Pod Insights The Founders Podcast #49 Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life by Richard Branson About this episode What I learned from reading Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life by Richard Branson.
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“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
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 David Senra? Though I have never followed the rules at every step, I have learned many lessons along the way. These lessons have done me good throughout my lifetime. I have written them down and I hope that you will find something in these pages that might inspire you. I believe in goals. It's never a bad thing to have a dream, but I'm practical about it. I don't sit daydreaming about things that are impossible. I set goals and then I work on how to achieve them. Anything I want to do in life, I want to do well and not half-heartedly. At school, I found reading and writing hard. Back then, dyslexia wasn't understood and my teachers just thought I was lazy. So I taught myself to learn things by heart.
0:45 David Senra? Now I have a very good memory and it has become one of my best tools in business. When I was starting out in life, things were more certain than they are these days. You had a career lined up, often the same one that your father followed. Most mothers stayed at home. Today, nothing is sure and life is one long struggle. People have to make choices if they are going to get anywhere. The best lesson I learned was to just do it. It doesn't matter what it is or how hard it might seem. As the ancient Greek Plato said, "The beginning is the most important part of any work. A journey of a thousand miles starts with that first step."
1:27 David Senra? If you look ahead to the end and all the weary miles between with all the dangers you might face, you might never take that first step. And whatever it is you want to achieve in life, if you don't make the effort, you won't reach your goal. So take that first step. Alright, so that was an excerpt from the introduction of the book that I want to talk to you about today, and that is Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life and Business by Richard Branson. So the way I would describe this book is it's as if Richard Branson wrote his own Cliff Notes version of Losing My Virginity.
2:10 David Senra? So the way this book differs from the other two is Losing My Virginity and Finding My Virginity are really long books. It's about 400 pages, I would estimate. Probably a 10-hour read each. This book is really short. You could probably read it in two hours, maybe in one sitting, maybe two sittings. So with that in mind, let's just go ahead and jump in and go through some of the notes and the highlights that I just found really interesting. It's actually a refreshing way to write a book because there's really very little fluff. So you're gonna see that as we carry on. Alright, so I want to start out in the first chapter. The book is separated into nine different chapters, just with different advice, like
2:53 David Senra? life, lessons that you apply, that you're supposed to apply not only in your life, but also in business. So the first one is what he was just talking about in the introduction, that he felt the best lesson he ever learned was just to get on with it, just to do it. So let's go to the book. "I find more reasons to do things than to not do them. My motto really is, screw it, let's do it. I will never say I can't do this because I don't know how to. I'll give it a go, and I won't let silly rules stop me. I will find a legal way around them. I tell my staff, if you want to do it, just do it. That way, we all benefit. The staff's work and ideas are valued, and virgin gains from their input and drive."
3:37 David Senra? Let me just interject here real quick. This whole idea, he is... It's funny because he's known as like the face of this huge company, this huge brand. And you know, he's not, he was not shy about gaining publicity for his companies by stunts that he did, you know, basically drawing attention to himself. But I have to say, like, there's no, when you're reading what he writes, and obviously not knowing him personally, he just doesn't seem to have that big of an ego. And he's constantly taking ideas, he doesn't really care where the ideas come from. If you listen to the last two podcasts...
4:21 David Senra? You realize that the structure of Virgins is kind of unique. In the sense that it's just not one. A lot of the founders that we've covered, you know, they're kind of like benevolent dictators, if you will. He seems to be much more egalitarian. So, this whole idea about empowering the people that work for him and just letting them figure out what the best way path was. It's repeated over and over again throughout all these books. And we see it again here, right at the beginning of this one. So he says, "I don't believe that the little word 'can't' should stop you. If you don't have the right experience to reach your goal, look for another way in. If you want to fly, get down to the airfield at the age of 16 and make the tea.
5:05 David Senra? Keep your eyes open, look and learn. You don't have to go to art school to be a fashion designer. Join a fashion company and push a broom. Work your way up." Now he's going to give some examples of how he applied this in his early life. Some of this will be familiar. Like I said, he's covering a lot of... He's telling similar stories, but in like a shorter condensed way. So it says, "I started Student Magazine when I was 15 years old and still at school. Some people said I couldn't do it. They said I was too young and had no experience. But I wanted to prove them wrong and I believed it could be done. I did my sums with care. I worked out how much the paper and print bill would be.
5:46 David Senra? Then I worked out the income from sales and selling advertising space. My school friend Johnny and I spent almost two years writing hundreds of letters trying to sell space. I also tried to get interviews with famous people. Writing those letters and waiting for the replies was more fun than Latin lessons. It gave me a huge buzz when we got our first cheque for advertising space. It was 250 pounds. A huge amount. My belief had paid off. I wasn't very good at passing exams at school. I knew I would do better on my own in the world. My parents let me make that choice. They were behind me whatever I did.
6:29 David Senra? So I left school when I was 16 to work full-time on Student. Johnny and I camped out in the basement of his parents' London house. It was great to be young and free in London. We drank beer, had girlfriends and listened to loud music. We were like students who didn't have to study. But we worked just as hard, though." Each time a chance came, we grabbed it. We branched out by being the first people to sell cut-price records by mail order. The first advertisement went in the last edition of Student. When a postal strike stopped us, we looked for another way. We wouldn't give in. Our goal was to open record shops, but we didn't have enough money.
7:11 David Senra? So we talked a man who owned a shoe shop into letting us use his spare space. We worked hard to promote the opening. We made the store a cool place for students to go, and one store led to a second and a third. And soon, we had stores in almost every big town. And I was still under 20 years old. So that's an illustration. That's kind of the format of the book where he's going to introduce a lesson and then he'll flashback into some previous experience he had where he was actually applying the lesson. So when he's telling you, hey, if you want to learn how to fly, go down to the airfield and push, uh, and start making tea, or just basically looking for like, he calls them lateral moves, any way into getting your, to your goal that doesn't include like the basic path that's laid out in front of you.
7:55 David Senra? You know, if you can't afford, you don't have the time, you want to be a fashion designer, you can't go to art school, well then, like you said, join a fashion company and start at the very bottom and try to work your way up from there. So, um, there's also stories in this book that I don't recall reading anywhere else. And I thought this was pretty hilarious. This is one of his first business ideas, and he is nine years old at the time. This is, "My very first business lessons were not a success, but I learned from them. My first money-making scheme was when I was about nine years old. One Easter, I came up with a great plan. I would grow Christmas trees. I asked my best friend Nick Powell to help me plant 400 seeds in our field at home."
8:37 David Senra? Nick is, uh, actually, who he goes on to co-found Virgin with. We're gonna talk about him a little later on. Uh, we worked hard but also enjoyed ourselves. We enjoyed messing about on the farm. All we had to do was wait for the seeds to turn into Christmas trees. It would take eighteen months. The first thing I had to learn was how to use figures. I was not good at sums at school. On paper, they made no sense. But as I planned our Christmas tree business, I used real sums that did make sense. The bag of seeds cost just five pounds and we would sell each tree for two pounds. We would make seven hundred and ninety-five pounds, which was worth waiting for.
9:20 David Senra? Even at an early age, I planned long-term and learned to wait for a reward. Um, that's one of the things he constantly harps on is that the reason that Virgin didn't survive, one of the reasons that Virgin didn't survive is a public company is because it wouldn't allow him to plan on longer-term horizons that he felt is necessary to do what he wanted to do. So he says, "My second lesson was that money doesn't grow on trees. Sadly, rabbits ate all the seedlings." So it's his first business and his first failure. Um, so, well, this is a story. Okay, so we were just talking about at nine years old, he has a best friend named Nick Powell.
10:04 David Senra? They try to do this Christmas tree business. Well, fast forward, Nick is working at Student. Uh, they have a falling out. They're still friends, but they're not working together anymore. Once Richard starts branching out into the record business, he invites Nick back in and gives him about forty percent of the music business. And so this is a story about how things are not going to work out with them. And his lesson is that you need to have fun and kind of use that as like a guide to if you're working on what you should be working on. So he said, "People ask me what my secret is. How do I make money? What they really want to know is, how can they make money? Everyone wants to be a millionaire. I always tell them the same thing. I have no secret.
10:49 David Senra? There are no rules to follow in business. These words sum up what I believe in. Don't waste time, have fun, and love your family."
11:02 David Senra? Notice that making money isn't in that list. I didn't set out to be rich. The fun and the challenge in life were what I wanted and still do. I don't deny that money is important. We live in an era where you must have some money to survive. I once said I only needed one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner a day, and I still live by those words. I never went into business to make money, but I have found that if I have fun, the money will come. And this is what I meant about using fun as a way to guide yourself. He says, "I often ask myself, is my work fun and does it make me happy? I believe that the answers to that matters more than fame or fortune. If something stops being fun, I ask why.
11:47 David Senra? If I can't fix it, I stop doing it. As soon as something stops being fun, I think it's time to move on." This is so important. "Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live." I found this out years ago in my working relationship with my oldest friend, Nick Powell. Nick was with me at the very start of Virgin. I was the ideas person and Nick kept the books in order and handled the money. His main job was to run the Virgin record stores, and they did very well. When we started the airline, we wanted it to be the best. We sank millions of pounds into it. Our main rivals, British Airways, tried to stop us.
12:30 David Senra? As the war between us heated up, we needed more and more money. It seemed an endless pit. Virgin Music was wealthy, but the airline was eating up the cash, and Nick didn't like taking such huge risks.
12:45 David Senra? That is when we both knew it was time for him to move on, so it stopped being fun for Nick. I bought his shares in Virgin from him. Nick's first love had always been films. He used his profit from Virgin to start Palace Pictures. He actually goes on and makes several movies that are really successful. I think he won one or two Oscars, too. He's still in the film business, and he's still having fun, and we are still friends. After a struggle, the airline finally went into profit. If Nick had stayed with Virgin, he might have made more money, but he would not have been happy. If we had gone on working together, even after the fun had gone, we might not have stayed friends. He made the right choice.
13:31 David Senra? So going back, there's a lot of... What I like about this book is that a lot of... He just gets right to the point. So it's almost like some of this advice is in like a maxim or an aphorism form. So this is just him reminding us that we just have to make the most of the situation that you just happen to be in. And it kind of echoes a little bit about the advice he was giving about like lateral moves to get to your goal. So he says, "Not all of us have the money to start up a business, or the luck, or the chances aren't there. Sometimes you're just glad to have a job, any job. So you grab the job in the factory, or the store, or the call center.
14:15 David Senra? You might hate it, but you try to make the best of things. But is that fun? I would say, do you really have to stay stuck in a rut? Is that job you really hate your only option? Whoever you are, you have other choices. Look around and see what else you can do."
14:38 David Senra? So this next thing is about taking risks, and then also understanding that you're not going to...
14:47 David Senra? You're not... There's no such... As he said in his other books, like there's no such thing as like a perfectly successful life. And if you think you had a perfectly successful life, you're most likely lying. But the note I left myself, I don't remember, I think it was Elon Musk who said this. But he talked about, it might have been in, I might have read it in Tim Urban's four-part series on Elon Musk on his Wait But Why blog, where he talks about people don't calculate risk correctly. And he feels Elon has a hyper rational approach to business. And he's just not scared that the business is going to fail. Because the phrase they use was, "What is the worst that's going to happen? You won't die."
15:31 David Senra? So let me just read this part to you real quick. "One thing I always try to do is keep my word. I set my goals and stick to them. Success is more than luck. You have to believe in yourself and make it happen. That way, others believe in you as well. Sometimes I get business offers that I turn down. I had the chance to invest in Ryanair, a good, no-frills airline. I turned it down. Ryanair is still going strong. I also turned down the chance to invest in Trivial Pursuit and a wind-up radio. All of these were good ideas. Some you win and some you lose. Be glad when you win, but don't have regrets when you lose. Never look back. You can't change the past."
16:13 David Senra? So this whole "never look back," he's gonna repeat that over and over again, not just in this book, but in another book, the other two books as well. And I, part of the reason that might have influenced him was, or at least one of the stories he talks about, about not looking back is, when he went to jail and he had,
16:32 David Senra? he went to jail for dodging taxes on record sales, when he was, I think, like 18 or 19, really young. And they put the bond at something like 30,000 pounds, which he didn't have. So his mom wound up putting her house up as collateral, so he could get bonded out.
16:51 David Senra? And instead of,
16:55 David Senra? instead of like attacking her son, or,
17:00 David Senra? she had a very, I would say, counterintuitive response. And that was, "Look Ricky, you made a mistake. Don't cry over spilled milk. You can't change the past. Just make it right in the future." And he wound up making it right in the future by paying back, I think he saved like 15,000 pounds in taxes, so the fine was 45,000 pounds, if I'm remembering correctly, and he needed to pay it over the next three years. And he wound up doing that. But for whatever reason, he does repeat this a lot. He's very, seems to be very adamant about not looking back and not, like, just harboring regret. So he said, "Try to learn from it. We can't all run big airlines or trains. Many people have more modest goals. But whatever your dream is, go for it.
17:46 David Senra? Always beware if the risks are too random or too hard to predict." So that's him again saying, "Protect your downside," which we talked about a lot. But remember, and this is what I mean about what's the worst that's gonna happen? Like if you want to start a business, like you're not gonna die. Yeah, you might fail. You might think you'll get a job, but this is him kind of echoing that sentiment. But remember, if you opt for a safe life, you will never know what it's like to win.
18:12 David Senra? Okay, so this is gonna be actually one of the longer stories that's in the book. And if you want to learn more, this is about, so he's giving us his opinion on a life lesson for not only your life, but your business. This is one of the, this is, you need to challenge yourself. And so this is a story about one of his, the biggest challenges of his life. If you want to learn more about this, not only does he write about his air, hot air balloon adventures in the book a lot, but there's also a documentary on Netflix that is called "Don't Look Down." And it is the story of him setting world records,
18:54 David Senra? traveling over different oceans and around the world on a hot air balloon. So this is one of the stories here. "So as I grew older, I faced bigger challenges. I seemed to run on high energy. I wanted adventure. Danger tempted me. I had already set a record for being the first to cross the Atlantic in a balloon with Per." And I think, actually, I might be pronouncing this wrong. It's P-E-R, so per, rather. That's the guy who approached Richard originally with the idea of crossing the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. So now they're doing, well, let me just, let me not, let me just read it to you. "Next, we decided to cross the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the USA.
19:36 David Senra? It was a far more dangerous venture, across 8,000 miles of open sea. No one had ever done it before, and I knew how risky it was because our rival had just died in an attempt. His balloon had torn and he landed in the freezing sea. It was so stormy that he couldn't be rescued in time, and he died from the cold."
19:58 David Senra? Joan, that's his wife, didn't want me to go on this trip. And I must admit, I was nervous. But I had promised to go and we were ready for the attempt. I couldn't withdraw, so I resigned myself to fate. My head said, "Stop," but my heart said, "Go." Whatever the danger, I wouldn't give in, and I think Joan understood. Our plan was to cross the ocean on one of the jet streams that circle the Earth, reaching 20,000 and 40,000 feet up. They travel as fast as a river in a full flood. Below that, the winds are slower. Our problem was the height of our giant balloon from the top to the bottom of the capsule, below was over 300 feet.
20:42 David Senra? As we broke through the jet stream, the top half of the balloon and the bottom would be traveling at different speeds, and anything could happen. That sounds terrifying. So, they're on the trip, I'm skipping ahead, getting to this part about the jet stream, it says, "As we rose, the top of the balloon hit the bottom of the jet stream. It was like hitting a glass ceiling. We burned more fuel trying to rise, but the winds were so strong, they kept pushing us down. We burned even more fuel, and at last broke through. The top of the balloon was caught by the fast current and took off like a rocket. It was flying along at a crazy angle at 115 miles an hour." That's bananas. "The capsule with us, excuse me, the capsule with us inside
21:27 David Senra? was still going at 25 miles an hour." So it's a difference between, that's quite a difference that he was describing before, when you're in and out of the jet stream. So one, if you're in, you're going 115 miles an hour, and it actually goes faster. I think the fastest they went on this trip was like 220 miles an hour in a balloon, which is kind of crazy. Alright, so the capsules, they're inside the capsule, hanging below the balloon, it's only going 25 miles an hour. If, and this is what it's like, how he describes it. "It felt like a thousand horses were dragging us apart. We feared the balloon would be torn in two, and the heavy capsule would hurtle thousands of feet down to the sea." But at the last moment, the capsule shot through the glass ceiling and the balloon righted itself.
22:11 David Senra? We flew along at great speed, faster than we thought possible. Seven hours later, it was time to lose the first empty fuel tank. It seems safer to drop down out of the jet stream to do this. And this is pretty crazy. Look how heavy these fuel tanks are. So it says, "We cut off the burners and went down into the slower zone." At once, the capsule acted like a brake, but the balloon still hurtled along. We could see the angry gray sea 25,000 feet below us. Per pressed the button to release the empty fuel tank, and at once, the capsule lurched sideways. The floor tilted and I fell against Per.
22:52 David Senra? To our horror, we found that two full tanks, as well as the empty one, had fallen off on one side. They weighed a ton each. So they just dropped, what, 6,000, around 6,000 pounds? Not only were we lopsided off balance, but now we didn't have enough fuel to control our height and find the right wind pattern. So we couldn't reach the USA. Three tons lighter, the balloon soared upwards. We hit the jet stream so fast, we shot through the glass ceiling like a bullet and kept on rising. So it's saying they let some air out of the balloon, but we still flew up. And this is the crazy part. Well, what happens to the human body at 43,000 feet?
23:35 David Senra? So it said, "We've been warned that the glass dome of our capsule would explode at 43,000 feet, and our lungs and eyeballs would be sucked out of our bodies." At 41,000 feet, we entered the unknown. So now they're at 41,000, then they go up to 42,500 feet. We had no idea what might happen. We were higher, not only than any balloon had been, but than any aircraft had ever flown, except the Concorde.
24:04 David Senra? At last, we stopped rising. The balloon cooled and we started to fall fast. We would have to last another thirty hours on almost no fuel. In order to reach land, we had to fly faster than any balloon had ever flown before. That meant staying right in the center of the jet stream, a space just a hundred yards wide. It seemed impossible. The final straw was when we lost radio contact. We had been going for hours and Per was worn out. He laid down and fell into an instant, deep sleep. I was on my own. Okay. So, this is what happens when Per's sleeping, Richard's the only one.
24:47 David Senra? He says, "I was so bone weary, I felt spaced out. When I saw strange, flickering lights in the glass dome, I thought they were spirits. I watched them as if in a dream until I realized that burning lumps of gas were falling all around. It was minus seventy degrees outside. If a fireball hit the glass dome, it would explode." "Per!" I yelled, "Wake up, we're on fire." Per woke up fast, he knew at once what to do. "Take her up to forty thousand feet, where there's no oxygen," he said, "and the fire will go out." At just under forty-three thousand feet, the flames died and we started down again. But we had wasted precious fuel.
25:32 David Senra? So the radio, they were, without radio contact for their ground crew while all this was going on, they finally get to a place where the radio's working. And now they're saying, "Our ground crew told us that our jet stream had turned. It would loop us back to Japan. We had to get into a lower jet stream at once, one that would take us to the Arctic. We dropped down to thirty thousand feet and flew an hour after hour at over two hundred miles an hour in a lopsided capsule. We finally landed in a blizzard on a frozen lake in the far north of Canada, in a wild area two hundred times the size of Britain. We were so far off the beaten track, it took eight hours to be rescued. By then, we both had frostbite."
26:18 David Senra? So this is where, this is his, like what he took away from this experience, like how he would, how he thinks about it. "I think the writer and mountain climber James Olman summed it up, summed it all up when he said something like, "Challenge is the core and mainspring of all human action. If there's an ocean, we cross it. If there's a disease, we cure it. If there's a wrong, we right it. If there's a record, we break it. And if there's a mountain, we climb it. I totally agree and believe, and believe we should all continue to challenge ourselves." That's funny that he put it at the end of that story, because I'm hearing that story and I'm like, there's, I, I know, I don't want to challenge myself.
27:03 David Senra? I don't want to be in a balloon forty-three thousand feet in the air. But I, I do love that quote. I've never heard that quote before. I think it's beautiful. Alright. Um, so, his, his mom had a, he had a really close relationship with, with, he still does. I think his mom might still be alive. His dad passed away, but he had a very close relationship with, uh, both his parents, but he learned a lot from his mom. And there's some crazy stories about what she did when she was raising, uh, raising him. So I'm going to run over a couple of these right now. So this is, uh, we're in the chapter that the lesson he wants us to learn is that we need to stand our, on our own feet. So here's some more lessons from his early childhood.
27:46 David Senra? "If you want milk, don't sit on a stool in the middle of a field in the hope that the cow will back up to you. This old saying could have been one of my mother's quotes. She would have added, 'Go on Ricky, don't just sit around, catch the cow.' An old recipe for rabbit pie said, 'First, catch the rabbit.' Note that it didn't say, 'First buy the rabbit,' or 'Sit on your bottom until someone gives it to you.' Lessons like this taught to me by my mom from when I was a toddler, or what made me, or, or what have made me stand on my own two feet. I was trained to think for myself and get things done." It's definitely a description of, of his mom.
28:30 David Senra? And so here's a rather extreme example. When I was four years old, mom stopped the car a few miles from our house and told me to find my own way home across the fields. She made it a game, one I was happy to play. It was an early challenge. As I grew older, these lessons grew harder. This is, his mom was hardcore. Early one winter morning, mom shook me awake and told me to get dressed. It was dark and cold, but I crawled out of bed. I was given a packed lunch and an apple. "I'm sure you will find some water along the way," mom said, as she waved me off on a 50-mile bike ride to the south coast. It was still dark when I set off on my own. I spent the night with a relative and returned home the next day.
29:16 David Senra? Uh, this is the funny part, because he's like, "Look, I completed this challenge." You expect like some kind of adulation. Says, "When I walked into the kitchen at home, I felt very proud. I was sure I would be greeted by cheers." Instead, mom said, "Well done, Ricky. Was that fun? Now run along. The vicar wants you to chop some logs for him." So I don't know if you're familiar with that word. I had to look it up. The vicar is like a, it's like a church member, like a clergy member. Um, and I love the idea that his mom's like, "Okay, that's good. You did a good job. Now keep going." Um, so his takeaway from this is, "My parents wanted us to be strong and rely on ourselves." And then a few pages later, there's some more, this is, uh, Richard learning from his entrepreneurial mother.
30:00 David Senra? "When I was born, dad was just starting out in law and money was tight. Mom didn't moan." This whole thing about not complaining. Uh, his, his family talks, tell, he has a bunch of stories that they share that, like, they try to impart that wisdom on him. And in turn, it's something he talks about all the time. He's like, "Just figure another way out." "She had two aims. One was to find useful tasks, tasks for me and my sisters. Being idle was frowned on." The other was to find ways to make money. At home, we talked business at dinner. I know some parents keep their work away from their kids. They won't share their problems. But I believe their children never really learned the value of money. Sometimes, when they get into the real world, they can't cope.
30:46 David Senra? We knew what the real world was about. My sister Lindy and I helped mom with her projects. It was fun. It made a great sense of teamwork within our family. And so this is just some of the different little businesses that his mom got involved in. It says, "Mom made little wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins. Her workshop was the garden shed, and it was our job to help her. We painted them and stacked them up." Harrods? It's that famous store in England. I think it's called Harrods. Harrods ordered them and sales boomed. She also took in French and German students as paying guests. Hard work and fun were family traits."
31:31 David Senra? So, in the very same chapter, so it's still following. It's like, I'm going to introduce you to the idea. I'm going to flashback into where I got the idea from. And now, he's going to talk about how he applied these lessons later in life. And it's about standing on your own two feet and listening to yourself. Actually, about how he didn't listen to himself first, then finally listened to himself in reverse course and fixed it. And this has the issue of his thoughts on public companies again. It says, "I went from small cottage industries to setting up Virgin Worldwide. The risks became bigger. I learned to be bold in my dealings and ideas.
32:15 David Senra? Although I listened with care to everyone, I still rely on myself and make up my own mind. I believe in myself and in my goals. And I lost faith in myself only once. By 1986, Virgin was one of Britain's largest private companies with 4,000 members of staff. Sales had increased by 60% from the year before. I was told I should go public. I should sell shares in my business." Two of my partners were not keen because they knew me well. They said I would hate losing control. But the bankers said it was a good idea. It would give me more capital to work with. And other big private companies like The Body Shop and Sock Shop had gone public. They were doing well.
32:59 David Senra? Pushed hard by the bankers, I made up my mind and launched Virgin on the stock exchange. Around 70,000 people applied for shares by post.
33:10 David Senra? Those who had left it too late lined up in the city to buy shares in person.
33:17 David Senra? I will never forget walking up that long line of people to thank them for their faith in us. I was, I paused there because I was just thinking about how strange the world he lived in was. Like, we can buy a share on our, on our phone right now. And these people have to send in the post, I assume that that's the mail, right? And then, if not, you have to wait in line? To buy shares in a company? That's, that's just crazy to me. Alright. Um, so I was very moved when they said things like, "We're not going on holiday this year. We're putting our savings in Virgin and we're banking on you, Richard." It wasn't long though before I came to hate the ways of the city. They weren't for me. So the city is like their version of Wall Street. Instead of a casual meeting with my business partners on my houseboat to discuss what bands to sign, I had to ask a board of directors.
34:02 David Senra? Many of them had no idea at all what the music business was about. They didn't see how a hit record could make millions of dollars overnight. Or millions of pounds, rather. Instead of being able to sign someone who was hot before our rivals did, I had to wait four weeks for a board meeting. By then, it was too late. Or they'd say things like, "Sign the Rolling Stones." "My wife doesn't like them." "Janet Jackson? Who's she?" I've always made fast decisions and acted on my instinct. Then, I was stifled. Most of all, I no longer felt that I was standing on my own feet. We doubled our profits, but Virgin shares started to slip. And for the first time in my life, I was depressed. Then, there was a huge stock market crash.
34:47 David Senra? Shares dropped fast. It wasn't my fault, but I felt that I was letting down all the people who had brought Virgin shares. Many were friends and family, as well as our staff. But many, like the couple who had given me their life savings... But many were like the couple who had given me their life savings. I made up my mind. I would buy all the shares back at the price everyone had paid for them. I didn't have to pay that much, but I didn't want to let people down. I personally raised 182 million pounds needed. But it was worth... And it was worth it to keep my good name and my freedom. The day that Virgin became a private company again
35:27 David Senra? was like landing safely after a record attempt in a powerboat or a balloon. I felt nothing but relief. Once again, I was the captain of my ship and master of my faith. I love this quote. "I believe in myself. I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and the hearts that love." Okay, so this book is really, really short, so that is where I'm going to leave this podcast. If you want to support the podcast, and the best way to do that is to sign up and become a member. Members will... If you sign up today, you'll automatically unlock, I think, 12 members-only podcasts that I've done so far.
36:12 David Senra? Plus, you'll get a new one every week. And this week's members-only podcast is some other advice from Richard Branson. We're going to talk about living in the moment, his affinity for catnaps, how he learned how to deal with regrets from Salvador Dali, talking about how, you know, not to look back, but not to look too far ahead either. What he believes in the most, time management tip that he learned from the founder of IKEA.
36:50 David Senra? Assessing where you are in life and making sure that you're dropping and changing the things that you want to change. More advice on how to set hard challenges for yourself, on learning, on how Richard learned how to love to read after being dyslexic, and his affinity and his evangelism, I would say, for developing the habit of taking notes constantly. So if you want to hear that and you also want to support the podcast, and do it for selfish reasons too, which is to get extra podcasts from me, please go to founderspodcast.com/support and you can sign up. It takes less than a minute, really, really quick. And there's also a link in the show notes below.
37:33 David Senra? If you want to get the full story, you want to read this book or any of the other almost 50-ish biographies that have been covered on this podcast so far, go to founderspodcast.com/books. If you click on any of the links to the books there and make a purchase, Amazon will send me a small percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you. And finally, just like Richard Branson loves to take notes, so do I. So when I listen to podcasts, I have for a long time, like I've talked about multiple times, that if you, if you want my podcast notes, and the notes that I take when I listen to other founders speak, it's called foundersnotes.co. You go there, you put in your email address, you'll immediately get an email back from
38:18 David Senra? me that shows the latest free version of Founder's Notes. You'll get a new, you'll get my, a new email of my podcast notes every Sunday, and if you like what you see, you can upgrade to become a paid member, you'll have access to all the notes that I make. And usually on a monthly basis, you'll hear from, if you're a paid member, about 20-plus founders every month, plus you have access to all the archives for all the notes that I've done so far. And that, I think, is up to like 70 different founders talking about what they learned building their businesses, their philosophies on business, how they got the idea, how they got their first customers. It's really, somebody emailed me and gave me such a great compliment.
39:00 David Senra? They used the word, let me, let me grab it to make sure I got the word correctly, and they, they talked about how succinct, they used the word "taught," T-A-U-T.
39:12 David Senra? And I knew that, I thought that that word meant like concise and to the point. And so I looked it up and it's, the definition is stretched or pulled tight. No slack. And to me, that was a huge compliment because I tried to take all the fluff. So we take about five to seven, like last week, I think it was like five hours of audio into an email with the best ideas you can read in 10 minutes. And I just take out all the noise and just give you, like in his own words, just no slack, all valuable information. And that was just a huge compliment and I really appreciated that. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make, you know, because it's basically impossible for one, for just, you have other stuff.
39:56 David Senra? You have a family, a job, hobby, stuff you want to do. So if you're not going to, if you think that there's value in hearing founders talk about their business, which I assume you do because you're listening to this podcast, which is what we're trying to learn from these books, and you don't have the time to go out and collect all this yourself, you might as well subscribe to Founders Notes and get the information without expending all the time. So foundersnotes.co. And I guess that's it for now. I will be back next week with somebody talking about a new book about a different entrepreneur not named Richard Branson. Thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.
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