#48 Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography by Richard Branson

What I learned from reading Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography by Richard Branson. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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

• 0:01David Senra?

  I view life as one big adventure. I'm always learning and finding new things to try and challenges to overcome. Whether you're running a company or simply living your life, hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and put a smile on your face along the way. A reviewer described Losing My Virginity as the first autobiography in which the author had written an expose on himself. I hope Finding My Virginity will be similar. If your life is one long success story, it won't make for a good read. What's more, you're most likely a liar. We all have ups and downs, trials and tribulations, failures and triumphs. We just hope to come out stronger on the other side.

• 0:44David Senra?

  The late Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur I most admire, said, "My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time." That thought has been on my mind as I write this book, thinking back to all the good times and tough times behind me and looking forward with wonder at what lies ahead. "I've always lived every day as if it's my last, fiercely loving my family and friends and trying to make a positive difference. We only get one life, and this is mine." So that is from the prologue of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which

• 1:25David Senra?

  is Finding My Virginity, the new autobiography by Richard Branson. So this is going to be the second of a three-part series on Richard Branson. Last week, we covered the book that he just mentioned, which was Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, Made a Fortune, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. So Finding My Virginity is written about 20 years after he wrote Losing My Virginity. So at the end of the first book, he has about a billion dollars in the bank, and for the first time in his life, he's achieved financial freedom. After a career, because most of Losing My Virginity is all about the struggle from starting

• 2:07David Senra?

  his first company at 15 years old, all the way up until selling Virgin Records, which is the first time in his life that he ever had room to breathe and he didn't have to go to banks and beg them to extend loans and raise more credit. So although there is going to be a ton of business stories in the book, after I finished it, after I finished reading the book...

• 2:30David Senra?

  I came to the conclusion it's more about a book on life. And he's almost 70 years old when he's writing it. And he's looking back and he's kind of giving us explicit lessons on, like he said from the prologue, "I'm hoping you can learn from my mistakes." And so that's the frame from which I want you to look at the stories that we're going to talk about today. As quite contrasted from the stories we talked about last week. And then next week will be part three. He's written many books, but I just chose three to cover. And if you want to see which book we're going to cover next week, go to founderspodcast.com/books. And you could see not only next week's books, but you could see the 40-plus books that have been covered on the podcast so far.

• 3:15David Senra?

  So before I get into the rest of the book, and we start talking about the start of what he calls his third career. Just a reminder that once we get going here, this podcast is a little different from maybe the other podcasts that you're used to listening to. I'm not going to interrupt our time with ads. This podcast is supported solely by people that get value from it. If you like the podcast and you want to support it, the best way to do that is by becoming a member. Just go to founderspodcast/support, or you can just click the link that's in your show notes on your podcast player. And for a very small monthly fee, you can unlock members-only podcasts. So these are podcasts that are not released anywhere else. It's only for people that are actively supporting the podcast.

• 3:56David Senra?

  And I think if you sign up today, there's like 11 you'd unlock, maybe 12. And I add, I do an extra podcast every week just for members. Okay, so I'll talk more about that at the end. Let me go ahead and jump into the book. And we're just gonna, we're gonna pick it up right in the year 1999. And this is what he's calling the start of his third career. "Necker Island, New Year's Eve, 1998. I was in my bedroom, trying to make an urgent to-do list. With the end of the year approaching and the end of the millennium looming, I find myself both reflecting back and looking forward. As so often during my life as an entrepreneur, I really had no idea what was coming next.

• 4:41David Senra?

  I had created and sold the biggest independent record label on the planet, and fought doggedly to build Virgin Atlantic into the best airline in the world." The Virgin Group had grown from a couple of companies to more than 100, and I had gone from a struggling hippie to a proud father and businessman. My mind was starting to wander to other projects, fresh ambitions and bigger dreams. It was time for a new start and to look to the stars. Many experts will tell you it tends to take a year to get a business off the ground, from the initial idea through planning, market research, development and launch. Personally, I've always disregarded this rule.

• 5:25David Senra?

  When I was a wide-eyed teenager, our mail order record company was set up in a couple of days, and even more complex businesses like Virgin Atlantic went from idea to liftoff in a matter of weeks. Generally, we like to work fast, try ideas, see if they stick, and if they don't, quickly move on to the next one. I work best when my mind is able to jump from one topic to the next in quick succession. It keeps things lively, and it's amazing how often good ideas from one company come out of another company's unrelated businesses. We talked a little bit about this last week with Second Order Effects. There's many examples, not only in this book, but in last week's book,

• 6:09David Senra?

  where he wouldn't have been able to seize the opportunity if he hadn't already done something previously, like in the case that he's referencing here specifically. Can't start a mail order record company if you haven't started a magazine first. So this whole idea, when he goes back a couple paragraphs where he's like, you know, like most entrepreneurs, I really had no idea what was coming next. So how do you combat, in Richard's opinion, how do you combat the fact that you can't predict the future? Well, he just described it. He's like, "I like to iterate. I like to try a lot of different ideas, see if they work, and if not, let's just move on to the next one." One of my favorite quotes of his, I think I mentioned this last week, is, "Businesses are like buses. There's always another one coming." And sometimes I feel as like founders, we can fall in love with our idea and like kind

• 6:54David Senra?

  of like stick to it as if it's the only one out there. And it's just a good reminder it's not. Okay, so it says, you know, sometimes one company came out of a completely unrelated business. He's just describing that with student magazine into the mail order record company, which then turns into record shops, which then turns into a recording studio, which then turns into a record label that he sells for a billion dollars 20 years in the future. So he says, "The turn of the century was to prove unprecedentedly productive, even by our standards," meaning it's a Virgin Group. "After my first wave as a records impersonario," I think that's that word, "and second as an airline founder, the third wave of my

• 7:35David Senra?

  career as a global entrepreneur was about to begin in earnest." So I just want to set up the rest of the book because it expounds on this idea. I think I talked about it on last week's members episode. So if you're not already a member, you missed out on that. But the quick summary is that he has this idea of this new wave he's talking about as a global entrepreneur and expanding out into other areas with the Virgin Group. He has this term he uses. It's called branded venture capital. So I think I said last week, I'm obviously familiar with what venture capital is. I've never heard the idea of branded venture capital. And so his idea is, hey, we have all this

• 8:16David Senra?

  money. We have a great brand. Let's do a bunch of 50/50 partnerships. And I'm saying 50/50. Most of them are 50/50. Some of them, there's obviously different breakdowns. But his preference is 50/50 partnerships. So people are bought in. Sometimes it's 51/49. And we're gonna find people that are either from within the organization or outside, we'll partner with them. And we'll run a bunch, instead of thinking about the Virgin Group as one company, it's, you know, a small collection of loosely affiliated three. Last time I checked, it was like 400 companies. I don't know what it is today. And in this book, he gives a couple of different numbers. Sometimes it's 100, 200, 300, and so on. So I'm not exactly sure of the exact amount, but you get the basic idea.

• 9:00David Senra?

  And then what happens is, these tiny companies, as they grow, they're broken up into even smaller companies. And what this does is, it caps his downside. It almost looks like, to me, it looks like an out-of-the-money option. So, his downside's capped, his upside's potentially unlimited. And I don't know if I'll cover it in here, but it talks about like, one airline he started. I think they started with like, either three or 10 million dollars. They get a buyout offer a few months, or a few years later, for 250 million. He turns that down, and it winds up going public for like, 1.5 billion. So that's an example. There's a bunch of examples where he takes these tiny little companies that he starts, after several years, and they'll IPO, you know, for smaller numbers than I think we're used to in America, at least.

• 9:41David Senra?

  Where maybe we're the outliers, at least the media that I'm exposed to. But there's several of these companies where he'll take public for, you know, 1 to 2 billion dollars. So that's his basic business idea, and I really like that idea. But the reason I'm telling you all this is, not only so you understand, you know, his modus operandi, and how he wants to organize businesses, and, you know, my own personal, like, it speaks to my own personal, like, philosophical leanings. But, there's gonna be issues with these, because, think about what he was just, at the very beginning of the book, he was comparing, you know, who did he name as the entrepreneur he most admired? Steve Jobs. This is the exact opposite approach that Steve took.

• 10:24David Senra?

  And so, Steve was all about control. And Richard is more about people, and opportunities, and he self-diagnosed a tension deficit disorder. So, he wants to constantly, you know, his business wants, he wants his business to be a constant, like, reflection of his personality. But, the only problem with that is, sometimes, when you have, you're not controlling it completely, you're partnering, you can't really control what other human beings are gonna do, especially the ones outside of your organization. So, that was a very long wind-up to tell you about a little story that's in the book that I want to share with you that has to do with going to court against a partner.

• 11:03David Senra?

  And we're going to just jump right into it. I dislike going to court almost as much as I dislike wearing suits. Back when I was starting out, I'd scribbled out the words "we don't need lawyers" in my notebook and underlined them for good measure. Court cases can keep me up at night with worry, and there have been numerous occasions over the years where we've had to go and defend ourselves. My first, and now we're going to do some flashback before we get to this fight with T-Mobile. My first experience was back in 1970, when I was arrested under the 1899 Indecent Advertisement Act for using the words "venereal disease." This is so ridiculous, but it's actually true. For using the word "venereal disease" in our student advisory center leaflets to encourage

• 11:47David Senra?

  young people to get sexual health checkups. What he's talking about is one of the, it's not charitable project, but one of the projects that came out of Student Magazine. So Student Magazine was a for-profit endeavor that they funded by selling advertising. But they would do things that, you know, they were young and idealistic, so they started up basically a call center where you could call in, and it's for students that had problems. They wanted to commit suicide, they had sexually transmitted diseases, they had all these problems that some young people have that they're uncomfortable telling, like, maybe their family about. So that's what he's talking about, that's what the Student Advisory Center was. So he's saying, hey, we had these ads saying you need to get checked to make sure you're

• 12:32David Senra?

  not spreading venereal diseases. After a day in the dock, meaning jail, we were given a nominal fine of seven pounds, but as a result, the outmoded law was eventually changed. Next, the infamous Sex Pistols case in 1977, when we were taken to court for displaying the band's album title "Nevermind the Bollocks" in our record store window. So that's the second time he's prosecuted under the 1899 Indecent Advertisements Act. And this is actually, I don't know if I covered this last week, but it's actually pretty funny how he gets out of this. We won the case when a professor of linguistics testified for us that bollocks was a nickname for priest. So they actually, what is it called? The epistemology?

• 13:16David Senra?

  I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but basically tracing where the term, how the term originally started and the changing of the actual definition into like the slang. So they were using bollocks, like BS. But the actual definition was derivative of clergy, like priests. So it says, "Before revealing that he was a priest himself," and so once he had this linguistics expert testify, the judge realized he's a priest and the charges were dropped. So it says, "I was in no mood for another day in court, and not because I hate wearing a tie, but the situation with T-Mobile was so serious, there was no other option."

• 13:58David Senra?

  So this is an example of what he means by branded venture capital. So we're going to figure out what is Virgin Mobile, like what are the components that make up Virgin Mobile? He says, "The shame was that Virgin Mobile was actually doing really well. By 2003, Virgin Mobile UK was turning over more than a million dollars, or excuse me, a million pounds a day." Again, I'm so used to talking about dollars that sometimes I'm going to be saying dollars accidentally. It's every number that is in this book is in pounds. "As such, we were already looking into floating the business on the stock exchange. Our partners, T-Mobile, was very happy with the way things were going, or so I thought. It all changed with the arrival of the new T-Mobile UK Managing Director, Harris Jones,

• 14:42David Senra?

  from America. Mr. Jones took a very different view of the situation. He saw our relative inexperience in mobile markets as an opportunity and decided to try to snatch our 50% share in a company now worth more than $1 billion." He claimed he was upset that T-Mobile had to pay us a marketing fee of around 4.56 pounds a month for every Virgin Mobile customer. The deal was written plain as day in our contract. But this didn't stop T-Mobile calling in their high-powered lawyers and threatening us with court if we didn't change the agreement. I thought it was disgraceful and we immediately took legal advice.

• 15:24David Senra?

  However, we were in an acutely difficult position because as we didn't own our own infrastructure, our masks, we relied on T-Mobile to provide service for our 2.4 million customers. See what he's doing there? So, he's basically just rebranded, and this is common, you see this in the United States, like MetroPCS and all these other cricket, stuff like that. We have a third party say, "Hey, we're gonna do a new service, we're gonna..." The branding on top of it's gonna be different, the price structure might be different, but we need you to provide, to become our partner and provide the actual service, which is what T-Mobile's doing. So, think about Virgin UK as just being a different, operating under like a private label, in this case, Virgin Mobile UK in the United Kingdom.

• 16:08David Senra?

  He does this in a couple of different other countries too. So, it says, "As was typical at the time, Virgin Group's cash flow was running low, with money disappearing fast into Virgin Atlantic among others. We could ill afford an expensive legal battle. T-Mobile asked us outright to cut the marketing fee payments. We debated whether it was worth conceding substantial amounts of money for the sake of saving the relationship. In the end, we decided on principle to stand firm. 'We're in the right here, I'm not being bullied by them,' I told the team. Once we gave them our response, T-Mobile attempted to break our partnership by activating a so-called no-fault termination clause.

• 16:49David Senra?

  If successful, it would have given them all of our shares worth over half a billion pounds for just one pound. A date in court became inevitable." See, I don't know when this is taking place because, well, he says by 2003. Okay, so that's about 10 years after he sold?

• 17:15David Senra?

  The record company? Because he's saying they're running out of cash, but he just had 500 pounds. So maybe, meaning like actual cash flow, and he reinvested it into companies. Okay. Well, I guess it's not, that's just my own curiosity. It's not too important to the story. The judge not only saw our side of the story, he was actually appalled by T-Mobile's behavior. In my judgment, this is the judge talking, their behavior was not acceptable commercial conduct. T-Mobile took the view that its commercial interests took precedence over the rights and wrongs of the situation. That in my judgment is a course of conduct which is deserving of moral condemnation. Instead of T-Mobile being given our shares for one pound, as they demanded, the judge

• 18:00David Senra?

  ordered them to give us all of their shares worth 500 million pounds for one pound. What's more, they were made to pay the cost of both sides as well as the damages. A bad day for T-Mobile just got worse. By taking us to court, they had ended up losing well over half a billion pounds. The following day, I had a telephone call from the head of T-Mobile's owners. This is this company called Dutch Telecom. So he says, "He was really charming, genuinely mortified by what had happened, and invited me over to their headquarters so he could apologize in person. He told me he was going to fire Harris Jones," that's the guy that came from America that

• 18:44David Senra?

  took over Virgin Mobile UK, or excuse me, T-Mobile UK, and got them into this whole mess in the first place, "and that he accepted the court's judgment. I hope," and this is the surprising part, "I hope we can enter into another commercial deal going forward," he said. "I was impressed and admired his pragmatism," and this is the lesson, "even though he had lost half a billion, he wanted to at least rescue something from it."

• 19:10David Senra?

  Okay, so this is how he identifies the opportunity for Virgin America. And his, his conclusion is something that, um, that I love to hear. And it's something that I think is observable when you take the time to think about it. And so that size, meaning size of a company, rarely equates to the quality of the company. So he says, "Whenever I flew in America, I encountered the same problems I used to find with international travel. The service was poor, prices were high, the entertainment was almost nonexistent, the food was barely edible, and the customers were missing out. It felt like an accepted truth that cross-country American flights were something to be endured rather than enjoy.

• 19:53David Senra?

  We saw it as a real chance to disrupt a sector where we had already had expertise and a key market where the Virgin brand was loved but had room to expand. Why not make flying good again instead of treating customers like cattle?" So a few pages later, he identifies, "Why is that even the case?" And he says, "In their wisdom, the US competition authorities somehow let the six largest airlines in the US become three giant airlines. Through sheer size, they dominate the market and controls key slot, excuse me, control slots in key airports, stifling competition and innovation. The industry response bore this theory out.

• 20:34David Senra?

  In nearly every major survey of the US airlines, United came out last, while Virgin America was top of the pile. Size rarely equates to quality." So the most of the part I'm going to skip over is, uh, there's this huge war with the consolidation of the airlines. They're continuing to consolidate internationally as well.

• 20:58David Senra?

  So Virgin America creates a profitable airline, they're doing rather well. They take it public and then they get bought out by Alaska Airlines, which just happened recently, in the last maybe two years, I think. And later on in the book, he talks about how being furious because you have this beloved brand, right? And Alaska buys them, I don't know, for maybe like $2 billion, something like that. And they shut everything down and fire all the employees.

• 21:31David Senra?

  So from a consumer's standpoint, like, why do you do that? And you do that because you're trying to eliminate competition. But that's not good for your customers. So it's just something I hate seeing. Even though I'm very much capitalist, I don't like concentration. What I find, like, in my personal opinion, like, this is really crony capitalism. When you have, you know, usually, these massive companies that have paid off politicians and now are getting to... Like, the politicians should be working for the consumer. And what is best for the consumer is, like, a diversified market, lots of little players trying to innovate and constantly, like, improve not only the product they're making, but the prices that consumers are paying.

• 22:12David Senra?

  And letting, you know, six airlines consolidate into three, like, that's just not... It's never good. At least, it's not good for us. Might be good for the shareholders and the people of the company, but you gotta, I think, think broader. Okay. So, I wanna... He has this... So, a lot of... A lot of what he's written about in these books is, like, his adventure side. He has, like, six Guinness Book of World Records from anything from, like, the fastest... Crossing the Atlantic Ocean the fastest in a balloon to crossing the fastest in, like, a boat. All kinds of, you know, kind of dangerous, crazy, life-threatening adventures he's been

• 22:56David Senra?

  on. But the reason I left a lot of that out is because I wanna focus, obviously, like, the lessons that we could take for a business. But I think he has this anecdote here that's helpful for us, and it's the... How would I put this? Like, the core... The correlation between risk and focus. And this is especially present in my mind because I just saw this fantastic documentary in the movie theater with, um... I think it's by National Geographic. It's called Free Solo, and it's about this... Free Solo means mountain climbing with no... With only your hands, feet, and chalk. And it's about what they call one of the greatest athletic feats in human history.

• 23:41David Senra?

  And this guy named Alex Honn walks up to this 3,000 foot tall piece of granite in Yosemite National Park called El Capitan, and he climbs it in four hours, just on his own will. So, once I finish reading this part, I'll explain to you why I feel like they're connected. So it says, "Pushing the limits of flying and stretching the technology to take us into space offers those who take part in it remarkable, never-to-be-forgotten experiences. But those rewards don't come without a risk attached. And in the mid 90s, I was devastated to lose several heroic men in two separate accidents." So, I don't know if that's a typo, because he says in the mid 90s, but now we're in

• 24:25David Senra?

  February 2005 when this happens. So, he actually, this guy we're going to talk about that dies, dies in 2007. So, I'm a little confused by that. "In February 2005, I had turned my attention away from Virgin Galactic and back to the project that had led us to working with Burt Rutan in the first place, which is the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer." So, Virgin Galactic, you know, this is, you probably know, this is his attempt to take regular citizens into low Earth orbit, into, you know, what is defined as like the lowest part of space. Now, the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer is this, I would say, marketing stunt that he did.

• 25:09David Senra?

  That might not have been his primary motivation, but it was like the largest, the longest flight without stopping to refuel. It's like this future, if you want to Google, and you want to see what it looks like, just Google Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. It's a rather interesting plane designed by this guy named Burt Rutan, who is also heavily featured in that book, Space Barons, which I did a podcast a few months, a few weeks or months ago. But it was just like carbon fiber futuristic plane that traveled. Well, am I actually gonna, am I telling you what's gonna happen before it happens? Okay, yeah, I am. I'm actually gonna tell you. Let me, let me just read this, because the book's gonna describe it better than I could summarize it. So it says, "I traveled down to Salinas in Kansas and was met by a crowd of thousands on a freezing

• 25:54David Senra?

  land strip, looking up at the majestic plane. As Steve Fawcett," so Steve's the guy that's gonna die a few years from now, "and I stood on the runway. I took a moment to marvel at the sheer strangeness of what we had built." Okay, yeah, I was totally tripping over myself. He's gonna describe what it looks like in here. "The Global Flyer had a single jet engine, above a short casing in the middle, with a tiny cockpit in front of it. Steve would have a few feet of space to sit, to sit in while he flew around the world without stopping. To either side, he could see "twin-tail booms mounted, making up a 35-meter wingspan, with every part of the plane built with ultralight material.

• 26:37David Senra?

  If we could pull this off, it could revolutionize the way planes were built and save massively on CO2 emissions. As Steve got into the cockpit, I jumped into a chase plane to follow."

• 26:50David Senra?

  So he's in a plane, it says, "Steve expertly guided the plane off the runway and it flew magnificently from the get-go.

• 26:57David Senra?

  It was exhilarating, flying behind, watching this unique machine zip through the air in front of us. I was already envisioning converting this technology to our commercial jets in the future."

• 27:09David Senra?

  It says, "But then the Global Flyer began to lose lots of fuel very quickly. Next, the GPS system faltered. I was nervous, I have to confess, but had full confidence in Steve's ability at the controls. He was extraordinarily calm under pressure, as he had shown on countless other adventures, including becoming the first person to fly a helium balloon around the world solo. Even so, it was alarming that I could no longer follow Steve's progress in the chase plane. When it got to the morning of March 1st, I had to stop in Toronto to launch Virgin Mobile Canada and was dumped onto the tarmac at the airport as Steve flew off overhead."

• 27:48David Senra?

  So this is back in the Mojave Desert. Bert and his team were frantically calculating whether the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer had enough fuel to continue the challenge. The wind was playing in our favor. If the jet stream remained strong, Steve could still make it. Nearly three days after he left, with almost no sleep, no respite, and no landings, he glided back onto the tarmac in Salinas. He had set a world record for the longest non-stop flight in history. 26,389 miles in 67 hours. So this is the result of that, of this stunt. Boeing and Airbus were quickly in touch and visited Scales Factory.

• 28:31David Senra?

  This is the name, Scaled Composites is the name of the company that built the plane for Virgin. And Bert, that guy Bert Raton, who's legendary in his own right, is the founder of Scaled Composites. I gotta see if there's a book about that guy, because he's had a rather interesting life, and he'd be, he'd make a good episode of Founders. So, talking about Boeing and Airbus, they were astounded that a plane built out of carbon composite material could fly around the world non-stop, using less fuel per hour than a four-wheel truck. They set about developing their own versions, and now planes like the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787 are largely made of carbon composite material. Years later, Virgin Atlantic ended up buying them from both companies.

• 29:16David Senra?

  Steve went on to complete two more world record-breaking flights in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer, which were among an amazing 116 records he set in five different sports. Okay. So, that is the lead-up to, remember, this whole section is about risk and focus.

• 29:39David Senra?

  So he's doing something insanely dangerous and as such, um, he has to be completely focused. And now here's the, the sad part. He says, "But Steve's record-breaking trials were soon followed by a tragedy. A year later, he disappeared while flying over the Great Basin Desert in Nevada. I was distraught and hoped against hope he was alive." Um, so it says, "We, you know, they, they went to look for him. When the Civil Air Patrol called off the search on October 2nd, 2007, after a month with no breakthroughs, we continued the search using Google's Earth new satellite imagery technology.

• 30:16David Senra?

  Sadly, there was to be no miracle. On September 29th, 2008, a hiker found Steve's identification cards in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California and remains matching Steve's DNA were later recovered."

• 30:31David Senra?

  This is, um, Richard's takeaway from this. "It's strange how adventurers often die doing something relatively mundane. Steve died flying a normal plane, not while chasing the land speed record." When you, and this is the, the, the last two sentences that we really want you to focus on. And I'll explain how it relates to Free Solo. "When you know the dangers, are trained for them and are fully focused, you are usually ready to deal with them. Mistakes can often happen in less dangerous situations." So to me, that's, that, that is a story that can be applied to the risk that you take when you're building companies.

• 31:16David Senra?

  But the reason I would say that is because when you watch Free Solo, Alex had been mountain climbing and preparing for that one day for 22 years. Um, and the, the documentary shows over and over again, he, he would climb the same route he was going to climb with no, with, with, uh, just hands and feet with, you know, the way normal mountain climbers do it. They usually do it with partners or they have, and they have ropes. And he would just train over and over again and, and, and practice and practice. And he did this hundreds of times before he attempted it. And what he liked about Free Solo is that the point he made in, in the documentary was, He knows the risk. One mistake and he falls, you know, several hundreds of feet, several thousands of feet to his death.

• 31:58David Senra?

  So he has to be completely in focused and almost in like a flow state where he's not thinking about anything else because he can't afford to. And that's the thrill that he gets off of it. And shortly after seeing the movie, I was so amazed. I went home and started doing research on watching other documentaries about mountain climbing and everything else. And I came across something interesting. The exact route that Alex was able to free Solo up El Capitan. A few months after that, there was two guys who were in their 40s. They had been mountain climbing for 20 plus years. They had climbed El Capitan over and over again, but with ropes.

• 32:35David Senra?

  And they were doing, they were practicing, I guess it's called speed climbing. So you see how fast you and a partner can climb up whatever specific route that you're going on. And so as such, they had done it so many times and got so used to it. They were not, they were not taking the proper safety precautions because they were, they were comfortable. So this is the, you can kind of see where the story is going. If you think about it in terms of risk and focus. Alex, Steve, these guys are extremely focused because they're doing something dangerous. And you know, if they make a mistake, it's their life. But when you're doing something nonchalant, something you've done a million times, I'm just flying a normal plane. Like he said, there's a lot of examples of adventurers dying doing normal things, not the adventure. Well, they, these guys were tied together. One of them didn't set,

• 33:20David Senra?

  um, set a safety hook in and was just doing it, you know, because he thought, oh, this part's easy. I can do it. He accidentally slipped. As he falls, he pulls his best friend off the mountain and they fall 900 feet to their death. So when you're building a company, it's not life or death. But I think the good lesson here is that mistakes can often happen in less dangerous situations. So when you know you're doing something that may be risky for your business or you knew, you know, you need. You need your full attention and focus. Chances are, you're getting your best work out of, that you're capable of out of. Like, uh, let me say that again. Chances are, in those environments, you're getting the best performance that you're capable of doing.

• 34:05David Senra?

  It's when you're doing something a million times that you don't think is... I guess what I'm saying here is that the biggest risk is when you don't think there's a risk. Because that's when you get relaxed. That's when you think, "Oh, I've done this a million times, I can just do this with my eyes closed." And that's when you realize that, you know, maybe the thing that you thought was easy is actually more complex. And that complexity can be dangerous for you.

• 34:31David Senra?

  Okay, so this is switching gears a little bit. This is how Richard Branson feels about selling companies. "At heart, I am an entrepreneur, which means I love building businesses and creating new things. In order to keep this going, however, it sometimes means selling stakes in companies or entire businesses. This is one part of my life I don't enjoy. I am not a person who harbors regrets, but selling companies has always left me with an empty feeling. I can still taste the tears streaming down my face after I sold Virgin Records in 1992 to keep Virgin Atlantic float.

• 35:13David Senra?

  Selling 49% of Virgin Atlantic in 1999 was very tough, too, but we needed the funds to kickstart the early stages of Virgin Active." Virgin Active is like a, their line of like gyms or health clubs. "The expansion of Virgin Money and the creation of Virgin Mobile." I think all three of those businesses, Virgin Active, Mobile, and Money, I think all IPO'd. And I think they're all, I think they all IPO'd for over a billion dollars. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure. "I enjoy the intensity of the building process and the heat of the negotiating table, but as I believe that a business is nothing more than a group of people trying to make a difference, selling always leaves me sad, feeling somehow I have traded people. So when I do have regrets, it is generally about upsetting people along the way or letting

• 35:58David Senra?

  anyone down. Sometimes, in business, people get hurt, but sometimes, too, doing a deal is the right thing for all parties." Okay, so now you know how he feels about selling companies.

• 36:13David Senra?

  Um, this is, I don't know why this has been on my mind so much about just like enjoying the time you have now because it's only coming once. And maybe it's because I have a young daughter and I know like there's a lot of stories that kind of make me, uh, can't be, the word's not nostalgic because I haven't experienced it yet, but in the book, Richard talks about like, you know, his daughter Holly's born and one day he's playing with her, you know, dance, uh, playing, dancing with her at three years old and the next he looks up and she's getting married. And, um, I thought about that last night. I was out to dinner with my wife and I was just like, we're gonna miss these times. Like, she's like, what do you mean? I was like, these times, right now, being in our early 30s, like having a young child like this, like 20 years from now, you're gonna, you're

• 36:57David Senra?

  just gonna miss it. I want to make sure that I'm like relishing and enjoying life. And I think I told, and she looked at me like I was a little crazy. I was like, listen, I really think it's because I'm reading all these autobiographies and these, you know, they're writing autobiographies towards the end of their life and they're talking about things they look back on and they miss and it's heavily influencing me. So I tell you that to tell you, to say the next thing is that, you know, something I've talked about, I think it started in the Paul Allen book, might've started in before that, but just this idea that, you know, it's really hard for us as single people, as individuals to make a change in the world. It's not impossible, it's really hard. But the thing you can influence is like your immediate surrounding. And even more of an influence is by being

• 37:40David Senra?

  a good parent, I think is the best thing that you can do to have a positive impact in the world. Because if everybody was a good parent, like think about all the, the ways kids can grow up and, and just really wretched, putrid environments. And those kids are influenced by that environment and they become the adults and they do the same thing. You gotta break the cycle somewhere. And so this is just a quick little paragraph about, it's kind of stuck in my mind about him talking to, um,

• 38:10David Senra?

  He's talking to his son. He's like, "Like many young people, Sam," this is his son, "hadn't worked out what he wanted to do by the time he left school. I reassured him that that was absolutely fine and natural, too." Just think about those two sentences. Like, how many of us knew? I mean, you're just so young. You don't know anything about the world yet. And so I do think there's a lot of pressure to make a decision. Like, think about how it's set up in the United States, like, I guess in most other countries, but just talking about the culture that I grew up in. We're asking 16- and 17-year-olds to make life-changing decisions, to sometimes take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and pick a career that they are going to need to enjoy for the next 40 years. Like, that just seems really impossible.

• 38:55David Senra?

  And so I felt these things, too. Like, I'm sure you probably did as well at this age. And so he goes, "You're 19." I remember telling him in one conversation, and this is the sentence that just hit me hard, and I was kind of talking about last night at dinner. "That only happens once, so enjoy it." I was very keen not to put any pressure on him or his sister and let them stand on their own two feet. Like me, Sam wasn't particularly academic and told me that school had always made him feel like his options were quite narrow. So he goes on and tells him, "Hey, take a gap year. Like, learn who you are first." And so I'm not going to continue reading the rest of that, but it's just a reminder.

• 39:40David Senra?

  You know, if you are, whether you are a parent already or you're going to be, you know, most likely, most of the people listening to this are either a parent already or will be one day. You've just got to, um, just try to be a good parent. Just really think about it. It's probably the most important things that we're ever going to do in our lives. Although sometimes it feels like our businesses are, you know? All right, um, okay, so let me skip ahead.

• 40:08David Senra?

  Oh, this is interesting because I've told you one of my favorite authors is Michael Lewis. He can make almost any subject entertaining. And one of the books that I've read that made a fundamental difference on me, maybe because of the time I was younger when I read it, or I don't know what it was, but it's The Big Short. So this is right around the time that Richard's be giving a business opportunity. And this is taking place in the early to mid 2000s. And this is his, his, the takeaway from the story is to trust your intuition. "In the mid 2000s, lots of people were excited about a new commodity that Goldman Sachs wanted to invest in. I had never heard of it, found it quite confusing, and balked at the amount of money required.

• 40:53David Senra?

  We decided to bide our time and get more details. As we investigated the deal further, I grew even more skeptical about the damage it could do to our brand, and we turned it down. I forgot all about those commodities until the real estate lending crash sent the financial world into disarray." So several years later, suddenly the commodities were all anybody was talking about: subprime mortgages. Many experts placed a lot of the blame for the crash on subprimes, and Goldman Sachs were fined 550 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As well as forking out the second biggest penalty ever paid by a Wall Street company, Goldman Sachs also had to state that its subprimes' marketing material, the same documents we

• 41:36David Senra?

  had been looking at, had misled investors with incomplete information. So basically, they wanted a ton of money in an area that he had no idea, it didn't make sense, his gut told him not to do it, and turns out they were, they were lying, I almost said a different word there, they were, it's interesting, they tell, "Oh, it's incomplete information." No, it's, they're scamming you. "It was a timely reminder to always examine every aspect of a deal and go with your instinct if it doesn't feel right."

• 42:06David Senra?

  So this is on, this is interesting. I never thought about this. About, you know, he's setting up all these companies. Like, do you have a favorite? And he said, "One question I am often asked is which company is my favorite? Founders, just like parents, shouldn't have favorites. We love all of our kids equally. But if you promise not to tell anyone, I'll admit to you, Virgin Atlantic will always have an extra special place in my heart. Can you imagine me still running a record label in my 60s?" That was actually surprising. If, first of all, I never thought to ask the question, "What company is your favorite?" But if I did, if somebody had asked the question, I would assume that his response would have been the record label. So it says, "Can you imagine me still running a record label in my 60s? Virgin Atlantic was the jump-off point..."

• 42:50David Senra?

  This kind of makes sense why it's his favorite, though, he's describing here. "Virgin Atlantic was the jump-off point from which I built a whole world to live, love, and laugh within." He called that a lateral move. "As I said in 2012, we have no plans to disappear. Virgin Atlantic was my baby 28 years ago when we set it up with just one plane. Like all children, they never really stop being your babies, and Virgin Atlantic is still much cherished." And he's talking about, on the very next page, you know, I think, it's funny that he loves it, because it seems to be also the one that gives him the most problems. So talks about, he's now continuing to talk about this issue he raised earlier about the further consolidation in the airline industry

• 43:34David Senra?

  and, you know, the disastrous effects it has for the actual end consumer. "For more than a decade, BA, British Airways, tried to form a partnership with American Airlines, which we fiercely contested. This partnership could lead to antitrust immunity under US law, which would allow legal collusion on pricing, substantially reduce competition, and potentially put Virgin Atlantic out of business."

• 44:01David Senra?

  And I love this, um, this is like a thought experiment. What would you do if you were king for a day? If I was king for a day, I would ensure competition laws were more strictly adhered to. I believe in this wholeheartedly. And I love this next quote. "I believe small is beautiful and the more companies competing, the better." Again, something I always reference on the podcast. There's a lot of these ideas that, um, you know, this is Richard Branson now writing this in 2017, but it could very easily have been Edwin Land writing it back in the 1940s. So says, "BA was essentially requesting permission to fix prices and schedules as well as share marketing and operational data activity that would normally be illegal.

• 44:46David Senra?

  It was an unholy alliance." And, uh, so, it, this is his takeaway. He goes, "Allowing the two biggest carriers on the planet to merge would create a hugely uneven playing field." Okay. So now I want to talk about, well, this is on social media, technology, writing, taking notes, delegation, and telling stories. And this is going to unfold over several pages, but I found it really fascinating. He says, "Two of the big changes over the, over the 20 years since I wrote my first autobiography have been the rise of social media and the way the internet has changed the way we consume information.

• 45:27David Senra?

  I did an interview with the New York Times, which they headlined, 'Taking Virgin's Brand Into Internet Territory.'" Richard Branson says the web is ready for his style of business, ran the subheading. "The web may have been ready, but I definitely wasn't. In many ways, Virgin wasn't, and this cost us a lot of time and money. One of the biggest mistakes Virgin ever made was not being fast enough off the mark to become a digital leader."

• 45:56David Senra?

  However, there have been many episodes along the way for us to learn from. To begin with, this is interesting, we were extremely quick off the mark when it came to the iPad. And we decided to launch the world's first iPad-only magazine called Project. I joined the team outside Apple's flagship New York store, covered head to toe in a newspaper. The magazine was great fun, pioneering a new way for people to digest stories. I quickly realized we had completely misjudged the market and we were publishing into a void. The critical reception was positive, but there weren't enough people with iPads, and certainly not enough people willing to pay to read a magazine. Within less than a year, both publications were dead.

• 46:40David Senra?

  I was disappointed that Project didn't work because journalism was where I'd begun all those years before. I started Student Magazine because I had a passion for making a positive difference in the world, and thought one of the best ways to do so was by spreading the word in print about injustices, as well as sharing new breakthroughs and innovation in the arts, culture, and politics. While I dislike school, I always love writing.

• 47:08David Senra?

  Aged nineteen, filling with the optimism of youth, I ruminated on the power of individuals to stimulate positive change. But as well as realizing my journalistic ambitions through Student, I was trying to make ends meet, calling up potential advertisers and organizing distribution. Without even knowing what the word meant, I was becoming an entrepreneur. Then, as we struggled to balance our books, the mail order record business we had started in the back of the magazine took off. Simultaneously, we were running the Student Advisory Center, that's what I was referencing earlier, our nonprofit organization helping more than 500 young people each week cope with issues ranging from loneliness

• 47:52David Senra?

  to contraceptive advice to sexuality. With these projects taking up lots of times and effort, Student went on the back burner. Soon, Virgin Records Shops and later Record Label superseded everything and my journalism career is parked.

• 48:09David Senra?

  So before we go into the rest of this, just to recap. He's talking about, hey, I really wish, like, so I started late in the digital game, right? But then, in some ways, I started early by doing a iPad-only magazine. Except at the time I launched it, not enough people had iPads, and certainly not enough were willing to pay for a magazine on just the iPad. But he talks about his first love was, you know, if you're starting a business at 15, chances are you like doing what it is you're doing. So he's like, "I was bad in school, but I loved to write." And so I'm gonna share later on some of the letters he wrote, because he has a lot of handwritten letters that, in some cases, are over 20 years old, that I found are really instructive for, for just good advice on how to live a good life.

• 48:53David Senra?

  But the reason I bring this up is because I love his ideas. Like, listen, I loved writing, I liked making a difference. Maybe the iPad magazine wasn't the best way to do it. And so he realizes that a blog and Twitter is basically the same thing, but the modern equivalents. So he's gonna come to that realization here. He says, "But while Project wasn't a success, I like to think students' spirit of outspoken thought and heady fun is revived through a different way of connecting with people, my blog and Twitter account." So what does that mean? He's basically, "Well, we basically started our own in-house, online publishing operation. And thanks to social media, I'm back in the editor's chair. To begin with, I was unsure about its benefits.

• 49:37David Senra?

  But 20,000 tweets, scores of social networks, 40 million followers, and a world record for most LinkedIn followers later, I'm happy to be proved wrong about social media not being here to stay." So I went and looked, and I was astonished at how frequently he publishes on his blog. The little short, just little random thoughts that he has. I recommend reading it, it's interesting. So he gets into this right here. He says, "People also often question, how do I find time to write so regularly? Whether notes, letters, blog op-eds, or even books like this. But the reality is, I'm always getting my thoughts down on paper. The trick," and this is great advice here,

• 50:21David Senra?

  "the trick is to make it part of your daily routine."

• 50:26David Senra?

  You have time to eat, drink, brush your teeth, and do dozens of other things every day. Just add writing to the list. I jot down ideas, thoughts, requests, reminders, and doodles every single day. If I didn't, I would forget them before I ever put them in action. So that's part of the reason. There's two things here that are important to me. One, the reason I take notes on books and podcasts, and I don't, I didn't know. I didn't know this was less common. Because like, I would never remember all this stuff. It's just, like, you can read a book and then go back five years later, and scroll through and just read your highlights in your notes, and then there's suddenly like, these ideas that, you know, have escaped to, to the ether, are now forefront of your mind again.

• 51:10David Senra?

  I think it's extremely helpful, and there's a, there's a, he said, I don't know if I share it on the podcast or not, but, he's at like Davos, taking notes on a presentation. And somebody comes over to him, like, you're the only one in there taking notes, and his, his point was just like, so common. I was like, yeah, of course. How else would I remember it all? Like, you could, I think there's, and I certainly used to suffer from this, until I saw studies and then my own life experiences, that you, you really overrate how much you're gonna memorize. I mean, even now, I talk to like, my mother-in-law, I'm like, how, like, I wanna try to compare and contrast, like, what goes on with my daughter to like, what, like, when my wife was three years old, how was she? And she's like, you know, outside of videos and pictures, you'd be surprised how much you're gonna forget as time passes. Because as you live through it, you're like, wow, that's the most important thing ever, I'm never gonna forget this.

• 51:55David Senra?

  Not realizing that's just fundamentally not how your brain works. But, um, this whole, the second part is, I want to do this. Saying that, hey, just make writing a part of your daily routine. Because, um, I'm going through and having to, having to read a book every week, and make a podcast on it, take notes, go back and think about all this stuff. I want, what I wanna do is like, write, like, in addition to the podcast, I was thinking about doing this in, like, uh, like, writing, what if I could write like, a 500 to 1,000 words on like, the, the best, what's the number one thing I learned from reading this book?

• 52:37David Senra?

  And not only because it would help me retain the ideas, but I think it would be useful for other people to read as well. And the reason I do this is because in like personal conversations, I feel like whether it's with an old friend or somebody you're getting to know, there's a really, I really like designing questions with constraints because you really see how a person thinks. So for example, I would ask the question like, if you were stuck on a desert island and you could only bring one album with you to listen to for the rest of your life, what does that album be, would be? Or one I ask a lot in my personal life is like, you could only visit one city for the rest of your life. What would that be? And the reason is like, because you know, people say, they'll give you a list of their maybe favorite books and that might be 20 books or their favorite cities they've visited

• 53:22David Senra?

  or whatever the case is. But when you say, no, no, you have to choose one. You really get to see how that person thinks. And, um, and I really do feel it's like a good tool to get to know the inner workings of somebody else's mind better. And I was thinking, I was like, well, what if I, like, okay, so if I wrote an article or whatever you want to call it, an essay, whatever you term you want to put on note, diary entry, um, about what's the one thing I learned from each of these entrepreneurs? I think over time, if I'd already been doing this from the get go, I'd have, you know, close to 50 of them by now. I think actually that'd be an interesting like audiobook or maybe even a book. But if I had to do that and I want to start doing it now, it's like, well, what's the

• 54:06David Senra?

  one thing you learned from, you know, Paul Allen? What's the one thing you learned from Steve Jobs, uh, James Dyson, over and over again? Like this collection of would be really interesting and helpful, not only to myself, but I think to others. So when I think about that with Richard Branson, it's obviously what I talked about last week. It's like protecting your downside. And I think going into details with stories, which we're in the middle of the importance of stories, the section I've just taken a tangent on. I think that would be useful and it's I like books that are there are short concise and get right to the point and I think that's just easier for most of us to learn that way so okay so now we're in the middle of why he's taking notes and and everything else so he goes if somebody works for me and doesn't take notes I ask them are you

• 54:50David Senra?

  too important note taking isn't beneath anyone I take notes in every meeting to keep the frame of mind to learn I edit as I go along and follow up with dates and tasks in order of importance I couldn't have written two autobiographies without them my first widely read blog was about the art of delegation so now we're going from note taking to delegation this is about two paragraphs later it was an appropriate theme since delegation has been a secret of my success for five decades asking for support is a strength not a weakness if you try to do everything yourself you won't succeed and you'll make yourself miserable along the way I now work with our content team on around 600 blogs per year and I call

• 55:35David Senra?

  the team several times a day so that's what he's going back where he's talking about hey student was you know this is ragtag group of people trying to make a difference he's like well I'm not gonna make a magazine today but an online blog is kind of best in both worlds so he's like we have an in-house online publishing operation and it's through his it's through his blog he has a team helping him and they're producing a lot of content every year and if you think that sounds too time consuming think of all the things you do that take lots of time and are not productive I love this I love the art of getting more done by the elimination of of there's a Bruce Lee quote it's like it's the daily decrease

• 56:15David Senra?

  not the daily increase that you should focus on hack away at the at the unessential I'm paraphrasing but it's it's one of my favorite Bruce Lee quotes rather than slave over a spreadsheet why not write a blog and turn your pitch into a story Humans communicate through stories. It's how we make sense of our surroundings, ourselves, and our place in the world. Human beings have glands, that's such a, this is such an interesting writing to me. "Human beings have glands that secrete all sorts of things, but the human mind secretes stories. We live narratives. That is the only way we know how to experience anything, and it is our glory."

• 57:00David Senra?

  That's, this is one of my favorite parts of the book, because this, what I just read to you, is just the, his insights takes place over five, six pages, and he's wrapping up like, what the effect of social media and technology is on today, like the importance of writing, why he takes notes, why he feels you need to delegate if you're going to build successful companies, and then how to tell, how to communicate the values of your company by telling stories. I don't, there's just a lot of information I found extremely valuable.

• 57:33David Senra?

  Just a few more things. So, remember at the beginning I told you that this is a book, as much as he talks about business, it's really a book on life, on somebody that's had an unbelievably, an unbelievably, an unbelievable, excuse me, set of experiences in one lifetime. And it's just like his musings on looking back and the things that he still remembers. Well, this is a short anecdote, and it's really sad about, you know, remembering, I would say melancholy, maybe sad's not the right word, but it just, you, you need, we have one life, as he said, multiple, like you have to live a life filled with purpose. Like, do not suffer every day.

• 58:18David Senra?

  Some level of suffering in life is inevitable, of course, but don't suffer through it. Like, make your life filled with purpose. Do whatever you need to do to work yourself in that position. And this is the realization that he comes to, you know, he had a really close relationship with his dad, and his dad's gonna pass away here. So he says, "I rang up dad to talk about the arrangements for the big day." So what he's talking about is that, um, his daughter and his, what is now his, his daughter's husband called him up and is like, "Will you, you know, will you, can I marry your daughter? Will you give me a blessing?" So he's talking to his dad, and then they, after that, they said, "Hey, we want to get married on the same day and the same place you did," which was on, I forgot, I think, December 20th, on Necker Island. So he said, um, Holly and Freddie had decided that they wanted to get married the same date and in

• 59:03David Senra?

  the same place as Joan and I had, 20th December on Necker Island. Dad listened carefully and then stopped me in my tracks with his reply. "I really hope you all have a wonderful time," he said simply. As he spoke, I understood what he meant. It was like an arrow through the heart. I think he must have known that he only had a few hours left. That night, March 19th, 2011, he died peacefully in his sleep. I was devastated. However far away we had been from each other in terms of distance, we had always remained extremely close.

• 59:45David Senra?

  Dad felt as constant a part of my life as the sun rising and setting each day. He lived a life, he lived as full of life as anybody could wish. So to me, I just took away, it's like you just live your life with purpose, enjoy it. He was 93 years old. He said, "Dad died a happy man. The only way you can do that is by filling your life with purpose and love. What you give, what you do, how you treat people, and how you make them feel." He's describing his dad here. "He had a kind word for everyone.

• 1:00:25David Senra?

  An infectious laugh, a cheeky streak, and a thirst for exploration that I am immensely proud to have inherited. His favorite phrase was, 'Isn't life wonderful? It truly is, though a little less wonderful without him.'" Okay, and I want to read, this is one of what I was referencing earlier, one of his letters.

• 1:00:54David Senra?

  Alright, so this is Richard's letter to young aspiring entrepreneurs. Olivia Hill, a 12-year-old schoolgirl who sent me a wonderful note about her own entrepreneurial dreams. She wrote to me, asking about the key skills I used when first starting out. I swiftly replied, "The advice might be useful for other young business students too." So here it is, so I want to read you Richard's letter to young aspiring entrepreneurs. And it doesn't just have to be young people. It says, "Dear Olivia, many thanks for getting in touch. I'm honored you have chosen yours truly as the subject of your business studies project.

• 1:01:38David Senra?

  As somebody who did not particularly enjoy school, I hope you have some fun finding out about Virgin's adventures. As you pointed out, my life in business started with Student Magazine when I was a few years older than you are now. We set up Student to give a voice to people like me who wanted to protest against the Vietnam War and the establishment. I didn't have a career in business in mind. We just wanted to make a positive difference to people's lives. I soon learned one of the best ways to do that is to become an entrepreneur. The key enterprising skills I used when first starting out are the very same ones I use today." Now he's going to list off what he feels are valuable traits of an entrepreneur.

• 1:02:20David Senra?

  "The art of delegation, risk-taking, surrounding yourself with a great team, and working on projects you really believe in. As you mentioned in your letter, I suffer from dyslexia, but was able to turn this to my advantage. I delegated the areas I struggled with to people who also believed in the project. This freed up my time to focus on what I was good at, the strategy of the magazine, making contacts, and developing marketing. We had very little money, so I had to take risks to get our magazine on the map. I approached to be in Student people like Mick Jagger and David Hockney, whom somebody with more experience may have been too intimidated to contact."

• 1:03:06David Senra?

  For some reason, they said yes. I secured advertising by calling up big brands from the school phone box, telling them that their rivals were already advertising with us and playing them off against each other. It was all great fun, and we learned so much about business by taking chances, getting things wrong, and getting up to give it another go. Back then, people who were interested in starting their own businesses were not encouraged in school. Nowadays, while still think much more could be done to encourage entrepreneurship and education, there are lots of tools and mentors to help you get started in business. If your studies spark your interest, then that's brilliant.

• 1:03:51David Senra?

  If you don't get top grades, remember, there's a lot more to life than some letters on a piece of paper. Have you thought about your own first business idea yet? When you do, be sure to let me know.

• 1:04:07David Senra?

  And a paragraph or two later, he expounds on his own personal philosophy. And I love this, and this is where I'll end. It's entrepreneurship is our natural state. All human beings are born as entrepreneurs. But unfortunately, many of us never had the opportunity to unwrap that part of our life, so it remains hidden. Now, as you do have the opportunity, don't waste it. I think entrepreneurship is our natural state. A big adult word that probably boils down to something much more obvious, like playfulness. When we are young, before we have our childlike wonder beaten out of us by adult life, we are at our most inventive and ambitious in our actions.

• 1:04:53David Senra?

  I've always tried to keep that youthful spirit. I think one of the best benefits of having to read.

• 1:05:04David Senra?

  So like so many of these biographies is is that it breaks you out of the mold because I'm constantly exposed to people that just they they designed their life. They didn't just let life happen to them. And it's this constant reminder that life can be almost anything you want it to be. It's so much broad, more broad than the narrow track society kind of trying to pushes pushes us into. And you realize that the people that just follow that track, those are not the people, they're the opposite of the people we're covering here. And so I think that whole thing is like, just, we had when you're a

• 1:05:48David Senra?

  kid, like you have a childlike wonder at the sense of the world. And then it's beaten out of us. And he's like, you know, I'm always trying to keep that youthful spirit. And you can kind of see it in the way he he lives his life. And the things he does. So, okay, so if you want the full story, read the book. You can go to, and if you want to read the book and support the podcast at the same time, like I said earlier, you go to founderspodcast forward slash books. If you buy N one, two, I think, I think I said this before, somebody bought 12 of the books at one time. When you, when you click on the link through the that page founderspodcast.com forward slash books, and you click through, and you buy

• 1:06:32David Senra?

  a book, Amazon sends me a small percentage of sale, no additional cost to you. So it's a great way. It's kind of like if I was sitting on the corner, and I was doing this in like the public square, you could come down and give me 80 cents or a dollar. That's the equivalent of what you're doing when you buy a book. So it may not seem like a lot, but it any little bit helps. And again, like, do you ever regret buying books? Like, a book is a bargain. It's just probably the best, as far as dollar for dollar, I can't think of anything better that you could you could purchase. And if you want to support the podcast, the best way to do that is to become a founders member. For a small monthly fee, you get access to founders members only podcasts. There's already 10 or 11, maybe 12 by the time you listen to this. And I do a new one every week. So if you sign up right now,

• 1:07:15David Senra?

  the founders members podcast I'm doing this week is on Richard Branson and some more ideas from this book. We're going to talk about giving Steve Jobs an idea, Branson's advice on marriage and relationships, his idea about how to turn.

• 1:07:34David Senra?

  The metaphor is, you know, how to turn a business from an acorn to an oak tree, which is one of my favorite Jeff Bezos quotes. We're going to talk about what would Richard do if he had to start over? One of the most unique questions I've heard him asked. Some problems, his outlook on why some problems need a private company, right? So not public companies, and a founder with a long-term vision. And how that's a way that you can only solve specific problems that are not relied on like quarterly earnings. He's got a great story on not, on why it's unwise to keep selling onions when the customer wants carrots.

• 1:08:17David Senra?

  There's some, another story I want to tell you about that I'll share on the Founder's Members Podcast on Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and satellites. And on how expenses compound and how to keep an eye on that. And finally, a letter that he wrote to his grandson, which I think is just wonderful advice. Because a lot of people say, you know, there's these questions where it's like, okay, well, if you could talk to the younger version of you, you know, like what would you tell 20-year-old Richard or 30-year-old Richard? That's a great question, too. But more importantly, that is, what would you tell your grandchild? Because you're going to love your children and grandchildren more than you love yourself.

• 1:09:02David Senra?

  And so I think you'll actually learn a lot from that. So I really like doing the Members Only Podcasts. Some of them look very similar to Founder's Podcast episodes, like the one that you just listened to. Some were very much an experiment. They're kind of weird. There's one that was only five minutes long, and it's a great story from Samuel Z. Murray. Some are long, just as long as a regular podcast. So.

• 1:09:33David Senra?

  My point being is, it's my way to, by me going out and making these podcasts, it's my way to say thank you for actually supporting and allowing me to do the project. And if you get any kind of value from this, and you know, I love the reviews, I love the emails I get and everything else, but at the end of the day, people willing to spend their hard-earned money to support a project is the best signal for me to keep going and that I'm actually doing something with my time that people find valuable. So please, if you do love the podcast and you've been thinking, you've been on the fence like, "Oh, I'm gonna do it eventually, oh yeah, I'm gonna support one day," don't wait, do it now. You click that link that's in the show notes, or go to Founders Podcast, four slash support.

• 1:10:18David Senra?

  If you're doing it on an Apple device, whether a Mac or iPhone, you can use Apple Pay. It takes less than a minute and then it's set and you don't have to worry about it. So that's the best way. The second, another way to support the podcast is, just like I take notes in Highlights in Books, I do the same thing for podcasts. And I do the same, and the reason I've been taking notes for so long on podcasts is because, just like what Richard said, like, how else am I gonna remember them all? Like, going back and reading notes, like, it just, if you're listening to a podcast to learn, you should be, if you're not taking your, like, you should be taking notes. Because if not, like, these ideas, like, a few of them are gonna stick in your mind

• 1:11:00David Senra?

  and they'll stick around forever and they'll probably change the course of your life. But there's a lot of stuff that maybe you learned six months ago, that you heard six months ago, and that by rereading it today sparks another idea that now interacts with an idea that you've had since then. And, you know, knowledge compounds. And so what Founders Notes is, is, hey, we're covering entrepreneurship from historical context on founders, right? We're doing that through books, through autobiographies and biographies. But what about all the entrepreneurs that are still in the arena today, operating today, building companies? When they go, appear on a podcast, which are, to me, what that is, is like, it reminds me of back when I was in college, it's just a lecture, except a lecture is way more valuable because you have an excellent

• 1:11:42David Senra?

  Expert in a very narrow, specific domain, which is they're an expert on how they built their one specific company. And if we can pull ideas out of how they built that one specific company. Now, some of those ideas won't apply to you, but some of them will. And then you can, again, take an idea that's, that's basically, what is that? That's just a distill. It's like their, their experience distilled, right? So you have maybe years of building a company that can come down to a helpful lesson or helpful hint for you. You can then take that from, from them, from their experience, combine it with something else that, from your experience, and now you're led to maybe a new business model, a new idea, a new opportunity. I think it's unbelievably valuable. So for the people that are already paid subscribers on Founder's Notes, you see something I've

• 1:12:24David Senra?

  just done is also explaining like, the value is very clear once you read it. But at the top of every email, it's gonna say, hey, I think last week it said, Founder's Notes turned five hours of audio into key ideas you can read in 10 minutes. And so every week, at the top of the paid email, you're gonna have, okay, Founder's Notes took 12 hours of audio. Basically, what I do is I add up all the, how long the podcast takes to listen to, and then how many words. The average person reads like 275 words a minute. And so ideally, I want the email to be, you know, five, maybe about 10 minutes long, I think is good. And so what, what, what happens is every month that you're a subscriber, paid subscribers are gonna hear for, from about 20 different founders every month.

• 1:13:09David Senra?

  It's about five every week. If you want to test it out first, go to foundersnotes.co, put in your email address, you'll immediately get back the most recent version of the free list. And I, free, the people on the free list are probably gonna get about one, hear from about one founder a week, so about 20% of what I'm currently producing. That gives you a good idea of what the, what it looks like. And basically, it's, I take key ideas and I put them in tweet-sized bullet points. So in two and a half minutes, or thereabout, you can read the best ideas out of an hour-long podcast. And if you're interested in listening to the podcast, I leave a link and you can go directly there and listen to the whole thing for, for additional content.

• 1:13:54David Senra?

  I personally think Founder's Notes is extremely valuable for people that are interested in entrepreneurship, whether you're already a founder now, or you want to be, or you just want to learn about business, business in general. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, go ahead and sign up at foundersnotes.co. Links are in the podcast player, like, like always.

• 1:14:11David Senra?

  Okay, so Founder's Members, Founder's Notes, if you want to buy books for Founder's Podcast four slash books, if you want to listen to the book, the book I just read, or any one other one, instead of reading it, there's a link below. I think it expires soon, though, and it's a way for you to get two free audiobooks. So I'd recommend picking up two of the books that I've covered so far, whichever ones stick out to you. And one last thing before I get out of here is if you want additional content from me, extra podcasts that are not on the free feed and are not on the member feed. I do extra podcasts for people that have left reviews and have told other people, recommended this

• 1:14:53David Senra?

  podcast to other people. So if you do it on like Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, you can leave a review, take a screenshot, email it to [email protected]. I will reply back. I check this email about once a week. I'll reply back with a reviewer-only, private feed that you can then input into your podcast player. It's really easy to do, and you'll have access to not only the past reviewer-only podcasts that I've done. I did one on Steve Jobs, as told through Ed Catmull, who worked with Steve Jobs for 26 straight years, and one on Max Levchin, but any ones I do in the future, that feed will automatically update into your podcast player. If you're listening on things like Overcast, pick an episode you

• 1:15:34David Senra?

  truly, truly loved, and they have a recommendation engine or a mechanism where you can, I think it's a star, it is a star, it'll turn the star gold, take a screenshot of the star turning gold, email it to me, and same thing, and any podcast app that you use, whatever kind of recommending mechanism that podcast player has, works for me. Take screenshots, send it to [email protected], and I will reply back. All right, I've talked enough. Thank you very much for the support. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.