[Applause] and uh without further Ado I I worked on a intro for Sir Richard and it went on for so long I thought that I should just not do that you all know that he's one of the most successful most creative entrepreneurs in the world one of the best known and one of the most inspiring and it's a great honor for endeavor to have him here please welcome Sir Richard Branson [Music] thank you where do you get the combination though of gumption and resourcefulness and and yet Financial discipline and all the things that have led
you to success I mean they're very varied kinds of instincts how did that how did that happen I know you started your first company when you were still in school but how did that evolve um well I've never I've never thought of myself as a businessman I've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur um and um and I think there some the most successful entrepreneurs are people who do not set out thinking you know how can I make a lot of money they they set out thinking you know how can I you know Change the
World by creating something that's going to make a real difference to people people's lives and um and then you know they create that thing uh and uh and at the end of the year if they've created it well there'll be more money coming in than going out and somebody else can you know I couldn't didn't know the difference between netal grow so somebody else had to add up the figures um so um you know so I think you know I was 15 I left school quite young I started a magazine to campaign against the Vietnamese
War because I thought it was a dreadful War um and I'm afraid us in the west we do start these Dreadful Wars and um and this magazine uh uh you know young people uh you know liked it and and took it on board um we managed to get enough advertising and enough sales to pay for the printing of the paper costs and um and you know I saw myself as an editor but soon realized I had to be a little bit of a publisher in order for the magazine to survive and I think you know
ever since then you know where I've seen uh situation you know like you know I was flying between um Puerto Rico and the bridge Virgin Islands one day and and uh American Airlines bumped us all they they didn't have enough passengers so they canceled the flight and I had a beautiful lady waiting for me in the Virgin Islands so um and there were a lot of other people at the airport who were desperate to get there so but I was more desperate than all of them so uh so um so I went back to the
back of the airport and I I was 26 years old I managed to uh uh blather a plane um I managed to blather a Blackboard I wrote Virgin Airlines on the Blackboard uh $29 single to Virgin Islands I came out with my Blackboard and I filled up my first Virgin Flight and uh and um when we arrived in the Virgin Islands I had a big grin on my face I hope this lady had a big grin on her face too um and um and I we and you know sort of suddenly started thinking well look
you know Airlines do bump you and you know they don't exactly offer the best quality product and um so when I got home I rang up Boeing and said have you got any second 747s for sale and U so you know one thing LED on to another um yeah that seems like that [Applause] um seems like and the young lady is now my wife so that was good was worth [Applause] seems like a reasonable response to getting bumped see is funny isn't it um so if you don't think of yourself as a businessman and you
don't think of yourself as an entrepreneur and you had to describe yourself how would you describe yourself well I think if if you if you really do analyze what what an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur is somebody who creates something and and I would say most entrepreneurs and that sound maybe sounds a bit precocious to say it um are artists and you know you you take a blank sheet of canvas uh and you have to you know fill in that blank sheet of canvas and you have to get every single little detail right on that canvas
um and if you don't get every little detail right you you you're whatever it is you're setting up will not survive if you get every little detail right uh you know everything from you know being a wonderful INSP inspirer of people you know getting a team to believe in what you're doing you know praising not criticizing um uh you know getting out there and letting people know about um you know what it is that you're uh what it is you where it is you're trying to make a difference you know then you'll succeed and um
but if you don't get all those little details right you're not going to succeed and uh you know so if I'm on a virgin plane you know I'll have a notebook in my pocket I'll I'll go and see all the staff um I'll go and see all the passengers uh you know and and at the end of the flight I'll have you know on average 20 little things in in that notebook and uh and and if you're you know we all know if you go to a restaurant where the owner is you know is the
chef you're going to get a fantastic service because they'll make sure every detail is right so if you're running a bigger group of companies you've got to try to run it as if you were the chef in the restaurant and you've got to um you know make sure uh you know you you you you care about you care about your people and you care about the details and and and then you can have a company that sings but if you look back then I'd be curious to know because you've done so many things so well
um is there something that you regret is there some something you either did or didn't do that you really feel like was an opportunity missed I really don't think so I mean I think you know both of us have and and iect most people in this room have had uh extraordinary lives you know we're just unbelievably fortunate the lives we've all LED um there most of us have had fun lives uh you know we thrown ourselves wholeheartedly into things sometimes we've Fallen flat on our face you know we picked ourselves up we've learned from that
um I mean I once you know I once thought we could take on Coca-Cola and we we we landed in America with a Sherman tank and we drove into Time Square uh this was before 911 and you know we' we' we'd wired up the Coca-Cola sign the night before with Petra and and you know we took we we we went over all these Coca-Cola cans and they they sprayed everywhere and we turned the barrel of the tank onto the Coca-Cola sign and as we fired it the whole sign blew up I this wasn't before 911
i' and and anyway and uh it it was everybody smiled and had a good laugh at the time but Coca-Cola f a bigger tank back at us and and uh we we retreated so so not everything succeeded but it was uh fun trying so for the entrepreneurs that are here Richard you know we take entrepreneurs uh at a point where we hope they can scale so they've already started their businesses they they've had a success and then what we try to do is help them take that success and really make it something uh as we
say high high impact with lots of jobs and uh either Countrywide region-wide or International reach what do you think you know getting so far is one thing but that inflection point where you can you really build something Beyond you know what you thought you could do at the beginning what did what what's that like and what advice do you have for people who are sort of facing that that moment and the choices come with it um well I I I think you know both stages both stages are critical I mean they uh you know if
people can't get over that F the very first stage and we we know we we we're setting up schools of Entrepreneurship which are tying into the the Endeavor scheme so we we our schools of Entrepreneurship are taking entrepreneurs uh you know literally off the streets with you know with that first idea which all of us all of us had and get and getting them onto the first uh r l of the run of the ladder and then handing them over to Endeavor to then take them onto onto the next stage and um and without either
of those stages you know you you're not you're not going to build build a great company um and you know the feedback I get from um people I've met um entrepreneurs who've come into contact with Endeavor is great and and U and you know giving giving you know having mentors who can really uh give you advice um is something which you know is is so important and um and um uh and I suspect you know you know a lot of us in this room wouldn't be where we are today without those mentors but to have
an organization that's going into countries all over the world doing that is fantastic that's interesting because actually the actually in in thinking about what we do if there was one single thing that was more important than anything else than we do is provide mentors to to these entrepreneurs uh consistently they all say of all the services that endeavor provides that mentorship is is absolutely critical I I want to I want to say thank you for for being here for for giving us your Insight I I know you arranged for one photo just to say goodbye
to the entire Endeavor family and as you do that I'd like everyone to give Richard a round of applause and say thank you from all of us thank you thank you
