Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.
When I got out of school, I just started doing plays of the off-off-Broadway route, and for many years, that's what I did, slowly doing work in tiny theaters, building relationships with people in the business. It's not a showy story.
Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.
Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base
We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is. My reward comes in the doing of it.
Whenever you're in a chaotic environment, there are some of the best opportunities. Nobody knows where the music business is going, but I know one thing: it's going to be about fan-artist relationships and how you monetize that. The business isn't going to turn around the way we're doing it now.
When I was 18, and when I entered my family business, I soon realised that it wasn't as easy as I thought. I had to deal with people of my father's generation. Building trust was key to doing business.
Some of the hard part of coaching is to be able to drag people over to the next side. People are comfortable with doing business a certain way. When that business kind of shifts to get people to change, it's not easy. It's a process.
Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in a flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business.
Nobody in my generation ever started out in private equity. We got there by accident. There was no private equity business - actually, the word didn't even exist - when I started. I got there out of the purest of happenstance and so I think many people find what they really enjoy doing just in that way. So another piece of advice for you is: don't worry too much about what you're going to be doing when you get out of business school - life will come your way.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire ... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
The business is about coming up with a business plan and using your relationships and networking and seeing your dreams come true. Everyone on this show has their own business. Fifteen minutes of fame is fleeting. It's about learning the business and creating a new business.
We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is.
My number one rule in business, and in life, is to enjoy what you do. Running a business involves long hours and hard decisions; if you don't have the passion to keep you going, your business will more than likely fail. If you don't enjoy what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it.
I went into show business because I love to work with people, and what I enjoy most about acting is rehearsing and getting to know people and their talents, forming relationships. Working in this business, barriers drop and you get into people real quickly.