Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson: The secret to big leaps
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Successful daredevils aren't really winging it, even if it looks that way from the outside. They have a method. No one knows this better – or does this better – than Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. Sir Richard has been willing to take death-defying entrepreneurial leaps again and again, into new markets and industries, establishing himself as one of the most prolific and successful founders ever. You can't help but marvel at his bias to action: his eagerness to ask “What if?” and then follow up those fanciful thoughts with bold and decisive steps forward. You don't have to be born with Sir Richard’s bravado to cultivate a bias to action. Sir Richard shares how you too can learn to take the right leaps, in the right moments, to generate outsize opportunities.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:36.0 | I arrived in Vegas and I was taken to the Palms Hotel, which is a very high hotel. |
| 0:47.0 | And I was told I was going to jump into the party below from the top of the roof. |
| 0:57.0 | And normally I'm game for anything, but as we went up the lift, you know, I was just thinking it's very windy outside. |
| 1:06.7 | It was blowing about 40 or 50 miles an hour. |
| 1:10.5 | Is this sensible? |
| 1:13.0 | That's Virgin founder, an incorrigible thrill seeker, Sir Richard Branson. |
| 1:18.0 | And that question, is this sensible, is one he's asked himself time and time again, often with the same answer. |
| 1:25.0 | Screw it, let's do it. |
| 1:28.0 | And it's the answer he gave on that wind-swept rooftop 400 feet above Las Vegas. |
| 1:33.4 | It was 2007 and Sir Richard was there to publicize |
| 1:37.8 | the launch of his new airline, Virgin America. |
| 1:40.4 | Far below, a crowd filled with celebrities and press waited in anticipation. |
| 1:45.0 | The chant began, jump, jump, jump, jump. So when I got up onto the roof people said it's not that windy and there were walls all the |
| 2:04.0 | way around the roof so we couldn't feel the wind and then I buckled into a sort of |
| 2:09.6 | bungee jump and jumped off the roof. |
| 2:15.0 | And as I came down the side of the building, I hit the side of the building |
... |
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