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
I may be a businessman in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I'm an idealist.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the duality of being a practical businessman while also embracing the visionary role of an idealist.
Richard Branson expresses the balance between the practical aspects of running a business and the creative, forward-thinking vision required to innovate and develop new products and companies. While he identifies as a businessman focused on profit, he also values the importance of dreaming and ideation, suggesting that true entrepreneurship involves both grounded practicality and aspirational idealism.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing the balance of vision and practicality.
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 don’t 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.
Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.
Why should a manufacturer bet his money, perhaps the future of his company, on your instinct?
Today's consumers are eager to become loyal fans of companies that respect purposeful capitalism. They are not opposed to companies making a profit; indeed, they may even be investors in these companies - but at the core, they want more empathic, enlightened corporations that seek a balance between profit and purpose.
If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them.
A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.
Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.
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