Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.
Richard BransonRead
Business is what concerns us. If you care about something enough to do something about it, you're in business
Interpretation
To engage in business means to care deeply about an issue and take action to address it.
Richard Branson's quote emphasizes that true business arises from passion and concern for issues that matter. When individuals are motivated to act on their values and interests, they create opportunities and engage in meaningful endeavors that not only fulfill their aspirations but also contribute to the world around them.
In practice
In a motivational speech to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.
It's a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur's metric for success. It's not, and nor should it be.
Some 80% of your life is spent working. You want to have fun at home; why shouldn't you have fun at work?
Values cannot be speedily forgotten if it is inconvenient or commercially expedient. Values have to have meaning and longevity; otherwise they are valueless. You cannot embrace innovation up to a point or only sometimes. Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking cords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.
Please donβt get hung up on this question of whether you need to have experience in an industry before you launch your startup.
What's the most critical factor in any business decision you'll ever have to make? Basically, it boils down to this question: If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards? One business matra remains embedded in my brain - protect the downside.
Participant (Productions) is the only production company in town that has a double bottom line: social good plus financial returns. It's too early to tell how our returns are going to look - though all signs are promising - but social good is what we're really after.
Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.
In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.
Every single person in every single company is either in sales or affects sales. Every single person in every single company is either in service or affects service.
I'm a believer that you accomplish much, much more with direct relationships than by using an intermediary. And that cash you keep in the bank can be the difference between staying alive as a small business, or not.
Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I'd toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four and Five as pure fantasy Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.
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