Richard Branson

Starting a business is a huge amount of hard work... You had better enjoy it.

I make up my mind about whether I can trust someone within 60 seconds of meeting them

Those who achieve great things are the ones willing to be scared but not scared off. If you dream big and take risks, impossible becomes just a word.

The best way forward is to give more people everywhere greater power to build their own destinies.

Success cannot be measured in wealth, fame or power, but by whether you have made a positive difference for others.

Business has to give people enriching, rewarding lives...or it's simply not worth doing.

If you do something for fun and create the best possible product, then the profit will come.

Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.

Launching a business is essentially an adventure in problem-solving.

Growth does not always lead a business to build on success. All too often it converts a highly successful business into a mediocre large business.

If you don't take risks you won't achieve anything.

Screw the competition - focus on good customer service.

If you look after your staff, they'll look after your customers. It's that simple.

I am impressed with just the enthusiasm for life and the fact that some of these people are in their 80's, even 90's, and they're absolutely determined to get out there and make a difference.

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.

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.

In the beginning it was just about the business - now it's about the brand.

First of all, if you're setting up a new company, you want to try to find a brand that can work on a global basis.

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings.

If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough.

Listen. Take the best. Leave the rest.