Pendulum Summit with Sir Richard Branson

Fantastic to MC the dinner with Sir Richard Branson as part of the Pendulum Summit – what a business rock star and he had us all enthralled at Pendulum as he told the story of how he started his first business at age 16 – the magazine ’Student’ and now his company Virgin Group controls 400 companies and he is worth over $5 billion. Nothing seems to faze him and he revels in setting himself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them. I love his approach to his staff and holidays – they can take as many as they want but just make sure the work gets done. In fact the key takeaway for me was that he regarded colleagues as more important than customers – if you look after your staff really well they will, in turn, look after customers really well. Beguilingly simple. This refreshing approach calls out all those companies who give lip service to the mantra ‘our people are our greatest asset’ but they don’t really behave that way in practice. Branson truly talks the talk and walks the walk.