#48 Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography by Richard Branson

**David Senra** (0:01)
I view life as one big adventure. I'm always learning and finding new things to try and challenges to overcome. Whether you're running a company or simply living your life, hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and put a smile on your face along the way. A reviewer described Losing My Virginity as the first autobiography in which the author had written an expose on himself.
I hope Finding My Virginity will be similar. If your life is one long success story, it won't make for a good read. What's more, you're most likely a liar. We all have ups and downs, trials and tribulations, failures and triumphs. We just hope to come out stronger on the other side. The late Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur I most admire, said, My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time. That thought has been on my mind as I write this book, thinking back to all the good times and tough times behind me, and looking forward with wonder at what lies ahead. I've always lived every day as if it's my last, fiercely loving my family and friends and trying to make a positive difference.
We only get one life and this is mine.
So that is from the prologue of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Finding My Virginity, The New Autobiography by Richard Branson. So this is going to be the second of a three-part series on Richard Branson. Last week, we covered the book that he just mentioned, which was Losing My Virginity, How I Survived, Had Fun, Made a Fortune, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. So Finding My Virginity is written about 20 years after he wrote Losing My Virginity.
So at the end of the first book, he has about a billion dollars in the bank, and for the first time in his life, he's achieved financial freedom after a career, because most of Losing My Virginity is all about the struggle from starting his first company at 15 years old all the way up until selling Virgin Records, which is the first time in his life that he ever had room to breathe, and he didn't have to go to banks and beg them to like extend loans and raise more credit. So, although there is going to be a ton of business stories in the book, after I finished reading the book, I came to the conclusion it's more about a book on life, and he's almost 70 years old when he's writing it, and he's looking back and he's kind of giving us explicit lessons on, like he said from the prologue, I'm hoping you can learn from my mistakes. And so, that's the frame from which I want you to look at the stories that we're going to talk about today, as quite contrasted from the stories we talked about last week. And then next week will be part three.
He's written many books, but I just chose three to cover. And if you want to see which book we're going to cover next week, go to founderspodcast.com forward slash books, and you could see not only next week's books, but you could see the 40 plus books that have been covered on the podcast so far. So before I get into the rest of the book, and we start talking about the start of what he calls his third career, just a reminder that once we get going here, this podcast is a little different from maybe the other podcasts that you're used to listening to. I'm not going to interrupt our time with ads. This podcast is supported solely by people that get value from it. If you like the podcast and you want to support it, the best way to do that is by becoming a member. Just go to Founders Podcasts, forward slash support, or you can just click the link that's in your show notes on your podcast player. And for a very small monthly fee, you can unlock members-only podcasts. So these are podcasts that are not released anywhere else. It's only for people that are actively supporting the podcast. And I think if you sign up today, there's like 11 you'd unlock, maybe 12 And I add, I do an extra podcast every week just for members.
Okay, so I'll talk more about that at the end. Let me go ahead and jump into the book. And we're just gonna, we're gonna pick it up right in the year 1999 And this is what he's calling the start of his third career. Necker Island, New Year's Eve, 1998 I was in my bedroom trying to make an urgent to-do list. With the end of the year approaching and the end of the millennium looming, I found myself both reflecting back and looking forward. As so often during my life as an entrepreneur, I really had no idea what was coming next. I had created and sold the biggest independent record label on the planet and fought doggedly to build Virgin Atlantic into the best airline in the world.