Freakonomics Radio - 321. Extra: Richard Branson Full Interview

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

Stephen Dubner's conversation with the Virgin Group founder, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”

Hey, this is Stephen Dubner. You are about to hear a conversation with Richard Branson, founder of the international conglomerate The Virgin Group. I spoke with Branson in November for our special series, The Secret Life of a CEO. We will be releasing full interviews from that series as bonus episodes, one a week for the next six weeks. You'll hear my lightly edited conversations with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and others. Hope you enjoy. Hello, this is Stephen Dubner. Is that Richard Branson? I am. I'm Richard Branson here. Nice to talk to you. Nice to talk to you, too. Thank you so much for making the time. How's things?

Everything's very good, thank you. I'm sitting here with a cup of tea in my hand and I wish we were talking in person, but anyway, nice to talk to you. All right. So, let's begin. If you would just literally say your name and what you do. Yeah, my name is Richard Branson and what do I do? I do everything virgin. Now, I'm sure most of our listeners are quite familiar with you, but just pretend there's someone out there who lives in a cave who's never heard of Richard Branson. How do you describe yourself to them, at least your professional self? Well, I am an entrepreneur. I suppose you'd also categorize me as an adventurer and hopefully a philanthropist. So those are my three main areas of occupation these days. A tangential and very small question, but one that I'm curious to know.

The Virgin logo is one of the most recognizable in the world, and I would argue one of the most elegant as well. I've read a little bit about its history. I know it came from Virgin Records, and Roger Dean was the original designer, and then it morphed over the years. But can you just talk for a moment about the logo itself and what it means to you, I guess? Yes. I mean, I was 16 when I started off in business. Um, uh, so I was, um, Virgin at business. Um, and, um, and we were either going to call the company Slipdisk Records or Virgin Records. And, um, fortunately we went for Virgin because, um, Slipdisk Airlines would not have been a great success, I think. And we started with a fairly sort of hippie-based looking logo by Roger Dean. And then when we signed the Sex Pistols, we felt the logo was not going to be appropriate.

And so we got somebody into the office and we talked at great lengths about what we wanted. And I stood up to go to the loo and I walked past him and he just scribbled on a napkin the Virgin logo. He just signed the word Virgin. And I said, you don't have to do anything more. We have our logo. And it became the iconic logo of the last 50 years. Was it in red originally? I think the original scribble, I can't remember whether he scribbled it with a red barrow or a black barrow, but anyway, it became red from day one.

And we were fortunate to get that bold, bold, bold color and the bold logo, just very simple. I mean, it's just, it can be used tiny, it can be used large. You know, we're just building, you know, three enormous cruise ships. I mean, I've just seen the logo on the side and it works really whatever size. You know, obviously, it's not your last name. It doesn't say Branson, but Virgin has come to mean almost Branson. I'm just curious, what does it feel like for you to see that logo on all these different things, whether small or, whether small or cruise ship size? Well, I still pinch myself.

I mean, I still get enormous satisfaction if somebody comes up to me and say they've just flown on a Virgin Atlantic or Virgin America plane and had a wonderful experience or worked out in a Virgin Active club or been on a Virgin train or booked a ticket on Virgin Galactic. And I must admit,

I sometimes think I'm going to wake up one day and just realise I've just had the most incredible dream. And I'll be, well, hopefully back as a poor student again one day and starting all over again. But yeah, so I've been very fortunate, had an extraordinary life. Just finished publishing my second autobiography, so that I suppose says it's been pretty full.

And it's been an incredible ride. So yes, and I appreciate every minute of it. Now, your title, your official title, as far as I can tell, is founder, comma, virgin group. In addition to that, are you the CEO of anything? I used to be, but I've delegated pretty well all the CEO roles. And I actually believe that people should delegate early on in their businesses so they can start thinking about the bigger picture. You know, if I'm ever giving a talk to a group of young business people, I will tell them, you know, go and take a week out to find somebody

as good or better than yourself. Put yourself out of business and let them get on and run your business day to day. And then you can start, you know, start dealing with the bigger issues. And you can, you know, take the company forward into bigger areas. And you can, maybe if you're an entrepreneur, you can start your second business or your third business. And so, I think too many young entrepreneurs, you know, just want to cling on to everything and they're not good delegators. Mm-hmm. But it's true also, at least I would argue, I'm curious to hear your take,

that there's, I think in the public perception, there's sometimes not that much difference between the entrepreneur and the CEO. But in fact, the energy and the ideas and even the personality of the person who creates a firm is often very different from the energy and so on of the person to be executing and running the firm daily. Do you see that split in that way, or do you think that's a little bit of a misperception? I think it's more often than not that you're correct. There are exceptions to the rule. I mean, for instance, when we had a record company in Germany many years ago, the person who actually ran the record company was a true CEO.

He was not an entrepreneur. He was great with people. He didn't want to stray from his job of running the record company. And he did a fine job. Whereas in France, we had a guy called Patrick Zelnick, who was a CEO, but he was also an entrepreneur. And he took the record company into Virgin Megastores, into all sorts of different businesses, a bit like myself. And he pulled it off. But once he'd become a true entrepreneur,

the two of us sat down and he then just found other people to be the CEOs who were perhaps less entrepreneurial, who would, you know, stick to their onions and do the day-to-day running well. And because it's, you know, it's difficult to concentrate on looking after your people and also be, you know, being an entrepreneur. I know that once when you were asked how involved you are in the mechanics of your businesses, you said, I don't understand these things completely. And you said, I've never been able to know the difference between net and gross, I'm quite badly dyslexic and really bizarrely, and it was on my 50th birthday that I was having a meeting with a group of executives and I asked the question, is that good news or bad news when some figures were given

to me and uh and one of the executives took me outside the room and and he'd already prepared himself for this he had a um a uh some coloring uh coloring pencils and he had a blank sheet of paper and he colored in this piece of paper blue and And then he put a net, a fishing net amongst the monks. And he put little fish in the fishing net. And he said, Richard, I don't think you know the difference between net and gross. And let me simplify it for you. The fish in the net are your profit. And all the fish that are not in the net are your gross turnover.

And hey, presto, I got it. And ever since then, I've been very swankily saying net profit and gross turnover as if nobody else knew it before. But the bizarre thing is that by then we had the biggest group of private companies in Europe and I'd managed to build all these companies without knowing it. And I think that should be reassuring for all those kids who are failing their maths exams.

It actually doesn't matter a damn. What matters is, you know, have you created the best company, you know, the best airline or the best record company and the best trained company? And if you have created the best, your figures will add up at the end of the year

and you'll have more money coming in than going out. And you can employ some accountants to work out the difference between net and gross. Now, maybe you're a fluke or maybe it's a bit of a generational thing. Maybe the world has just changed a lot. But, you know, management has obviously become very, very professionalized in the last 20 or 30 years. And, you know, MBA programs are just exploding everywhere. And so now to be the CEO of even a very small company, one is expected to be extremely well drilled in all the things that it sounds like you've really never had to be very good at. Do you think that that professionalization of leadership is in some ways a mistake,

that someone like you had a lot of instinct and energy and true appreciation for what you're trying to do with a company and that some of that gets killed off by this professionalization of the leadership class? I think it can be. I think if you feel that, if you feel a little bit lost in a company because of that, that should spur you on just to get out and run your own company. I mean, I've never had to report to anybody since I was, well, since I left school at 15. And that's the luxury.

And, you know, I can do, you know, foolish things like, let's start a spaceship company, which, you know, if I was working for a public company or, you know, a normal company, I would never have got it through. And so the great thing about being an entrepreneur, I mean, I think entrepreneurs are a class unto themselves. They do not need that professionalism. They need a passion, an absolute passion for what they're doing. They need an absolute belief for what they're doing. They need an absolute belief in what they're doing.

They need to be wonderful motivators of people, inspirational leaders. And, you know, those are sort of the key things that they need. Can you talk a little bit more about being a wonderful motivator of people? By all reports, everything I've read about you, it sounds as though most of the people who work with you and for you really like you and that you, I don't know about go out of your way to treat your co-workers well, but you have a lot of policies that are very employee friendly and so on. I think a lot of people out there, bosses, whether they're CEOs or down, they'd like to be like that and they'd like to motivate people, but it's hard. Do you have any secret advice? Well, I mean, I think, you know, what I find,

I find that some American companies are anything but good at motivating people. And I find that hard. I mean, hard to understand because, you know, if you've got a happy, motivated group of people you're working with, you can achieve anything. And, you know, you can ride the good times together, you can ride the bad times together. If you treat your people badly, you know, they're not going to go that extra mile when things are tough. So, I mean, I just think you should treat your people in the same way that you treat your family. I mean, however you would treat your brothers and sisters or your children, the same should apply exactly to the people you work with. And it's so much more pleasant.

I mean, a lot of our time we spend at work, and work should be fun. It should be enjoyable. And you should also have policies that follow through with that. So, you know, if people want to work from home, let them work from home. If people want to work from home on Fridays and Mondays, let them work from home Fridays and Mondays. If people want to take a month off and go around the world,

let them take a month off and go around the world. I mean, people will give everything back if you give them the flexibility and treat them like adults. I hear you and I so want to believe that that's the way to be. But the skeptic in me just thinks, well, if every company let everybody work from home Fridays and Mondays and let them take a week off and go take balloon trips or climb a mountain, that productivity would plummet and the economy would fall apart. Why do people not exploit that at your firm, at least? Because they feel trusted. And also, let's just look at this business of forcing people to come to an office. First of all, you've got maybe an hour or an hour and a half of travel time in the morning, another hour and a half of travel time in the evening. You know, when you're at the office,

it's important that you say hello to everybody and you're friendly with everybody. So you use up another hour or two socialising with people. Then because you're not at home, you need to communicate with your family. So you spend another bit of time communicating with your family. And so the day carries on and you might get a couple of hours worked up uh if you're at home you know you you can you can wake up you can uh you know you can find some you can spend a bit of time with your families and you know and and be a proper father which is what perhaps the most important or mother most important thing that's things that we can do in our life. But you can also find the time to get whatever your job is done

because you've got another four or five hours free to do it. And we've never been let down by people that we've given that trust to. I think treating people as adults, giving people trust, never been let down by people you know that we've given that trust to i think um you know giving you know giving people you know treating people as adults giving people trust uh is is um so important um i mean i'll just give you one other example it's slightly slightly different but i mean we we have a policy of um giving ex-prisoners a second chance and taking on as many people who've been in prison as possible into our virgin companies um because we give them that trust um not one of them have ever re-offended um uh and uh and uh and you know we're talking you know like in virgin trains i think we have

you know 35 people what the person who's head of our security at Virgin Trains, she comes out of prison on a Monday morning, works until Friday night, goes back to prison for the weekend, comes out. But she's absolutely brilliant at her job and somebody who will do everything they can for the company because the company has given them that second chance. You have started and sold and shut down and grown many, many, many companies.

Can you talk just for a moment about your overall win-loss record? I'm curious to know if you actually have ever tallied up the successes versus failures. I haven't. I mean, we've never had a company go bankrupt because our reputation is everything. And, you know, we believe that if you can afford to, if a company is not working out, you must settle all your debts. And so we've never had a bankruptcy. And that's in 50 years. So we're proud of that. And I think that's really helped keep the reputation of Virgin. But obviously, over 50 years, things changed. So, you know, we give you a very

good example. We started off with record shops. And we built maybe 300 record shops around the world, Virgin Megastores. And then iTunes came along and the internet came along. And people, sadly, didn't see the need to go into record shops anymore. And so, you know, we either sold or closed down most of those 300 record shops. There's still a few left in the Middle East, but that's about it now. But, you know, that spurred us on to, you know, move into mobile phones and into, you know, into new technology that was evolving. So if mobile phones was going to put us out of business

because and and and games you know people a lot of kids were spending more time on games than than music then you know we it was up to us to embrace it and so we we embrace we embrace that instead and um and i think you know fortunately we've been ahead of the game, you know, over the last 50 years. So, you know, by and large, we've had, you know, many more successes than we've had things which we've had to say goodbye to. Now, a lot of the businesses you've been in, including some of the ones you just mentioned there, are not businesses that you build from scratch or even really necessarily run from the ground up, but they're more partnerships. And the way you do business and the Virgin Group is a little bit different than many other firms. You call it branded venture capital. Talk to me just about how that works and whether it was a happy accident or is that something that you

decided strategically to pursue a long time ago? Well, I think just to be slightly more accurate, we've generally speaking started, we started by owning pretty well every company. So we start with 100 100 ownership in the companies um and uh and then um over over the years um in order to then invest in new new uh entrepreneurial ventures that i may have come up with we'll sell share we'll sell shares and the companies that

we've started um and sometimes we've sold 100%. But we keep a brand royalty in everything. And we keep in touch with the Virgin brand. We monitor the Virgin brand. We have a team of people who monitor it to make absolutely certain that anybody who's running a Virgin company respects the fact that our reputation for all of us is all we've got. So generally speaking, we'll start with 100% ownership

and then maybe over the years we'll sell down and then we'll put that money into new ventures. Thank you for that clarification. Was that the case with Virgin Mobile? Was that a little bit different or no? So Virgin Mobile, we own 50% of the company. So with Virgin Mobile, we didn't have the resources to build out a network. And we also didn't think that that would be our strength. What our strength was was marketing to the public and the brand and the whole proposition.

So we did a deal with a company called T-Mobile and they took 50% of the company. They gave their infrastructure, their masks. And then, you know, we ran it on a day-to-day basis. We put the team in. And, yep, we built a pretty formidably successful company. And then we merged it with the biggest cable company in the UK.

And it became Virgin Media um and um uh and yeah so that's how that works out and I actually in my new book um Finding My Virginity I tell the story of how our partners in that one um actually you know um were in in our opinion, naughty boys and tried to steal the company from us. But anyway, we fortunately won quite a big court case on that there. Coming up after the break, what does it mean to be a public-facing CEO, perhaps the most public-facing CEO, at least after a certain Pennsylvania Avenue resident. I would do anything I could to get Virgin on the map, even if it meant jumping in boats or balloons.

Also, how to go up against a much bigger competitor. You've got to take them to court before you go out of business rather than afterwards. Let's get back to our lightly edited full conversation with Richard Branson, founder of The Virgin Group. Talk about your strategy for choosing the right CEO for a Virgin firm. Oh, Helen, can I have another cup of tea? Thank you. Sorry, I was going to order. No problem.

Being British, order some tea. Sorry, just say that again. Take your time. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to know your strategy for choosing the CEO of a Virgin firm. What do you look for? How does the process work and so on? we'd like to promote from within. So, because I think there's nothing more discouraging for, you know, say a thousand people who work in a company to, you know, for a so-called expert to be brought in from outside.

And, you know, and generally, if you can't find a good CEO within, you know, with a000 people in a company, there's something wrong in the first place. You should have deputies who are quite capable of stepping into the CEO's position. You know, I look for people who are fantastic motivators of people, people who praise people, who genuinely care of people, people who praise people, who genuinely care about people,

people who, you know, are not apt to criticize people. And obviously they've got to be good at what they do. And then, you know, we let them get on with it. And we try not to second guess them. And we accept that, you know, some things they'll do differently than us, some things they'll do better than us. But, you know, by finding somebody, that frees me up to have a life and move on to other adventures or other entrepreneurial things.

So I think we've managed to get a great team. Now, the other advantage of promoting from within is you know what you're getting. Quite often people bring in outside CEOs into a company and it can destroy the whole atmosphere of a company and damage can be enormous. The other thing is we try to promote our CEOs. I mean, if I give you two examples, there was a recording studio division we had, and there was an excellent lady that cleaned the floors. Anyway, she ended up, a girl called Barbara Jeffries, running the whole recording studio division. In Canada, we had an excellent receptionist who ended up being CEO of our foundation in Canada.

And, you know, so I think, again, you've got to, you mustn't always put people in boxes based on their job. You've got to, you know, think that people are often capable of far more than meets the eye. And if you promote people above what they'd expect, they will give everything back. You've been quite outspoken about supporting women in business leadership. A lot of Virgin companies have or have had female CEOs or managing directors. But as I'm sure you know well, overall, especially in the States, there's relatively very few female CEOs, especially big companies. What do you think is the issue there? And obviously, it's not an easy problem to address. But what do you think is the issue? And what do

you think are some smart steps to begin to address it? Yeah um yeah i mean i think that when you have a company dominated by men you know that they they apt they're apt to um uh think of that you know their fellow men as the as the next potential ceo you know rather than a woman. I mean, and therefore, my own instinct is that the only way of actually solving this, you know, in a relatively short term, is to force things upon companies. So, in Scandinavia, the government has said that companies have to have 40% to 50% females as board directors of companies. And, you know, initially that was difficult because there just weren't enough know enough obvious candidates uh to fill all the places and and a lot of women had a lot of different roles on a lot of different companies the same women um but um but in time people have um realized how much better those companies are

run i mean women you know let's say a supermarket chain, I mean, women have an awful lot to, you know, more knowledge than men on supermarket chains. I mean, and maybe they shouldn't, but they do. And so on. I mean, you know, women are a breath of fresh air, in most most areas so um so um uh yeah so i think i you know i think um you know i think i think it needs to be you know i think we need to kick to kick started it needs to be forced on companies um i'm not sure that a lot of women agree with me on that i've i've asked women and they say you know we've got to fight our own corner um but you know personally i'm not sure they're right

because I think, you know, I think there's a danger that men will continue to appoint men. At Virgin, you know, I mean, our bank in Britain is run by a wonderful woman called Jane Angardia who, you know, who's actually taken on, you know, taken a big sort of campaigning stance for women in Britain. The chairman of the bank is also a woman. And, you know, we're doing better and better. And, you know, the people we've got are the best

for the job. They're not there just because they're a woman. They're there because they're really, really good at what they do. But there are many others. You have Mary Wittenberg, you have Lisa Thomas. There are many others. And have Mary Wittenberg, you have Lisa Thomas. There are many others. And I'm curious, you kind of are in a, if not unique, unusual position to oversee a firm with a lot of female leadership and therefore you can kind of compare female leadership to male leadership. I'm curious, it's always hard to generalize,

but do you see um significant differences in female versus male uh leadership uh at your firms at least um i wouldn't i i wouldn't say um i wouldn't say significant i would say um you know uh you know a good a good female leader is just as good as a good male leader and vice versa. And, you know, you get the occasional women trait. You know, they're arguably slightly more emotional, maybe, I mean, in the same way that, you know, oh, actually, hang on there, maybe I'm getting on dangerous ground here, but, you know, but I think, you know, but I think I'm seeing it, saying it as a positive, I think, you know, they express themselves in a female way sometimes. And that can sometimes rub men up the wrong way.

But, you know, in my opinion, it's a positive thing. It's great to see people express themselves fully. So, we've been speaking with quite a few CEOs lately for our show from companies like PepsiCo, Ingenoi, and Microsoft, Satya Nadella, and Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and quite a few others. And obviously, every person is unique in how they think about their job, how they spend their time. But it strikes me that even the most public-facing of those CEOs is much less public- facing than you. In other words, in many ways, the Virgin brand is really Richard Branson. That at least is my assessment. I'd love to hear your assessment and how you see yourself as a representative of your firm. Well, I think, you know, if you go back to when I was 15, 16, I didn't have any money and I was starting a company without financial resources.

And therefore, you know, if you're going to take on British Airways or you're going to take on the big record companies, I had to use myself to promote what I believed in. And so, you know, I was creating artists or I was creating an airline that I believed in. And so, you know, I was creating artists, so I was creating an airline that I believed in. I didn't have the money to market it. So, you know, so in order to get on the front pages rather than the back pages of the newspapers and get the brand out there, I would, you know, I would do anything I could

to get Virgin on the map, even if it meant, you it meant jumping in boats or balloons and trying to break world records, et cetera. I think that worked. And now I think the Virgin brand stands on its own two feet and I'm not needed in the way that i was um we you know we can also afford to take advertising and things um and um uh and uh um and um you know but i can still maybe put a little bit of icing on the cake um and um you know if we build a spaceship

you know i'm i'm certainly not letting the chairman of british airways jump in on the cake. And, you know, if we build a spaceship, you know, I'm certainly not letting the chairman of British Airways jump in on the first flight. I'm jumping in myself. And so, yeah, so still the two may be intertwined. But I think the Virgin brand is here to stay. And, you know, and hopefully will outlast me. And that was the original plan. You know, that's what I wanted to ask you next. I'm glad you brought it up because I didn't want it to appear to be a morbid or overly probing question, but what would Virgin look like beyond Richard Branson? And I'm curious if you think about succession. Well, I'd be irresponsible not to, and I'm fortunate. First of all, all the companies are run by great, wonderful people. We have a chairman and chief executive who run the group

on a day-to-day basis. And I've got two wonderful children who sort of you know do their own thing but they they dive in and out and um and you know and and i'm very proud of them and proud proud of um you know the the help that they give me on and and the contributions they make and um and you know they love people they my daughter runs our foundation and does a really good job. My son makes documentary films on subjects, all of which actually we see eye to eye on. So, you know, drug reform and the death penalty in America, gun reform and other things like that.

And they're really good films. He just did a film about my ballooning exploits, which Netflix have just picked up called Don't Look Down. And so they're both very capable. And I think it helps for a company like Virgin to have a face. And I think they can be the younger faces going forward. But I'm still enjoying myself. So for the next 10 or 20 years, I'm still going to be very much involved, I hope.

I know you're not much of a fan of Donald Trump. There's a bit of history there. But of all the CEOs we've spoken with, it strikes me you have more in common with him as a businessman than anyone else in that you've built a brand whose name alone is so recognizable that it's valuable and that the name can get attached to a multitude of businesses. Do you dislike that parallel as much as I suspect you do? Or maybe you don't even see it as the parallel I suggest it is. Yeah, I mean, obviously, he's used his own name as his brand. And obviously, we've used Virgin as our brand. But, yeah, but there's certainly some truth in what you say.

I mean, you know, we, I mean, before we became president, there was a certain kind of building that wanted the Trump name on it. And he did well out of that in the end. And I'm not sure how successful he was at stretching the brand. But, you know, because, I mean, obviously he went into the airline business and that failed. And the casino business, I don't think, was great and so on. The golf courses seem to be doing, that seems to be an exception so far, the golf courses, right? Yeah, the golf and the luxury side did well.

But anyway, I mean, do I like the comparison? Yeah, he's the President of the United States of America. But, you know, there are aspects about what he has to say and about people in particular that I find uncomfortable. And I would love him if he could change his approach and embrace people more than he has done in the past and is doing. Again, I know it's obvious that you see yourself as a very different kind of human than him and also as a different kind of communicator and leader and so on. Again,

I don't mean to harp on the parallel, but one thing I will say is true. If I look at the two of you as business people, you certainly stray a lot from the beaten path. You're kind of both in different ways, the very opposite of the modern corporate leader. So I guess what I'm asking is you've both been very, very successful. What I'm asking is, does that success indicate perhaps that too many modern corporate leaders are too timid or risk averse? Because neither of you are that. I've just literally five minutes ago saw Michael Bloomberg. Now,

he's somebody that, you know, I have enormous respect for. You know, he's, you know, as a businessman, he's created, you know, he hasn't been bankrupt three or four times. You know, he's built, you know, extraordinary businesses. And he's done it, I mean, you know, he's not your normal corporate type of businessman. And I think, you know, I think there's lots and lots of extremely good business people in America and around the world that fit into that category who I would have enormous respect for. And most business people, most entrepreneurs I have enormous respect for because I think entrepreneurs are the people who employ people, create most of the new jobs, who make the world a better place, who shake up the bigger, more complacent,

you know, fat-bellied companies and who innovate. And, you know, and I think, you know, without, you know, all these wonderful young and older thrusting entrepreneurs, you know, the world would not move forward. And so, you know, there is a big difference, I think, between entrepreneurs and then the sort of rather staid business leaders of big companies who often are anything but entrepreneurial. But fortunately, they're the young thrusting entrepreneurs that are taking them on and coming up with new innovations. And these big companies are having to try to find managers who are slightly more entrepreneurial. I'm curious. So your career, as I understand it,

obviously began, you were very young and you created your own path and just kept going and kept having ideas, kept trying, failed, didn't let it bother you and so on. But from the original, the magazine, Student Magazine, which was a culture magazine, from the original, the magazine, Student Magazine, which was a culture magazine, to record stores, record label, airlines, trains, mobile phone company, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's not a model. I don't know who you might have looked to as a model for that, because I can't think of people who had done what you had done.

I'm just curious, what kind of either mentorship did you have along the way? Or maybe it wasn't actually mentorship, but just someone that you saw whose ideas and vigor you admired and patterned yourself after a bit? Or was it really Richard Branson just kind of figuring out Richard Branson along the way? It was more the latter. I think, first of all, I never thought of myself as a business person or an entrepreneur. I just initially just thought of myself as an editor and wanted order for the magazine to survive i had to worry about printing and paper manufacturing and and distribution and so on and and i sort of became an entrepreneur uh in just in order that i could fulfill my dream of being an editor of a

magazine um and um and you know my education uh was you know being in the real world and learning the art of survival away from school, away from learning and just being thrown in the deep end and in fact exactly the same way I learnt to swim was going into a fast-flowing river and having to learn not to drown. It's kind of amazing you're still alive, I have to say, of all the things you've done. It's pretty remarkable.

No, I am a very, very, very, very lucky man. I tell 75 stories of near-death experiences in my new book. You must be part cat. There was one man, a man called Sir Freddie Laker, who ran a... He was the sort of pioneer of discount airlines, really. And he came to my houseboat one day and he had gone bankrupt. He'd been pushed out of business by British Airways.

And he just gave me a couple of bits of advice. He said, you know, three words you've got to remember. Sue the bastards. And he said that British Airways will do everything they can to put you out of business. And you've got to take them to court before you go out of business rather than afterwards. And I took his advice. We took British Airways to court for a dirty tricks campaign they waged against us. We won the largest libel damages in history. And we distributed, it was Christmas time, we distributed to all our staff and it became known as the British Airways Christmas bonus.

So we were very popular that Christmas. Unfortunately, you can't repeat that every year, can you? But well, maybe you could. Well, if they want to, we'll... Yeah, it's up to them i guess yeah let me ask let me ask you this um you've admitted that virgin galactic may not be the best bang for the buck when it comes to maximizing profits um you also admit that the virgin board has not been thrilled with the endeavor why is this so important to you? You only lived once and there is no space line on Earth. There are

millions of people who'd love to become astronauts, who'd love to go to space, me included. And I want to fulfill the dream for myself, for those millions of people, for my children, and build a Virgin Galactic space line that is safe and, in time, affordable. And it's taken 12 years to get this far. And I think we are, you know, three months or so away from our dream. But space, you know, rocket science is tough and space is tough.

And we've had tears along the way. We've had many high moments along the way. But I think we're almost there. And it's not just putting people into space. It's putting, you know, I mean, like there's 4 billion people are not connected in the world. You know, Virgin Orbit, which is another Virgin company, will be putting small satellites into space and creating big arrays of satellites around the Earth. There's point-to-point air travel, which we'll get involved in at tremendous speeds. I go to Australia a lot.

I'd love to be able to get there in three or four hours rather than in 18 hours. But anyway, I love a challenge. I can't resist a challenge, whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know, Virgin Hyperloop, which is another exciting thing we've just got involved in, or whether it's, you know, space travel or whatever. You know, we love to get in there and learn about, learn and hopefully experience.

Once again, you're atypical for the kind of people we've been speaking with for this show lately. You're not the CEO of a firm with a big structure reporting up to you. You're the founder and therefore you roam across projects and so on. That said, I'm curious to ask you something I've asked some of these other folks, which is I hear often that being at the top of a firm, especially if you've ascended from internally, that it's very lonely that you get there and all of a sudden you don't have any peers, you're alone at the top. I'm curious whether for you that's the case, whether you're alone at the top. I'm curious whether for you that's the case, whether you get lonely at the top. No, I don't get lonely. I think, I mean, I love people. And I think if you really love people and you see the people who you work with as brothers and sisters or children, depending on their age,

and you're a good listener of people and you enjoy the company of people, it's anything but lonely. And so maybe I'm lucky, I don't know. But I, you know, I mean, I suspect, you know, I mean, there are occasions because I'm a recognizable face around the world that I can maybe get just a little bit too many selfies in a day. Is that why you want to go to space to avoid all that? Well, maybe that's why I live on an island. I love people, but sometimes it's good to retreat occasionally. Now, I think the Virgin Company is an unusual company. It's true. We're a sort of way way of life company which i don't think really exists in the world so you know we we we um uh you know we look after you when you're young um we look

after you you know as you get into your 20s and and then you know like with health clubs and music music companies and and and games companies um you know then we you know we we maybe move into trains and planes and uh and and then spaceship companies and then cruise ship companies i mean you know so we we you know we we you know banking insurance you know so we'll look after most of most of your needs um and we have stretched the brand into lots of different areas. And most companies, I think, just like you mentioned people like Facebook or others,

they'll specialize in one area and they'll do an incredible job. And most likely they're worth an awful lot more as companies than Virgin. But all I can say is we've had a lot more fun, I suspect. We've learned a lot more fun, I suspect. We've learned a lot more,

and enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks so much for the time today. Enjoyed speaking with you. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks a lot. Bye. In next week's special episode, my interview with Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein. Money doesn't necessarily make you happy. Some of the saddest people I know are the wealthiest people I know. And some of the poorest people I know are some of the happiest people I know. You know, Thomas Jefferson said life is about the pursuit of happiness, but he didn't tell us how to actually get happiness. And it's the most elusive thing in life is personal happiness.

But, you know, I think I was happy before I was wealthy. So, you know, I don't know that the wealth has made me happier. Coming up on the next regular Freakonomics Radio episode, what happens when a bunch of economists set up an experimental preschool to help underperforming kids? Okay, so now is where the real problem starts. It was one of the most difficult things I think we could have tried to do. And why preschool may already be too late to attack the education gap. By the end of the age of three, children born into poverty will have heard 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. It's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes Allison Hockenberry, Greg Rosalski, Stephanie Tam, Max Miller, Merritt Jacob, Vera Carruthers, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts or any number of podcast portals. You should also check out our archive at Freakonomics.com where you can stream or download every episode we've ever made. You can also read the transcripts and find links to the underlying research. We can be found on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio at Freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening.