#47 Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Even though I'm often asked to define my business philosophy, I generally won't do so because I don't believe it could be taught as if it were a recipe. There aren't ingredients and techniques that will guarantee success. Parameters exist that, if followed, will ensure a business can continue, but you cannot clearly define our business success and then bottle it as you would a perfume. It's not that simple. To be successful, you have to be out there. You have to hit the ground running. And if you have a good team around you and more than your fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can't guarantee it just by following someone else's formula.
Business is a fluid, changing substance. And as far as I'm concerned, the Virgin Group will never stand still.
It has always been a mutating, indefinable thing. And the past few years have demonstrated that. But it is only when you come to write a book such as this that you discover how far you still want to go. That's how I see this book. A comprehensive account of the first 50 or so years of my life.
The struggling years. But also a work and a life in progress.
This book was never intended to be as dry as a balance sheet. But will, I hope, give an idea of what has been important to my life and to the people around me thus far.
Okay, so that is Richard Branson writing in his autobiography. And the book is called Losing My Virginity. How I Survived, Had Fun, And Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way.
So this book was originally published in 1998
And I went back and checked my Amazon account. And the first time I read it was back in 2005
And rereading it now, what, almost 13 years later, I realized how much of it had fallen away from my memory.
So everybody, Richard Branson is probably, what, one of the most famous entrepreneurs of all time, like in history. Certainly one of the most famous living entrepreneurs.
And what I forgot about it is how much of the book is what he's describing there.
Struggle. And it's not until he sells what surprised me now re-reading it, and I'll get to it eventually, later in these podcasts, is it wasn't until he was able to sell virgin music, some 25 years after he started out as an entrepreneur, that he actually had, for the first time in his life, money to do other things that he wanted to do. So we'll go into detail about how he would just constantly build businesses, but never had too much money to speak of because he kept reinvesting in the business and kept expanding the Virgin Group.
And so one other thing before I also get back into the book is, as you probably saw in the title of this podcast, this is going to be part one of a multi-part series on Richard Branson.
So in the past, there's been, I've done multiple podcasts on certain people, Henry Ford, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, because there's multiple books written about their businesses. And what I want to start doing now, which I think is more helpful, is if I'm going to be covering entrepreneurs multiple times, I want to try to do it all at once. There's probably five different books that I want to read on Steve Jobs. And so what I would do if I could go back and redo it is, I would do all of them in order, because you're reading about the same material, you have a deeper understanding as you continue. And I think that's a little better than maybe doing one podcast on Henry Ford, for example, and then waiting two months. Sometimes you forget all the detail. So I'm going to do it. This is an experiment, see how it works. But for Richard Branson, there's several books of his that I want to read. And I think this one, obviously, we should start with this one because it's not a biography. He released another autobiography like a year or two ago, which I'm going to definitely read, and it'll be one of the parts in this multi-part series. But I think Losing My Virginity is the perfect place to start because this is what I'm most interested in and why I'm doing a podcast where I read biographies of entrepreneurs. Is because, first of all, I think it's very inspiring. Not just my opinion, but there's tons of other founders that have talked about the same thing. It's very inspiring about reading the life story of people that have accomplished something.