Living The Red Life - Life Lessons From Living With a Billionaire for a Week

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Rudy Mawer and Richard Branson share a few things in common: both are British, and both are passionate entrepreneurs intent on creating an impact and leaving a lasting legacy. ‘Life lessons from living with a billionaire for a week’ is the subject of today’s episode of Living The Red Life as Rudy was fortunate to spend a week with Sir Richard Branson on his private island.We, the Red Life Tribe, are fortunate to learn from Rudy today as he shares some of Richard Branson’s insights and applies them to our current business situation today. In between playing chess with the Virgin boss and successfully swimming around Necker Island, Rudy was able to glean so much wisdom from one of the world’s greatest businessmen alive. He’s generously sharing his insights so that we too can innovate and grow and empower ourselves with the right mindset as we go full throttle on Living The Red Life. It’s all here, and it’s all good.  “Understand that, hey, it’s about bringing in the right people and trusting them and not trying to do everything yourself.” ~ Rudy MawerThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:- Circumnavigating Necker Island, chess with the Virgin Boss, and other crazy stories- How Richard Branson made travel amazing – innovation born out of frustration- Innovating in an industry you want to disrupt- Seeing failures as lessons — learning not to dwell on disappointment - Hiring the right people around — especially when you don’t know the industry - Having the mindset of knowing when to move on and not be a victimAnd more!Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Hopefully through story, you can take some tactics, some secrets, some strategies, some mindset hacks that a billionaire has that's built an ultra rich, right? A billionaire or million, multi-millionaire or tens of millions, you aspire to build that, but you want to build legacy. You want to build charitable adventures where you give back. You want to have adventure and fun. You want a good family

and you want to be able to hopefully inspire future generations of entrepreneurs trying to do the same, which is what he did. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hey, what's up? Welcome back

to another episode of Living the Red Life. I have a unique one today. This is a life lesson that most people never get the privilege to ever get and understand. And luckily I was fortunate enough to spend the week with Richard Branson. So this episode is for a breakdown of everything I learned from living with a billionaire for a week. Okay, so life lessons,

living with a billionaire for the week on a private island. If you don't know, he owns Necker Island in the Caribbean. Richard Branson is one of the most famous entrepreneurs, especially in Europe and the UK. Built a massive empire, which is Virgin. If you don't know, Virgin has cruise ships, they have hotels,

they have their airline, they have their health clubs, they are flying around in space, and hundreds of other parts within Virgin. It started with Virgin Records and then became this massive empire worth billions and billions of dollars. And I was fortunate enough to take all those insights, 70 years of business growth close with Richard. And I'm going to share some of my biggest takeaways on today's episode. So as you can tell, I'm very excited. I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity, right? And not many people not only get to meet a billionaire, but I always say get to meet a billionaire, spend a

whole week with them, having all lunch dinners, playing tennis, getting beaten at chess, swimming around his private island, which I did win at. After many chess defeats, I needed one victory. And then also learning from a billionaire that's built multiple companies that's 100% self-made, as in they didn't inherit a massive fortune. They didn't inherit a business. They didn't come from real estate or oil that was generational wealth which is why I look up to him so much and also being from the UK right there's I think it's harder in the UK to really create that legacy for yourself like he's done obviously I'm from the UK and I moved to America because I felt it was too hard in the UK in the small town I was in to really do it and obviously

he spent the last you know 40 years of his life outside of the UK traveling the world and building these international brands. But anyway, today is about you guys learning from me and what I learned from him, because most of you won't ever be able to go to Necker Island or spend time with a billionaire. I hope you will do, but it's very hard, right? And I've worked for 10 years to build the relationships, the connections, the reputation that got me a private invite. And you actually can go to Necker Island. I think two weeks of the year, they have open spots where you can book a room.

I think it's $25,000 to $50,000. But it doesn't mean Richard will be there and probably isn't spending the week. So I'm very fortunate. I went with a group called Maverick and a small group of entrepreneurs. And it really was a life changing week. And some of the biggest takeaways I'm going to share in this episode aren't just like, hey, this business tactic, right? When you're a billionaire, you're not talking about, oh, what software do we use and how do we keep our email list clean and how do we scale our ads and what's the best social media platform there was none of those conversations and today's episode

isn't about any of those things so if you're here to get some marketing tactics um i've got hundreds of those floating around the internet this is about uh philosophy's mindset of a billionaire and someone that's built such a gigantic empire and done it in what I would call a healthy way, right? He's loved by many, has an amazing family, he's super fit, active, you know, he's 70 and he was swimming around an island in crazy seas and oceans. We swam around, it's about four miles and 15 fit, healthy swimmers started. And there was me and about two others finished. He's playing tennis every day. So, you know, when you look at, hey, I want to become rich and famous and successful, but I want to do it without compromising other key aspects of life. You know,

I think he has all of those key aspects that many of us as entrepreneurs always are juggling to balance, right? Health, wealth, relationships, being a good person, giving back his philanthropy efforts. He has a massive charity, Virgin Unite, hundreds, and we were helping do some activities for them and strategy for some of the charity groups there. So that's why, you know, I love what he's done. And I think some of his mindset stuff you're going to take away from today. So I'll dive in. So and I'll give you some lessons. And if you love today, a teaser, I'm not on an affiliate commission for this, but he has

a documentary called Branson on HBO Max, four part series. I had my staff watch the first episode. We actually all watched it together. Hundreds of takeaways, OK, that you'll love. So if you love the teaser of today, there's a whole four-part series you can go watch on HBO that'll introduce you to more of this and his story and his journey and what you can take away.

So one of the biggest things to start, and you'll see this revolving trend over the course of the episode today, is the mindset he has around innovation and idea creation. So to give you a bit of a backstory, he had Virgin Records, okay? And then he decided one day he was in Puerto Rico flying to his private island and he couldn't get a flight. This was before, you know, he had a private jet or anything.

And his flight got cancelled. So he rented an aeroplane and he said he hated travel and he was traveling the world and obviously traveling to the Caribbean a lot. And so he rented an aeroplane and then he had a sign and he sold five seats on the plane he had just rented, this tiny plane, just to, you know, fund some of the trip over there. This was one flight, Puerto Rico to his island, not far, a 45 minute flight. And he rode at the top, you know, his Virgin Airlines, right? So he started the brand out of the need because of the frustration and the problems he was having with that industry, right? Travel. We all hate

travel. We all hate flying. It sucks. Okay. We're miserable most of the time. If we fly first class, it's obviously a nicer experience. And if we fly private, it's obviously the optimal experience. But, you know, 30, 40 years ago, that definitely wasn't accessible and it's still not accessible to most people. So he saw this need. He said, how do I make travel amazing, a great experience, a fun experience? And then he just figured it out as he went away. He literally rang up Boeing, who create the planes, and he said, do you have any planes for sale? And they said yes. And then he went and bought a plane and started, and his goal was four months to launch the airline, okay? If some of you listening take four months to launch a Shopify store or build a website, okay? So challenge yourself. He's launching an airline that's flying from the UK to New York in four months.

This is 40, 30, 40 years ago, right? 40 years ago, I think, when it wasn't that easy to fly, right? It wasn't quite like today. It was more expensive and a premium. And so he started this airline. He made it fun. He made it unique. He did discounted flights to grow the customer base and

the brand and then he went on and did crazy PR stunts and crazy mass media to get what eyeballs and attention right these days there's still mass media on the news but there's also going viral on social media right that's the new eyeballs and attention and it's not one's better than the other you want both obviously so he figured out this, you know, think about that four month window from, hey, I'm stuck in Puerto Rico trying to go to my private island. And then this is a four months later,

he's flying, he's built an airline, okay? And a lot of that was the innovation, the need to build something, right? Out of a frustration, but also figuring out, hey, I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel here. I'm going to just ring the people that make airplanes and see if I can buy one. And then I'm going to partner up with people that are launching airlines or have already launched an airline and hire mentors of people that have launched airlines, right? And he actually got some mentorship from another big

entrepreneur that had launched an airline in America. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast.

It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous

episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram, at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30 second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. So that whole journey, it's just like our journey, right? We might be launching a Shopify store or a new dropshipping brand or a new coaching business in four months. He's doing it for an airline.

He's hiring the right people. He's going to someone that's already done it before. He's innovating out of a bad experience or an industry that maybe he wants to disrupt, right? And that trend continues. He does that for health clubs, gyms, okay? He makes gyms fun and a friendly, welcoming, warm, modern, exciting environment. So think, how can I do that for my brand? How can I look at my industry? What are the frustrations? What frustrations did I have if I was in that industry? What frustrations do my customers have? And how do I create something? Okay, next mindset thing and big takeaway I got from him is he didn't see anything as failures. Okay, someone actually asked him when I was there, what is your biggest failure? And he goes, well, I don't really have any failures. I just have lessons.

And obviously, we all can, you know, if you categorize it from a business standpoint, we all have lots of failures. And he shared personally some big problems and failures and things he had had that I can't really share publicly. But they're massive. They're things that we would never ever even probably in our lives witness or grow a brand big enough to even have to experience. I hope I do, but many of us won't. And he just sees them as lessons. And it's like, how do you reframe your mindset? Because right now you're listening to this and you get overcharged on your

bank account and you get a $35 overdraft fee. You launch a funnel and it flops. You start ads and they don't work. You hire a freelancer or an agency and spend a few thousand and it doesn't work out. And that stuff eats away at you, right? And you've got to look at yourself. Why is that eating away at you?

It's because of your mindset. It's because of where you're at in your life. And if you want to be successful, you've got to just look at these as lessons. way at you it's because of your mindset it's because of where you're at in your life and if you want to be successful you've got to just look at these as lessons look at these as okay how do i stop this continuing to happen what have i learned from this and then how do i build a system and a framework around it so it doesn't continue to affect me okay and he's you know any billionaire probably right or pro athlete they become incredible at handling the losses because if they don't, they eat away at them, they affect them, and then they can't be

productive. They can't be innovative. They can't be happy and the inspiring leader that CEOs and people like him need to be. So it was really good to see. I think I handle problems and failures very well for where I am at in my age and life. And it's one of my, you know, and I even have people around me that try and bring me down, staff and family, where they're like, well, aren't you worried about this? Aren't you? And I'm like, yeah, but just spending an hour talking to you about how bad it is, isn't useful, right?

Spending an hour talking about all the things we can do to fix this and generate revenue or solve this problem is useful. So excuse me if I'm going to close you down here and move on because I don't need to talk about it. It doesn't help me. It doesn't serve me. And you need to build that, right? You need to build that system where you have the right energy and approach to problems, not dwelling in the failures. Which leads me to one interesting other thing I learned, right? If you look at Richard, many things he did, he had zero clue, right? And in his documentary, you actually see this, he had zero clue about records and music. He said, I don't really listen to music. And one of the interviewers go, and this was, 30 years ago, in its peak, they go, well this was, you know, 30 years ago in its peak.

They go, well, how do you pick the artists that you represent for your record label? And if you understand the music industry, you make all the money from a couple of massive hits. Right. And then you have all the costs on all the failures. So you have to it's kind of like gambling. You're really waiting and putting money in to get that big hit. And then it's like just a cash flow machine. And they go, well, how are you running a record label if you don't listen to music? And he goes, oh, I don't need to do that. I have lots of great people around me that listen to music all day and they make the decisions.

So think about that. Running a billion dollar record label and he doesn't even listen to the music. And a lot of you right now, you're trying to grow and you're too scared to hire a freelancer an agency you get upset when someone picks the wrong image you're obsessed over the logo that no one's even seen yet and you spend weeks going over these small things and obsessing and you can't release control but there's billionaires out there running billion dollar brands that they have no clue about rich has no clue about an airline either but he figured it out and hired the right people and bought a plane right so if that doesn't motivate you to go hey i've got a big idea and vision and i'm not going to let the small things bottle me down and

stop me and sidetrack me i don't know. Because for me, I spent two or three years failing because I was exactly what I just described. That's why I couldn't describe it so well. I was obsessed over every little thing. And now I'm the opposite. Like there's still stuff that goes out for my brand that you've probably seen that I don't like and I don't always approve it.

And it upsets me for a split second. Then I move on because I know it's not that important in the grand picture. And you have to get okay with empowering other people to make some decisions for you and realizing they won't always be good ones. And some of them you won't like, but you have to do that. If you want to grow something big, if you want to grow a business, not a solopreneur or freelancer business, right? If you want to grow a real business, you might have hundreds of employees one day, right?

So understand that. Understand that, hey, it's about bringing in the right people and trusting them, not trying to do everything yourself. We're at 100 employees and staff now between our office and our remote team. There's hundreds of decisions made every day that I don't have input on, like I did five, six, seven, eight years ago when there was 20 staff. But I'm okay with that. And it's hard, but it's what it takes to grow a massive business. And obviously, the plus side of that is I can travel and I'm not having to approve everything.

Stuff can run without me and I'm not having to approve everything. We can make money in sales and I'm not there to collect the cash. I'm not the one on the sales call. So that should be your goal, right? That should be your vision. Next, I think a last great story I'll share that you can hopefully learn from is when the hurricane wiped out his island, which, you know, is his house. He has his animals there, his family, everything. It was all destroyed. And within 10 minutes, they said he was sat there planning and really painting, hey, how am I going to rebuild this? How can I use this opportunity, which sucks, cost him hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild? How can I make this even better than before?

How can I upgrade, okay? Let's think about this for a second. If you had your $100 million of your little own world destroyed, right? So even your house and your cars, and he had stuff he wanted to pass down to his future grandkids and generations, all destroyed overnight, you probably wouldn't be sat there planning how to make it even better and being proactive.

And that's what it takes, the mindset of a billionaire, right? To think that way, to act that way, to, you know, I'm sure he was distraught inside. It ruined the whole economy in the area. You know, he has spent tens of years, you know, decades building the islands and how he wanted it to be, to be washed out in a day. But he got on with it he made it better than ever i was fortunate enough to spend a week there and it's an incredible place a beautiful place amazing animals i love animals and there's animals everywhere and obviously amazing

amenities and an amazing facility but it takes that mindset and business too it takes that mindset when everything's wiped out, when you're at your lowest, when you've had the worst month ever, when the debt's mounting up or the best four staff members quit or your business partner steals your money. It takes that mindset to go, okay, how can I move on versus being a victim and spending the next six months telling everyone about how your business partner quit and stole all the money and now you're sorry right like that's what most people do i hear it i hear all the time my business partner did blah blah blah and it's six months a year of their life gone just traveling and telling the story and doing nothing with their life because they're

so distraught and i get it it sucks but how do you not let that waste six twelve months of your life how do you move on and say how can i make an even better business by myself? I don't need the partner, I don't need the money, I've got the mindset and I'm going to build an even bigger and better thing by myself. And there's many more stories I could go into and hopefully through story, you can take some tactics, some secrets, some strategies, some mindset hacks that a billionaire has that's built an amazing empire, is an amazing person and can spend a week with someone like myself having fun while running a multi-billion dollar empire and all those assets. That's what I aspire to be. And I think most people that want to be ultra rich, right? A

billionaire or multi-millionaire or tens of millions. You aspire to build that, but you want to build legacy. You want to build charitable adventures where you give back. You want to have adventure and fun. You want a good family and you want to be able to hopefully inspire future generations of entrepreneurs trying to do the same, which is what he did. So an awesome experience. Go watch the documentary. If you ever get a chance, try and go to Necker Island. It really is incredible once in

a lifetime. And I hope you got some takeaways that shook you a little, that made you challenge yourself, made you go, wow, I need to work on this. And that will make you a better person, a better entrepreneur, more successful in life, just like Richard has done. So until next time, keep living the red life. I know Virgin does a great job of that. They're all red, we're all red. They're obviously living the red life and I hope you do too.

I'll see you in the next episode. Take care, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen.