People who work for me are working for what I believe in. The leaders who run our companies do so on the basis of those who came first and who said, "A company is its people." I hope my companies are run on the basis of praising their workers and looking for the best in them, not criticizing them. In the same way that you water a plant and it sprouts leaves, people flourish when you praise them.

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

It isn't effective or productive to force your employees to do anything. Choice empowers people and makes for a more content workforce.

There is no real difference between work and play - it’s all living.

One of the best bits of advice I can give is, early on, when you're building a new business, try to find somebody to run it on a day-to-day basis to free yourself up to look at the bigger picture.

The brand is only as good as your products, so.. if people have a good experience on Virgin Atlantic or if they have a good experience on Virgin trains or.. if they have a Virgin mobile phone and they can get straight through to our people and they're well looked after and then they'll try the next product that we launch.

You know I think if the people who work for a business are proud of the business they work for, they'll work that much harder, and therefore, I think turning your business into a real force for good is good business sense as well.