Richard Branson quotes: this is the best advice from English business magnate and founder of the Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson.
“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.'”
“My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it into new ventures and not have it sitting around.”
“I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt love for my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.”
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures. Learn from them and start again.”
“Please be polite. Nothing in life should erode the habit of saying ‘thank you’ to people or praising them.”
“Building a business is not rocket science, it’s about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.”
“Learn from failure. If you are an entrepreneur and your first venture wasn’t a success, welcome to the club!”
“With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.”
“Remember, it’s okay to be yourself.”
“My definition of success? The more you’re actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel.”
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
“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.”
“Chance favors the prepared mind. The more you practice, the luckier you become.”
“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.”
“Education doesn’t just take place in stuffy classrooms and university buildings. It can happen everywhere, every day, to every person.”
“You’ve got to take risks if you’re going to succeed. I would much rather ask forgiveness than permission.”
“If you don’t have time for the small things, you won’t have time for the big things.”
“Entrepreneurial business favors the open mind. It favors people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.”
“The best way of learning about anything is by doing.”
“Screw it. Let’s do it.”
“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple.”
“Don’t become a slave to technology – manage your phone, don’t let it manage you.”
“The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.”
“Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company it will be invincible.”
“Fortunately we’re not a public company. We’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.”
“Communication: the thing humans forgot when we invented words.”
“You can never go too far wrong by thinking like a customer who’s new to the business.”
“Train people well enough so they can leave; treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
“Life is a hell of a lot more fun if you say yes rather than no.”
“Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.”
“I believe that drudgery and clock-watching are a terrible betrayal of that universal, inborn entrepreneurial spirit.”
“One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.”
“Take a chance. It’s the best way to test yourself. Have fun and push boundaries.”
“Above all, you want to create something you are proud of. That’s always been my philosophy on business. 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 doing nothing.”
“If you spot an opportunity and are really excited by it, throw yourself into it with everything you’ve got.”
“If you don’t succeed at first, there’s no need for the F-word (failure). Pick yourself up and try, try again.”
“Listen. Take the best. Leave the rest.”
“You can’t do a good business with a bad person. Find the right people to work with and you can’t go wrong.”
“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”
“Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.”
“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
“As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”
“Take the competition seriously, but not yourself.”
“Don’t think, ‘What’s the cheapest way to do it?’ Or, ‘What’s the fastest way to do it?’ Think, ‘What’s the most amazing way to do it?'”
“To launch a business means successfully solving problems. And solving problems means listening.”
“I wanted to be an editor or a journalist. I wasn’t interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.”
“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.”
“Your company should act as a springboard for ambitious employees, not a set of shackles.”
“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 and jobs, to employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.”
“I’m prepared to try anything once.”
“There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.”
“If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.”
“When you’re first thinking through an idea, it’s important not to get bogged down in complexity. Thinking simply and clearly is hard to do though.”
“My general attitude towards 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.'”
“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”
“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. If I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.”
“My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had. Every day I’m learning something new.”
“Spend more time smiling than frowning and more time praising than criticizing.”
For more quotes like these, check out Deepak Chopra’s lessons.
