Richard Branson on Selling Virgin Records for $1B, Donald Trump & Going to Space

0:02It's 1984. Seen as a year of hope across the world, and on a houseboat in North London, one man hoped a big risk would deliver even bigger rewards. That man was Sir Richard Branson. And he was about to risk everything by launching a business. People told him he was crazy to consider. And you are about to get a first-hand account of that meeting from the man himself. In partnership with IFS, it's time to go into the room where it happened with Sir Richard Branson.

0:36So Richard, why have you chosen this particular room to take us back to? When I first came to London as a 16-year-old, I couldn't afford a house or a flat. And I was driving past some houseboats in Little Venice, and my car broke down. And I shouted over the canal to an Irishman who was on top of his houseboat doing a bit of painting work, are there any houseboats for sale? And he said, cross the bridge and come and have a drink. So I went over and had a drink with him. He said, well, the houseboat next door has got a lovely lady called Mundi on, and why don't you go and talk to her? So I went and met up with her, thought she was drop-dead gorgeous, stayed the night as you do, And ended up, she had a dog called Friday.

1:38So I then had Monday to Friday sorted. Very good. It had a stove in the middle of the room. It was one room, one little kitchen and a bedroom. It ended up being the place that I started Virgin and lived on and worked on for 10 years. One day I ended up moving out and a lovely lady called Joan ended up moving on, who became the mother of my kids. And so in building Virgin, there would be kids crawling around, nappies to change, meetings to have. but it was a lot of happy memories from it. Well let's talk then about one of the significant moments that happened on that boat. You want to take us back to a meeting with your senior team from Virgin Records.

2:40Would you share with us the build up to this meeting happening? Well, Virgin Records we built into the most successful independent record company in the world. We'd just signed the Rolling Stone We just signed Janet Jackson, David Bowie, and that was on top of Genesis and Sex Pistols and Steve Biko and anyway, lots of wonderful artists. And I had been bumped off a plane and had decided that airlines do bump people and that I really didn't like traveling on British Airways or Pan Am or TWA. And I thought, you know, screw it. I'd quite like to start an airline. And I'd done a deal with Boeing to get one secondhand 747.

3:40But I now had to sit down with Simon and Ken, who worked with me on running the record company, and tell them that I was thinking of going into the airline business. And they came to the boat. Simon basically, I think if he was able to have got me certified as insane, he would have done. But basically said it over his dead body. He just thought it was the most awful idea imaginable. And Kenny was slightly politer than that. I had to think for a day or two. So, you know, I mean, I was in danger of falling out with a really good friend who happened to be a cousin from South Africa over it. You know, do I give in and just do the record company or do I move into the airline business?

4:39And I also knew that, you know, there was signs that the record business, you know, the writing could be on the wall for the record business. with new technology coming along and so on. But to be honest, my main thing was just, I felt we could create a great airline. And so I had another meeting with them where I said, I've done a deal with Boeing where if it doesn't work out, if I'm wrong about people loving Virgin Atlantic, I can hand the plane back at the end of the first year and therefore I protected the downside and there is no risk bar a few months' profits of Virgin Records of us going into it.

5:29And on that basis, I finally got agreement and started pushing on with the airline. Can you talk to us about self-doubt in moments like that? Because obviously you did your due diligence. You met with Freddie Laker, who knew a thing or two about running airlines. You'd had a conversation with Boeing. You had your gut instinct and your own kind of emotional connection to this idea. But when you're preparing to meet with some senior people and they're telling you, this is the wrong decision, Richard, what is the role of self-doubt and how do you deal with it? So one advantage of owning a company is in the end, the buck stops with you.

6:11If I hadn't owned Virgin, most likely Virgin Atlantic would never have started. In fact, Virgin Atlantic would never have started. There are occasions where you just have to say, my instinct is that we should do this, and my instinct has been pretty good in the past, and I protected the downside. And in the end, you have to say, I'm going to do it. And that's sort of what happened on that occasion. and um but protecting the downside is is is very important for any any any new venture that anybody does there's no point in just you know going and blowing all all the hard work of years of building a record company i mean we were i was i was 29 years old at the time but we we'd spent you know 10 10 precious years building a really great record company by protecting the downside i i've I felt okay about going ahead.

7:14And I knew that after 12 months, if people loved the airline, we could then get more planes. But if they didn't love the airline, we could quietly bow out and say, we'd learned a lot from trying. But you were still having to, in many ways, walk away from something that you'd spent 10 years creating. Your focus was now going to be on Virgin Atlantic and looking forward to the airlines. How much of a role do you allow motion to play in those decisions? That time, I wasn't walking away from the record company. Subsequently, when British Airways launched a vicious dirty tricks campaign against Virgin Atlantic, I realized that I needed the money from the record company to secure Virgin Records' future and to secure the airline's future.

8:04We sold Virgin Records for a billion dollars. Although Simon would have rather we hadn't sold Virgin Records, he went home with enough money to live on for the rest of his life and has led a great life since. And Virgin Records continued, but under new ownership. And that money has then enabled us to not just build Virgin Atlantic, but to move into the rail business, to move into building spaceships, to move into building Virgin Active clubs, to doing numerous other things, which we wouldn't have been able to do without it. if you find conversations like this one intriguing and you want more hidden insights from the likes of richard rory sutherland or unicorn founders like will shoe from deliveroo please don't forget to follow our show and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts right back to the conversation do you look back much and think about the decisions you did or didn't make or are you very much someone who's always looking forward i never regret uh je ne regret I never regret anything because to be a true entrepreneur, you've got to make mistakes on occasions.

9:30I love every second of my life, whether it's things working out or things not working out. I live for the present and I live for the future. and I learn from the past, but I don't think I would have changed that decision, for instance. I mean, just on occasions, I'll hear UB40 Red Red Wine playing or Rolling Stones Can't Get No Satisfaction or David Bowie Absolute Beginners and think, hmm wouldn't that be nice if they were still part of part of virgin i suppose in many ways it was also a seminal moment because deciding to go down the roots of the airline meant eventually you did some virgin records the billion pounds allowed you to create all these amazing businesses in the virgin group and so many people now say when i speak to them you know entrepreneurs and business people i'm like what what would you love to achieve and almost to a man than a woman they go i'd love to do what Richard Branson did and create the modern version of Virgin.

10:39Is that even possible, do you think? Yes, it is. But it's interesting whether, you know, this year is the 40th anniversary of Virgin Atlantic. Nobody thought it would survive 40 years. Larry Page was introducing me at an event at Google, and he said, you know, Richard started 400 companies and I've only started one. And as quick as a flash, I said, swap. You know, because sometimes, you know, just concentrating on one company, financially, you can do a lot better than if you, you know, if you diversify. But I've had, I think, a lot more fun than he has by diversifying. I've learned a lot more.

11:29It's been, you know, I've had an extraordinary life because of it. You know, my first business was a student magazine. I'm not sure at my age that it would have been still appropriate to be running a student magazine. So diversification has meant that some things I'm still doing that I've started over the years and still thoroughly enjoying. So the first time we met, after the interview, you were rushing off to Ireland for a meeting about a medical business. You've just come back from Saudi where you were having a meeting with the crown prince about developments over there. You are as inquisitive and as interested in the world as you've ever been.

12:09If someone has an idea and they want Richard Branson to, at the very least, listen to what they've got to say, what do they need to tell you? What is it that gets you excited about new ventures? So I think the elevator pitch, I mean, we have a new hotel that I'm launching officially tomorrow in Shoreditch called the Virgin Hotel. And we've been having the elevator pitch there for the last couple of months where people can pitch an idea, but they've got to pitch it within one elevator ride. And I think that you can sum up most likely whether something's going to succeed in almost one elevated pitch.

12:53So I like an idea that's succinct and clear. And I just need to decide whether it excites me, whether it's different, whether it's worth spending time on that idea. You can only do so many things in your life. Do you really want to spend time doing whatever that idea is? Is it going to make a really good difference to other people's lives? And then maybe one will go, screw it, let's try it. And what area of the world excites you the most at the moment, with the rate of change probably greater than any of us have seen in our lifetimes? Every country in the world, it sounds a bit of a cop-out answer, but having just come from Saudi Arabia, I mean, it's unbelievable the speed of which they are developing.

13:38you know the population of nearly 40 million people there's a revolution going on there you know i was in a hotel room you know looked out of this looked out of this bedroom window with a person who's uh who's developing around this hotel and there were 98 cranes massive cranes all around and he just said you know this is what i'm developing uh there's 41 hotels going into this area. And that's just one tiny little area of Riyadh. And, you know, new airlines being set up. They bought 150 new planes to start the airline. So, you know, so this is just one country in the world. There's, you know, and, you know, there's so many exciting things going on around the world.

14:30There's certainly worrying things going on, you know, in a country that we should all be looking up to and proud of. There's certainly question marks on America right now and the unpredictability of what's going on there. I, like a lot of people, are very worried about and the unpredictability of their foreign policy. Do they really want Britain to be friends? Do they want other countries to be friends? some of their policies not indicating that and their attitude to Ukraine I think is very worrying so yeah, question marks there but if I go back over my lifetime every decade the world has improved so dramatically over the previous decade the amount of people coming out of poverty the amount of people

15:33not getting married off too young. Gay rights, by and large, have all gone in the right direction.

15:45Social issues are generally going in the right direction. We've still got lots of battles to fight. But, you know, so the fact that the last three or four months has gotten a bit ropey. Hopefully the next, hopefully things can get back on track. Do you think it will? I think we've all got to fight very hard to make it. I mean, I just spent the morning writing a blog, which was basically saying to entrepreneurs in America, you've always been guided by science. You know that, for instance, climate change is an issue just because your leaders in your country tell you that you've got to stop being guided by science and that climate change is not an issue, etc.

16:38You can't just take it lying down. You've got to speak out because you spoke out before. You've all gone very quiet. You must speak out in the future. So I think it's up to us business leaders to be a lot braver than people have been the last four months. I sort of look at what's happened in America in the last little while. I was thinking about you actually a few days ago when I looked and I thought, well, their social policy will definitely be at odds with what Richard Branson believes about the environment. Their reaction to immigration and the global movement of people will definitely be at odds with what Richard Branson thinks about the world.

17:18These tariffs, you know, stopping global deals being done and allowing people to grow and flourish in the countries they're in will also definitely be at odds with what Richard Branson thinks. So with all those things in mind, when you look at what Donald Trump has done in the first 100 days as president, what do you think he's trying to achieve? It's a good question. He's definitely pandering to what he believes his base is. And he's educated his base, I think, in a way that is inaccurate. It's inaccurate on climate change. America on immigration is going to need millions more people. I mean, the amount of people who are going to die in the next 20 years is going to be enormous because people are getting to that age.

18:20The amount of new births is tiny, whatever it is, 1.5 per person. To get all the jobs done, you're going to need immigration. attacking, I mean, gay people definitely feel more uncomfortable in America than they did four months ago. You know, that is very sad to see things being set back. I think black people will feel a lot more uncomfortable than they did four months ago because, you know, a lot of these government jobs were actually black people who've been laid off. So anyway, there's definitely been, in my opinion, quite a big setback in the States. I remember when we met last time, one of the best lines, I thought, that's great.

19:04You said, politicians won't change the world, entrepreneurs can change the world. Have you picked up the phone to someone in a position of influence like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and shared these thoughts with them? I have definitely talked to Elon Musk about Ukraine because I think that the stance that America has taken on Ukraine is terrible. I mean, like to talk about Zelensky being the dictator, that Ukraine was the people that started the war. I mean, you know, it's just palpably, you know, absolutely and utterly wrong in history, you know, and modern history. And, you know, everybody knows it was wrong.

19:46I mean, it's just unbelievable to hear statements like that being made. when a country is invaded by a foreign aggressor, and that country has had Great Britain and America guarantee the sovereignty of its borders in a treaty in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons to Russia, America and Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who are all part of this treaty, must stand up and protect that country because that was the understanding of the agreement in 1994. And what did Elon say? Let's say we differ on that one. Can we talk about optimism in the face of all of this stuff? Because I think if there's one thing that an entrepreneur has to have in his armour, it's optimism.

20:37So overall, are you more optimistic about the future of our planet compared to those wonderful days when you were chilling out on the houseboat in London? or are you more fearful? So just dealing with one other thing you said, in my previous time I talked to you, I think I said that entrepreneurs must play a very important part. I think entrepreneurs must play a very important part, but working with politicians, I don't think it's one or the other. Entrepreneurs can help politicians because they're obviously elected to make important decisions. And together, we can play an important part. As for the future, I think we've got to fight to make the future better.

21:25And I think entrepreneurs, as many of us as possible, united together, working with decent politicians can make this world a better place. One thing I have thought of the last few months is, my God, how attractive Great Britain is. you know it's you know i think people people down this country over the last sort of 10 years or so but suddenly you just realize that and when you could travel the world where great britain is a fantastic place for um my children and grandchildren to live in and and for people listening to this program uh compared to so many other places in this world now this i love to hear because every time I open my social media apps, I'm confronted with people talking about the cost of living and the tax rises and that Britain's broken and knife crime in London.

22:17And it feels negative, negative, negative. So I love the fact that someone that travels as much as you do and has seen so many things as you thinks that Britain is in a great place. Please tell us why you think that. You know, we have a proper democracy. It's just a wonderful mixed, diverse country of all sorts of people. I've just been watching a film that we've been making about Archbishop Tutu, or my son's been making about Archbishop Tutu. He talks about coming to Great Britain from South Africa and walking down the street. This is before he was well known. And he just melded in and he just said how fantastic it was to be in a country like that.

22:58There are issues, like you mentioned knife crime, horrendous. And, you know, obviously, the whole country's got to do everything they can to stamp it out. But thank God it's not, you know, every single minute of every single, ah, in Chicago, somebody is shot dead, you know, with guns. You know, we have not allowed guns into this country. And thank God for that. You know, when you compare it to what's going on elsewhere, the mass shootings in schools in America, they happen twice a month. I mean, it's just at least monthly. And you hardly see it written about anymore. It's just so, but it's so awful.

23:48We don't get that. Great Britain has not had that for some time. So there's a lot to be thankful for. So if you were a 25-year-old Richard Branson, with the opportunity to travel as people do have today and you were ready to start your entrepreneurial journey. Would you stay at home and do it here? The wonderful thing about the world today and the fact that you've got a good airline to go to America and other places called Virgin Atlantic is the world is one place. So you can start it in Great Britain and then you can set up shop in America and, you know, I mean, when we started our record company many years ago, you know, we started in Great Britain, but then we soon had, you know, record companies in America and France and Germany and Holland and Spain and, you know, worldwide, Japan and South Africa and so on.

24:45And then used those as a base to then build recording studios in these countries and other things. But, you know, you might as well start in the country that you're born in and see whether your idea can work here. As one of the elders, I love kind of taking your view on the world. What would you want to say to people listening to this, not just entrepreneurs, not just business people, but anyone that stumbles across this podcast and thinks, well, I can't make a difference to the world. There are too many problems. The world's too big. Little old me. What can I possibly do? What would you want them to hear?

25:22So I'm a founder of the elders. I'm not actually one of the elders. we have a wonderful group of people Nelson Mandela was there at the beginning and Archbishop Tutu and President Carter and others and

25:41with the elders I've travelled the world seeing where we can make a difference next month we go to Hiroshima in Nagasaki. And obviously when you're building your business, you know, you, you, you, you must make, draw a circle around yourself, make sure that, you know, that the person within that circle is, is fit and healthy and strong. Then, then you can widen that circle around your, your village, your family, your friends. And, you know, you can make sure that, you know, the school in your local town is doing well and the medical services are doing well and you can help there. And, you know, and then in time, you can draw a circle around your country and then as your country, your company grows bigger, you can draw a circle around the world and try to deal with world issues.

26:38And I think that, you know, they're just adopting issues that, you know, that you can relate to. I mean, I've been fighting for drug reform for years. I think that drugs should be treated as a health problem, not a criminal problem. Britain is now amongst the worst countries in the world for drug reform. In America, nobody gets prosecuted for smoking a joint anymore.

27:10the tax from the selling of cannabis it goes back into schools and medical centers and drug rehabilitation centers and alcohol centers and so on whereas in England you can get a criminal conviction which can mess you up for the rest of your life and maybe stop you from going to America We have an organization called the Global Drug Commission that we work with closely, with 20 ex-presidents who all agree the same. And our job is to try to educate new ministers who come into power in countries about what's going on in the rest of the world and why they should be brave and why they should change tact on some of these things and tact on some of these things.

28:03and that's one area where we very much feel that Britain should change tag. Your advice to those people that do feel helpless, feel the world is too big for them to make a difference? The people that get on well in life are people who really love people who, you know, like, you know, if there was a waitress at a Virgin Hotel in the shortage last night who was just absolutely charming, so sweet. And you just think, she'll go places. And often, over the years, if I can bounce into somebody who's incredibly friendly and outward going and positive, I'll write their name down, write their number down, give it to our team and say, this person should be taken on.

28:56um so i think that you know don't don't get down don't you know go in on yourself but just be be as positive as you can be as friendly as you can and and you'll you'll get places in life and and and yeah best advice i think i can give and as well as observing the world and seeing the direction that things are going in you still manage to find time amongst that and all of your businesses before doing passion projects and doing things that some would call scary, others might call exciting. And you are preparing to co-pilot the first balloon to go to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, into the stratosphere, right?

29:37Well, I'm hoping to. The company that is building it, I just hope they'll pull it off. If they pull it off they they have said that i can um i can pilot it and um and i love you know i love a challenge i can't say no to a challenge um and you know i've i've had a lifetime of flying um hot air balloons um uh and uh you know we we did the atlantic we did the pacific we've almost went around the world in the balloon had had incredible adventures you know crossing mount everest and k2 and some hairy landings. Every balloon landing is a bit of a crash landing. And obviously my trip to space was the most memorable day of my life, I suspect.

30:29So the chance to do another extraordinary flight, I'll definitely jump at it if it definitely goes ahead. Tell us when someone calls you, and now we understand the kind of thing that gets you excited. How do you decide that actually something is too risky? What's your risk analysis like for something like that? Yeah, so I will look at the downside. When it comes to business, I'll look at the downside. When it comes to adventure, where my life is on the line, I will look at the downside. I'll try to look at if this happens, can I get out of it? And if you enjoy life, as I do, and you still feel you've got something to contribute to life, then it's important to check out the downside.

31:17Take us into what you think the first 60 seconds is going to look like and feel like for you and those passengers in the balloon as you slip above 100 ,000 feet and the curvature of the Earth appears. Well, I'm fortunate enough to experience it with the space flight. And there it was 300 ,000 feet. But at 100 ,000 feet, you're still going to have an extraordinary flight. It'll be longer than a Virgin Galactic flight. It'll be more gradual. Yeah, you'll just get spectacular views. and you will see the sort of blackness of the sky when we're up there. Enormous big windows. I'm just hoping that this little company that is building this project manages to get it off the ground.

32:10I see this smile coming across your face as you think about that. Would you personally love to do adventures like this? How long? I think so, yes. I mean, I believe that life is about experiences. You know, when you take your final breath, I don't think that you're going to be thinking about the things you owned and the things you bought, even the lovely things like the houses and the cars. I think you're going to think of how you felt. Yeah, I think life will come down most likely to your family, your friends, your children, your grandchildren, and your experiences, and the difference you feel that you've made in your 3 million heartbeats.

32:59I'm told, I only read about that yesterday, 3 million average heartbeats that you have in your lifetime. But anyway, so you might as well live it to its full if you can. Do you think you could have done any more with the heartbeats that you've had so far? They've been put to pretty good use so far. And I've also been ridiculously, ridiculously fortunate and lucky. I mean, I think luck definitely plays a part in people's lives. And there's definitely a star up there that's been very kind. When you think about the luck that you've had, what springs to mind? I mean, there have been about 75 different occasions where I've nearly killed myself.

33:45and the star up there has guided us home in some way or another. So, yeah, if you turn over a car, for instance, on the M40 and you walk out of it, something's been very kind to get you out. There's been a lot of occasions like that where I'm very fortunate. And you said there at the very end, what you remember is your children, and your grandchildren making a difference in the world. When something like going into the stratosphere in a balloon is offered to you, what are the conversations you have with Joan and Sam and Holly and the grandchildren? Holly and Sam definitely want to go to space themselves.

34:33Right. And the grandkids definitely want to go to space one day, so they will go up on Virgin Galactic one day. and a lot of these adventures I do with Holly and Sam so it's more the conversations we have to have, the three of us have to have with Joan nowadays. We climbed Mont Blanc together recently we climbed Mount Tubkal in Northern Africa together we've done many adventures together the Matterhorn for Sam and so on And Joan is our complete opposite. She has absolutely no interest in doing anything foolish like this. She's a wonderful down-to-earth mother and grandmother. And her feet are firmly on the ground.

35:26And if we ever didn't come back, she would make sure that any young children that are around will be well looked after. but her comment to me was simply the last time I embarked on an adventure was yeah, you can do it but I just want to make one thing clear I won't be coming to your funeral

35:51Anyway, with a smile I think And you said thank you darling and walked out the door off on your mission Virgin Galactic also have big plans you have a new shuttle on the horizon so to speak. When you have issues like with Virgin Orbit, how does it then make you feel about these big grand plays, these brave moves in certain directions? Is it chasing you at all or not? With Galactic and Orbit and COVID all happening around about the same time, and we had 160 planes grounded for nearly two years and cruise ships grounded during COVID and health clubs closed and so on. We just decided we could only really afford to keep either Galactic or Orbit going.

36:45And in the end, we decided to concentrate on Galactic because it was a people's business and it was just something I just would not want to ever let go. So, yeah, so in life, you know, you have to sometimes make difficult decisions and every company that we have is like having a baby and it's very difficult to let any baby go. But just on occasions, you know, for the sake of all the other babies you've got, you just have to make a difficult decision.

37:23and Galactic is formidably exciting and we've had 12 wonderful flights into space and now we're building a number of spaceships and I think it's going to have a good future. What did you think of the criticism of the all-female flight? Because it did garner a lot, didn't it? Yeah, I think they may have made, the way they promoted it may have been a slight mistake, but if it had been an all-male group of people going up, there wouldn't have been one word of criticism. And I just think it's sad that when women stick their neck out to do something like that, they get criticized, whereas a group of men would never have got criticized.

38:13It's depressing though, isn't it, that even in 2025, a group of women do something incredible and the criticism flows. Yeah. No, it's still... Anyway, they hopefully have got thick enough skins to brush it down and move on. When times are tough for you, COVID is a good example, Virgin Orbit is a good example. What do you do to protect yourself, to protect your mental health? It's a good question. And COVID was perhaps the worst time of my life from the pressure of it. I've never felt down in my life. And I could feel... It was a hell of a burden at the time. And fortunately, two things. I keep really fit.

39:06So I get up early in the morning. I work out, I play tennis. In a day, I might do three or four hours of activities. So being really fit and healthy at my age is obviously critical for prolonging life a bit longer, but also being able to confront issues when they come up. And then the second thing was I was lucky enough that my kids and grandkids all arrived just before COVID bit. And so I had them around. And so together, you know, we were able to get through it. And then finally, we just had a fantastic team of people who run all our companies. And they, you know, were determined not to let Virgin Atlantic go.

39:57They were determined not to let Virgin Voyages go. They were determined to literally keep the ships on the road and succeeded by and large. But it was good for me. I mean, I suspect for a week or two, I actually understood how people can to get depressed about something, which I'd never felt before that time. Well, did it feel like? yeah I mean it was you know there was just that sort of feeling that

40:38anyway anyway so it's not pleasant you know and and and yeah so hopefully it'll make me make me the more sympathetic a person in the future and more understanding a person in the future. I've enjoyed this conversation about the modern world that all began on that house vote all those years ago. And it's a reminder, isn't it, that those little decisions, that the time can feel like any other decision. You know, they can feel not so significant. All these years later, you realise that all these incredible adventures and these incredible things that you've done have really stemmed from that moment.

41:16But before we wrap up, I love that you get frustrated by things and you get frustrated by hotels that aren't good enough. So you create a hotel brand or an airline that's not good enough, create an airline brand. Trains aren't good enough, create a train brand. Mobile phone businesses that aren't dealing with their customers right, create a mobile phone business. Is there anything you see in the world now where you think that needs to be solved? That frustrates me and I wish it was better. Maybe democracy in America. I'm worried about the way it's going. and we'll do everything we can with friends in the States to try to make sure that America doesn't go down a dark path.

41:59Thank you so much for your company. I've met so many people and I fear that when they die, there's ghosts of missed opportunities floating around their deathbed saying, if only you'd have believed. I think you're one of the very few people I've met where I really don't think that's the case. So thank you so much for sharing so much with us. Thank you for being such a lovely person to talk to. Cheers. Nice to see you. Congratulations with it on the tour. You have just been in a room with Richard Branson, and boy, it happened. You know, I think his advice is timeless, but so often I see that it's overlooked because at the end of life, it isn't your possessions that matter.

42:33It's your experiences, your relationships, the impact that you leave behind. And whether piloting blooms into the stratosphere or launching record labels or airlines, Richard's a man who prioritizes adventure, growth and meaning over comfort and safety. He remembers to stay healthy. He knows he needs to start local, yet he also thinks global. He's also well aware we're entering a stage of humankind where productivity is going to be the norm. AI is going to see to that. So to stand out, it's not about you working harder. It's about you working smarter. Be a great storyteller. Put community and emotion at the center of everything.

43:07Honestly, I loved it. I hope you did too. I think that was a true masterclass from a master. You have just been in the room where it happened with Sir Richard Branson. If you enjoyed today's episode in partnership with IFS, please subscribe to the show. You can also follow us on Instagram, follow us on LinkedIn, where we've also got our own newsletter. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you again soon.