It took me years to work out the difference between net and gross. In meetings I just used to say, 'Tell me if it's good or bad news.
A generation ago, the image was that you had to trample everyone else down to succeed; but I don't believe that makes good business sense.
We spend most of our lives working. So why do so few people have a good time doing it?
Whatever business you are in, every company can shoot for the start in their own way.
Remember it's OK to be yourself.
Business is the force of change. Business is essential to solving the climate crisis, because this is what business is best at: innovating, changing, addressing risks, searching for opportunities. There is no more vital task
When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better.
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility.
Our model is to develop each business separately with its own shareholder and management - this way we can concentrate on the job in hand, rather than be part of some enormous and faceless conglomerate.
Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.
I set up this magazine called Student when I was 16, and I didn't do it to make money - I did it because I wanted to edit a magazine. There wasn't a national magazine run by students, for students. I didn't like the way I was being taught at school. I didn't like what was going on in the world, and I wanted to put it right.
...making profits is important because it keeps all our people in jobs and, you know, it keeps what we - what we've created going, but, you know, what we're - what I get my - what I'm proud about doing is creating companies which we're really proud of, you know, which we can really be proud of and a byproduct of that hopefully will be that they'll be profitable and be able to pay the bills.
We've got an engaging, edgy, vibrant, fun product, ... It may or may not work, but we're going to give it our best shot.
Take a chance - it's the best way to test yourself, have fund and push boundaries.
Because I don't see Virgin as a company but as a way of life and I fully enjoy it, I don't think I'll ever retire.
You've got to take risks if you're going to succeed. I would much rather ask forgiveness than permission.
Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once.