Q: Who are people you would point out that you look up to?
I think that there’s two people I would name, and that is Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela. And the reason is that with Nelson Mandela , he spent 28 years in prison, comes out of prison, and not only forgives his captors and forgives the white community that had done terrible things to the black community in South Africa, (but) brings him into his cabinet. (He) unites the country. And those white people who committed those terrible atrocities, instead of sending them to the electric chair, Archbishop Tutu set up truthful reconciliation courts where there are people who come voluntarily to the courts to ask for forgiveness and apologize to the relatives of the people they’ve done these horrible crimes to.
And in that way, the country was united, and it’s a wonderful country to visit, that was the result. I think they’ve set a fantastic example for all of us. I think all of us in this room, after today, could just ring up the one person we’ve fallen out with in life, an ex-partner or whatever, and just invite them out and befriend them again, even if you don’t think it’s your fault (and) you think it’s their fault. It would make the world a better place. They set a great example in that way.
Q: How many hours a night do you sleep? And what is it that makes you realize it’s time to pull back and move on to the next thing?
Often, that’s (when) the money has run out. My wife has been exhausted in mortgaging the home one too many times. Fortunately, I think we’re just past that stage now.
I actually need a good night’s sleep. I find that people that manage to sleep well for three or four hours, it’s something I can’t do. I need a good seven hours, seven hours of sleep if I can. I think being healthy and fit is incredibly important. … Finding time to look after yourself, tennis, kites, that sort of thing, finding fun ways of keeping fit, I think is very important.
Q: Aside from business, what has been the scariest moment in your adventures? What’s next?
On attempts to balloon around the world … (I) generally ended up with a helicopter pulling me out of the sea. I think it happened on five different occasions. It can be quite lonely when you are going along at 30,000 feet in a jet stream. You’ve suddenly dropped half of your fuel and you are just heading off across the Pacific. You are determinedly hoping that you can get to Los Angeles, which we were heading for in that particular case.
Fortunately — this is where luck plays a good part in life — the winds went up from about 100 miles mph to 250 mph and we did cross the Pacific. We missed L.A. by 3,000 miles (and) ended up in the Arctic, but nearly proved that we actually crossed the Pacific, and we were the first people to cross the Pacific. …
It was great fun, but it also helped Virgin Brands get on the map and get an edge. Apart from the space travel, the next exciting area we are looking at is exploring the depths of the oceans, which are not explored. The Puertorican Trench, which is five miles from our island, is the deepest place in the Atlantic. It’s 28,000 feet down, and no one has been down it more than 300 or 400 feet. We have no idea what kinds of species are at the bottom there. And there are other incredible places, which are deeper as Everest is high. The technological problem of building a submarine to go down to 35,000 foot is vast. It’s something like 1,500 times the pressure that an airplane is subjected to. So that’s a challenge we’d love to see if we can overcome.
Q: What would you tell us we should invest in?
I think the most important area to invest in is clean energy. There are plenty of people in American who are not great leaders in global warming. … I personally think the world does have problem, and we’ve got to do something about it as quickly as possible. What is absolute fact is that we are depleting our natural resources very quickly, and the demand for oil is going to exceed supply within the decade unless we hurry and come up with alternative sources of energy. Energy is the lifeblood of everything we do. Any area of energy, preferably clean energy, there’s money to be made and there’s a world to be saved. So give it a god.
