuck the shower curtain in the bath.” When Sir Richard Branson visits any of the three hundred businesses in his Virgin empire, he makes a note of every small failing that catches his eye, from a dirty carpet in an airplane cabin to an employee using the wrong tone of voice in a call center. “[The] only difference between merely satisfactory delivery and great delivery is attention to detail,” he wrote recently. “Delivery is not just limited to the company’s first day: employees across the business should be focusing on getting it right all day, every day.

Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming.” —RICHARD BRANSON

I sometimes think in life you’ve got to dream big by setting yourself seemingly impossible challenges… If you don’t dream, nothing happens. And we like to dream big.

We learn something important from each of them, and if you remember nothing else from Branson’s experiences, take these points to heart.

Balloons have taught me to reflect more. On earth, my life is fast and hectic, each moment full. It can be too busy. We all need our own space and it’s good to pause and do nothing. It gives us time to think. It recharges our bodies as well as our minds. I often think of the fishermen I watched that Christmas in Japan. It’s in our nature to strive – so I wondered what they looked for in life? They seemed content fishing and feeding their families. They didn’t seem driven to set up fish-canning empires. As far as I knew, they didn’t want to cross the Pacific in a balloon or climb Mount Everest. They took each day as it came. They lived in the moment, and perhaps this is what gave them peace of mind. My grandmother lived life to the full. At the age of

If you do still have to work for a boss at a job you don't like, as almost everyone does at some point, don't moan about it. Have a positive out —look on life and just get on with it. Work hard and earn your pay. Enjoy the people you come into contact with through your job. And if you are still unhappy, make it instead your goal to divide your private life from your work life. Have fun in your own time, you will feel happier and you'll enjoy your life and your job more.

A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure.

Since my wife ran off with a lesbian basketball coach, in October of 2007, I had to raise my three youngest children as a cowboy single dad. This has made it impossible for me to travel and run my hotel jobs. I hired Jim Rossi to run my out of town work for me and Jim had done a great job for the first year. As time had progressed, Jims drinking and greed seemed to be taking a toll on what was in October 2007, the largest hotel remodeling business in the Midwest. If I’m able to get the Palace up and running, I can shut down the hotel road work and personally run The Palace. Making the Grand Palace as successful as my hotel business was when I ran all the hotel renovations road work myself.

about enjoying life to the fullest.

These values do not come cheap. These values must be paid for.

From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better.

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways and numerous other Virgin enterprises, once defined an entrepreneur as “Someone who jumps off a cliff and builds an airplane on the way down.