Screw the competition - focus on good customer service.

All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you'll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don't trust you.

I was fortunate enough, after many visits to many wonderful, weird people to come across Burt Rutan, who is a genius in the Mojave Desert. And SpaceShipOne was born and had three flights into space that won something called the X Prize. And from there, we're building SpaceShipTwo, which is ... a beautiful spaceship that is very, very, very nearly completed and will be ready from about next Christmas onwards to start taking people into space.

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

I moved into a nice houseboat in Little Venice when I was 15 years old. I found a girlfriend called Monday and a houseboat called Friday, so I had the week sewn up.

Free publicity and word of mouth is probably the best and cheapest form of advertising. Learn to use it to your advantage.