Q: When you started Virgin more than 25 years ago, did you know that it would be such a huge global brand?
No. I left school quite young. I left school when I was 15 to start a magazine for you people. A lot of wars were taking place, and like a lot of young people (and) I disagreed with the war. Students wanted to have a magazine to campaign against the war, and I just wanted to be an editor.
I’ve never been interested in being an entrepreneur. That act of being an entrepreneur, the projects that I’ve launched, is so I can pay the bills at the end of the year and keep people in employment to actually do the things I enjoy doing. I just enjoy doing a lot, and one thing has led on to another. I never expected to be in this wonderful position that I find myself in, and I don’t want to waste that position.
Q: How do you continue to maintain this passion, continue to have so much fun after so many years, after you gained recognition, wealth, etc. ?
I think I’d be very sad if I didn’t continue to be in a position where I can make a difference. What a horrible waste it would be if I just sat on the beach all day and got drunk. I love learning, and I think anyone who finds themselves in the position in life where they can make a difference, they owe it to themselves and to society to make a difference.
I just came back today from Europe, where I just spent three days with the elders ensconced talking about all the various crises in the world and trying to think, ‘Can we avoid a dreadful situation with somebody trying to bomb Iran or making a terrible mistake in the world? What can they do to avoid that happening? How can we — the people of Zimbabwe — be better looked after than they are today?’And so on.
There are lots of different places around the world. You’ve got Sandhurst, and you’ve got all these places that teach people to kill. There are very few universities and very few people out there that are actually trying to think of ways to avoid conflict and various areas like that. And it’s very fun.
Q: What words of wisdom would you give us in order to change, grow and realize the sky is not the limit?
It has to be step by step. It was in the case of Virgin. … We would take one box, and when we felt that we had got the financial strength to go, move and do the next challenge, we would do it. And sometimes, we would do it before we’d actually had the strength to do the next challenge, but we just didn’t (want) anyone else (to) know.
You also need some good fortune along the way. We’ve certainly had our fortunate breaks, good breaks along the way, and hopefully, we’ve made the best of those. There were occasions when we came very close to failing. If you are building a business without financial backing, from scratch, there’s a very thin dividing line — as I’m sure a lot of people in this room know — between success and failure. It’s sometimes a real battle to stay on the right side of that dividing line.
When we launched Virgin Atlantic, we had a very successful record company. Our bank went into complete panic. They thought it was going to bring everything else crashing down, and they attempted to foreclose on us. Fortunately, we had one or two companies around the world (to) supply us and lend us a little extra money, and we kept going. But it was very close, between the Friday and the Monday, where things could have gone wrong.
Q: Do you have a succession plan?
I think because I’ve done some rather foolish things in my life, attempting to fly around the world in a balloon or break transatlantic sailing records and things, I’ve had to write a will quite often, had to think about what would happen if the balloon goes down. I think it would be irresponsible not to have a succession plan.
But in a sense, I run my businesses as if I’m not there anyway. If you are a true entrepreneur, one of the things you’ve got to do very early on in building a business is, in a sense, put yourself out of work. You’ve got to be brave. You’ve got to find somebody that’s better than you to run the business so you can be an entrepreneur and think about the next project and think about the bigger picture.
There are very good managers. There are very good entrepreneurs. Find a good manager to run your business so that you can think about the next project. Virgin has got fantastic people running the Virgin group, running all the companies. And that means if the balloon bursts, companies will carry on fine without me. And it also frees me up to tackle some of the social challenges I suppose I’m finding more of interest as I get older.
And if my kids want to help me out one day — my son’s playing out in L.A. at a concert if anyone’s there — I’m sure maybe they’ll come and help me out.
Q: Are you going to encourage your children to be entrepreneurs?
My daughter has become a doctor and we’re obviously very proud parents. She spent a year working at Virgin to see whether she wanted to do conventional medicine, but we do health clinics and things like that at Virgin. … She was determined to prove herself before she came in at Virgin.
In a sense, it’s the same case with my son. He’s trying to build his own business, trying to become a very good musician and doing TV shows, doing lots of different things. And understandably, he wants to prove himself before getting involved. My son is pursuing an entrepreneurial path and determinedly. He doesn’t want any leg up from his dad, which I admire.
Q: What are you most proud of that you have done, and what would you like to do next that you haven’t thought about doing?
For all of us, it is our family. I’m proud of the fact that I will be lucky enough to have the same woman for 32 years. She’s a great mother… and (I have) fantastic children. That’s what lives on after you; you live on through your family.
The Virgin Unite Foundation … can make a real difference in the world. The advantage of a company having a foundation like that is that it’s fantastic for the 60,000 people that work for Virgin. Instead of them just feeling like they’re working for a money making machine, they are working for a company that is a force for good. So their hard work is looking after themselves, and their employment and their shareholders.
