Dan Martell - I Spent 100+ Hours With This Billionaire - Here’s What I Learned

00:00:00.000 I spent 168 hours with Richard Branson, and here's what I learned.

00:00:04.800 A few years ago, I got an invite to spend a week with Richard Branson at his home in Switzerland.

00:00:09.400 I had imposter syndrome out the yin-yang. But I went and I said to myself, 0.53

00:00:13.640 I'm just going to go with one specific reason. I want to see the billionaire that every other

00:00:18.640 billionaire wants to be like. How does he operate in his day-to-day? What is he actually like? How

00:00:23.560 does he hire people? What are the kind of people that he hangs out with? And I watched him get up,

00:00:28.240 eat breakfast with his assistant, and leave for the rest of the day just to play. He spent most

00:00:32.900 of his time with us, not doing any work, not being distracted, not being stressed out, but just

00:00:38.660 having fun and living life. And over a few days, I asked his assistant, how do you work with Richard?

00:00:43.780 And that's when she shared with me the simple process that's changed my life forever. The

00:00:48.280 first thing I learned is he doesn't touch technology. Every morning when they have breakfast,

00:00:53.220 that is when she writes down all the things that she doesn't know how to deal with and presents

00:00:57.500 them to Richard. And he gives her feedback and ideas and suggestions. And then she takes all of

00:01:03.220 that and all the other requests that come in throughout the day. And she moves those things

00:01:07.240 forward while Richard is hanging out with us. So that way he can be so present in his day to day.

00:01:12.600 He can hear for opportunities. He's listening. He's in the moment. And it's a fascinating thing

00:01:17.560 to see because when you live in a world where everybody's distracted, here's a guy that's worth

00:01:21.540 billions that is only there for the conversation. So he routes 100% of his conversations through

00:01:27.280 his assistant. All the demands, all the requests, all the needs on his time, they go through one

00:01:32.820 person and her name is Helen. Even all his emails, they go through Helen. He doesn't read them. For

00:01:38.100 the most part, he walks around with a legal pad and he writes down ideas and notes. And I think

00:01:42.440 he just rips them apart and puts them in his pocket. And when he gets a chance, he'll sit down

00:01:46.120 and review his ideas with Helen, maybe over breakfast. And that's the degree of technology

00:01:50.560 that he's got in his life. He keeps it so simple. It's not complicated. He doesn't have his login

00:01:55.720 to his CRM or his email or to his bank accounts.

00:01:59.660 He doesn't need that.

00:02:00.700 He's a connector and idea guy.

00:02:03.180 And I think a lot of us would benefit

00:02:04.600 from learning how to do that better.

00:02:06.020 The second thing I learned is he licenses his name.

00:02:08.680 When people see the Virgin logo everywhere,

00:02:10.620 like Virgin Records, Virgin Media, Virgin Mobile,

00:02:13.360 Virgin Airline, they think like Richard owns

00:02:15.440 all those companies, but the truth is out of 400 companies,

00:02:18.540 more than half Richard only owns a minority percentage

00:02:21.280 of the businesses or it's a licensing deal.

00:02:23.460 companies pay a licensing fee to use the name the virgin group of businesses is a 16.6 billion

00:02:29.620 dollar revenue business as of i believe 2019 with over 71 000 employees but many of those businesses

00:02:36.580 they only own a minority stake in them or their licensing deal where they've been paid to use

00:02:41.860 the virgin brand i remember one night we were having dinner and i asked richard a simple

00:02:46.180 question i said in business what is the most important thing that you've learned i was like

00:02:51.380 thinking it's going to be some deep secret that nobody else has ever heard before. And he says to

00:02:56.100 me, brand, the power of brand. And I'll be honest with you, at the time, I didn't really get it

00:03:02.380 because I'm a software guy. So I was thinking there's got to be more to this. What does he

00:03:05.760 mean by the power of brand? And then I realized that most of the companies that he's involved in,

00:03:10.880 he's licensed his brand to other businesses and they pay him for the virgin name to be associated

00:03:16.640 with the Virgin brand.

00:03:18.000 That is a powerful idea where you can build a business

00:03:21.180 that has such demand, like the Nike check mark,

00:03:24.680 where you get paid to use that logo

00:03:27.200 to create the essence of what that means.

00:03:29.660 And the cool part is I realized,

00:03:31.680 you know, it took me a few years

00:03:32.880 that the most powerful brand that we all have is our name.

00:03:36.140 It's who we are.

00:03:36.960 It's what we're about.

00:03:37.940 It's our reach and our reputation.

00:03:39.680 And Richard just made me realize

00:03:41.440 that had I been more deliberate back when I met him

00:03:44.520 and continue to invest in my personal brand,

00:03:46.940 many of the dreams, many of the goals

00:03:48.580 I've been out to accomplish

00:03:49.900 would have happened a lot quicker.

00:03:51.520 The third thing I learned is that he monetizes his passions.

00:03:54.840 See, most people don't realize that wealthy people

00:03:57.540 find ways to take essentially an expense

00:04:00.120 and turn it into an asset,

00:04:01.980 to take something that costs money

00:04:03.540 and turn it into a revenue generating item.

00:04:06.160 He does this with everything.

00:04:08.060 I mean, the property we were staying in,

00:04:09.920 it's part of the Virgin Limited Edition boutique hotels.

00:04:12.660 most of his homes from Necker Island to his property in Africa, every one of them,

00:04:18.440 there are places that you can also rent for hundreds of thousands of dollars per week.

00:04:22.740 But that's just one example. I mean, everything from space travel with Galactic to music with

00:04:27.860 Virgin Records to kiteboarding is hosted an event called Mai Tai. You know, it's kind of the modern

00:04:32.860 day golfing for Silicon Valley. I have friends that instead of putting their money in a bank

00:04:37.280 account where it earns interest, they literally figured out how to hack cars, purchase these

00:04:42.360 supercars, they get allocations, they buy right, and over time as an asset, it makes some money.

00:04:48.780 Same thing with watches. If you know what you're doing, you buy at the right time. These things

00:04:52.860 are investments that will hold their value and go up over time. Wealthy people do this with art

00:04:57.400 for tax reasons. See, the rich know how to turn a passion from an expense into a revenue generating

00:05:02.940 item. The fourth thing I learned is he's a master connector. A big reason that he has all these

00:05:07.940 properties is because he likes to host events and meet other people. I mean, even on the trip I was

00:05:12.880 on, there's probably 20 other entrepreneurs from him Ferris to Brian Johnson, the biohacker. And

00:05:18.860 amongst the group, he ended up investing in three or four other projects through his venture capital

00:05:24.160 fund. So I would say almost 70% of Branson's time isn't spent running companies, but meeting and

00:05:30.160 connecting with entrepreneurs. Once he'll invest in, collaborate with, maybe start new companies

00:05:35.240 with, maybe license his brand to. These are the types of things that leverage his zone of genius.

00:05:40.420 And I was really inspired by it. I mean, I ended up starting hosting more dinners, organizing events,

00:05:45.920 doing things like my ski trip with 48 entrepreneurs to snow biking trips to mountain bike trips. Like

00:05:52.380 I just realized, like, why not integrate everything into one? It just makes connecting

00:05:56.920 with like minded entrepreneurs really easy. You've got an event or a moment throughout the

00:06:02.440 year that you can invite new people to so that you can connect them with your friends and new

00:06:06.560 opportunities are going to come from that. I know my friend Yannick, he's got a group called Maverick

00:06:10.260 and they do a charity event every year at Necker Island to help bring awareness to projects that

00:06:15.260 Richard's involved in, but also he gets to meet all these incredible entrepreneurs that write a

00:06:19.680 check for the charity, but get to spend some time directly with Richard, you know, hanging out on

00:06:23.860 his island, playing chess or going kiteboarding. Life gets a lot easier when you have the who,

00:06:29.680 not how. You've got big problems. You want to find the person that's already solved this so they can

00:06:33.840 connect with somebody on your team to resolve it. Your net work is your net worth because it's all

00:06:39.020 about relationship capital. And this is honestly what the top people in the world focus on the

00:06:43.820 most. That's what I learned from spending 168 hours with Richard Branson. And if you want to

00:06:48.540 learn what I got from meeting a thousand millionaires, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - March 08, 2024

I Spent 100+ Hours With This Billionaire - Here’s What I Learned

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