Richard Branson says:
This is by no means a complete list – here are 65 of my top lessons learned in business.
1. Be passionate
2. Love what you do and do what you love
3. Dream and strive to achieve your dreams
4. Be your own champion
5. Be true to yourself
6. Treat others like you would like to be treated
7. Listen
8. Say what you mean and mean what you say
9. Get to the point, fast
10. Don’t take yourself too seriously
11. Be curious
12. Be alert and receptive to opportunities
13. Embrace the unplanned
14. Be optimistic
15. Share your ideas
16. Remember there’s no such thing as a bad idea
17. See a problem, fix it
18. Think like a customer
19. Say yes!
20. Screw it, just do it
21. Know when to say no
22. Challenge the status quo
23. Find a gap in the market
24. Produce something of use
25. Disrupt the market
26. Get the essentials right
27. Nail your executive summary
28. Treat business as an endurance race not a sprint
29. Think of innovation as an endless quest
30. Don’t get caught up in what’s trendy
31. Challenge peoples’ perceptions and possibilities
32. Take the constructive criticism and use it, and ignore the baseless cynicism
33. Think of failure as a hurdle not a dead-end
34. Learn by doing and failing over
35. Use past failures unlock future successes
36. Don’t focus on the past, plan for the future
37. Regard opportunities like buses – there’s always another one coming
38. Zag, occasionally
39. Make bold moves
40. Stand out from the crowd
41. Make sure your advertising is new, different, playful, and above all memorable
42. Tell stories
43. Celebrate your wins – big or small
44. Always respect, but never fear your competition
45. Play fair
46. Spend more time smiling than frowning and more time praising than criticising
47. Surround yourself with great people
48. Hire attitudes
49. Put your staff first
50. Empower your employees, don’t rule over them
51. Support diversity in the workplace
52. Think of people as change-makers, not resources
53. Listen to your employees’/colleagues’ ideas
54. Understand and you will be understood
55. Lead from the front line
56. Give second chances
57. Delegate
58. Say thank you
59. Invest in employee wellbeing
60. Avoid making decisions in isolation
