Richard Branson  1:33  

First of all, I was sure that the airline business stank. The quality was ghastly and it wasn’t fun. Yeah, pretty miserable experience to travel from A to B on British Airways or any of the other airlines. 

I thought if we could throw into the mix a plane that was great fun and was beautifully designed. They also had staff that loved what they were doing, where the food was great, and the seating was nice, where there were stand-up bars, where the entertainment was great, then we’d have a chance. We couldn’t be sure. 

First of all, I did a deal with Boeing so I could hand the plane back to Boeing at the end of the 12 months, if I was wrong about this. That was protecting the downside. So at least I knew the worst that could happen was about 50% of the profits of Virgin Records, if it all went wrong. 

Then we threw this one plane in against Pan Am with 300 planes, TWA with 300 planes, British Airways with 300 planes, Air Florida with a couple of hundred planes, People Express with a couple hundred planes, and British Caledonian with 100 planes. People loved it. 

I used myself to make sure we’ve got on the front pages of the newspapers and not on the back pages. At the end of the first year, we rang up Boeing and asked for a couple more 747s for Florida and for a couple more routes. Slowly but surely, we grew. 

As we were growing, British Airways decided they didn’t like this at all, even though we were sort of four or five planes and launched what famously became known as the dirty tricks campaign. 

We took them to court and we won the biggest libel damages in history. We distributed it at Christmas time. That became known as the British Airways Christmas bonus. All our staff are smiling and happy. British Airways backed off somewhat. 

As we were growing, every one of our other competitors went bankrupt. TWA went bankrupt. Anyway, the whole flock disappeared. The only reason I think British Airways survived was they had a monopoly of the slots at the main airport. 

So, it is possible for a much smaller company to be the David taking on the big Goliath. As long as you’ve got quality, panache, fun and style, you can actually beat them or at least you can beat most of them. That’s what Virgin Atlantic did.

Stig Brodersen  3:41  

I really like this response, not so much because Branson actually responded to the question. In many ways. I think that Richard Branson almost doesn’t acknowledge that you can be paralyzed and I mean that in the best possible way. I don’t see him being paralyzed. He’s very much just like, “Screw it and just do it!” He makes it work. 

I would like to provide some context to this. I’ll have two short stories here about him that can really tell you about how resourceful he is. 

One of them is that he bought an island, pretty early on, an island that he couldn’t afford. When he asked the owner why it was so expensive, he was told it was because the power supply was so expensive for him to buy and he simply couldn’t supply it. 

Branson’s way of thinking was simply, “Okay, I’ll just build a power plant then.” He went out to the Caribbean, then he built a power plant, so he could get his island for a lot cheaper. I don’t know what the price was worth, but I’m telling that story just to tell you that he’s just very resourceful in the way that he thinks about solving problems. He’s thinking what is the end goal? Then he solves the puzzle in terms of getting out there. For example, “I want to start a carrier. Okay. How do I go there?” 

Preston Pysh  4:56  

For me, somebody who’s listening to this that doesn’t have a lot of start-up capital like Richard Branson has in both of those scenarios we were talking about, I think they can kind of roll their eyes at some of these comments. 

However, where I think that you can learn a lot from Richard Branson is more on going back to Stig’s island comment, his idea from the beginning was “I want my own private island, but maybe because it’s so expensive, maybe I can bring guests into the island and vacation there whenever I’m not there.” He looks for these win-win situations. 

Going back to the Boeing example that we were talking about. Here’s a guy who wants to get into this business, but is scared for obvious reasons. I mean, he listed all the competitors. Well, he works a deal with Boeing, even though he had resources to do the deal himself and to assume all that risk. 

The only reason I think that he stepped into the airline business is because he had that deal lined up with Boeing where he could return the aircraft if it didn’t work out. That’s where a guy who actually even has the resources but he’s still acting like the power of broke like the Daymond John book we read. He’s still operating in this mindset where “How can I do things on the terms that I want to do them, but do it in a very cost effective way that minimizes my downside?” 

You heard a little bit of that in the conversation. 

Stig Brodersen  6:13  

The first comment, Preston, the thing you said about the island. It almost sounds like the first Airbnb right? 

Preston Pysh  6:20  

Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of what he did, right?

Stig Brodersen  6:22  

Yeah. He wasn’t living there for most of the year so you could just rent it.dI think we even looked into that a few years ago, Preston. 

Preston Pysh  6:29  

Yes. 

Stig Brodersen  6:29  

We didn’t rent it, though, but it was interesting to check out. You also have a good point about whenever you say I’m not going to buy my own island or I’m not going to set up my own airline. Sure, so let’s take another example from what happened when he was 15 years old and had no money. I think we can all resonate with that example. 

Back then, you didn’t have cell phones. Well, it wasn’t invented. He had this school magazine and he needed to attract advertisers. He actually had so little money that he couldn’t afford the change using that phone box at his school. 

What he did was he called the operator and said, “Oh, I don’t have any change on me but I have a really important meeting with Mr. Something-son. Could you please set me through?” That is what happened. He did that multiple times. 

One of the examples that he brought up himself was when he called both Coke and Pepsi. He called Coke and said, “Pepsi just bought ads in our magazines. Would you like to buy ads too?” He did the same thing with Pepsi, and at 15 years old, he raised 4500 pounds. That was how he got started. 

Now, I’m not saying it’s super ethical. I’m not saying that that is what you should do. It’s just like, “Hey, I’m going to set up this magazine, and then I’m going to figure out how to do it. I don’t have any money. I don’t even have money for a simple phone call. I’m going to figure out a way to do it.”

Preston Pysh  7:53  

That’s the difference. Most people would say, “Well, I want to start a magazine. I don’t have any money. Okay, well, I guess I can’t do that.” They’re done where Richard Branson thinks, “It doesn’t matter. I can figure out a way to get around that somehow.” Then, he just figures it out. 

The key point for me is when you think that it can’t be done, the thing that’s really limiting you is your thinking and not necessarily your resources or your creativity or whatever. You’ve got to somehow just keep pressing on to get there. 

So, for the next question, he was asked, “You say something really interesting in your book. You say if your life is one long success story, you’re most likely a liar. I’m sure that you’ve had no shortage of failures in your own life.” 

But the person starts listing all of the things that he’s accomplished, like Virgin Cola, clothing, cosmetics. “For the audience and the people who are listening to his response, they’re often terrified by failure, and aren’t willing to take that first step because they’re just so scared of failure and so we’re curious to hear your thoughts on that idea.” 

This was his response.

Richard Branson  9:01  

I could have added that it also makes for a much better book if you’ve got a little bit of ups and downs, because there’s nothing worse than reading somebody’s autobiography where all they include are all these lovely successes that go from one set to another. 

As I said earlier, I love to say yes. I love to try things. Sometimes I fall flat on my face. Sometimes I succeed. I think because we generally start things from scratch. We haven’t had any sort of massive dramatic failures that have really damaged the foundations of Virgin. 

Generally speaking, if we started a bank or financial service company, we’ll just literally start in a very small way and then build it up from there. We start an airline. We start with one plane and we build it up from there.

Because we’ve created companies that are much better than our rivals, generally, the public identify with them and generally, more often than not, it’s successful. 

Where we’ve come unstuck is where we’ve taken on a big Goliath: Coca-Cola. Your product just can’t be fundamentally better. I mean it can be… Some people may say it tastes better, but for a year when we took on Coca-Cola, I thought we’re going to be the biggest brand in the world. We’re outselling Coke and Pepsi in every store in Britain. 

I got a Sherman tank and I drove into Times Square in New York and turned the turret on the Coca Cola sign, which we then had to *inaudible* wired up the night before. It looked like we blew up the sign. 

Anyway, Coca-Cola wasn’t amused, understandably. What happened, and I only found this out because about two years after a new bank manager at Lloyds Bank in England invited me out for dinner. She happened to be the woman who was behind this back at Coke two years earlier. 

She went in to see the chairman of Coke or the president of Coke and said, “You know, this little Virgin brand. We’ve got to take them seriously. They’re outselling us in Britain and like a bushfire it could catch on. It could take us around the world.” 

He literally didn’t take us seriously and a month later, he looked at a new set of figures, he then called her in and said, “Right, there’s a DC10 on the runway at Atlanta airport. It’s full of cash. It’s full of squad teams. You’re going to lead the charge and you’re going to England. I want you to snuff them out.”

Virgin Cola just disappeared from the shelves of Tescos everywhere. It just suddenly disappeared. We had no idea why people would take it off. We would ring retailers and protest. They wouldn’t let us know. It wasn’t until two years later that we found out what had happened. 

Anyway, we were the *inaudible*. The problem was that with British Airways, when we had similar things, our product was better so we survived. Though with Coca-Cola, we lost that battle.

Preston Pysh  11:39  

The reason Stig and I played this is because we found that to be an interesting comment that he made about this competitive nature. I think it just shows you how insanely competitive business can get, especially at even macro levels with Coca-Cola going over to the UK with a wad of money to convince retailers not to carry a product. That’s just crazy. Incredible story and we thought it was a story that was worth sharing and interesting. So, Stig I’m kind of curious to hear your thoughts.

Stig Brodersen  12:07  

That is one field. This gentleman is taking on Coca-Cola himself. I also loved how he’s completely upfront about him falling flat on his face on that one. 

What I really took away from this and what I would like to communicate to the audience, especially if you have followed Richard Branson before, and you might be intimidated in some way. You’re feeling like, “How can he do all that and how has he no fear of failure?” It seems that is what he has. 

I would love to talk about personality types and also if you can do something about it, and how to look at this. I’m personally a huge fan of learning more about who you are and your strength, but also your shortcomings, specifically about one test. We’ll link to it in the show. It’s completely free and everyone can take it. You can be so called assertive or you can be turbulent. 

If you are assertive, it means that you are typically self-assured, even tempered and resistant to stress. That would be someone like Richard Branson, meaning you don’t spend too much time thinking about past actions or choices, and not what other people think of you. 

I wanted to address that because a lot of that is formed in your early years. It’s not always something you can change when you grow up. It’s not something you can just be like, “Oh, Richard Branson doesn’t care. He just started an airline. I want to do the same.” 

I don’t want to discourage anyone when talking about this and when I say that a lot of this is fixed, this is purely empirical. It’s sort of like this. If you are short, you can probably still be a good basketball player, but you just do not have the same advantages as someone who is 6 feet tall. 

It’s important whenever you are talking about that way of life and that way of taking chances to learn more about yourself in terms of how you react to failures and how you react to the experiences life throws at you.

The reason why I also wanted to play this question was really to address that and to encourage people to do something that is fit for them and where they have their own strengths. This is not only something that I’m saying. 

I think as most people know, both Preston and I were heavily influenced by Ray Dalio and his book “Principles.” This is one of the key takeaways I took from that book is he’s testing himself and his testing everyone in the team. I think they even have like baseball *inaudible*. It bridged more in terms of pinpointing what people are good at and what they’re not good at, and what should that person do.

I want to throw that out there. The website is called 16personalities.com, which has been immensely helpful both for me and for everyone at TIP. 

It’s heavily influenced by Ray Dalio and I just wanted to bring that up here now we’re talking about Richard Branson, in his own way extreme personality, and why that’s such a strength in terms of what he’s doing.

Preston Pysh  14:49  

There is something else that I wanted to address in there. He was talking about how they always start a business from the ground up. That reminded me of a pretty famous book that we read a while back, and maybe we can have the link too in the show notes. It’s called “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen. 

I think he’s out of Harvard, right? Harvard professor?

The main premise of the book is that when a company wants to start a new product or service that is really kind of outside of their lane, oftentimes, the best way to go about it is to literally separate it from the business itself. Give the manager who’s identified to start this business full reins to start it from the ground up, and almost as if they’re completely detached from the main company that’s starting it itself. 

I kind of get the sense, especially after this way that Richard Branson answered this question, that that’s how he operates. It is exactly what this book was recommending. 

Now, I definitely didn’t do any service to the complexity of everything that Clayton Christensen laid out in this book, but that’s a general premise. It seems like Richard Branson has been naturally doing this since the very beginning. Just something else I noticed in that comment 

For the next question, he was asked, “You have more than 200 different businesses. How does this work? Are people coming to you with the ideas? Or are you saying, ‘Hey guys, let’s get in the business X, Y, and Z’?” 

This is how Richard responded to this.

Richard Branson  16:16  

It literally comes from frustration and I think that’s the best way for any business to start. Keep your eyes open. You have a notebook in your back pocket. You get frustrated. I mean, the reason we got in the hotel business, I’ve had a few too many drinks, I get to the hotel room, I can’t turn the bloody music off. I can’t turn the lights off. 

There’s a list of about 300 things that you go through and big hotels never get these things right. You’re not quite sure how to turn the television, the WiFi, you just go through hell trying to get the bloody WiFi on, and so it goes on. 

Therefore, out of frustration, I will create the kind of hotel that I want to go to, the sort of perhaps better known… I expect quite a few people know the story. I’m going to tell it anyway. 

It’s fun. I’d been away from home. I was 28 years old. I was trying to get back to the Virgin Islands. I hadn’t seen my lovely lady for three weeks. American Airlines tell me that they’re going to bump us all because they don’t have enough passengers and the 50 passengers there were obviously distraught. They want to get to see their loved ones that night. 

I went to the back of the airport or had a plane, borrowed a blackboard and wrote Virgin Airlines as a joke, $39 one way to the *inaudible*. I filled up my first plane. As we got into the *inaudible*, the person on my left just tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Chopping up the service a bit and you can be the airline business.”

That got me thinking airlines do bump you. They were absolutely dreadful in those days. The next day I rang up Boeing, and I said, “This is Richard Branson. I have a record company. I got Rolling Stones. I got the Sex Pistols. I got Phil Collins. Anyway, I’d like to buy second hand 747 please.”

There was a long pause, and there was this lovely old man called RJ Wilson on the other end of the phone, and he said, “Normally Richard, I’d find an excuse to put the phone down on you, but you do sound very enthusiastic. I will send somebody to come and see you. I just want to make one recommendation, if you [are] really seriously going to go into the airline business, for God’s sake, do not use the name Virgin. People will assume your airlines are not going to go the whole way.”

Preston Pysh  18:22  

It’s definitely a funny exchange. He’s got me smiling for sure. His incentive for the 200 businesses that he has created is based on frustration, which I think is pretty neat, because it shows you a key insight into where maybe you can start a business. 

I know there’s people out there that all have frustrations with the way that they deal with things. I think the key to Richard Branson’s success is not only is he able to identify those frustrations, but then he is able to design products and services that are better than what’s out there. He won’t take it to market unless it is better than what’s out there. 

That’s just vital, you just can’t create something that’s as good. 

I think back to our interview with Ian Siegel from Zip Recruiter, he said, “If you can take one step out of the process, you’ve got a winner. But if you’re doing the same number of steps, or you’re adding steps to whatever the process that people currently have to do, that is a non-value added activity, and people are not going to do it. If you can make it simpler, and you can make it better, that’s a business.” 

I like this response. It was good.

Stig Brodersen  19:28  

I would like to address the concept here of having 200 different businesses and talking about a competitive event. It’s because what Richard Branson is talking about here is that because he had a record company, that doesn’t mean that he should be in the music business. That is not necessarily his forte.

His forte is probably something else. I think what he did was to ask himself, “What is it that I can do that no other people can do or at least one of my best at?” He wasn’t an expert in music and he wasn’t an expert in airlines. He really just worked in that frustration. 

If you really think about what Richard Branson is really good at, it is teaming up with the right people. I think that’s pretty evident after having followed him for a few years. 

People that he can inspire and who like him have no shame in life. I’m saying that in a bizarre way I can, or courageous enough to disrupt the industry. I think if you look at other billionaires… 

Come up with a billionaire like Warren Buffett and what is his competitive advantage? If you look at his early investments and very profitable investments in Geico and American Express, [are those] because he’s the best credit card guy or the best insurance guy? No, he’s the best capital allocator.

The thing is so important whenever you try to define your own skill set, not to think in terms of an industry but think, what is my competitive advantage? Then, there might be one industry, but most likely, it’s several industries because that is exactly this one thing you can use with a capital allocation and teaming up with the right people or whatever it is that you can use in your own niche. 

Preston Pysh  21:10  

We enjoyed talking about some of the Richard Branson stories. Quite fun. 

At this point in the show, we’re going to go ahead and take a question from the audience. This question comes from Moe and here’s his question.

Moe  21:17  

Hey, Stig and Preston. I am Moe from Dubai. I’ve been listening to your show for the last six months. I’ve learned a lot from you guys. So keep it up. 

My question today is about active versus passive investing. For learning purposes, I’ve set up a small portfolio, definitely not big enough to be diversified, but from what I’ve read, passive investing has outperformed active investing over the long run.

I just wanted to get your thoughts on, say, if you had to build a portfolio, how would you differentiate between active and passive investing? Would you have both kinds of investing strategies in your portfolio? Just general comments and thoughts on that. 

Thank you and I hope to make it on the show. 

Preston Pysh  21:48  

Moe, I love the question. I can’t tell you which one’s better, but I can tell you which approach I personally use. I absolutely do both. A lot of the capital that I invest is in a passive way, in an ETF, but that ETF is very targeted as to where I kind of see where I’m at in the market and in the specific credit cycle, whether it’s international or it’s in the US. 

Then, at the same time as using those passive vehicles ETFs, when I invest, I’m also making individual stock picks. I guess mine is kind of a hybrid, depending on where I’m at. 

In general, I would say that I have a lot more money invested, much larger portion of my portfolio is passive than active. So, that’s me personally. I’m kind of curious how Stig does it.

Stig Brodersen  22:39  

I think I’m primarily active, but it really depends on what you mean by active and passive and how would you find it. I mean, if we find it as passive investing being a pure dollar cost averaging approach, putting in the same amount every single month and then into the overall stock market, then I guess I’m not.

I know that’s probably also what you’re getting at here, Preston, when you said ETF. That depends on whether or not we define an ETF as being passive. A lot of different ETFs are not passive. Then you can, of course, also have ETFs that capture the world market or the S&P 500, or however you want to put that.

For instance, there are some ETFs out there who are targeting value companies in the S&P 500, based on different metrics like price-to-book, price-to-earnings. 

If you are taking an active approach that you can beat the market one way or the other, then I would say that you are doing active investing one way or the other. However, again, it depends on how you find it. 

I don’t frequently trade. I might have added three stocks this year to my portfolio. For me, that’s almost over trading. Then, some people might say they could do that in an hour or in five minutes. It’s hard what is right for you.

You mentioned that on average, passive is doing better. I would say it’s a natural conclusion. If the way that we measure this is by saying, “If you just have the stock market, would you then perform better than investors who also have the stock market, but you just pay the fees because they trade back and forth?” Then, yes, the passive investing strategy is probably best. 

I think it really depends on your own mindset, especially after reading books like “Market Wizard” books. I have a newfound respect for traders. I think that pulling up some of those statistics, I know that was not the intention why you’re doing it. 

But just for the sake of argument, having this statistic that says that passive investing would do better. Say, of course, that is the underlying principle of investing but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be an active investor. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have really successful traders or you can’t really have a good track record like Warren Buffett

Preston Pysh  24:50  

Stig, I think that what you’re getting at goes back to one of your original comments that you were making on the show, which is about personality type. A huge takeaway that I had from reading a lot of the “Market Wizards” was this idea that you can trade and you can invest in so many different ways. 

So much of it is what are you kind of wired for? What is your personality wired for? What I really like about Jack Schwager’s books is he shows you just a multitude of different ways that people have really traded successfully with an incredible track record. 

Here’s a perfect example. Peter Brandt, just total price action Chartist kind of person. His annual returns are in excess of 20 years and the guy’s been in the business for 30 years or something like that. Incredible track record. 

He is looking at nothing but price and volume whenever he’s trading. He’s looking at chart patterns. I just can’t do it. 

In fact, I look at Peter’s Twitter page all the time, because it’s just providing me another level of data. He tells people the direction he thinks things might go, because I don’t understand that approach. That’s not my personality type, but I find it highly interesting. I find it as another data point as I’m kind of considering things. 

So what I would tell you first is going to Stig’s point earlier in the show is, what is your personality type? Are you somebody who has to be very active? Are you comfortable like Stig making three picks in the last six months or whatever? 

It really comes down to who you are and what kind of fits with the way that you operate and then find a person out there that implements whatever that approach is. Read every single thing you can find on that person and every single book that they recommend, and go for it. See if it is a fit. 

Stig Brodersen  26:34  

I think it’s a really good comment you had there, Preston. Going back to the thing about personality type and also Richard Branson and him being assertive. If you take one of those tests and you realize that you are assertive, I mean, an active strategy might be good for you. I’m personally very assertive and I’ll also just throw Preston under the bus and say he is too. That is what this test is saying.

Preston Pysh  26:57  

Extremely assertive.

Stig Brodersen  26:59  

In many ways that’s a good thing if you are an active investor, because basically it means that Preston and I can listen to each other and we can hear Warren Buffett or whoever on CNBC, we still have our own picks. We don’t get swayed if everyone tells us we’re idiots, and we’re picking the wrong stocks. At the end of the day that’s not a big concern to me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a big concern to Preston either. 

If you realize that you’re turbulent and you know that other people’s opinions mean a lot… Whenever you are at a dinner party and the guy next to you is talking about how he’s made a gazillion dollars on buying biotech in whatever, and you change your opinion. You become nervous. You don’t want to do passive investing, you have trouble sleeping, and now you feel you’re missing out on a ton of different things.

No, I mean, stick to a hardcore passive investing strategy. Sleep well and forget about the concept of investing. I think it’s very important to know your own strengths and shortcomings when it comes to investing. I guess those were my key takeaways.

Preston Pysh  28:00  

All right, Moe. Well we really enjoyed this question as a token of our appreciation for going on the website and asking the question, we’re giving you free access to one of our paid courses, our intrinsic value course, where Stig and I teach people how to value individual active picks. 

If people want to check out the course, it’s at TIPintrinsicvalue.com.

Moe, we just can’t thank you enough. If anyone’s listening to this and you want to get your question played on our show, go to asktheinvestors.com. 

If you go there, there’s a little media player where you can quickly record a question and if it gets played on the show, you can get a free course from our site. We just really appreciate it when people do that.

Stig Brodersen  28:38  

Alright guys, that was all that Preston and I had for this week’s episode of The Investor’s Podcast. We will see each other again next week.

Outro 28:47  

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