I Spent 100+ Hours With This Billionaire - Here’s What I Learned
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Summary
A few years ago, I got an invite to spend a week with Richard Branson at his home in Switzerland. I went for one specific reason: I wanted to see the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like. How does he operate in his day-to-day? What is he actually like? How do he hire people? What are the kind of people that he hangs out with? And I watched him get up, eat breakfast with his assistant, and leave for the rest of the day just to play.
Transcript
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I spent 168 hours with Richard Branson, and here's what I learned.
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A few years ago, I got an invite to spend a week with Richard Branson at his home in Switzerland.
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I had imposter syndrome out the yin-yang. But I went and I said to myself,
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I'm just going to go with one specific reason. I want to see the billionaire that every other
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billionaire wants to be like. How does he operate in his day-to-day? What is he actually like? How
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does he hire people? What are the kind of people that he hangs out with? And I watched him get up,
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eat breakfast with his assistant, and leave for the rest of the day just to play. He spent most
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of his time with us, not doing any work, not being distracted, not being stressed out, but just
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having fun and living life. And over a few days, I asked his assistant, how do you work with Richard?
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And that's when she shared with me the simple process that's changed my life forever. The
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first thing I learned is he doesn't touch technology. Every morning when they have breakfast,
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that is when she writes down all the things that she doesn't know how to deal with and presents
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them to Richard. And he gives her feedback and ideas and suggestions. And then she takes all of
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that and all the other requests that come in throughout the day. And she moves those things
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forward while Richard is hanging out with us. So that way he can be so present in his day to day.
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He can hear for opportunities. He's listening. He's in the moment. And it's a fascinating thing
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to see because when you live in a world where everybody's distracted, here's a guy that's worth
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billions that is only there for the conversation. So he routes 100% of his conversations through
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his assistant. All the demands, all the requests, all the needs on his time, they go through one
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person and her name is Helen. Even all his emails, they go through Helen. He doesn't read them. For
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the most part, he walks around with a legal pad and he writes down ideas and notes. And I think
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he just rips them apart and puts them in his pocket. And when he gets a chance, he'll sit down
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and review his ideas with Helen, maybe over breakfast. And that's the degree of technology
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that he's got in his life. He keeps it so simple. It's not complicated. He doesn't have his login
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to his CRM or his email or to his bank accounts.
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The second thing I learned is he licenses his name.
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like Virgin Records, Virgin Media, Virgin Mobile,
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all those companies, but the truth is out of 400 companies,
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more than half Richard only owns a minority percentage
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companies pay a licensing fee to use the name the virgin group of businesses is a 16.6 billion
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dollar revenue business as of i believe 2019 with over 71 000 employees but many of those businesses
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they only own a minority stake in them or their licensing deal where they've been paid to use
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the virgin brand i remember one night we were having dinner and i asked richard a simple
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question i said in business what is the most important thing that you've learned i was like
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thinking it's going to be some deep secret that nobody else has ever heard before. And he says to
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me, brand, the power of brand. And I'll be honest with you, at the time, I didn't really get it
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because I'm a software guy. So I was thinking there's got to be more to this. What does he
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mean by the power of brand? And then I realized that most of the companies that he's involved in,
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he's licensed his brand to other businesses and they pay him for the virgin name to be associated
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That is a powerful idea where you can build a business
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that has such demand, like the Nike check mark,
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that the most powerful brand that we all have is our name.
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that had I been more deliberate back when I met him
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The third thing I learned is that he monetizes his passions.
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See, most people don't realize that wealthy people
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it's part of the Virgin Limited Edition boutique hotels.
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most of his homes from Necker Island to his property in Africa, every one of them,
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there are places that you can also rent for hundreds of thousands of dollars per week.
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But that's just one example. I mean, everything from space travel with Galactic to music with
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Virgin Records to kiteboarding is hosted an event called Mai Tai. You know, it's kind of the modern
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day golfing for Silicon Valley. I have friends that instead of putting their money in a bank
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account where it earns interest, they literally figured out how to hack cars, purchase these
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supercars, they get allocations, they buy right, and over time as an asset, it makes some money.
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Same thing with watches. If you know what you're doing, you buy at the right time. These things
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are investments that will hold their value and go up over time. Wealthy people do this with art
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for tax reasons. See, the rich know how to turn a passion from an expense into a revenue generating
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item. The fourth thing I learned is he's a master connector. A big reason that he has all these
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properties is because he likes to host events and meet other people. I mean, even on the trip I was
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on, there's probably 20 other entrepreneurs from him Ferris to Brian Johnson, the biohacker. And
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amongst the group, he ended up investing in three or four other projects through his venture capital
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fund. So I would say almost 70% of Branson's time isn't spent running companies, but meeting and
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connecting with entrepreneurs. Once he'll invest in, collaborate with, maybe start new companies
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with, maybe license his brand to. These are the types of things that leverage his zone of genius.
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And I was really inspired by it. I mean, I ended up starting hosting more dinners, organizing events,
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doing things like my ski trip with 48 entrepreneurs to snow biking trips to mountain bike trips. Like
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I just realized, like, why not integrate everything into one? It just makes connecting
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with like minded entrepreneurs really easy. You've got an event or a moment throughout the
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year that you can invite new people to so that you can connect them with your friends and new
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opportunities are going to come from that. I know my friend Yannick, he's got a group called Maverick
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and they do a charity event every year at Necker Island to help bring awareness to projects that
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Richard's involved in, but also he gets to meet all these incredible entrepreneurs that write a
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check for the charity, but get to spend some time directly with Richard, you know, hanging out on
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his island, playing chess or going kiteboarding. Life gets a lot easier when you have the who,
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not how. You've got big problems. You want to find the person that's already solved this so they can
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connect with somebody on your team to resolve it. Your net work is your net worth because it's all
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about relationship capital. And this is honestly what the top people in the world focus on the
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most. That's what I learned from spending 168 hours with Richard Branson. And if you want to
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learn what I got from meeting a thousand millionaires, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.