Richard Branson Quotes

If you really stay focused on what your beliefs are and what your customer wants, you'll find the right markets.

When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?'

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.

Once you understand business models you can then start prototyping business models just like you prototype products.

We spend as much time looking at companies that are smaller than we are as we do at those that are bigger.

I study my competition for at least an hour a day. I get on the internet, look at what they doing, then I look at ways to defeat them.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

I love the business of business; I love the risk raking.

Just like a script, you need to keep a business plan to yourself.

You'll go out of business if you think people are stupid.

One of the people who most influenced me was Ben Shapiro, a marketing professor at the business school. He used to rant and rave and pound his fist: 'It's all about the customers!' And he was right. He was also right that, at that time, retailing was devoid of really talented people; he urged me to go in that direction.

Business is all about risk taking and managing uncertainties and turbulence.

Lot of companies are looking for advisory work on business strategy, restructuring work.

People are in such a hurry to launch their product or business that they seldom look at marketing from a bird's eye view and they don't create a systematic plan.

The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side.

I've made mistakes before of doing different projects just based on my dreams, my hopes, my thing, and not really thinking about my customers.

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

You have to understand who your customer is and her motivations and marry it to what's happening in the outside world.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Start small; get to know the landscape. We take risks but not major risks. We always started with small capital - €4m in Holland, $10m in Russia - and as we get to know the landscape of a country, we think about other businesses.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

People come in with business plans and, I mean I know that no one is going to meet everything they say in a business plan but you got to have something to, to guide towards.

My business is the analytical framework.