Richard Branson

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

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

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

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

Not everybody is some kind of media model.

We get real results only in proportion to the real values we give.

When you are in real estate, you are going to make some mistakes.

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.

Nations are great as they are prosperous as they are industrious as they are just.

I never insisted that I was a good student.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

[On Laura Nyro] I said to Laura ‘You know Laura, I think we should sell your music publishing company. I think right now is the right time you have three songs in the top ten this may never happen again and I think we can get a lot of money for it.’ And I made a deal with Clive Davis to sell Tuna Fish Music for $4 million. And that was a hell of a lot of money in 1969. It made her famous, it made her rich. It got people to listen to her music with her singing.

If you love what you do, if you love going to the office, if you really like it – not just say it, but really like it – it keeps you young and energised. I really love what I do.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

In the long run people are going to buy the cheapest and the best article no matter where it is made.

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

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

The golden rule for every businessman is this: Put yourself in your customer’s place.