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Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson

Lesson 156 from: The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show

Chase Jarvis

Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson

Lesson 156 from: The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show

Chase Jarvis

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Lesson Info

156. Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

How to Find Your Purpose Through Grief and Loss with Tunde Oyeneyin

48:49
2

What is the Meaning of Life? with Tony Nader

1:17:18
3

Weirdness is the Key to Self Improvement with Marcus Buckingham

1:10:59
4

How to Unlock the Key to Continuous Innovation with Tony Fadell

41:57
5

Talent is Bullsh*t with Steven Pressfield

1:06:26
6

Finding Self When No One Is Looking with Jason Reynolds

59:50
7

Does Cold Water Exposure Really Have Scientific Backing with Dr. Mark Harper

56:15
8

Heal Your Past with Sheleana Aiyana

51:06
9

How An Unconventional Path Got Nabil Ayers To President Of One Of The Most Influential Music Labels

1:04:12
10

All the Hacks to Maximize Your Life with Chris Hutchins

1:08:02
11

Happiness is an Inside Job with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

1:19:58
12

The Power of Regret with Daniel Pink

49:35
13

Data-Driven Life Decisions with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

1:01:26
14

Escape Purgatory of the Mundane With Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu

1:09:58
15

Transform the Quality of Your Life with Tony Robbins

51:37
16

Strengthen Your Intuition & Unlock Your Inner Wisdom with Amber Rae

1:00:13
17

Make Your Message Heard with Victoria Wellman

1:13:34
18

Susan Cain: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

1:09:31
19

Can Food Turn Us Into Geniuses with Max Lugavere

1:21:16
20

Peace Is a Practice with Morgan Harper Nichols

1:14:56
21

Creativity Hates Complacency with Maria Brito

1:10:34
22

A Love Letter to Human Potential with Kate Robinson

54:14
23

How to Build Confidence and Be More Social with Vanessa Van Edwards

1:01:21
24

Trauma Is Wreaking Havoc On Our Lives with Gabby Bernstein

51:59
25

Take The Leap, Start a Business with Payal Kadakia

58:37
26

What Every Creator Should Know About NFTs with Tom Bilyeu

1:05:47
27

40 Seconds To Fame Or Failure with Apolo Ohno

45:52
28

Unlock the Power of Nonverbal Communication with Joe Navarro

1:03:28
29

Living Shouldn't Hurt with Aaron Alexander

1:20:24
30

Ego, Disrupted. How Buddhist Wisdom Meets Western Therapy with Dr. Mark Epstein

1:11:55
31

Words Can Take You Anywhere with Arianna Davis

53:00
32

Master Your Inner Voice with Dr. Ethan Kross

1:06:21
33

Accelerating 10,000 Hours to Mastery with James Altucher

1:09:49
34

Transform Your Mind in 12 Minutes a Day with Dr. Amishi Jha

1:15:57
35

Powerful Habits to Ease Anxiety and Boost Productivity with Mel Robbins

1:15:17
36

The Art of Self-Reinvention with Malcolm Gladwell

1:00:45
37

Creative Acts of Curious People with Sarah Stein Greenberg

1:10:01
38

Self-Discovery, Activism, and Rock & Roll with Stevie Van Zandt

57:56
39

Why Design Matters with Debbie Millman

1:07:04
40

Discover Work that Makes You Come Alive with Jonathan Fields

1:15:34
41

Releasing Trauma and Mastering Your Emotions with Jason Wilson

1:05:35
42

Food Saved Me with Danielle Walker

47:16
43

Changing Our Relationship with Rest with Chelsea Jackson Roberts

49:11
44

Retracing Passion to Build Lasting Career Success with Chris Bosh

54:27
45

Old School Photography + Other Musings with Kai Wong

41:52
46

Escalate and Evolve: A Blueprint for Career and Life with Ben Uyeda

1:08:44
47

The Stories That Hold Us Back with Jon Acuff

1:07:22
48

Poetry, Vulnerability and Finding Your Voice with Jericho Brown

1:13:40
49

What Does it Take to be Backable with Suneel Gupta

1:05:38
50

Unlocking Creativity, Courage and Success with Rebecca Minkoff

53:00
51

How To Heal From Your Past with Dr. Nicole LePera

1:13:54
52

That Will Never Work with Marc Randolph

1:12:06
53

The Real Cost of Your Dream Life with Rachel Rodgers

1:02:44
54

Your Network is Your Insurance Policy with Jordan Harbinger

1:24:15
55

Dream First, Details Later with Ellen Bennett

1:14:45
56

We're Never Going Back with Harley Finkelstein

1:01:47
57

How to Shatter Limitations and Achieve Your Dreams with Steven Kotler

1:08:10
58

The Creative Art of Attention with Julia Cameron

1:05:23
59

The Path Back to True Self with Martha Beck

59:45
60

Upgrade Your Brain and Learn Anything Quickly with Jim Kwik

1:21:22
61

The Urgent Need for Stoicism with Ryan Holiday

1:11:30
62

Delicious Food Doesn't Have to be Complicated with Julia Turshen

1:14:35
63

Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention with Erin Meyer

56:27
64

Stop Living On Autopilot with Antonio Neves

1:07:38
65

How to Tackle Fear and Live Boldly with Luvvie Ajayi Jones

59:42
66

Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable with Jamie Kern Lima

1:05:03
67

Hard Work + The Evolution of Self with Priyanka Chopra Jonas

36:36
68

The Power of Idealism with Samantha Power

1:34:35
69

Pushing the Limits with Extreme Explorer Mike Horn

1:22:54
70

Fast This Way with Dave Asprey

1:15:34
71

Uncomfortable Conversations with Emmanuel Acho

45:59
72

Why Conversation Matters with Rich Roll

1:24:17
73

Elevating Humanity Through Business with John Mackey

1:15:14
74

When Preparation Meets Opportunity with Paul Ninson

1:04:14
75

The Art of Practice with Christoph Niemann

1:12:18
76

Matthew McConaughey: Embracing Resistance & Catching Greenlights

1:19:38
77

Starve the Ego, Feed the Soul with Justin Boreta

1:25:32
78

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results with James Clear

1:20:55
79

Badass Habits and Making Them Stick with Jen Sincero

1:06:12
80

Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

1:09:18
81

Imposter Syndrome, Getting Unstuck and The Practice with Seth Godin

1:13:19
82

The Art of Curiosity and Lifelong Wisdom with Chip Conley

58:47
83

The Lost Art of Breath with James Nestor

1:03:15
84

The Art of Reinvention with Sophia Amoruso

1:03:59
85

Harness Kindness as Your Hidden Super Power with Adrienne Bankert

1:08:26
86

Heal the Soul, Restore the Calm with Stephan Moccio

1:28:19
87

Finding Resilience & Possibility with Guy Raz

1:08:47
88

Truth, Fear, and How to do Better with Luvvie Ajayi Jones

1:18:22
89

The Future is Faster Than You Think with Peter Diamandis

57:56
90

Music, Writing, and Time For Change with Nabil Ayers

1:20:38
91

Freedom to Express Who We Are with Shantell Martin

1:10:34
92

So You Want to Talk about Race with Ijeoma Oluo

1:10:47
93

Photographing History with Pete Souza

1:16:35
94

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone with Lori Gottlieb

58:51
95

Never Settle with Mario Armstrong

1:38:11
96

The Science of Making Work Not Suck with Adam Grant

1:15:36
97

Street Photography + Capturing Truth with Steve John Irby

1:10:54
98

Life, Writing, and Real Talk with Roxane Gay

1:05:57
99

Steve Aoki: Creativity, Community and No Days Off

50:57
100

The Power of Passion and Perseverance with Angela Duckworth

1:08:25
101

Know What Drives You with Michael Gervais

1:05:20
102

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind with Vishen Lakhiani

59:07
103

Risk, Fear, and the Art of Chill with Jimmy Chin

1:13:51
104

Personal Growth and Understanding with Citizen Cope

1:16:21
105

Living Life on Purpose with Jay Shetty

1:20:06
106

Get Out of Your Own Way with Dave Hollis

1:08:10
107

Hope in A Sea of Endless Calamity with Mark Manson

1:15:12
108

How to Find Yourself with Glennon Doyle

1:10:16
109

Make It Til You Make It with Owen Smith

1:20:50
110

Surf, Survival, and Life on the Road with Ben Moon

1:08:01
111

Create the Change You Seek with Jonah Berger

1:00:22
112

Workplace Revolution with Amy Nelson

1:05:16
113

Rethink Impossible with Colin O'Brady

1:29:31
114

Good Enough is Never Good Enough with Corey Rich

1:25:24
115

Say Yes To What You Want with Chris Burkard

1:22:54
116

Finding Stillness In A Fast Paced World with Ryan Holiday

1:08:00
117

Everything is Figureoutable with Marie Forleo

43:50
118

The Art of Being Yourself with Elizabeth Gilbert

53:41
119

Creativity, Comedy, and Never Settling with Nate Bargatze

1:37:12
120

Personal + Career Reinvention with Jasmine Star

1:01:18
121

Stay Creative, Focused and True to Yourself with Austin Kleon

1:12:25
122

Ramit Sethi 'I Will Teach You To Be Rich' book launch with Chase Jarvis

1:07:17
123

You Don't Need to Be Rich to Live Rich with David Bach

1:09:51
124

Harnessing Your Human Nature for Success with Robert Greene

1:04:28
125

Addiction, Reinvention, and Finding Ultra with Endurance Athlete Rich Roll

1:07:41
126

Disruption, Reinvention, and Reimagining Silicon Valley with Arlan Hamilton

1:12:31
127

The Intersection of Art and Service with Rainn Wilson

1:03:25
128

Your Mind Can Transform Your Life with Tom Bilyeu

1:30:19
129

Do Something Different with Jason Mesnick

1:02:38
130

Less Phone, More Human with Dan Schawbel

1:07:40
131

Startup to $15 Billion: Finding Your Life's Work with Shopify's Harley Finkelstein

1:12:42
132

It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work with Jason Fried

1:49:02
133

Love, Service, and Living Your Truth with Danielle LaPorte

1:11:05
134

How to Do Work That Matters for People Who Care with Seth Godin

1:10:56
135

Happiness Through Gratitude with AJ Jacobs

1:12:54
136

You Are Your Habits with Julien Smith

1:03:40
137

Maximizing Creativity + Navigating the Messy Middle with Scott Belsky

1:09:10
138

The Most Important Conversation About Life… Death with Michael Hebb

1:13:38
139

Redemption and a Thirst for Change with Scott Harrison

54:58
140

Imagination and The Power of Change with Beth Comstock

1:12:29
141

Success, Community, and his cameo in Parks & Recreation with NBA All Star Detlef Schrempf

1:02:02
142

1,000 Paths to Success with Jack Conte

1:07:32
143

Unconventional Ways to Win with Rand Fishkin

1:37:49
144

How to Sell Without Selling Out with Ryan Carson

1:05:45
145

Be the Artist You Want to Work With with Nigel Barker

47:12
146

Your Story Is Your Power with Elle Luna

1:33:53
147

Celebrating Your Weirdness with Thomas Middleditch

1:14:04
148

Persevering Through Failure with Melissa Arnot Reid

1:33:23
149

Go Against the Grain with David Heinemeier Hansson

1:18:07
150

Stamina, Tenacity and Craft with Eugene Mirman

1:17:15
151

Create Work That Lasts with Todd Henry

1:06:50
152

Make Fear Your Friend

08:08
153

Tame Your Distracted Mind with Adam Gazzaley

1:12:08
154

Why Grit, Persistence, and Hard Work Matter with Daymond John

1:05:15
155

How to Launch Your Next Project with Product Hunts with Ryan Hoover

1:11:15
156

Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson

45:05
157

Embracing Your Messy Beautiful Life with Glennon Doyle

1:27:29
158

How to Create Work That Lasts with Ryan Holiday

1:20:25
159

5 Seconds to Change Your Life with Mel Robbins

1:14:53
160

Break Through Anxiety and Stress Through Play with Charlie Hoehn

1:08:10
161

The Quest For True Belonging with Brene Brown

1:29:41
162

Real Artists Don't Starve with Jeff Goins

1:19:16
163

Habits for Ultra-Productivity with Jessica Hische

56:18
164

Using Constraints to Fuel Your Best Work Ever with Scott Belsky

1:21:07
165

The Intersection of Art and Business with AirBnB's Joe Gebbia

1:19:56
166

Build a World-Changing Business with Reid Hoffman

1:19:31
167

How Design Drives The World's Best Companies with Robert Brunner

1:05:33
168

Why Creativity Is The Key To Leadership with Sen. Cory Booker

53:06
169

How To Change The Lives Of Millions with Scott Harrison

1:16:14
170

How To Build A Media Juggernaut with Piera Gelardi

1:21:04
171

Transform Your Consciousness with Jason Silva

1:08:02
172

The Formula For Peak Performance with Steven Kotler

1:01:40
173

How What You Buy Can Change The World with Leila Janah

1:04:10
174

Overcoming Fear & Self-Doubt with W. Kamau Bell

47:44
175

The Unfiltered Truth About Entrepreneurship with Adam Braun

1:21:36
176

Build + Sustain A Career Doing What You Love with James Mercer of The Shins

51:58
177

How Design Can Supercharge Your Business with Yves BĂ©har

33:40
178

Conquer Fear & Self-Doubt with Amanda Crew

1:29:39
179

Become A Master Communicator with Vanessa Van Edwards

1:19:52
180

How iJustine Built Her Digital Empire with iJustine

1:08:05
181

How To Be A World-Class Creative Pro with Joe McNally

1:05:19
182

How To Stop Waiting And Start Doing with Roman Mars

43:43
183

Gut, Head + Heart Alignment with Scott Dadich

38:17
184

If Not Now, When? with Debbie Millman

55:31

Lesson Info

Lessons in Business and Life with Richard Branson

Hey everybody, how's it going, I'm Chase. Welcome to another episode of the Chase Jarvis Live Show here on CreativeLive. You guys know this show. This is where I sit down with the world's top creators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders and I do everything I can to unpack their brains to help you live your dreams in career, and hobby, and in life. My guest today is probably, well he definitely needs no introduction, but I'm just gonna try and actually not give an introduction because you'll know who he is the second I say his name. It is, the guest today, Sir Richard Branson. Nice to see you (laughs). Thank you. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) They love you. Welcome. You just got in yesterday from the other side of the pond. I got in from Washington actually. I was trying to see if we could rally the World Bank and the IMF to help the Caribbean that's been trashed from the hurricanes, and then of course I came here to watch Virgin Sport do a great performance, and now Son...

oma and Napa Valley are being trashed as well, so it's a strange, the world is, yeah, strange forces at work. So many strange things happening right now. Your book just dropped. A, congratulations. The first one, Losing My Virginity 20 years ago this year I think? So we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I did want to mention I like to open the show when I can with current events. Most recently I think it was two days ago now, or maybe three, you introduced Hyperloop One, now in partnership with Virgin, so it's Virgin Hyperloop One. How long has that been in the works? You've got so many things going. What was the motivation behind that? Well there's a guy called Shervin who took me out to the Nevada desert some months ago and I saw this wonderful tunnel outside Las Vegas where they were test running Hyperloop One and the chief engineer happened to be somebody I knew from Virgin Galactic before, and it was very exciting, and I'm in the rail business. We have the number one rail network in the UK, but our trains are restricted to about 135 miles an hour because of the track. So the idea of being able to transport people at 600, 650 miles an hour was too good to miss. So Virgin Hyperloop has been born and there are countries all over the world who have expressed an interest in taking it. It'll transport both freight and transport passengers, and it'll, I think, transform cities like, places like Scotland that are miles from London. Suddenly they will only be 45 minutes away and so it'll make such a big difference in bringing people closer to each other. Yeah, just the fact that cities that are separated by states or vast spaces, we're gonna be like metro stops basically at 700 miles an hour. Exactly, yeah. I mean, actually, technically if it's a straight line you could almost go 1,000 miles an hour. It's just the g-forces if you've got corners. Anyway, realistically, 600, 650, which is pretty damn good. Shervin, founder of Sherpa Ventures, I know Shervin a little bit, also early in Insta-- Or in Uber and a couple of other investments. Super smart guy. Was that a relationship? I think a lot of folks at home are curious about how that kind of stuff happens. Is it just because you're you and you've transcended all kinds of different transportation environments that you get to be on the inside of this? I think we're lucky that people trust the Virgin brand. Whether it's Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, Virgin Australia, our previous transportation businesses have been successful and so companies that have come up with cutting edge technology I think quite like the idea of being associated with the Virgin brand. We put an investment in the company but the thing that excited me the most was the fact that it became Virgin Hyperloop and that, as long as we put the brand onto products that are exciting, that enables us then, the next exciting project that comes through, it makes it that much easier for us. Well one of the things that, we serve sort of a couple of different audiences here at CreativeLive. I think of them in certainly two buckets. One is the bucket of people from zero to one and the people are just figuring out what they want to do, and can they make the leap from their full time job to do something more entrepreneurial or as a creator, and then there are people who are already identify with being a creator and I think you stand as an inspiration to both of those groups. You've talked a lot about your dyslexia and I surveyed some of the folks in our community and said if you could sit down with Sir Richard, as I have the good fortune of doing, what would you talk to him about? And that was one of the things, I think, when people think about moving on in their career they think about their barriers first, and you've talked at length about it in other interviews, but I was wondering if you could just put a little context on us. What was it like in school, and then how did you, in a sense, I've heard you talked about using your dyslexia to your advantage, and how should you think about that or how should folks at home? So it's interesting. Three days ago I climbed a mountain in Morocco. It was 18 hours up and down, so a lot of time on my feet, and I talked at great length about dyslexia, and first of all, just the basic name dyslexia, why have they come up with a name that is so negative and so difficult to spell, and so difficult to pronounce (laughs) for a dyslexic? So by the time we got to the bottom we thought, right, we've got to push alternative thinker as the new name for dyslexia, and I'm gonna blog about it in the next few days, so if anyone's got any better names for dyslexia, we thought we'd come up with something. That has to be brand new, I mean maybe 10 or 20 years old. They didn't have the term when you were-- No, they didn't have it when I was young. I think dys anything, it sounds pretty nasty (laughs), but anyway. So I think I was pretty hopeless at school. The conventional education passed me by. But I think that was a good thing because come 15 I decided to quit school and bizarrely for a dyslexic, start a magazine to campaign against the Vietnamese War. My dyslexia really helped me become a really good delegator, and I think that's been one of my great strengths. I've had to find brilliant people around me over the last 50 years in all the different ventures we've done, and be willing to give them a lot of freedom, freedom to do good things and freedom to make mistakes, and by and large it's worked. And that's freed me up to worry about-- The next Hyperloop One. The next projects but also just to look after oneself and spend time with one's family, and be ready to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. So not to get bogged down by the minutiae. And I think the best bit of advice I can give any entrepreneur is find somebody better than yourself, give them the freedom to step into your shoes, and then clear the decks yourself and all those things that you were doing, hand over to them, and then you'll find very quickly that the desk will be full up with new ideas which you can then hand over again and you can keep doing that. And then you can become a serial philanthropist as well as a serial entrepreneur. So let's go back to speaking of entrepreneurial, go back to the magazine for just a second, because often people's first projects are indicative of where they're going to go and that was in publishing, right? You published a student magazine. Why magazines and how did you get it off the ground? I think people are interested in the tactics. Like what did you actually do? So the last thing I thought was that I was becoming a businessman or an entrepreneur. I just wanted to be an editor of a campaigning magazine to campaign against the Vietnamese War, which was one of the most unjust wars ever. In fact, pretty well every war is unjust, but this was a ghastly war, and young people between the age of 15 and 30 were all marching on streets and trying to bring the war to an end, and I didn't have any money. There weren't such things as mobile phones in those days. We had a mobile phone box at the school with a fixed-line telephone and if you wanted to make a call you had to keep putting money into the phone box, and I chose the times of day when other kids were not using the phone box to go and ring up potential advertisers to see if I could persuade them to advertise in my magazine. And there was one occasion where I was putting money in and I lost the money and I didn't get through, and I rang up the operator and they said, "Oh don't worry, we'll put you through." So then I started using the operator as my secretary. I'd just ring up, say I've lost the money and never put any money in, and so I had these posh operators being put through, I've got Mr. Branson for you. I finally had my free telephone calls and I just had to hope that I didn't get the same operator two or three times in a row. And then I would talk to Coca-Cola and say Pepsi's just taken a full page ad. I learned these tricks quite early on. Oh well if Pepsi's doing it we will have to do it. National Westminster Bank, oh well if they're doing it then Barclays will do it, and so on. When I got about four and a half thousand pounds of advertising promised I was 15. From huge brands. From big brands, yeah. You literally just called up. I think there this was this young, enthusiastic, but actually they wanted to get to young people so, there wasn't a magazine for young people in those days so somehow we persuaded them, and then the headmaster had me in said, "Look, you either run this magazine "and leave school or you stay at school "and you don't run the magazine." And I went, thank you (laughs) and I sort of waved him goodbye, and the magazine became my education. I suppose I became and entrepreneur by default because I had to worry about the advertising, worry about the distribution, worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing, and being an editor was important but at least 50% of the time was becoming an entrepreneur, a word that didn't exist 50 years, becoming by mistake. Some French dictionary probably had it in there (laughs). Yeah, I'm sure the French knew what entrepreneur was, but in those days every company in Britain was run by government really so you had British Telecom, British Gas, British Steel, British Coal, and they were awful, badly run, and then myself and a woman called Anita Roddick who started Body Shoppe, there were just the two of us as entrepreneurs. If anybody wanted to interview a woman they interviewed Anita, if they wanted to interview a man they interviewed me. So we got more than our fair share of publicity for what we were doing and the fact that I was young gave me an added advantage too. And then just one thing led onto another and I found that music was really expensive to buy so I thought, screw that, we'll use the magazine to start selling music much more cheaply than anybody else. Of course we were selling music we liked, so it didn't have, we wouldn't have had Andy Williams, it would be Frank Zappa. We started having credit, we got a lot of credibility by the quality of the music we sold. Stones, Sex Pistols. The Stones, exactly. And then we started, I came across tapes of artists that we loved and nobody would put out, so we thought, screw that, we'll start a record company, and Virgin Records was born. And it became the most successful independent record label actually in the world. Janet Jacksons, and, anyway, a whole lot of, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Boy George, et cetera, et cetera. And it was a lot of fun. You said two things in there that I want hold onto, one was that the magazine was your education. So what do you have to say about traditional education? I mean I, frankly, CreativeLive exists because I don't feel like that the traditional education is preparing people for the future. The future is skill-based and whatnot, and obviously you're an investor in CreativeLive, so there's an overlap there, but talk to me about how you think about traditional education versus just the doing. One of the reasons we started the magazine was because I couldn't stand the education system at school. People left school after years and years and years of learning French but hardly speaking a word of it. People left school after years and years of learning Latin and hardly spoke a word of it. And it was just facts being crammed into you. And one of the reasons we started the magazine was to campaign against the system. Many, many years later we're still having re-imagining education conferences on Necker Island and things, and I just still think we ain't sorted the problem out yet. What you're doing is tremendous, and there needs to be more of what you're doing. But schools still are very fact-based and exam-based. I'm determined to see in the next sort of 10 years of my life whether we can really make a difference. Maybe, we'd love to work with you in thinking how we can properly re-imagine education and make kids bounce into school really being stimulated in a wonderful way. You call yourself a grand-dude. You've got a couple of grandchildren. Do you think about the world that they'll go to school in and do you think it'll look anything like the one that we're in now, or how do you think about the-- Well I think in Britain the education system has not changed that much in the last 50 years. And it still needs to. With four grandchildren all two years old I would like to try to get it, help get it right sooner rather than later. Alright, we're on it. Great. The second thread that you were working off of that I want to pull on is you started with the magazine, the magazine allowed you to sell music, music translated into a record label, you used the financing as I understand from the record label, sale of the record label for the airline, and et cetera, et cetera. Is that a... Is that what you prescribe? Because everyone wants to, not everyone but the people that are at least listening and watching to the show here, they want to find their thing and that is a question that I hear so often in entrepreneurial circles is, how do I know what to focus on? What advice would you give someone who's wondering, like how do I find my passion, and how do I pull on these threads, and where are they going to lead to? Help us understand how you got started and how they should think about it. Well I think most people listening to this show know what their passion is, and it could be a hobby, it could be, they could love reading, they could love playing tennis. They'll have passions, and if you have a passion it makes sense to spend a lot of your life involved in that passion, and quite often you can turn your passion into a business. You can see that maybe there's some aspect of your passion that people are not doing that well and you can say screw it, I could do it better. And I think if you spend your life with your eyes open looking for things that frustrate you, looking for gaps in the market, that's all a business is. It's filling in a gap and doing it better than it's been done by anybody else. People who don't have closed minds will most likely find those opportunities. Now I suspect there will be 100 people who will have come up with that idea before you, but those 100 people won't have had the courage just to go and do something about it. So it's those few people who just say, right, I'm gonna give it a go, that often end up being successful. Starting small I think is another thing that I see people miss. This is the second time you've been on this show and we recounted this, how you got started with Virgin, you were in Puerto Rico, and I'll let folks go listen to the other show for that story, it's a beautiful story, but you had one plane. You were an airline with one plane, and to me that's remarkable that the concept of an airline, you think of American Airlines or something that has vast fleets of planes and is starting small, Hyperloop One, it's not exactly small, right? Now you've got this massive vision, but how do people go from zero to one? You have to start somewhere and you happened to start with a 747, so it's not like it's a small plane, but is there any advice that you have on getting started? 'Cause I think that first step paralyzes so many people. Yeah, I mean the rules I set myself was, first of all I was sure that the airline business stank and the quality was ghastly, and it wasn't fun, and it was, yeah, pretty miserable experience to travel from A to B on British Airways or any of the other airlines. So I thought if we could throw into the mix a plane that was great fun, which was beautifully designed, that had staff that really loved what they were doing, where the food was great, the seating was nice, where there were standup bars, where the, you know, the entertainment was great, that we'd have a chance. We couldn't be sure. And so first of all I did a deal with Boeing so I could hand the plane back to Boeing at the end of the 12 months if I was wrong about this. And that was protecting the downside, so at least I knew the worst that could happen was about 50% of the profits of Virgin Records for the year if it all went wrong. And then we threw this one plane in against Pan Am with 300 planes, TWA with 300 planes, British Airways with 300 planes, Air Florida with a couple of hundred planes, People Express with a couple hundred planes, British Caledonian with 100 planes, Air Europe, Dan-Air, et cetera. (laughing) The odds, talk about the odds. And people loved it, and I used myself to make sure we got on the front pages of the newspapers, not on the back pages, and come the end of the first year we rang up Boeing and asked for a couple more 747s for Florida and for a couple more routes. And slowly but surely we grew, and as we were growing British Airways decided they didn't like this at all, although we only had sort of four or five planes, and they launched what famously became known as the Dirty Tricks Campaign. We took them to court. We won the biggest libel damages in history. We distributed it at Christmas time and it became known as the British Airways Christmas Bonus. (laughing) And all our staff were smiling and happy. And British Airways backed off somewhat. As we were growing every one of our other competitors went bankrupt. TWA went bankrupt, Pan Am, British Caledonia, anyway, the whole lot, Air Florida, the lot disappeared and the only reason I think British Airways survived was they had a monopoly of the slots at the main airport. So it is possible for a much smaller company to be the David taking on the big Goliaths, and as long as you've got quality, and panache, and fun, and style, you can actually beat them, or at least, yeah, you can beat most of them and that's what Virgin Atlantic did. And the fact that you've done that in so many different industries, is that a method? Like you've always had, Apple needed Microsoft, there's always a bad guy, and it was clearly British, it was this crappy service, you talked about the state-run or state-subsidized, and you talked about panache, and style, and all these other things. Is that a requirement, the dynamic that there's something that needs changing or disrupting, or is that just the way that you think or build businesses? I think it's not a requirement but I think competition is good for everybody, and having a bigger competitor with a fat belly to prod makes it a lot more fun than if you just suddenly had a monopoly in a whole new industry. It makes you much more sleek of foot than I think if you were the only player in town. So 20 years later you have written Finding My Virginity after the Losing My Virginity release. Let Matt get a good shot of the cover there for the folks that are watching. Explain the concept behind the book, would you? Because Finding My Virginity, I thought virginity could only be lost. (laughing) Well I'm sort of finding my virginity all the time with new ventures and my final book in another 20 years will most likely Virginity Found hopefully. I'll finally get there. First of all, I think everybody should write a book. I think every single person on this earth has great stories to tell which they can share with their children and their grandchildren, and it's a pity that everybody's life is not captured. The stories your parents taught you when you were young, your friendships, everything, I think are worth capturing. I've been lucky enough to have a very full on, I think quite interesting life, and therefore I think sharing my stories with others, hopefully people can learn something from them. Losing My Virginity sold millions of copies and I've met a lot of people who said it affected their lives. They maybe dropped everything, started their own business, they've done very well as a result and I hope Finding My Virginity will have the same sort of affect on people's lives and that they will take a few bits from it and learn from it. I'm a storyteller, I love telling stories. I think that's the best way of getting messages across. Humor is important and there's quite a lot of humorous moments as well. (laughing) Well having steamrolled through it in the last 72 hours-- Well thank you for actually doing that. No, it was brilliant, and also speaking of the other books, I've collected biographies of amazing artists and entrepreneurs my whole life. Those have been inspirational to me and so yours, your original book, certainly did that. This strikes me as a little bit more, almost of a leadership book. There's so many, and in modern times where our own leaders were able to start a company with basically nothing, we've got more access to tools and technologies than we ever have before, all these things are democratized, folks who used to be followers are now becoming leaders, and I feel like leadership is a huge area of growth and opportunity. I myself had to figure out how to be a leader as CreativeLive and turning to you and others, you taught me how to mitigate the downside and whatnot, but what, do you have information, or ideas, or any advice for the folks that are leaders in businesses that you feel like is often missed, or ignored, or what has been the key to your success in leadership? Well I think a good leader is a bit like being a good father really, or a good mother. I think what you do at home and what you do at work should be almost one and the same. So if you're a good father you look for the best in your kids, you praise your kids, you love your kids, and a good leader is exactly the same. You've got to lavish praise on the people that you're working with, you've got to be a good listener, make sure that you're listening all the time, you're absorbing what you learn from the people who you're working with. I just hate when I see leaders jumping down people's throats or lording it over people, or not listening, hearing their own voices all the time, and it's so counterproductive. So I think the traditional sort of stereotype of the sort of Dallas, if anybody can remember that TV series, leader that treads all over people to get to the top is the absolute opposite of what one needs in leaders today. Trump, I suspect, is the absolute opposite of what one needs in a leader today. But fortunately, that's the exception to the rule. Most modern day leaders are great with people and they bring out the best in their people, and therefore they get a really loyal group of people around them. To ask somebody to leave a company should be so rare. I mean generally speaking, if you're talking about a company as a real family you find another position for them within the company that suits their role better than the one that maybe they're not working out in. And this whole sort of slightly more American approach of firing people too readily is, I think, very wrong. How important is vulnerability and authenticity to leadership? You show great empathy whenever, I've spent time, a lot of time with you and you're always concerned about folks as you said, like firing. Is that something you're very cognizant of, like empathy and vulnerability? You share a lot about being scared in the wine cellar when the hurricane hits your house. Just how important is that for folks at home that are thinking about their own role? I think you need to, again, yeah, you need to be human, you need to be willing to cry on occasions. When our spaceship went down, I talk about it in the book, I met the 700 engineers and we all cried together, we all had a big hug together, and then we picked ourselves up and we moved on to create VSS Unity, our new spaceship, which will hopefully be going up in a few months time. People shouldn't be afraid of being human beings and with all the vulnerabilities that human beings have. The space component was also really big. Can you talk to me about your fascination with space? Is it literally space in and of itself or is it the concept of space being something that's so vast? That's the next frontier for you besides of course Hyperloop One, but why space? Why you, why space? Why not, I suppose I would say. I think it's something that, I would say 80% of the people I meet would love to go to space and it's up to us to produce spaceships that enable them to go safely and affordably, and that's the challenge that we set ourselves. And creating a spaceline, look it's fun, I mean fuck, you know what I mean. (laughing) You only live once and if I'd done nothing else in my life but create a spaceline that could take people into space I'd feel pretty chuffed. And there's a lot that can be achieved through it. We're putting up 2,000 satellites around the world with OneWeb as part of, we have a company called Virgin Orbit that is putting up satellites. And that will make a big difference back here on Earth, and because our spaceships are designed like, they're real spaceships in the shape of airplanes, we can move into point to point travel one day. So it's ridiculously good fun, it'll be great for the Virgin brand, and you only live once, and it's horribly expensive. (laughing) But if you can pull off the best in an industry, generally speaking you'll find that you'll get your money back one day. So you've just got to create the best in the first place, which we're nearly there in doing. A final theme I want to explore in the book is that of, you talk about the elders. Folks like Nelson Mandela have been a big inspiration to you. How important is mentorship and a peer group and community to you and to building not just a brand but a life that you're proud of? Yeah, really important. I was lucky enough to get to know Nelson Mandela really well and he has a wonderful sense of humor, as does Archbishop Tutu, who they're both very, were both very close, and building The Elders with them I think is one of the most important things that we've done, Peter Gabriel and myself have done in our lifetimes. The Elders have been going about 10 years. They go into conflict regions, try to resolve conflicts, they set up some wonderful organizations, things like Girls Not Brides and so on. They've spoken out strongly on things like the climate change, and so it's magical being involved with that and about 50% of my time is now spent on not-for-profit ventures like campaigning against the War on Drugs and trying to get governments to treat drugs as a health problem, not a criminal problem, trying to protect the species in the oceans through Oceans Unite and The Oceans Elders, trying to rally businesses to become forces for good and make a difference in the world through The B Team. You know, getting the Carbon War Room and the Virgin Earth Prize to try to help tackle climate change. So there's a lot of really great people running these wonderful not-for-profit organizations that hopefully can make a difference as well. So your chronicles as an entrepreneur are well documented, and also I'll reference our earlier conversation, it's been very popular. There's a lot of talk about your near-death experiences. Your film had just come out at that time and so if folks want to hear all the numerous ways you've almost done yourself in from ballooning. I want to flip the script in this particular, and I think so much of your world is giant for people and wildly aspirational, but you have to get out of bed just like everybody else. You have to put your pants on one leg at a time. What are some of the tactical things that you do, like maybe for example, in the morning how do you get started with your day? What are some things that you do that have provided a really good life for you? Health is dramatically, you know, really important to you, I know that about it. Yeah, I mean I... Looking after yourself, your body, is the most important thing you can do because if you don't look after yourself you can't look after your children, you can't look after your wife, you can't look after your businesses, everything else falls apart. So the first thing I do in the morning is get up early, go and play tennis with somebody that's a tennis pro who's better than me and we have a full on couple of sets of singles tennis, and I'll do the same again in the evening. Then if the wind is up I'll go kite surfing, and then I would have done all that by seven o'clock. I'll then go and have some breakfast and try to make sure the breakfast is relatively healthy. And then I'm set up for a really full on day. At least once a year we set ourselves as a family a big challenge, and we try to raise money for an organization for young people that my children set up called Strive, to do with education actually for young people. So last year the kids rang me up and said, "Dad, I'm not sure you're gonna want to come on this one. "You can if you want to." So foolishly I said yes, so we started at the Matterhorn, we did an eight day hike across the Italian and Swiss Alps. We then did a two and a half thousand kilometer bike ride through the mountains from the north of Italy to the southernmost tip of Italy. We then swam to Sicily. We then did a marathon, another hike, then a mountain bike, and then a hike up to the top of Mount Etna, and at the end of it I felt like a 25 year old, I had a body of a 25 year old. I've never felt so fit for years. And the great thing is, by setting these challenges you've got to train for them, and then last week we just climbed the highest mountain in North Africa called Mount Toubkal. It was 18 hours on our feet and you curse and swear at the time but afterwards it just feels so good, so I think setting yourself family challenges or just every year sort of set a challenge which you can work towards is a good idea. All that's well chronicled in here as well. So last point I'd like to hear from you. In the last interview we also, I asked you to tell me something you hadn't told anyone else in a different interview and you struggled with that for just 20, 30 seconds. Then you came up with a great story, you cited yourself as a storyteller, about getting pulled over by a copper. And I won't (laughs), you pounded a buddy in the stomach and he was ill, and you were speeding. I'll leave it at that, but that was a great story. Instead of a story that no one else had heard, one thing I haven't heard from you is, in previous interviews, is what's the most important thing to you? You talk a lot about building businesses and you're so good about reaching out to others. In the end, everything comes down to your family and friends. That's all that matters in the end. So we've been very lucky, you know, my parents were very lucky. They loved each other throughout their lives. I've been with Joan for 40 years, and as I told her last week, she's still as sexy beast. And because we're happy together that has helped with our kids and helped their relationships, and my guess is that they'll stay together and they're very, very happy, and that will help with their children. And so we've just been very lucky in that way. I mean obviously 50% of families are not so lucky, and then they have to sort of pick themselves up and try to sort of keep those friendships and those families together. I'll end with one fun story, which I told in the book. My dad when he was about 86, 87, I took him on a hike through Africa following the migration of the wildebeest, and he loved Africa. It was pissing with rain every day and for a poor 87 year old to have to get up and go and try to squat down over a hole in the ground in the middle of the night in the pouring rain was not much fun for him, but anyway, it was a wonderful thing for a father and son to do. On the last day he woke up and he had the biggest smile on his face. We were sharing a tent, and I said to dad, "Did you have a happy dream?" And he said, "Yes." I said, "Did it involve a woman?" And he said, "Yes." I said, "Did you misbehave with her?" He said, "No." He said, "But she misbehaved with me outrageously." (laughing) Anyway. So yeah, humor, humor's important. The book is laced with it. Speaking of sexy beast, you've got to pick up the book. If you're watching or listening, Finding My Virginity by Sir Richard Branson. I know we want people to pick up a copy of the book. I want to say thanks for supporting CreativeLive of course. Thank you. There's another way that I've heard you asking people to get involved and that's your rebuilding the Caribbean or doing something to help. What is a way, after recent devastation from the hurricane there, is there a particular way that people could donate funds or time, or what would an ask be there for the community? There's so many causes that, here in San Francisco and you've got Napa Valley, and Sonoma on fire, and there's so many causes for people to help. There is a tiny little foundation called Unite BVI that's trying to help rebuild the British Virgin Islands, but we can put our resources into that. So look, I think everybody out there have got very important causes that they'll put their spare pennies towards. Right now what we're trying to do is get the World Bank and the IMF, et cetera, to look after the Caribbean as a whole and really try to get in there and try to move the Caribbean into becoming, being powered by clean energy and to help get it back on its feet in a big way. Actually the best thing you can all do is in a year's time once we've all, once we've got it rebuilt, come and visit us in the Caribbean because that's what people are gonna need, because they're gonna need to get tourists back. (muffled) Thanks. Thank you so much. Cheers. Y'all, we'll see you another time, probably tomorrow. Thanks, you'll have to tune in. (upbeat music)

Ratings and Reviews

Dream Focus Studio
 

By far the best classes on Creative Live!! Thanks Chase Jarvis for bringing so much greatness to the table for discussion! Just LOVE it!

René Vidal
 

@ChaseJarvis - love chat with Gabby about hope and the "relentless optimism" you share at the end of Creative Calling. Many thanks. -- René Vidal McKendree Tennis

bob
 

Excellent interview with thoughtful questions. Thanks!!

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