Top 791 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Branson - Page 11

I've taken many knocks over the years but it has only made me stronger and more determined to succeed.

If you love what you do and if you believe in what you do, others will share your enthusiasm. Passionate people find their way to the Virgin Group, and when they do, we snap them up and try to keep them within the family.

Whether you are launching a start-up or leading an established company, you should start establishing your social media presence if you haven’t already.

It's never easy to set up any business, but it comes back to determination and drive and the love of what you do!

Allowing my people to have a good work-life balance by working flexibly is very important to me.

We have the enormous opportunity in our hands to make a positive difference for business, people, and the planet.

Conflicts often stem from a couple of leaders on both sides that are badly brought up. They'd rather go to war than compromise. And in business, you're competing with other companies all the time, but you don't end up going to war with each other.

I like to take chances on people, and whenever possible, promote from within - it sends a great message to everyone in the company when someone demonstrates a passion for the job and leadership skills at every step along the way and is rewarded with a leadership role.

Don't hesitate to seek external help or advice where need be. Sometimes, it takes an external, emotionally unattached individual to detect your business flaws and render unbiased advice.

I have never had an office that I work out of and work has become intertwined with my personal life.

Explore this next great frontier where the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business.

When you are starting a business or going down any challenging endeavor, you are bound to encounter challenges. You are going to hit many roadblocks and obstacles. These are obstacles that would make any sane person want to throw in the towel and quit. If you want your business to succeed, you can’t do that (duh).

I am always working on the go.

We all are now very aware of what a connected world we live in - connected to each other and to the earth that gives us everything we have. We need all countries and companies to step up and play their part - setting strong goals, having clear plans, and openly demonstrating progress.

Look for the best in people to build a fantastic team

Exploration is a wonderful way to open our eyes to the world, & to truly see that impossible is just a word.

I have had a lot of fun pushing the boundaries on my balloon and kitesurf adventures, breaking some world records in the process, and I think this attitude of having fun whilst working hard is one that lends itself very well to successful entrepreneurship.

For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility.

If you don't make bold moves, the world doesn't move forward.

An entrepreneur is somebody who is taking bold risks, is often doing things that have never been done before, trying to do things better. And an adventurer is challenging themselves, often doing things that have never been done before, seeing what they're capable of. In both cases, you've got to protect against the downside.

I decided there must be room for another airline when I spent two days trying to get through to People Express.

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

Making money never was my incentive. I just want to fight big companies.

Quality brands never go bankrupt.

As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation.

We Experiment Endlessly, With New Products, New Methods, New Companies And New Marketing. A Successful Business The Emphasis Is On Experiment And Development, Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Business.

I was never, ever interested in becoming a businessman or an entrepreneur. If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.

Any idea can be a great idea if you think differently, dream big and commit to seeing it realized

From the first days of my career as an entrepreneur, I have always used my own and my team's lack of experience to our advantage. In fact, at our first venture, Student magazine, we used our newcomer status to secure great interviews and generate publicity - people were excited about our new project and wanted to get involved. Our inexperience fed our restless enthusiasm for trying new things, which became part of our core mission.

If you want milk, don't sit on a stool in the middle of a field in the hope that a cow will back up to you.

I'm sure if Brawn GP keep plying me with champagne and putting gorgeous Virgin girls either side of me, you never know!

I think great businessmen are more likely made than born. I don't know if it's from your upbringing, your parental background, the struggles you go through. In my own particular situation, I left school at 15 and I was struggling to survive in the jungle and that was a great education. So I think just getting out there, hands on, learning to survive teaches you a lot.

There are quite a few things I've done that even I thought might have been one step too far. But if you are willing to make a fool of yourself and make people smile, as long as you do it with a sense of fun, you can get away with it.

We need a new way of doing business to get out of the present crisis ... Absolute greed has come close to bankrupting the world. Thanks to the crisis that certain businesses have dumped on everyone a lot of people are going to suffer on a global scale. All of us must learn. It is all the more important that those business leaders that are left standing try to be a force for good.

I think it's important we continue to find new ways for start-up businesses to get access to funding, mentorship and business advice.

When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better.

We need government and business to work together for the benefit of everyone. It should no longer be just about typical "corporate social responsibility" where the "responsibility" bit is usually the realm of a small team buried in a basement office - now it should be about every single person in a business taking responsibility to make a difference in everything they do, at work and in their personal lives.

I was interested in creating things that I could be proud of and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, things that I could be proud of, and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, but in order to be an editor of a magazine I had to become a publisher as well. I had to pay the bills. I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution of that magazine.

I think that marijuana should be legalized. I think the only reason it isn't legal is because politicians who smoked it when they were young men or young women just don't have the courage when they become politicians to legalize it.

If you have an idea that's going to make a big difference to people's lives, and other people are not doing it, you know, just say "screw it," do it and get on with it, and give it a go.

People who work for me are working for what I believe in. The leaders who run our companies do so on the basis of those who came first and who said, "A company is its people." I hope my companies are run on the basis of praising their workers and looking for the best in them, not criticizing them. In the same way that you water a plant and it sprouts leaves, people flourish when you praise them.

I'm not the sort of person who fears failure.

In the '80's my gut feeling was that airlines were crap. I hated spending time on planes. I thought we could create the kind of airline I'd like. So we got a secondhand 747 and gave it a go.

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.

Virgin could never have grown into the group of more than 200 companies it is now, were it not for a steady stream of intrapreneurs who looked for and developed opportunities, often leading efforts that went against the grain.

Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn't have customer service. They had might, but they didn't have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.

Protect your reputation. Don't be afraid of making mistakes.

Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.

Every aspect of life is magnificent and wonderful. It's so important to keep fit and healthy.

Purpose is not an add-on, it’s not an initiative. It is a culture change and it never finishes

There are millions of people out there who would love to become astronauts, who'd love to go to space - they'd love to look back at this wonderful world from space. That will be the engine that will enable us then to develop spaceships to transport people around the world at tremendous speeds in an environmentally friendly way.

The entrepreneurs who succeed usually want to make a difference to people’s lives, not just their own bank balances.

Never go into business purely to make money. If that's the motive you're better off doing nothing.

As an entrepreneur, you've got to protect against the company going bust. And as an adventurer, you've got to protect against losing your life. It's even more important as an adventurer to get it right.

However tight things are, you still need to have the big picture at the forefront of your mind.

If you can run one company, you can run another. Running companies are about inspiring and driving the best out of people.

Entrepreneursh ip is not about getting one over on the customer. It’s not about working on your own. It’s not about looking out for number one. It’s not necessarily about making a lot of money. It is absolutely not about letting work take over your life. On the contrary, it’s about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.

I just kind of dive in if I think I can create something that will make a difference and then try to get the numbers to stack up after the event. So most of the things I've done I would not have done if I'd have asked the accountants to look at them before.

I'm a great believer that saying yes is a lot more fun than saying no.

My mother always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running all the Virgin businesses-so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve.