I have had fun running all of the Virgin businesses, so I never see a setback as a bad experience; it is just a learning curve.

People who think and say we more often than I are a lot more likely to succeed.

With all my employees, I listen to them, trust in them, believe in them, respect them and let them have a go! I never believe I know better than they do and have been fortunate over the years to build up a very strong management team whom I can trust and take advice from.

Education doesn't just take place in stuffy classrooms and university buildings, it can happen everywhere, every day to every person.

I learnt from an early age this need to delegate responsibility out to other team members as there is just too much for one person to do themselves. What is the point of hiring talented team members if you don't give them the freedom to make the most of the chance you have given them?

When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin's door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I'd been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody'd seen before.

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