Richard Branson

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

Competition is the lifeblood of industry.

If your dreams don’t scare you they are too small.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

The way out of the depression is to start spending and doing things.

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.

A touch of the jitters sharpens the mind, gets the adrenaline flowing and helps you to focus.

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

I get my design inspiration from Christian Dior and Chanel.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.