“Screw It, Let’s Do It” is one of Richard Branson’s autobiographies. Slash advice books. He says it is about lessons in life. Which is really what most of his books are about. Anecdotes about how to be a winner. Many of which genuinely are useful.
He is a man who makes snap decisions. In general, that is a bad idea. Or at least no better than a well thought out idea. However, it does fit with the Virgin brand of doing random things because they sound fun.
It also does a lot of crazy things. Balloon flights, weather hurricanes and Atlantic yacht crossings for example. He has had to be rescued on a regular basis. This is fine except that the flip side of that luck is that somewhere in the third world a child is being a particularly horrible terminal disease so that the universe can balance it all out.
He has built himself up from nothing, and that is very impressive. Though he did have a privileged upbringing having a wealth family and going to public school. He also has dyslexia and has not let that get in the way.
I really liked his quote on climate change. Something like “we’re a group of people who agree the building is on fire, but none of us will reach for the extinguisher”. He also advocates innovating our way out of the situation while still having fun. All good stuff.
In the end, I was inspired to go out there and do something. That will almost certainly wear off before I actually get round to doing anything, but it was a good feeling for a brief few hours.
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Tags: business, richard branson, virgin
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2015 at 11:20 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.