Richard Branson: How A Dyslexic Drop-out Built A Billion Dollar Empire

Told at school that he would either be successful or in prison, with a value of over $3 BILLION and earth’s atmosphere the only thing trapping him (for now), it’s an understatement to say that Sir Richard Branson became a success. But behind the Virgin empire and its global offshoots, lies a dyslexic school leaver who never saw himself as intelligent, let alone a business person, who threw caution and conventional wisdom to the wind, transforming from business Virgin to visionary. In this invaluable conversation, Richard shares the riches of his hard won lessons and the wisdom that can only come from an exceptional life. For all fans of The Diary Of A CEO podcast, this is truly a life changing conversation. Richard: http://bit.ly/3FHqy48 http://bit.ly/3VTvAjJ Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  You do think about, is it selfish? Is it worth it? Is it something?

• 0:11Speaker 00

  So.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Sir Richard Branson.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Richard Branson is one of the most fun-loving and adventurous billionaires in the world.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  He's conquered our skies, blasted off into space.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  The entrepreneur's entrepreneur, the marketer's marketer.

• 0:27Steven Bartlett?

  In the school of business, they said focus. By the age of 33, you've got 50 different companies. You kind of break that law, it seems.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  If we'd stayed still and only focused on one business, we wouldn't have a business today. We're still going strong 55 years later. If you get the little details right, makes for an exceptional company over an average company. We were the first airline to introduce seatback videos in the world. Sleeper seats for business class passengers. We've always been ahead of the pack. The airline's been bullied by British Airways, famously through the dirty tricks campaign. The best always succeeds.

• 1:00Steven Bartlett?

  As if all that you'd done before wasn't enough, you decided to aim for the stars.

• 1:05Speaker 04

  We're going to space.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Looking back at this beautiful, beautiful earth that we live on whilst floating, it was a dream come true. You know, we're still at the early stage of space travel and there are still risks.

• 1:17Speaker 04

  One pilot has died after a passenger spaceship crashed.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Everything that we'd built up looked like it was crashing down.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  What impact does that have on you and your mission?

• 1:31Speaker 00

  You've got to continue.

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  Richard, having spent the last 24 hours reading both your autobiographies, but also your new HBO docu-series, it feels very relevant to start where I usually start when I have these conversations, which is, can you tell me the context that I would need to understand about you and your earliest years, your home life before the age of 10, that went on to making you the man that I saw in that docu-series, but the man that we've also observed and been inspired by for many decades?

• 2:13Speaker 00

  So I was brought up in the countryside.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  I love the country.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  And I was brought up by a mum and dad who,

• 2:33Speaker 00

  I suppose, were struggling after the Second World War.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  A mother who was a fairly extraordinary woman, who was absolutely determined that we'd stand on our own two feet. Wouldn't let us watch television. You know, made sure that we were outside doing things or creating things. And, you know, I've been forever grateful for that approach. And on occasion, she would maybe go a little bit far, you know, just of pushing us out of the car at age five or six and making us, you know, find our own way to granny's house.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  But, you know, anyway, we survived all her, all, all, her, her approach. And, and, and hopefully are the stronger for it.

• 3:29Steven Bartlett?

  Throughout your docu-series, but also throughout your, your books and everything that I've heard you talk about Eve, your mother. She, she felt like a really, really extraordinarily principled and strong character. And in the docu-series, you actually say that you didn't realise how much she had influenced you on becoming the entrepreneur you are today. What was it that she was doing, pushing you out of the car at four, five years old and making you walk home? But what is, what was, were those principles that underlined her approach?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  So, I mean, she was one of the sort of first entrepreneurs around, really. I mean, not, you know, not a particularly successful one, but she was making table mats and, you know, cutting out pretty pictures from books and, and, and, and turning, you know, turning them into pictures that she would then take to Harrods. Harvey Nichols, interestingly, and I didn't realise this until I saw it in some letters that she'd written to me, you know, working from a phone box in London.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  And that was her office, just like my office had been later on, working from a phone box at school. But, yeah, but so she would never stop. She was an idea, idea a minute, always trying to, you know, better, better our lives and also always trying to create things that she could be proud of.

• 5:06Steven Bartlett?

  When was she most proud of you? In terms of what kind of behaviours or achievements would make her most happy when you were young?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  She, yeah, she was, she was fairly, yeah, she was, she was fairly firm when it came to, you know, the need for, you know, being courteous from a young age. And I mean, I remember in church one day, I refused to go and sit next to somebody that she wanted me to sit next to, who was maybe visiting our house. And when I got home, she asked my dad to spank me. And that had never happened before.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  And my dad takes me into, into the living, into the next door room and, and instructs me to burst into tears and he slaps his hands together very hard six times. I come out rubbing my bum. But, and then of course she regretted having done it in the first place, but of course it never happened. They, but.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  And but that, you know, that, you know, she, she, she, you know, she generally speaking, it was unreserved love, but she, she wanted us to care for other people properly. You know, if we ever said ill about somebody, we'd be sent to the mirror and we'd have to stand there for 10 minutes because it, you know, she felt it reflected so badly on us that we'd said ill of somebody. And, you know, those sort of lessons, I think, were very, very, very powerful and very good later on in life when I was, you know, leading people, always trying to look for the best in, in everybody.

• 7:02Steven Bartlett?

  One of the threads throughout your story, which shocked me, surprised me and inspired me in many ways throughout the docu-series, was this continual desire to move on to the next thing and make things bigger and to capture another opportunity, which struck me as being, at times, like really defining character of you. You know, even when things seemed to be successful by anyone's estimation, you pushed on again and then you'd push on again and again. Do you, do you have any idea where that instinct, all that characteristic came from in you?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  I'm sure that came from my mum. I am son of Eve, which, which is my mum's name. And, but it's also, I think, because I was dyslexic and, you know, pretty hopeless at school, I've forever been trying to prove something to myself and, and, and prove something that, you know, when she was alive, to her and my dad. And I'm inquisitive, I just love, I love learning about new things.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  And once I've actually absorbed everything there is to know about, you know, the, the thing I've just created, I'm apt, apt to want to move on and learn, learn something about something completely different, particularly if I feel other people are not doing it well. And, and so I just love diving in there and, and trying to, you know, shake up an industry that is badly run.

• 8:41Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think she, she and your father, even your father Ted, had high hopes for you?

• 8:49Speaker 00

  I think that my mum definitely thought that I would be, yeah, she, she, she, she, she decided that I was going to be Prime Minister of Britain one day. And, and I think that, yeah, she, so she, she definitely had high hopes for me. My dad just wanted us to be happy. I mean, he was a very lovable, content, funny, witty individual, wanted to be an archaeologist, but ended up going into the law after, after the war. And would have been happy, I think, as long as we were happy. He didn't mind, he didn't really

• 9:33Speaker 00

  want to push us. But, but my mum, I think, expected, expected more of us.

• 9:39Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned school a few moments ago. You and me both have a similarity in that we were hopeless in school. You went off to boarding school at seven years old, which in and of itself is a pretty extreme experience for a seven year old. You described this as being a little bit too young in your view. And you struggled, in part because of your dyslexia. At the time, did you, did you know what dyslexia was or what it meant?

• 10:04Speaker 00

  No, I had no idea what dyslexia was. I just assumed that I must be a little bit thick. I mean, I could just about add up and subtract. But when it got to more complicated stuff, like algebra and geometry and the likes, I couldn't understand the reason for it. I wasn't interested in it. You know, I couldn't understand why we were having to learn French when, when nobody seemed to ever actually speak it when they left school. And, or Latin, or, and, and so I suppose in my head, I rebelled against.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Being taught things that I couldn't see the relevance of. And and actually, that was a good thing because it it it ended with me rebelling from actually staying at school and leaving school at fifteen and and creating some and creating a magazine, which to try to sort of address some of the issues in the world.

• 11:08Steven Bartlett?

  Your dyslexia, you've often highlighted that in many respects, it's been a superpower. It's given you skills that have led to your success. What what is that? What are those skills? And what is the advantage in your view of this dyslexia and how that's changed how you function and operate?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  And I think that first of all, I'd like to say I'm proud of being a dyslexic thinker. And I'm delighted that dyslexic thinking is now becoming almost part of the vocabulary. And I'm pleased to, you know, talk to many dyslexic kids over the years to try to make them realise that, you know, you know, do not, do not be worried about it. You know, look at, look at the areas that you that you enjoy and concentrate on those.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  And the areas that you're not great at, you know, either that you'll catch up later on in life, or, you know, if you're going to start a business, you can delegate and find other people who can deal with those. So I think dyslexic, dyslexic people really excel at the things that, things that they're, that interest them. And I think I know a lot, a lot of business people, for instance, who were dyslexics, who've, who have, have gone on to do incredible things.

• 12:42Steven Bartlett?

  Your headmaster, I read the very slightly humorous, slightly shocking story of when you're at boarding school, you had a little bit of a romantic run in with his, his daughter Charlotte, got expelled, staged a fake suicide, got unexpelled. And then you, as you referenced a second ago, you had this idea for the student magazine. I read that there was an ultimatum given to you by your headmaster where he said, Richard, I know you're starting this magazine. You either got to leave school or start the magazine or stay in school and focus on your formal education. And at that point, you made the decision to jump ship.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think the headmaster was very foresighted. I think, you know, if a kid at school wants to start a national magazine for young people, what a great education. And they should have, they should have welcomed us to stay at school and do it, you know, within the, from, from school. But the headmaster wasn't going to allow me to do that. And, and thank God, because, you know, getting out into the real world, I achieved a lot more than I would have done if he, if he'd, if he'd been pleasant and said, you know, run the magazine from school. And there were a lot, there was a lot going on in the world. You know, there

• 14:01Speaker 00

  was the Vietnamese war, there was the Biafran war, there were the provosts in Holland, there was, there was the education system that needed students to rebel against. And, and so it was, it was an exciting time in the sixties to leave school, go to London, and try to start a magazine.

• 14:26Steven Bartlett?

  I watched your, as I watched your docu-series yesterday in that, that theatre that we're all in, including yourself, one of the lines really struck, struck me when, when they showed the, the small room that you were building this magazine in. I know sometimes it was a postbox, but sometimes there was a small room, I think at a later date, a line was said, which was, this was my education. And for young people who are considering taking a leap when they have very little responsibility or think, you know, very little to lose, throwing themselves in that kind of, throwing themselves in a situation where they'll fail their way to an education struck me as being so important and so underrated. You don't have kids or you don't have a house or a mortgage. And it seems like that's exactly what you did. You used like failure and risk as a way to self educate.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's difficult for me to recommend it to everybody listening to this program because not everyone's going to be successful. And obviously you and I have been fortunate that we have had success doing it that way. Some people, and I'm not going to get, put my conservative hat on knowing that the parents may be listening as well. You know, some people will benefit from having an education, you know, degree or whatever to fall back on if they're, if they're, if they're, they find that they're, they just can't make a go of it in business.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  But anyway, for, I think for the two of us, I think the, yeah, being out in the real world, I mean, I learnt so much. And, and, you know, it's held me into such good stead throughout my life.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  You know, in running a magazine, of course, you're going out interviewing people, you're learning every time you interview somebody. I, you know, I think being a journalist or being an editor, you, it's not so different from being an entrepreneur. You're, you're out all the time meeting new people in different sectors, just learning, learning, learning. And, and, you know, through the magazine. A lot of people would write with problems, young people would write with problems. So we ended up setting up a student advisory centre where we would give people advice on venereal

• 16:50Speaker 00

  disease, or the gay population, or contraceptive advice, abortion advice, psychiatric advice, and just meeting all these people with all these different problems, suicidal mental problems, really opened my mind. It was just a fascinating, fascinating education. And throughout my life since then, I've spent a lot of my life trying to address some of these issues, first of all, in a wider sense in London and now more on a global scale.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  But that is, education was so important. For instance, I remember when I was fifteen in London, somebody who was gay came to me saying that they wanted help. And I just turned sixteen. And I thought very naively that when they said they wanted help, that they didn't want to be gay. Of course, within a month or two, I realised that people are born gay, and they don't have a choice in the matter. And what they desperately needed in those days was to meet other gay people.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  And because if they came from some remote place in the UK where gay people weren't accepted, they would come to London desperately seeking love or seeking friendship. And so, just little things like that I learnt from just being out there, listening and doing.

• 18:40Steven Bartlett?

  That magazine was the first sort of big notable thing that you'd done in business. And throughout your story, and even before I'd met you and watched the docu-series and read the book, I was told by other people, Richard Branson's an amazing delegator. You mentioned it earlier on, your delegation skills. To understand how to delegate to someone else, you first, as you've said, need to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and also their strengths and weaknesses. So what are your strengths, in your own words? What is the bit of the puzzle that you're good at?

• 19:12Speaker 00

  I think I'm good with people. I think I can trust people. I think I can surround myself with really, really good people. I think I'm able to, yeah, to delegate, not to second guess them all the time.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, to praise, not to criticize.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  I think I'm quite good at, if I create something, making sure it's the best in its area, so that the people who are working for Virgin are really proud of what they're doing.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  You know, it's really important that, you know, if somebody's in a pub and they work for Virgin and somebody says, "What do you do?", that they're proud of the fact that they work for Virgin and they're happy to say it. And there are some companies that if people work for, they won't really want to be able to say that they work for such and such a company.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yes, I think my people skills is the most important skill.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  I think...

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Just giving, giving, you know, giving things a try.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  You know, screw it, let's do it. Obviously, it's one phrase I made years ago and, and I've used that phrase many, many a time. You know, somebody comes with a, an idea and I like them and, and yeah, just say, you know, let's, let's give it a go. And, and sometimes we both, we all fat, fall flat on our face. Sometimes, sometimes it succeeds.

• 21:18Steven Bartlett?

  And conversely then, what are the, what are the weaknesses that you've kind of observed in yourself, or the things that you tend to delegate to other people? I, I actually read something which said, which was a quote of yours that said, "I once did an IQ test at eight years old. I don't think I filled in anything. Going forward thirty or so years, I was running Europe's largest private group of companies, but I didn't know the difference between gross and net profit, but it didn't matter."

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Yes, I was in a board meeting when I was about fifty years old and, and the director

• 21:54Speaker 00

  said, and I think I said, "Is that good news or bad news?" And then, and one of the directors said, "Come, come outside, Richard, a minute." So, came outside and he said, "You don't know the difference between net and gross, do you?" So, I said, "No." He said, "I thought not." Anyway, I brought a sheet of paper. So, she brings out this sheet of paper and he, he has some color pens and he colors it in blue and then he puts a fishing net in the, in it and then he puts a little fish in the fishing net and he says, "So, the fish that are in the net, that's your profit at the end of the year and the rest of the ocean, that's your gross turnover." And I went, "I've got it." And I was, ever, ever since

• 22:38Speaker 00

  then, I've been name dropping net and gross to people who've obviously know full of full well what it is. And, but, but the point of the story is, it really doesn't matter. I mean, it's, it's a good idea most likely if your, your, your chief accountant knows.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  But, you know, for, for somebody who's running a company.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  What matters is can you, you know, can you create the best, the best company in its sector, you know, if you're going to create an airline, is it going to be palpably better than the rival airline? If you create a cruise company, is it going to be palpably better than the other cruise companies? If you're going to create a train company, is it going to be palpably better than what's gone before? And if it is, then at the end of the year, it's likely that more money that will come in than goes out. And, and then somebody, you know, somebody else can add up, add up the figures. So I think, you know, to be, to

• 23:46Speaker 00

  run a, to run a business, you know, yes, it helps to add up, it helps to subtract, it helps to multiply. I don't even think you need to worry about division. That, that's it. So, you know, so if you can, if you can do those three things, you can run a business. If you can't do those three things, I wouldn't worry too much. You find somebody else you can and just, but just go out and create something that's going to make a positive difference to other people's lives.

• 24:16Steven Bartlett?

  That student magazine became, kind of pivoted at the end into a mail order music business, which is a big part of the docu-series that we watched yesterday. But then it became so many more things. And it's, the, the interesting thing is kind of how you swung from one of these business ideas to the next, because you'd seen a product or service that you thought could be done better, or there was an opportunity there. When I, you know, in the school of entrepreneurship, if that's like a metaphorical thing, we always talk about the importance of focus. Now, when I look at your story from 15 years old, starting that magazine, to starting a mail order business around, I think, 20, 22 years old, when Virgin was kind of conceptualized and launched. And then by the age of 33, you've got 50 different

• 24:57Steven Bartlett?

  companies involving everything from filmmaking to conditioner cleaning and generating more than $10 million in sales. I go, this is not what they told me about, the need for focus in the school of business. They said focus. You kind of break that law, it seems, of focus.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  So I've never really thought of myself as a business person. Obviously, you know, on paper, I am an entrepreneur or a business person. I've never really been interested in the bottom line, despite what the docu-series seems to betray. I really have been interested in creating things I can be proud of. And a lot of those things come out of personal frustration. And I must have been frustrated quite a lot when I was young because I ended up, you know, trying a lot of things.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  And I just found it great fun investing in, you know, people I met. You know, somebody will come along and, you know, the music business may have been, you know, struggling at one stage in my career with the advent of the iPod. And, you know, a couple of guys come along and say, you know, you should do mobile phones. This is, you know, this would replace the music business. And they were great, great, great people. And, you know, so we thought, screw it, you know, let's do it. Let's go into the mobile phone business.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  And so if we'd stayed still and only done, only focused on one business, maybe let's say the record business, let's say record stores, which is one of our earlier things. We most likely wouldn't have a business today because the mega-stores and record-stores no longer exist because the iPod and free music really put them out of business. So, you know, so by actually going against the rules of, you know, what you learn in business school,

• 27:22Speaker 00

  we, you know, we are still going strong, you know, fifty-five years later.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  And and diversification actually saved us. I mean, like during Covid,

• 27:37Speaker 00

  you know, Virgin Atlantic and our very badly hit companies was was saved by Virgin, I mean, being able to sell Virgin Galactic shares. So so diversification is far more exciting. You you learn a hell of a lot more and it can be useful in times of crisis.

• 27:59Steven Bartlett?

  It's clear that only a great delegator would would be able to diversify without creating, spreading themselves too thinly, per se.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 28:08Steven Bartlett?

  I guess that goes back to that skill of diverse of delegation.

• 28:13Steven Bartlett?

  Your headmaster said something to you that my best friend Joe Ridgeway said to me when I was eighteen years old after I dropped out of university. My best friend Joe Ridgeway from Plymouth said to me, I remember I stood in this this curry shop on in Rushham. He said, you're either going to be a millionaire or in prison. Now, when I read that this morning, when I was doing research on your headmaster, it stopped me and my breakfast halfway through my sort of chew. I thought, gosh. Now, I know why he said that to me, because he knew there was a certain level of desperation in me and there was a certain craftiness, which was could either take me, could either be used for good or evil. When you was, when you did the student magazine, that that prophecy appeared

• 28:55Steven Bartlett?

  to come true one day when the police raided your magazine and arrested you. And I learnt about this in the docu-series last night. Your your mother then puts her house on the line to get you out of jail and you choose to expand, you choose to expand your way out of the problem, which for you meant, as it said in the docu-series, opening thirty record stores that year to be able to pay your mother back. Have you always chosen to expand your way out of problems?

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Um, yes, I think the answer is yes. Um, I mean, I, I spent one night in prison. In those days, you had to pay tax on records if you shipped them to Europe. Sadly, with Brexit, you're gonna have, people are gonna have to do that again. But, um, uh, and, um, uh, and I stumbled into the fact that if you drove across the channel and drove back again, you had a piece of paper which said you'd exported the records and therefore you didn't have to pay the tax. And, um, and, uh, but anyway, so we, we, we, we, we got a, a bad rap on the knuckles.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  I spent, I spent a night in prison and swore never, ever, ever, uh, to spend a second night in prison in my life. Um, and, uh, and yes, we expanded fast in order to pay, pay off the fine. Um, uh, we just needed the turnover. Um, and it was, it was actually, um, uh, actually a really, um, uh, a, a wonderful booster to, to all the team at Virgin to, to, um, uh, and, uh, and fortunately, you know, we managed within three years to pay, to pay it off.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Um, but, um, I mean, I, it, it, sometimes we're expanding, uh, uh, expanding just for the shared pleasure of learning about something new. And, um, uh, and then maybe occasionally on, like, like on that occasion, we're expanding to get ourselves out of prob, out of trouble.

• 31:03Steven Bartlett?

  The most, from my perspective, one of the most terrifying decisions you ever made was to go into the airline industry. Warren Buffett's fairly famous for saying that he has once considered employing someone to sit in his office and every time he feels like investing in an airline to talk him out of it because it's such a absurd, terrifying business to get into. You were running a very successful record label and record store, um, business by then. You had many, many companies, many investments, and you decided to take this huge bet to start an airline.

• 31:36Steven Bartlett?

  Now, there's a lot said about why. Could you tell me in your own words why?

• 31:41Speaker 00

  And it it it really was out of frustration of um flying on other people's airlines, having having bad experiences and and feeling that um we could uh we could do it better. We could make it, it could be more fun. I mean, in in in those days, uh you know, if you flew on, say, British Airways, it was a monopoly. Um uh they, you know, you were, you you maybe got a lumped chicken dumped in your lap. Um there was no entertainment. Um the cabin crew certainly didn't enjoy working for the company and and and you really felt like you were just being

• 32:21Speaker 00

  herded from A to B in in a in a cattle truck. Um and um uh and so uh I flew, I was flying all over the world um to um uh to uh to visit our record companies, because we had record companies in most countries around the world, and and just felt, you know, that that we we could, we could do it better. Um uh somebody came along to us with the idea of a business airline um only. I didn't think that would be very exciting to run. Um and um uh but I thought a really, really good quality airline for everybody, including business people, um you

• 33:04Speaker 00

  know, would be a a a something special to run. And um uh and so ended up ringing up Boeing and um and having a wonderful discussion with a wonderful guy called R J Wilson and then ending up um being able to uh lease a second-hand seven four seven from him. Um and um and because, you know, uh I do like to, you know, to protect the downside, which is obviously important in business. Um I did a deal with him whereby I could hand the plane back at the end of twelve months if, you know, if my instinct was not right.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  Um and um but fortunately, at the end of twelve months, people love flying on Virgin Atlantic, and we ended up, you know, getting a second and a third plane from Boeing. And um and that was, yeah, thirty-eight years ago. And um and

• 34:01Speaker 00

  You know, Virgin Atlantic has, you know, it's like a, roughly the same age as my daughter. You know, she's been, the airline's been bullied by British Airways, famously through the Dirty Tricks campaign.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  It was a really tough time. We took the A to court and we won the biggest libel damages in history.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  She's had, she's had to go through the like, I think, crashes like the nine, nine, nine eleven disaster, the two thousand eight disaster.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  It's the Covid disaster. And, and I'm sure that we've, you know, that it's cost us more money than, than we've ever made from it.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  But it's been the flagship, you know, for Virgin. It's enabled us to launch other companies in different countries around the world on the back of the, the strong brand and the strong reputation it's had.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  And she's, she's a, a daughter that I will zealously protect and, and as long as I can.

• 35:17Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back at why that business survived, considering the fierce competition, considering what British Airways did and what ultimately found guilty of in court with their Dirty Tricks campaigns, the bit that really stuck out to me yesterday was hearing that they had a staff member hack into your customer database to, to kind of spy on what you were doing. That went to court, you won the battle. And that acted as a, a real boost, I think, for Virgin because it kind of staged you as this sort of David versus Goliath situation where you were the underdog. But as you look back on that journey, many people have fallen in that industry. It's a graveyard, as you say in the documentary. Why did Virgin win? What was it? Was it brand? Was it customer experience? Was it just grit?

• 36:01Speaker 00

  I thi- I think that.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  I think a lot comes back to staff. I mean, we've always had a great team of people working at Virgin. They're really proud of the company.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  They, we've done things, you know, we've always been ahead of the pack in new innovations. So, you know, seat back videos, for instance, we were the first airline to introduce seat back videos in the world.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  The sleeper seats for business class passengers, you know, stand up bars and lounges and so on, you know, collecting money at the door, you know, for charity that Virgin was the first to do that. And now pretty well every airline and most airports are doing it as well. This change. So I think, you know, every little detail, I think, the team have got right at Virgin. And if you get the little details right, you know, then collectively, it makes for an exceptional company over an average company. And, you know, if I'm

• 37:22Speaker 00

  on a Virgin plane or in any Virgin company, I'll have my notebook, I'll take notes, I'll listen to the staff, listen to the customers, you know, and then act on it when I get to the far end. And, and then be back in touch with the people who gave me the ideas to thank them and tell them what we've done. And I think a good leader has to be a good listener. And if you're, and that's, I think, one of the most important attributes of a good leader.

• 37:57Steven Bartlett?

  I grabbed my phone halfway through watching the docu-series yesterday when you mentioned the seat back videos, because in the same breath, you mentioned how every accountant would tell you not to do many of the things that you've chosen to do, but also the banks wouldn't even lend you the money to do the seat back videos. They'd give you the money, like $2 billion to do the planes, but they wouldn't give you the $10 million to do the seat back videos. You've mentioned instinct as well a few times. As a CEO over the years, I've had this battle between like instinct and the CFO. You seem to tend to, I think the quote you said was, um, you tend not to consult finance people and accounts people when you, when you have these ideas.

• 38:36Steven Bartlett?

  How have you found that battle between the two, between your instinct and your vision and the money people going, this won't work, this doesn't make sense?

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I suspect that you're an, you're the entrepreneur and, and they're the CFO because you're the entrepreneur and they're the CFO. So I think you've just got to believe in your, your, your, your instinct and, um, and, um,

• 39:03Speaker 00

  and, and go with it. And if you create something, you know, I mean, we're just opening a new hotel in, uh, New York. You know, if it's the best hotel in New York, even if it's gone over budget in, in the building of it, which it, which it will have done.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  The, the best always succeeds. Um, uh, you know, we, we, we famously during COVID, uh, launched a new cruise line, Virgin Voyages. Um, uh, you know, it is, you know, so much better than any other cruise line out there.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  You know, we've had two years where we've had to moth, mothball the ships. But, you know, we've stuck with it because we know that the, the quality is such that, um, people will seek it out. And, uh, and the feedback's been, you know, spectacular. I mean, it's Virgin, Virgin at its absolute best. I'm actually heading there this afternoon. Um, you know, it's fascinating. Each ship has seventy eight different nationalities working on it. You know, twelve hundred people, um, and they're just the best and, um, and it's adults only and it's a lot of fun. And, um, uh, but, you know, there were moments during COVID that we did think, you know, we, we definitely chose the wrong business to launch.

• 40:25Steven Bartlett?

  Virgin at its absolute best.

• 40:28Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean? What is Virgin at its best?

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Virgin at its best is when you launch a new company and you know that because.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  You know, people have experienced previous Virgin companies that they will give it a try. You don't really have to even advertise. They know that when they went on a Virgin train, when we ran the network, that it was really good quality. When they went on a Virgin plane, it was good quality. When they went into Virgin Health Club, it was good quality and so on. And so, you know, that gives us a big advantage with a brand that people have tried, they've loved. And so when we launch something new, like a cruise line, they will give it a go and we make sure that we don't let them down.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  And then, you know, having them try the cruise line if we decide to do a new venture. You know, it's that much easier for us to launch it off the back of the cruise line.

• 41:32Steven Bartlett?

  You are so synonymous with the Virgin. I don't think I know a person who is as synonymous with their brand as an individual. So when you think of Virgin, you think of Richard Branson. When you think of Richard Branson, you think Virgin. And in 1985, you start doing some pretty extreme adventures around the world, which become, kind of pay into the brand and give the brand extra meaning. Things like crossing the Atlantic by boat, which sunk. It seems like a lot of the trips you took either collapsed, like fell out the sky into the sea or the boat sank. You set so many records through that period. So, you know, I was reading about you going 250 miles per hour in a hot air balloon across

• 42:16Steven Bartlett?

  the Pacific from Japan to the Arctic and Canada, again, breaking existing records at the time. This became a real hallmark of like the Richard Branson and Virgin brand, these extreme adventures. Was that intentional? When you did that first one, was it because of a marketing thing or was it because of the fun of doing it for yourself?

• 42:36Speaker 00

  It started out as a mixture of the two, but more, we had one plane. And somebody said, you know, why don't we try to bring the blue ribbon back to Britain for the fastest boat across the Atlantic? And, you know, we can, we can, we can build this boat. And, but it ended up being much more than just a marketing adventure. It became, it became a real adventure. I mean, it was tremendously exciting and I was in my very early thirties and, and, and, you know, it was tough, but it was, it was great fun.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  There were, you know, lots of moments of drama, which there always are when you're trying something that's never really been tried before, including, as you pointed out, we sank, we sank before we got the whole way across.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  But, but anyway, it makes for a good documentary series. And it makes for a good book and, and, and, you know, and it did put Virgin on the map. It made Virgin a much more sexy brand, a more adventurous brand than say British Airways, our rival, and, and other, and other, and other brands.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  I mean, Virgin Atlantic cheekily took a full page ad when we, when we, when we sank in the Atlantic, the only thing that was sticking out of the Atlantic of the boat was the brand Virgin. And, and the ad just had the picture of the boat sticking out of the water and, and the ad said, next time, Richard, take the plane.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  And, and of course, there were, there were people who said, you know, what have you saying? What if you end up in the, in the Atlantic? You, you know, no one's going to want to fly on an airline where, but of course, it's quite the reverse. It's, you know, people, you know, it, it helped put, it helped put a tiny little airline on the map more effectively than anything else we could do and much more cheaply.

• 44:49Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned that ad from, from your competitor there.

• 44:54Steven Bartlett?

  In the moment, competition is the arch enemy, you know, causing you a ton of nuisance. But as you look back on the competition you've had throughout the different industries you've been in, has the competition actually made you stronger and better at what you've done?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Yes, and I think the reverse is also true, that, you know, these big public companies or big government-run companies like British Airways have been made the better by having Virgin Atlantic innovating and, you know, them having to, you know, catch us up over the years. And I think British Airways is a better company today than it was,

• 45:36Speaker 00

  you know, thirty eight years ago when we started. So competition's good for all of us, big and small. And the only role that governments need to play is intervening when there's unfair competition. And that's one of the most important roles a government can play is making sure that they set laws that encourage competition and don't stifle competition. And, you know, we've had, yeah, anyway, there've been books written about

• 46:17Speaker 00

  about companies that have tried to stifle Virgin in the past, but somehow we came through.

• 46:25Steven Bartlett?

  There's this term now called personal branding, which has become very popular, predominantly because of social media and everybody having a channel and they can build followers and they can try and tell the world who their company is using social media. But you were kind of the first CEO personal brand to many people because everything you did added value to the brand. And it wasn't just what Virgin said. I think when I look at your story, it teaches me that the brand is what the people do and what the founder does becomes the brand more so than ever. And I think that's often what we lose sight of. And some of the best brands in the world, like the Red Bulls of the world, have figured out that the things you do say much more about the brand than what you say.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:04Steven Bartlett?

  And you are like the perfect example of that. In the early nineties, you got in a bit of a struggle because of the broader economy and you ended up selling your record business.

• 47:15Steven Bartlett?

  From all accounts and from speaking to some of your current team, they said that this was a very difficult moment for you, that it was crushing, I think the quote that I was told. Is that accurate and why was it crushing?

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Oh, look, I think if you think of your, if you think of the, the things that you create, like children, which, which I do, and I think of it like that because it is just a bunch of people. And I mean, you know, your business is yourself and a group of people. If you sell it, it's like selling, selling, you know, if you sell a company, it's like selling a group of children. And that's, that's tough all round. I needed

• 48:05Speaker 00

  to, I needed a war chest to combat British Airways and the dirty tricks that they were, they'd launched at Virgin. And, and, you know, so, you know, the war chest that I thought I could best tap into was Virgin Records. The good thing was that, you know, the staff at Virgin Records, you know, still had a, had a job that working for another company. And the staff at Virgin Atlantic were safe because we had the financial clout to, to deal, to deal with our competitor. So there are, you know, there are obviously times in

• 48:49Speaker 00

  life where you have to make tough decisions like that. And, and, yeah, but it, and move, and move on.

• 49:00Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have any regrets about, about how that happened, about that phase?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  And I have, I always think that if anybody asked me if I ever have any regrets about anything, it would be, I'd be a very sad person to answer, answer positively because, you know, I've had the most extraordinary life. It's been full of, you know, interesting twists and turns.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  And I honestly really can't think of anything I regret in the past.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  They and I think I really do think I'd be a sad person if I if I had regrets. I mean, it's just been rich with rich with, you know, adventure and and and people and and and I'm not somebody who looks back by and large. I mean, obviously, an interview like this, I will, but and I suppose I've reached an age where, you know, it's important to write books and it's important to do documentaries and, you know, because it's important not to waste your life and and and it's important to share what you've learned.

• 50:07Steven Bartlett?

  How did you feel yesterday watching the docu-series on your life? I was sat just behind you, so I'd watch, I'd look at the screen and now I'd look at your reaction and I'd see you laughing sometimes.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Um, I was emotionally drained, to be honest. Um, I mean, after the after-party, I just could not really get my words out for the first half an hour. Um, it, you know, I found it quite, you know, fairly exhausting. And I mean, they, it's incredible, a really good documentary maker and Chris Smith is one of the best in the world. I mean, you know, prides himself on his independence, which I respect completely. And and so we, you know, we didn't have input into it. Um, you know, obviously, therefore, not everything one's going to agree with and and not everything is, you know,

• 50:59Speaker 00

  in my brain would be exactly as it was, but nine, you know, ninety-five percent, ninety-six percent was was was as I see it. And but but but just what is incredible was the archive footage they managed to find. You know, considering we'd had my main house burnt down, my main house blown down in a hurricane twice. And the fact that anything survived to be able to make such a, you know, such a really full, quite, you know, really quite exciting, I think, documentary series was, you know, I have to take my hat off to them.

• 51:40Steven Bartlett?

  And then in the, as I watched the last episode of the docu-series last night, I saw you once again in typical Richard Branson style, set yourself a new frontier, which was space, as if you, you know, as if all that you'd done before wasn't enough, you decided to aim for the stars.

• 52:00Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  So I remember many, many, many years ago, when President Gorbachev was leader of Russia and he was trying to bring Perestroika to the West and trying to put out peace signs. He invited me to come to Russia to be the first person to go up in a Russian spaceship. But it would have meant a big cheque, you know, 60 million. It would have meant a year learning Russian and being in Russia. And I just didn't have the time and already the spare money to do something like that.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  But it did just get me thinking, you know, that's an inordinate amount of money to charge for somebody to go to space, you know, for that kind of money, why couldn't I just build, start building a spaceship?

• 53:09Speaker 00

  And so we registered Virgin Galactic Airways and I went around the world trying to see if we could find somebody to build us a spaceship and then just found this genius, Bert Rutan. You know, to me, you know, I've always dreamt of going to space one day. I think 50% of the people listening to this program will have dreamt or will dream of going to space. 50% will think, you know, why on earth would you want to do that?

• 53:45Speaker 00

  But, you know, it was the most extraordinary day of my life, my trip to space.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  And, and you know, looking back at this beautiful, beautiful earth that we live on, it was from space whilst whilst floating, whilst floating with a lovely group of people. Just an extraordinary experience. And, and to be honest, yeah, to pinch a pinch, pinch oneself moment to be doing it in a spaceship that we that we built. And, and,

• 54:27Speaker 00

  and yeah, so it was a dream come true.

• 54:32Steven Bartlett?

  In that documentary, we're also reminded of the the cost of all of these endeavors. At a moment when there's a shot of you taking a phone call at your house, learning that in the lead up to Virgin Galactics, going to space for the first time, an astronaut had died in one of the tests. It's a very emotional scene, but it is a reminder of

• 54:54Steven Bartlett?

  the cost of these great endeavors to humanity. That day, when you received that phone call and then you you rushed yourself to the to the to the site, what's on your mind?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  So it's happened to me twice in my life. You know, I was once in a cinema in, in Europe with my kids and I my phone just kept, kept vibrating and and and I ignored it and ignored it. And then on the sort of third or fourth time, I decided to walk out of the cinema and check it. And one of our trains had come off the track. And, and you know, straight away, I knew that, you know, I just had to get to the scene of the accident.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  And, you know, there were no flights that night, so we had to had to drive through the through the night. And then, yeah, and, and then anyway, we got got there at early, early in the morning the next day. One lady had died and, you know, and I went, went to the morgue to meet the relatives. And, you know, we, we had a hug, hug and. And unfortunately, it turned out it wasn't actually a Virgin's fault, but you know, but you're still obviously responsible for the fact that it was on a Virgin train.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  And and and then you've got to, as owner, you know, confront, talk to the press and and and but it I think the fact that you make the fact that you make an effort and get get there quickly is very important. And the same when when we lost a test spaceship,

• 56:54Speaker 00

  I knew straight away, based on my previous experience with the train, that I needed to be there as fast as possible.

• 57:01Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a conversation about discontinuing Virgin Galactic at that moment after losing that life?

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was. I mean, you know, we I sat down with George Whiteside and just said, you know, is it, you know, asked ourselves questions, is it worth it? Is it worth, you know, is it worth continuing? What would happen if we had a second accident? You know, we would never, never, never be forgiven. I mean, it would, you know, it would, our reputations would be destroyed.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  But then we then we spoke with all the all the engineers and we spoke with many of the people who'd signed up to go to space and and we spoke with the family and of

• 57:51Speaker 00

  of the pilots who'd lost. And with one with one voice, they said, you know, you've just got to, you've got to continue. And and we did. And and we're still, you know, we're still. You know, we're still at the early stage of space travel. There's still risks. I mean, we think that, you know, we don't, you know, we think that we're through all the big risks. You know, we've got a, we can automatically switch off an engine if, you know, if anything goes wrong with the rocket motor, just, and, and, and we've got, we've got astronauts actually

• 58:34Speaker 00

  flying, flying our craft. But it is, it is, it is the early stages and, but, but I think everybody, everybody involved are doing it with their eyes open.

• 58:46Steven Bartlett?

  One of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching scenes from the Ducky series is in 2021, when you are months away from your first space flight on your, on your own spaceship, spacecraft, space plane, whatever, whatever the terminology is. You've named it after your mother. You've named the mothership after Eve. And then tragically, she passes away from Covid before she has the chance to embark on that space journey with you, which she was planning to do. That phase of your life, when you lose your mother, when you lose Eve, what impact does that have on you and your mission?

• 59:30Speaker 00

  It, it, I mean, first of all, she'd lived a, a long life and, and extraordinary life. And, and so it was, yeah. And, I mean, yeah, I was very, very fortunate and our family were very fortunate to have had her around so long. And, and the absolute last thing that she would have wanted was for, for, for the mission or any missions to be held up as a result of her death. I mean, you know, she, she will, you know, there's a star up there and she'll be on it and, and I'm sure that she was there and.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  They're in spirit when I went to space and she definitely would have been smiling, smiling down at us with my dad Ted. And so, yeah, and so I think when we lose loved ones, it's, you know, you live on, you live on through your parents and your children live on through you and your grandchildren live on through your children and, you know, that's the sort of wonders of life.

• 1:00:46Steven Bartlett?

  And when you came down from that space flight, which is detailed in your second memoir, in the sort of updated version which has just been updated, you wrote a letter to your mum after coming down from space. You said, Dear mum, you always told me to reach for the stars. Well, I took my own winding road, but I always knew when to follow your lead. You always pushed us to our limits. You were always a dreamer. You urged me to strive for every opportunity I saw. You told me to chase my wildest fantasies, to live life to the full, how you lived, how you loved, and how you are missed.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, she, you know, I think, yeah, hopefully, yeah, when people read the book, they'll think about their own mums and dads and, you know, how lucky we are to have mums and dads who sacrificed so much for us and as we grow up and then obviously later on in life, one can give, you know, give back in looking after them as they get a little bit older.

• 1:01:54Steven Bartlett?

  The docu-series was a bit of a punch in the face from the start because of that opening scene about your family where you're sat there ahead of your journey to space, trying to say some words to Holly, Sam and Joan, your wonderful wife and your kids, just in case you never make it back from space. This is something that you've done time and time again before you embarked on these journeys.

• 1:02:19Steven Bartlett?

  Really, really difficult to watch, really difficult to watch, and took me by surprise because it was so early on in the film.

• 1:02:30Steven Bartlett?

  Why was, why is it so hard to to get those words out? Otherwise, you seem like such a composed individual. But when it came to those words, it seemed like, you know, multiple takes. You got up, you walked away, you came back, got up, walked away and came back.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  So, um, so first of all, I I do, uh, um, I cry in happy films. I cry in sad films. My kids bring a box of tissues when we when we go to the cinema or used to. Um, and, uh, so that, that, that, I'm, I'm, I'm, um, uh, you know, even even now, just talking to you, I can feel tears in my eyes. So, um, so, um, uh, so it's it's not surprising for me to suddenly not not be able to get my, get through my sentence sometimes. Um, but obviously, look, if you're, if you're, uh, if you're reading, um, if you're, if you're,

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  if you're speaking about as if you've, as if you've died to, um, you know, to to your kids and your grandkids, um, yeah, lots of emotions go through your head at the time of saying, of speaking. I I suspect even the emotions of, my God, should I be, you should, you know, is it, is it, is it worth it? And a lot, a lot of the this documentary series is asking the question, is it selfish? Is it worth it? Is it, uh, is it, is it, is it, is it something? Um, uh, is it, is it something that one should be doing? Um, I remember, um, I was in, I was just taking off on, um, to go across the Pacific in a hot air balloon and walking into this truck.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  And, um, Joan Therketel from ITN was just finishing editing my obituary, um, in case I didn't come back. And she said, you know, Richard, do you, do you want to sit and watch the obituary? And and I said, well, why not? And, um, and, you know, I sat and watched the obituary and again, had a couple of tears in my eyes at the end of it. But, um, but, um, you know, but I do think that in life, well, you know, one advantage of doing these adventures is actually you do. Confront the ultimate inevitability of, you know, that you're not going to be here forever. And so you do think about, you know, have I left everything in order?

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  You know, what am I going to say to my children? What am I going to say to my grandchildren? A lot of people don't have that opportunity because they die suddenly. So, you know, so I have written quite a few letters over the years in thinking that I just may not come back from this adventure or that adventure.

• 1:05:13Steven Bartlett?

  The documentary also shone a light on Joan, who has clearly been this huge rock in your life over the years. She's a strong, tenacious, honest, very, very to the point, wonderful woman.

• 1:05:30Steven Bartlett?

  What does she mean to you? And what has she meant to you over the last forty, fifty years?

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Oof, well, I was lucky enough to meet her forty five years ago in a recording studio

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  called The Manor. Walked into the kitchen and just looked across the room and she was the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen in my life. And it was instantaneous love from me to her. And it took me a while the other way around. But she's just a fantastic, down to earth Glaswegian, doesn't suffer fools gladly.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Complete opposite to me. You know, doesn't play tennis, doesn't run, doesn't ski, doesn't climb mountains. You know, doesn't go adventuring. But, you know, she's the most fantastic mother for Holly and Sam and the grandkids. And, and she knows what matters in life. So, you know, I mean, the, in the end, I suppose what matters is, you know, the love you can give to your children, the food on the table.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, but above everything, just unreserved love to all everybody around her. And, and, and, and everything else is, is sort of icing on the cake.

• 1:07:03Steven Bartlett?

  You're a man synonymous with living a life worth living. One of the quotes from the film was about, you know, not living a life that is full of risk is not living at all, words to that effect. If I was Sam or Holly, your kids, and I asked you, I said, Dad, what's um, what is a life worth living? What, what would you say to me?

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  I think just to, to first of all, fulfill their own, fulfill their own dreams. I mean, I mean, not, not to have their father or mother push them into things they don't want to do. So, um, you know, I was lucky with my, my, my daughter wanted to be a doctor and she, you know, she, she did the medic, she became a doctor. She now helps us with our foundation. My son wanted to make films and, and, uh, and he's a musician basically, which is his main love and he, and he, he does a little bit of both of those things. They're both fantastic parents and they find the time for the grandkids.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  So I think just to, um, you know, to, to follow, to follow whatever dream it is that you have as best you can.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  And, um,

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  and, yeah, and, you know, we've been lucky that our kids have, our kids have, I think, found their, found their path in life.

• 1:08:29Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last, last guest asks a question for the next guest, not knowing who they are asking it for. The question that has been left for you is,

• 1:08:44Steven Bartlett?

  where were you when you, when you felt most vulnerable and why?

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  I think I felt most vulnerable, um, relatively recently, um, during the.

• 1:09:02Speaker 00

  About six weeks into Covid, when everything that we'd built up looked like it was crashing down. And interestingly, when the sort of British press, rather than being supportive, really, really turned on us. And but fortunately, you know, my kids and grandkids and everybody arrived around about that same time. And the team just got down and worked really hard

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  day and night to make sure we kept as many jobs safe as possible. And I think pretty well, every Virgin company got through it. And pretty well, every employee's jobs got protected. But that was maybe the toughest time, toughest time in my life for, you know, suddenly, it just looked like your reputation and everything else was going out of the window. But Covid was tough for so many people. And but, yeah, but we've held it to.

• 1:10:18Steven Bartlett?

  Holly and several members of your team referenced that as being your toughest moment. But the word tough is just a word. If I zoomed in, if I was there, what would I have, and I was you, what would I have seen and what would I have felt? When you say the word tough?

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Well, I think that I've never understood depression. And I think I understood it's like, you know, where people get depression from after that experience. And it's good, you know, it's good to, you know, it's good to have gone through it myself a bit. I mean, I didn't last too long. Because I've, you know, brought up by, you know, parents who'd, you know, been through the Second World War, and you couldn't waste your time, you know, getting depressed, you know, there were much far worse things than being depressed. But anyway, it taught me to understand it, which I think will hopefully make me better understand

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  other people's depression in the years to come.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  What were the symptoms of that?

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  And what were the symptoms of it? It's very difficult to to pinpoint the symptoms. But you know, look, you just you just feel very sorry for yourself for a day or two. And then you just have to snap out of it and and and get, you know, my mum, my mum would have, if she'd been alive, and well, she was, but I mean, if I'd talked to her about it, she would have told me to pull myself together and just and and and get back to work and and and I think within two or three days, you know, her her words would have been ringing in my head and and I would have overcome it. And I did overcome it. But it just, you know, you just a little a taste of it anyway.

• 1:12:07Steven Bartlett?

  Richard. So, Richard Branson, thank you so much for your time. I you to me, you've, when I started this podcast, you were the name, you were the name that if one day I could speak to on this podcast, I think we might as well pack it up and finish because to me, as an entrepreneur my whole life, you've always been the north star of entrepreneurs and you've represented and embodied what it is to be a entrepreneur that's striving forward to create better in everything you do. I had the pleasure of researching your story again now at thirty years old, and it's been a tremendous source of inspiration for me. To meet you today, to get to come and watch your docu-series is one of the highlights of my entire entrepreneurial career and life and definitely this podcast. So, thank you so much for that because I'm

• 1:12:50Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not sure you'll ever really appreciate how much of an impact you have on people like me. So I want to make sure that while I have you here, I have a chance to tell you and to thank you for that because you've definitely changed my life. And I know I'm not the only person. And so, thank you. Your book is amazing. The docu-series was so captivating. I stayed up till about three AM last night, making sure I watched all of it and then watched it again, the last episode again this morning. And I implore everybody to go and check it out now on HBO. But yeah, most important thing is I just wanted to say thank you.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Well, I thank you back. And yeah, many, many congratulations on all you've achieved and all all you've been a young bastard. All you will achieve in the years to come.

• 1:13:31Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Richard.