Virgin Voyages and Beyond: Richard Branson's Vision for the Future

That's what we do with any new company. We do. We get a big blank sheet of paper and we think, right. How can we make this company different and far more appealing than any other company that's gone before us?

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So we're all very excited to see you.

Well, that was a lovely welcome. Thank you. It's worth. Thank you. Anyway, thank you very much.

So before we get started, just so I have the right protocol, I know that back in 2000, I think it was, you were knighted by Queen Elizabeth. You are now Sir Richard Branson. Is that. Should I say Sir Richard or do.

I. I was Knighted on the 25th anniversary of the Sex Pistol's record. God save the Queen. Which. And I was slightly nervous that the queen would actually cut off my head rather than touch my shoulder. But unfortunately, she was very gracious, forgot about what had happened 25 years before. And. Yeah. So. But anyway, Richard is the way to go.

All right, thank you. So let's start with mindset. You are a record setter. You're interested in that. You've done all kinds of ballooning records. You kite surfed across the channel.

What.

What drives you to do that? What motivates you and drives you to set those records?

Very originally it was for marketing reasons. So we had one secondhand 747 in our airline fleet against British Airways, 400 planes. And somebody said to me, let's build a boat to try to break the record for the fastest boat across the Atlantic. And of course, we'll have A very big Fly Virgin on the boat. And so a few months later, I found myself in New York heading off across the Atlantic, being pounded to death. And we sank about 300 miles before we got to the UK but fortunately, when the helicopter rescued us, the words fly virgin was still sticking out of the, out of the water. And so the next year we came back and succeeded. And then I basically got addicted. I mean, I just loved trying to do things which had never been done before. Somebody said, no one's crossed the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. And so I got my hot air balloon license and then a few months later found myself waiting to take off from Sugarloaf, Maine across the Atlantic. And, and everything that could, could have gone wrong, went wrong in those adventures. I think I've got the record for being pulled out of the sea five times by helicopters in my life. So. And if anybody wants to break it, I wouldn't recommend it. But, but, you know, I think it gave Virgin a. You know, we didn't have the Internet to promote our companies in those days, so we needed to use, use ourselves to get out there and, you know, get, get the companies on, on the map. And, and I think these adventures gave us a much more sort of sexy, you know, image or somebody, something that people could identify with over, over, say, British Airways that was quite stuffy, would never dream of jumping in the blue.

My favorite stunt you did was when they were building the London Eye, the big Ferris wheel.

Don't spoil the story. I'm going to tell this.

I love that. I love that. Well, let's talk about. So being pulled out of the thing and getting out of the sea and getting permission from China at the last minute to go over, not get shot down when you're in these balloons and that kind of stuff. You've cheated death. In your book, you said 76 different times. And actually there's another one that you mention in the book that's not part of the 76. So at 77, you were leaning out a window and, and you got excited and almost fell out and somebody grabbed you by your shirt and pulled you back in. So that's number 77. What drives you to do that?

And what do you.

I guess probably. Let's talk about. You recently decided to ride out Hurricane Irma. And you were up on the, you were sitting in a place, I think you said that you were watching it come in and then you decided that you better get in under the shelter. And you came out later and there was a bathtub and that had been thrown in exactly the place that you were hanging out that would have had you end. And what did you learn from going through that process, that hurricane and all of these near death experiences?

Every time you have a near death experience, you swear to yourself you'll never do something like this again. And then within a sort of a week you think, well, I can do it slightly differently this time and we won't end up in the sea or whatever. Hurricanes, obviously, you've got no choice. They come every 10 years. And last year Irma was the worst hurricane in history.

So you figured, I'll just hang out at home.

Well, some of our staff had to be on Ireland and yeah, look, I like an adventure. So I joined them and fortunately we have a very secure wine cellar. So we hung out in the wine cellar. We had 14 hours of what sounded like a screaming train going by and, but plenty of wine. So it wasn't too, we weren't suffering too much. I'm trying to tell the London Eye story and he's gone off. Let me tell the London Eye story. Okay, so they. So I got a telephone call one morning and I was told that British Airways, they had this giant wheel which is opposite the House of Commons. It was on the ground. They had all the world's press there to photograph it being erected. And, and that they had a technical problem, they couldn't get it up. And so. I had an airship company and I rang up the airship company and I said, please get to this wheel as fast as possible. It was outside London. So about two hours later they came over the giant wheel and all the world's press were there. And if we've got the picture of the airship.

That is awesome.

Anyway, we got the headlines, not British Airways that day. We have quite a lot of fun with airships. They light up at nighttime and you've just had the super bowl in America. Did your team win?

Yeah.

And the, the. Yeah. So NBC wanted us to use our airship to film, to film the super bowl. And obviously we said yes. And we had an enormous fly virgin on the side of it. And we assumed we were going to get lots of, you know, lots of cameras coming up to our airships so that, you know, and Super Bowl's the best place to promote your products. But anyway, they made it very clear that they wouldn't have any cameras looking at our airship because, you know, I don't know, a second in the super bowl is a million dollars or something. So when the airship went up after about five minutes, we just pulled Out a banner at the back which said, NBC cameraman are the sexiest guys and girls in America. And we had their cameras just came up non stop the whole way through the Super Bowl.

That's awesome.

I'm telling some of these marketing stories because I think I'm addressing an audience of great marketing.

Are there any marketers in the room?

Yeah, because, I mean, it was interesting when, you know, I mean, you've, you. I mean, with. I don't know, how do you think you'd all be in the room if the Internet didn't exist? I doubt a lot of you would, actually. And, you know, so 50 years ago, when we started, you know, there wasn't the Internet and we just had to, you know, come up with fun, zany ideas to get our companies on the map. And we had a lot of fun doing it.

We were talking backstage about one of the things that I asked, because in your book, it was, I think, the introduction of Virgin Mobile in Australia. And you got out of your car and would you tell that story of what happened?

Well, we were launching a new mobile phone company in Australia and instead of driving into Sydney, Gene or Wang drove out of Sydney. And I said, well, you know, why are we going outside? I thought the press conference was in Darling harbor near the famous bridge. And she said, you'll see, Richard. You know, I could see she was a bit nervous. But anyway, so we drive into this field and there's a helicopter. Helicopters happen a lot in my life. But anyway, there was a helicopter sitting in the middle of the field. So I thought, that's all right. I don't mind flying into Sydney in a helicopter. It'd be nice to see. And so I'm about to climb into the helicopter and she says, no, no, no, Richard, sorry. If you could just pull this on your legs and strap up like that. Well done. And then this bungee jump, the bungee rope, we're going to attach to the back of your belt, if you could lie face down. And the helicopter takes off, and I'm 100 foot below the helicopter, I then take off and I immediately start swinging round and round and round and round and heading towards the Sydney Bridge. And fortunately, I'd done a couple of skydives. So finally I got myself into a skydive position and it was then just beautiful. I mean, it was as close to flying as you could ever be. I mean, it was just. You just felt like a bird. I mean, just flying through the sky. But then I saw the bridge coming up and I thought, Fuck, I'm 100ft down. I hope the helicopter realizes. Anyway, fortunately, we went just over the top of the bridge, not into the bridge, and there are all these people walking across the bridge and gave them a little wave. And then we landed on top of these cages where all these poor people had been who got orange or got Cellnet or got BT or other telephone companies were locked in and I had to rip the cages open. And anyway, but it's fun. I mean, it's better, you know, we got the front page story rather than, you know, a little anecdote in the back. And everybody smiled and everybody has fun when something like that happens. And, yeah, I recommend it for certain consumer companies.

So how many of you have flown or otherwise interacted with a Virgin brand? Raise your hand. Look at that. All the people who.

That's awesome. Thank you.

So over the years, you've built Virgin into one of the most, I think, beloved and recognized and versatile brands ever. Originally, I think you had a different name for it. Would you tell that story and how you came upon deciding on Virgin?

Well, I was 15, turning 16, sitting in a basement with a lot of girls who were 15, turning 16, and we were trying to come up with the name of a record company that we were going to start. My name was Slip Disc Records, which, you know, the old vinyl discs they always used to slip. And I'm quite glad we didn't do Slip Disk Records because I think Slip Disc Airlines wouldn't have done very well. And. And then one of the girls just laughed and said, why don't you call it Virgin? We're all virgins. And laughed hysterically. And then she paused and said, and you're Virgin in business. You've never done anything in business. So Virgin it was. And then we spent four years trying to get the registry office to register the name Virgin, and they thought it was rude. And. And after about three or four years, I finally decided, you know, the Virgin was beginning to, you know, get established. And I wanted to protect the name. So I got the English Dictionary and it said, Virgin, pure, untouched, unblemished. I mean, the absolute opposite of rude. And I wrote to them and they finally caved in and registered the name. That's awesome.

And you have now you've got spaceships, you got cruise ships, airlines, so many different things, phone companies, trains, and even fitness clubs that I didn't know about until I started really researching. I must be old or short attention span. That's what we entrepreneurs call. So I know from time to time people must have said, richard, you're pushing the brand too thin. It can't be that diverse. How do you react to that? And what do you think the secrets are to having brand integrity but being so diverse in so many different areas? With Virgin.

So you're absolutely right. I mean, when we had music stores and we decided to go into the airline business, people thought we were absolutely mad. And, you know, there were like the, you know, Richard, you should stick with your onions, you know, stick with what you watch. You know, you shouldn't, shouldn't move out into it, into new areas. Now, of course, if we had just stuck with music stores, we wouldn't be here today because the music business, with the ipod, the music stores disappeared. The reason we've gone into so many different areas often has just come from personal frustrations. So. So, you know, I'm sorry, I know some of you will have heard this story, but it's a fun story. I'm going to tell it again. So the way the airline started was I was in Puerto Rico. I was trying to get to the Virgin Islands. It was six in the evening. I'd been away from my girlfriend for three weeks. And the American Airlines captain says, I'm sorry, we're not taking off until tomorrow morning because we haven't got enough passengers on board the plane. And so I went to the back of the airport. I borrowed a blackboard as a joke. I used the word Virgin Airlines, And I said, $39 one way to the Virgin Islands. I went to all the people who'd been bumped, and I filled up my first plane. And then when we got to the Virgin Islands, somebody said, sharpen up the service a bit and you could be in the airline business. And the next day, I got on the phone to Boeing and I said, can I talk to your sales department? I was 28 years old.

I didn't even know you could call them up and say, hey, you got a plane, you can sell me.

The funny thing in life is if you just try these things, you'll surprise yourself, as I'm sure a lot of people in this room realize now. And so this wonderful man called R.J. wilson answered the phone, and I said, it's Richard Branson. Do you have any secondhand 747s for Sal? And he said, well, we do have one or two. Are you in the airline business? I said, no, I have a record company. I've got the Rolling Stones, I've got the Sex Pistols, I've got Boy George. And there was a pause, and I thought, he was about to put the phone down to me, and then he said, now, look, Richard, I like the sound of your voice. I'll come along and see you. But you just got to promise me one thing. Before I come, you've got to change the name of the company. He said, a name like Virgin, everybody will assume your airline won't go the whole way. And somebody just got it anyway. But he came and he sold us a 747, and I. I broke my promise.

So a lot of folks here are building brands, and you obviously seem to have a bit of a knack for doing that. What would you say the top three things that the people in the audience should be thinking about as they go about building their own brands?

Well, first of all, you're only as good as your own reputation, so. And it's your personal reputation and it's the reputation of your brand. So you've got to zealously protect your reputation and not get tempted to do anything that could possibly, you know, you could read about the next morning and feel, you know, uncomfortable about. Read about it, reading about it in the newspapers. So. So I think the Virgin brand has survived 50 years, by and large. I think we've got it right and we know we can sleep well at night, and we have people who are. But in each company, making sure that the way they deal with the customers is great, you know, that we treat people fairly, that we don't overcharge. All these sort of factors are really important. So you have your brand and then obviously your people and people.

It's kind of interesting.

You've.

For the trains and I think the banks as well, and I know the airlines. You've intentionally reached outside of the industry to find just good people. Could you comment on that a little bit? Because I know that's one of the keys.

Yeah. I mean, when we started an airline, we did not want to bring in a whole lot of airline people to run our airline. I mean, yes, okay, in the cockpit, we quite like to have pilots that have flown before. You'd be pleased. But apart from that, we wanted fresh faces with fresh ideas. And, you know, and that's what we, that's what we do with any new company. We, we, we do. We get a big blank sheet of paper and we think, right, how, how can we make this company different? And, you know, far more appealing than any, any other company that's gone before us, and we bring in people from different Virgin companies around the world to create. Create the magic. And I think, you know, we're then, you know, we do look after our people. Well, I mean, we're, you know, at Virgin in our offices in London and in New York. If people want to take holidays for two months and they'll still get paid, they can do it if they want.

Was it your daughter that suggested you implement the program of. I mean, talk about that just for a second.

Yeah, my daughter just came, rang me one day and said, I think, you know, she worked. Worked that. I think you should be brave and just say, give, you know, treat people as adults. You know, they want to work at home, let them work at home. If they want to go part time, let them go part time. If they want to take a sabbatical, let them take a sabbatical. If they want to take a week off, you know, first, you know, anytime through the air or a month off or two months off, let them do it. If you treat them like that, they will, you know, they will perform even better at the times that they're at work and it's turned out that way. And I mean, in America, I think the amount of holidays people are given is terrifying. I mean, how you can actually bring up kids with that little holiday time being given to you. And, you know, with. With modern communications, people can work from pretty well anywhere, so why shouldn't they be working a little bit with their children? And Necker island also.

Love it. Thank you. That's great.

Thank you. The thing I thought you were going to say was in the various companies you mentioned, we have a policy of taking on, giving people a second chance. So taking on people from prisons, and we've taken on dozens and dozens of people who come out of prisons. Not one of them have reoffended. I mean, they are so appreciative that they've been given a second chance and they become.

That's really great.

Yeah, they become some of our best, you know, our best, best employees. And it's good for society if companies can do that because, you know, I mean, generally people reoffend because, you know, they're dumped outside of prison. They've got no money, no options. They've got no options. I mean, it's.

So let's. Let's move to where you're expanding.

You're.

I think in 20, 20 Virgin Voyages will be a cruise line with three cruise ships, right?

Yeah. So I wouldn't dream of going on a cruise ship, but that's the reason we decided to go into creating our own cruise ship. We wanted to create the kind of cruise ship that myself and my Friends and, you know, would just love to go on. And again, big blank sheet of paper. I got people in who'd been on cruise ships. And she sets sail 12 months from now going to Havana and Bahamas. She, I'm afraid no grandkids, no kids allowed. It's just going to be adults only. And yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.

And you know, where are you sailing from initially?

Initially from Miami.

Okay.

And then Havana we managed to get permission to go into, which is fantastic. And we've got an island in the Bahamas that is beautiful and we've got setting up beautiful beach things and so on. So yeah, so it's gonna, it's gonna be good. And you know, we got five cruise ships on order. The first one just came out of the dock in Italy three days ago. And it's going to be fun.

Nice.

So what do you see as the next industry that's most ripe for. You're a disruptor. What do you think is you're going to make some waves that there, Right. Forgive the pun, but what would you say is the next industry that really needs a shaken up?

Well, I mean, space is becoming rather exciting for Virgin and space is virgin territory.

The puns are here all day long.

I've had a lifetime of them. Sorry it's Virgin on the ridiculous. But anyway, there we go. So where was it 14, 15 years ago, I gave up waiting to be taken to space by NASA or by the Russians or by the Chinese, and realized that they just were not interested in taking us to space. And so we, I traveled the world looking for a genius engineer, came across Bert Rutin, and we started building our space company. And as I said in the introduction video, we've had tears, we've had joy. Two days ago, our second flight into space happened, which included a young lady in the back, one of our engineers. And just seeing her face of absolute joy as she looked out when she reached space just made me really itching to go up myself.

So they're already doing test runs of that right now. When will you be launching? Or when is the current plan?

So I'm hoping to go up this July. Everything seems to be going really well towards that. This July happens to be the anniversary of the moon landing, which I, I was alive for and remember vividly on a black and white TV set. And yeah, I mean I, I. And we got 700 people who signed up or are itching to go. So yeah, so we're building three or four spaceships at the moment. And we're building them in the Mojave Desert. Then we move the whole operation to that rather stunning looking spaceport that you saw in those pictures in New Mexico. And that's where we'll be operating.

So it said, revolutionizing the small satellite industry. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. So that's actually a sister company to Virgin Galactic called Virgin Orbit. We took one of our secondhand 747s from Virgin Atlantic, which went right back 35 years. We converted the wings that could take a giant rocket. We then spent the last eight years building this giant rocket. And we will be putting an array of satellites up. There's a company that we were instrumental in starting with a man called Greg Weiler from Necker island, actually from the Bar, which is plans to put 2,000 satellites around the Earth. And that will connect some of the billions of people who are not connected. And the advantage of a 747 is, you know, we can launch that, we can launch satellites within 24 hours anywhere in the world. The rocket will travel around the earth at eighteen and a half thousand miles an hour, dropping off the satellites. So that's got its first launch in a couple of months time.

That's awesome. And I love the story about the logo too. Would you mind sharing that with everybody? How the logo came up with the.

Logo was, I'm trying to remember. Stephen Hawkins and Stephen Hawkins and myself both made a logo of our eyes. And everybody, every astronaut who goes up into space will have a little version of their eye put on the spaceship.

So of each of theirs. That's so cool. Your personal brand has been undeniably helpful in helping the Virgin brand. And one of the challenges, I think a lot of folks especially here in the audience have, is that they only have a personal brand or they only have a corporate brand. How do you believe that your personal brand has helped Virgin? And how have you kept one from overshadowing the other?

So in the early days the headlines would be brands and this brands and that. And I felt I wasn't, you know, building the brand. And it was only after about 10 years or 15 years that people started talking about Virgin this and Virgin that. So I think the personal brand, I mean, because I was young, I mean, I started off at 15, 16 years old. That helped me get interviews and get the press interested. But now I think the Virgin brand is well established around the world. And so if I get run over, I think the Bergen Branch can way outlive me and continue in the future.

That Makes sense. So one of the things that we were very sad about when Virgin America went away as an airline here in the States, so was I, was that that customer experience, the customer experience that Virgin is really well known for is very special and very unique and it's always good. What is your process for designing the customer experience, how the customer actually experiences your product and the customer journey? When you're looking at how the journey of the customer across the buying and consumption experience is going to be, what's the process for doing that?

Well, first of all, yeah, we never wanted to sell Virgin America because I was British. I had to have non voting shares in the company and annoyingly the company got sold and sadly I don't think Alaska, they haven't kept the brand, they haven't kept the staff. So it's been quite, quite sad to see that happen. But on a positive note, let's go back forward to 13 years. When we started Virgin America Airlines in America were not a pleasant experience and we wanted to bring in an airline into the States that when people walked on it they would go, wow, this is just fantastic. And we wanted to create the kind of airline that children would get really upset with their parents if they weren't flying on Virgin because the entertainment system for instance, would be much better. And know, we wanted to create a kind of airline where everybody working there absolutely loved, loved everything about it and therefore they, they had a smile on their face all the time. And Virgin America won best airline best, you know, 10 year, 10 years in a row. And I think it was, you know, it was much better than all the other airlines. Maybe one day we'll come back.

Did they change the rules on the ownership? I knew that they were working on that.

No, they've still kept the rules. I mean it's a bizarre archaic system which was left over from 1938 when they were worried that Hitler would buy an airline in America or something. And the big airlines have used, used it to protect themselves ever since. They don't really want really good airlines like Singapore or Emirates coming into America. So yes, so the rules are still there.

What industries would you say right now? You've identified them very well throughout the banking experience. Just amazing. Everybody loves going to the bank. Dmv. It would be great if you could do Virgin DMV which is our motor vehicles registration. But what would you say are the industries right now that could most be benefit from what you do?

Well, I think, I mean we've obviously got one or two exciting new things like space, which we're working on. So Virgin Hyperloop is, I think, going to be very exciting. And that's basically a tube. If anybody's outside Las Vegas, they can see this tube in the desert where we're testing, testing virgin Hyperloop. And we'll have a pod in the tube and it will levitate and It'll go at 6, 700 miles an hour. And it's on a magnetic track. I give you an idea of how it could be used. So Dubai has a big airport. It's full up. So they got to build another airport which is 60, 70 miles away. If we put a hyperloop between the two airports, instead of people taking some hours to get through the traffic to get to the other airport, they'll get there in next to load time. But more excitingly, if you land in Dubai from jfk, you'll be able to get into your pod from the gate that you've landed in, miss out the whole airport and with your luggage, go straight through to the gate at the other airport, going on to Hong Kong, get out and get on the plane. And you know, we, we can have pods of all different sizes. Different size pods can go to different, you know, different gates. And so it will say it just saves that, you know, one and a half hours going through an airport and the one and a half hours on, on in the, in the traffic. We're building one of these in from Mumbai to Pune in India, which is the most dangerous road to drive. Takes five and a half hours. And the Indians have given us all the way along the side of the motorway. And you know, that will transform, you know, people be able to get there in less than half an hour. And it'll, it'll be very exciting. So we'll see. I mean, you know, like, like with Virgin Galactic, it's, it's, it's in the early stages, but it's, it, it looks, looking good.

So in a lot of these pictures, including that video, I see that you are a fan of champagne. I too am a fan of champagne. What's your favorite champagne?

Oh, I don't know if you've got any Dom Perignon there. No, my wife lives off champagne. I was just. Why I have to work so hard. Just keep, keep her in champagne. But yeah, I mean, it is champagne and red wine in my. Yeah, I haven't really got onto spirits yet.

But are you a French wine, an American wine?

Oh, I'm not too, I'm not too fussed. It's a good, a good red wine.

Good Red wine does. Now, speaking of spirits, you have something that you're doing in that world and I think you have an interesting partner as well. Right. Could you tell us about that? When someone approaches you or you approach someone about doing a partnership down in. Partnerships have been very big in your life with Singapore Airlines, I think, and several others. What makes a good partner and what do you think you look for? I mean, obviously that's the perfect partnership.

Partnerships are so important in life. I mean, obviously, if you're lucky enough to find a lady you love or a man you love and you stay together throughout your life, it's an absolute joy. If it works, it's a joy for your children, it's just wonderful. But partnerships in business can be equally magical. And I think you've got to do the sort of give and take and you've got to sometimes be, you know, overly generous to your partner to make sure that it works and not.

So then Ryan will be leading Virgin Nation.

Yeah, I mean everything every other partnerships work well, but I mean, obviously that's a little bit, you know, I think he wants to go to space, so we'll. Yeah, maybe I'll send him on a one way ticket after that.

I like that.

But no, I mean we've been very lucky. We've had some great partnerships and we'll continue to have partnerships in new ventures that we do.

So one of the things that we look at here is we have a thing we call earned media or publicity, which you're obviously amazing at. And then we have paid media where we're paying for advertising. Is there a way that you approach that? Like, is there an ideal mix or how do you think about those two things?

The more media you can get that you don't pay for, the better. And yeah, I mean, so I will, you know, if Friends ring me up, which they once did, and said, you know, would you like to come and appear in Friends? You know, yep, we'll do that. You know, it's just to, you know, jump, jump in and make the best of any of these fun offers and you can have fun at the same time. The only problem about appearing in Friends was I was walking down the street in America one day and somebody came up to me and said, instead of saying, you're the guy from Virgin, you're the guy from Friends. So I wasn't. But anyway, it's. I think if you can get free advertising, you should get it, but obviously you've got to mix it with paid.

Do you think that you get more bang on a long term basis from one or the other.

I think that it depends slightly what kind of company you're building. I mean, we've built consumer facing companies in pretty well all, everything that we're in. And so, so creating an image that people identify with is much easier through, I don't know, ballooning, boating, your personal charisma, et cetera, than through ordinary advertising. But then once you created that image, then you can lay the advertising on top of.

What final thoughts would you like to leave this wonderful crowd of marketers and entrepreneurs with before you take off for the next adventure?

Well, most of my time these days is spent on trying to solve some of the sort of intractable problems of this world. And, and I think that, you know, when you're a small business, you know, you've got to look after your first of all yourself, make sure you keep healthy and well. Then once you know that you've got yourself well looked after, then your employees and the people around you, then maybe your local village, then maybe your local city, look at what things you can do to help than maybe your country. And then when you become a global brand like Virgin, you've got to look at the global issues and see how you can help. And I think if we can get every company to do that, most of the problems of this world I think can be solved. So. Yeah, so I mean, you know, we've looked at the really big problems, the, you know, climate change. I mean, tomorrow I've got a team of judges coming to NECA to judge something called the Virgin Earth Prize, which was a $25 million prize that we put up a number of years ago to see if anybody could come up with a genius idea of extracting carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere. And we won't know until tomorrow night whether anyone will win it. But it stimulated lots of people to think about because if you can actually extract enough carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere, you can then balance the Earth's temperature. The war on Drugs has had 60 years of abject failure. And I think if we as business people had a business that had 60 years of failure, we would have closed it down 59 years ago. And we've done a lot of studying on what works, what doesn't work, which country are doing it right, which countries are not doing it right. And it's completely clear to the Global Drug Commission, which I'm part of, that drugs should be treated as a health problem. Alcohol, you know, treated as a health problem. And look after those people who don't know how to deal with it. And countries that have done that, I mean, if you take heroin in Portugal, it had a just as bad per number of population as America has today of people who are addicted to heroin. The government, you know, the president went on television and said, we're not going to prosecute any of you ever again. You're not going to go to prison. We're going to set up centers for you to come to get your help. We're going to have you supervised. We're going to make sure you have clean needles. We're going to make sure that you don't overdose. We're going to make sure you don't have to go and break and enter into people's homes to get your dosage. And then when you're ready to be weaned off, we will find a clinic to help you. And within five years, pretty well every single heroin addict in Portugal disappeared. Now, in America, how many people here know of somebody who's suffered from heroin? Or what's the other one, the other thing that you've got a substance in America, everybody's got. But anyway, it seems. Thank you. It seems to touch so many, so many, so many families here. And, you know, just. Just for the government to come out all the time and say, you know, increase the war, increase the war. It's not going to work. And there needs to be a change of policy.

From all of us. Thank you so much for all of the good that you do in the world, for inspiring us as entrepreneurs, for being on the Business Lunch podcast and at Traffic Conversion Summit. Let's give Richard Branson a really big hand.

Thank you.

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