BIG NAMES
where we’re launching a new concert,
to New York, where we’re talking about
the space program and so on. So, it is
very varied. As chairman of the company,
I think I spend about 25 percent of
my time helping make sure that all
of the people are running the various
companies around the world, that their
particular venture is put on the map may
be on a global basis and that we’re trying
to build the Virgin brand as one of the
most respected brands in the world. So,
I should think as much as 25 percent of
my time is spent on marketing which is
most important in any business. I think
about another 25 percent of my time is
spent on new ventures and really trying
to learn everything there is about the
new ventures before we launch them.
About 10 percent of my time is spent on
firefighting and making sure that I’ve got
the time to firefight if something’s going
wrong somewhere. And about 40 percent
of my time is spent on social issues and
building new organizations, more for the
benefit of the climate or health issues or
charitable issues. That’s roughly how my
time’s divided.
Joe: That’s actually very valuable
information for all of our readers. It seems
that your humanitarian activities and your
business ventures, as you’ve gotten older
in life, are becoming one in the same. Do
you feel, for all entrepreneurs, there’s a
responsibility to create value beyond cash?
Richard: I think that capitalism is basically
the only system that is known to work.
Communism has proven to be a failure.
The problem with capitalism is that a few
individuals become extremely wealthy.
Therefore, with that wealth comes extreme
responsibility. I don’t work any harder than
a really good junior doctor works, or a good secretary, or a really good
dentist, or a journalist. Because I’m a business leader, I’ve got extreme
wealth. What is absolutely critical, I think, is that if you find yourself in
that position or you’ve sold a company, you make sure that that money
is not wasted away in bank accounts, but it’s put to good use, it’s
reinvested in creating new jobs. Let part of it be used towards tackling
the numerous problems in the world, and you get the balance right.
As I say, with capitalism comes responsibility. You’ve just got to get that
balance right.
Joe: What were the defining moments and shifts throughout your
career, throughout your life, that shifted you to start spending 40
percent of your time on social issues? Or did you always do that?
Richard: You can’t afford to do it when you’re building a company in
the early days. The only word that really matters is survival. If you don’t
survive, you certainly can’t, later on in your life, do any good. I may
have been inclined to help when I was a teenager. I set up an advisory
centre for young people to help them when they run into problems,
and 35 years later that centre still goes. The bigger dreams that
I might have had then, obviously, I couldn’t put into practice because
I didn’t have the financial resources. But now, we do have the financial
resources. We also have the know-how and the entrepreneurial skills
to look at issues in the world, social issues in the world, and see if
we can’t tackle them in a better way than charitable organizations or
volunteer organizations have done in the past. So, we’ve got the funds
to do it, but we’ve also got the knowledge that’s come from being able
to build companies from scratch and knowing how to deal with people
and motivate people inside.
Joe: I’m going to ask you a couple of
questions about that, of course. Certainly,
one of the things I want to focus on, too,
is fun, because you do so many crazy
things and you just seem to have so much
darned fun. I do want our readers to get an
understanding of all of the contributions
that you’re making with Virgin United.
What I’d like to hear is what your definition
of a social entrepreneur is?
Richard: It’s basically someone who
uses their entrepreneurial skills to tackle
social problems. For instance, Africa has
thousands of different organizations doing
wonderful work in Africa, but there’s no
coordination. So, somebody in Nigeria
may come up with the best way of killing
mosquitoes, but that information will not
necessarily be made available to people
in Kenya. Or somebody in South Africa
may have come up with a way of making
sure that a mother doesn’t pass on her
HIV status to her baby, but somebody in Morocco may not know
about it. So basically, we’re using our entrepreneurial skills to set up
a war room — it may come out with a different name — where we
can coordinate all of these ideas and disseminate information, look
for better practices, and try to make sure that the limited amount of
resources that are going around in Africa are best spent on these
enormous amounts of problems that exist there. Hopefully, we can help
to get on top of it.
Joe: I imagine you’re solving tons of them. What do I want to ask you
is how do you stay balanced with all that you have going on? You come
across as relaxed, cool, and calm. Are you really that way or do you get
kind of stressed-out at times?
Richard: Fortunately, I think I’m really generally very calm. I certainly
don’t ever lose my temper, because I just think that would be
counterproductive. Again,