A company is simply a group of people. And as a leader of people, you have to be a great listener, you have to be a great motivator, you have to be very good at praising and looking for the best in people. People are no different from flowers. If you water flowers, they flourish. If you praise people, they flourish. That's a critical attribute of a leader.

Drive, determination, passion and hard work are all free and more valuable than a pot of cash.

Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.

My people are at the core of everything I do, and I recognize the importance of giving them the flexibility to balance work around their personal lives.

All successful people - not just entrepreneurs - have got things wrong over and over again before finding the right solution.

Dream big by setting yourself seemingly impossible challenges. You then have to catch up with them.

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.