Lessons from a Billionaire - What I learnt from a week with Richard Branson
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Last month I was hanging out on a tropical island with Richard Branson...
This month, not so much.
If you've been following the online business space lately, you would've seen a whole lot of the leading female entrepreneurs hanging out with Richard Branson in a tropical paradise 🏝️
Now, I saw some posts from this trip a few years back and immediately thought
"How do I go 👋 ? I want to be there next time!"
...all the women who I looked up to in online business were there on the previous trip, and I was suffering from some serious FOMO.
So I decided for the next one, I'm gonna figure out how to get on it. And I'm happy to report that after a little bit of investigative work, determination in building my business and a lot of patience (because covid postponed the trip by a coupla years).
I just got back from Necker Island!
Today, I'm gonna share with you what the island is really like and what Richard's like in person, as well as the lessons which I picked up from the man himself, both advice he gave us directly and lessons I just picked up by taking notice of daily life and the island paradise that he has created.
And then finally, I'll also share exactly how I got the invite and how you could too.
So be sure read all the way until the end to get that.
Okay, so let's start off with what Necker island is really like.
The whole place is very Bali themed. The buildings, the decor, the names of the rooms are all very authentically Bali-style. There are rooms all over the island, so if you're put in some of the further out rooms, you actually get given a golf cart to drive around so you can get everywhere - so much fun!
The main hub of the island is the great house, which sits on the tallest hill of the island, and then on the roof of the Great House there is a little hot tub with a 360 degree view of the island.
(You can tell Richard the mastermind of the plans for the island had a sense of humor when he made that design choice!!).
So our room was down a cliff from the main house (see the room tour here!), so we had a good hike and workout every time we went to and from our room.
And the view from the room... WOW! 👇
Now on the island there is a room called the Temple, which is where a lot of business talks and charity foundation work take place.
It's where we got to do a Q and A with Richard, and it's also where a group called the Elders was formed. The Elders, if you're unaware, is a group Richard founded with his charity, Virgin Unite, which works to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the world today, and that was founded at the Temple, which funnily enough I could see from my outdoor shower in my room. That was wild & made for some seriously inspirational showering 🤣🤣🤣
Necker Island Itself
Now the island itself is quite large. There are windy little sandy roads all around, but no signage, so it's super easy to take a wrong turn!
The island is also very eco-friendly. Richard had three windmills on the island, plus a solar panel park. So the island is fully energy efficient, which is not just good for the environment but is also good for convenience.
Case in point - we stayed on another island for a few days before Necker, and because a storm had just ripped through all the power on the island was out for the day - eek! It meant that we ate dinner in pitch black darkness on the first night and none of our room cards actually worked, which in the end just kind of funny, but it's not something you'd be wanting to deal with every day!
Generally, though, the vibe that you get from Necker is that of a magical tropical island, and it's just as alive as alive could be.
It's crawling with super fun people and Richard has so many tropical animals living there, you can easily mistake the place for a tropical zoo or animal sanctuary!
The island also isn't just home to Richard, but also a lot of his staff too, there's an entire staff village where some lucky team members get to live.
Granted, the island isn't big enough to house everyone who works there. They let us know there are over 180 staff, which run the place. So many go to and from work on a daily ferry boat, which runs hourly to the nearby island of Virgin Gorda.
What's Richard Branson really like?
That's what the island is like. But let's talk about what Richard is like.
To be honest, he is an absolute gem.
He's extremely kind and gracious and humble.
Case in Point: My friend Patricia and I played him at tennis and he was significantly better than us! (The shame!) It can be annoying if you're playing with people who can't return the ball well enough and therefore kept any rallies like we did, but he was nothing but encouraging and kind, even if we kept ending rallies.
Anytime we walked by the court and he was playing, he invited us to join him & gave us some great tips & tennis advice.
And finally, as much as I expected the island to be a big party, most of the time we were actually up at five or six in the morning to join Richard for his daily morning sports, like tennis or hiking a Mountain.
So the place is honestly pretty tame in terms of parties, but I guess that also depends on the group visiting. Apparently, the group before us had been some like "guys" business group who spent the time getting absolutely out of hand, and the staff were pretty clear that they were thrilled when our girls group turned up!
While I didn't have a wild party every day. I did come home with a pretty fabulous little souvenir!
A Bottle of Necker Island-branded champagne 🍾🍾🍾!!!
I had heard in previous years some of the ladies had taken home a bottle as a souvenir to pop for a special business accomplishment, and so I also took one and I decided the milestone at which I want to pop it at.
Stay tuned to find out...
Now before I get to the lessons, I gotta say, that I could never have reached the income required to join this mastermind if I hadn't added passive income streams to my business...
If you're dreaming of your Biz runnning on autopilot whilst you live your best life... my passive income roadmap is for YOU!
Lesson 1
Onto the the first major aha I had on the island!
Just how much we entrepreneurs can design our lifestyles.
The term lifestyle design was first made famous by one of my favorite other entrepreneurs, Tim Ferris.
But honestly, it looks like Richard Branson may have actually beaten him to it in terms of completely actualizing the dream of lifestyle design!
Richard has set up his life a hundred percent to his liking. Firstly, he's a super social guy and you can tell he absolutely loves meeting people and chatting with them, but that it could be challenging to keep a social life going when you live on a remote island.
But he decided, no problem. I'll just turn my island into a resort!
The island can be booked by groups of guests, and the team let me know it's pretty much booked back to back with guests year round.
I don't know how thrilled I personally would be to have people wandering around my home all the time (I lurve my quiet time!), but Richard clearly has the money to not have that happen, so if the island is a resort, it's definitely because he wanted it to be!
My guess is that he did it because he genuinely loves having people around. For example he spent a ton of time with our group during the week we were there. We weren't sure beforehand how much time we'd actually get with him, but we were all
very happily surprised with just how much Richard time we actually got!
He joined us for breakfast and lunches and dinners. Played tennis with us and took us out on hikes around Necker and a neighboring island. He also did an actual Q and A session with us too. He even drove a friend and I from the tennis courts up to breakfast on a few mornings as well (so cool!).
Now coming back to lifestyle design, Richard is well known for his fun and childlike joy...
But how exactly do you keep that vibe going when you're in your seventies and maybe all of your friends are getting a bit more mellow?
You hire a bunch of fun young staff!
His staff have a fantastic time with him. They tease him, they joke around, they play pranks with him. I noticed that he's not at all trying to avoid his staff, quite the opposite.
His team on the island seems kind of like adult children to him keeping him young and his life super fun, even into his older age!
And from conversations with him, he specifically recommended if there's a staff member that you're gonna spend a lot of time. Be sure to choose more based off personality than on skill level.
This man has also perfected what he enjoys doing and making time for it! He loves playing tennis and kite surfing, so he had a full couple of tropical tennis courts built. He also employs two full-time tennis trainers on staff, so he can play every single day, multiple times a day.
He also has an entire water sports team and all the equipment and toys for kite surfing 🏄 and the latest rage that - that efoiling above the surface thang, which we also got to try!
DON'T MISS SEEING HOW I DID HERE!
In terms of work. I actually jokingly asked him when he ever gets time to get work done and the truth seems to be he has been fantastic at hiring people and giving them all the freedom to do their job in the way that they want to.
Even if those people make mistakes or if they do it differently than he would've done.
He definitely doesn't seem to work crazy hours.
Of course, he is in his seventies, so it is a normal time to retire, he is still the head of the Virgin group. But from spending time with him, I didn't get the impression that he's working around the clock like some other entrepreneurs do, even as they get older.
It was very clear to me on the island that Richard determined how much social life he enjoys. He loves to spend time doing his favorite hobbies and his favorite sports and chose how much work time and playtime he wants.
And then he designed his entire life very consciously around those choices!
The Second Lesson I learnt from Richard Branson was...
that staying healthy is a major factor in success.
So in conversation, Richard credited his ability to handle the real challenges that he faced in his businesses and the stresses that his businesses sometimes caused him to his great health and fitness.
While he drove me up to breakfast from tennis one morning in his golf cart, he told me that he's considering writing a book on health #excited !!
He said he realized that he has access to knowledge and doctors and health professionals that most of us do not, but he doesn't want all of that to stop us from living healthfully, so that's why he's pondered, compiling everything he's learned into a book. Richard also interestingly mentioned that most diseases can be prevented if they're caught and treated early, so he actually gets a blood test every six months to help him catch anything very early on.
What Richard eats for Breakfast!
Richard eats super healthfully and he also regularly eats the same thing for three days.
At breakfast in a row, I notice him eat one bowl of oatmeal with just a few berries on top, followed by one medium size slice of brown toast with some avocado on it, no salt, no pepper.
And also beside that one hard boiled peeled egg 🥚!
All the meals that we had for the week were also super healthy... we had sushi 🍣, fish 🐟, vegetarian food & fruity puddings 🍧.
They also have an alcohol-free cocktail menu on the bars now as they notice a trend towards their Necker guests drinking less and less. And if you're wondering what Richard's beverage of choice is, it was a strawberry Dacquiri 🍹.
Richard, as I already mentions, loves his sport! And from taking a very hilly hike with him, I can absolutely confirm that the man is significantly more fit in his seventies than I am in my 30s.
Necker Lesson Number 3
The third thing I learned on the island is that you don't need to have a change-the-world business idea or to be super high-brow to build a great business!
In our Q and A sessions with him, a few of the ladies from our group asked questions about his vision and his thoughts on conscious capitalism and other abstract ideas and concepts.
And the answer is he kept consistently coming out with, I don't think were what the ladies were expecting.
He answered all those questions with something along the lines of,
I looked for bad service and problems that I noticed in businesses I was interacting with, and then I built businesses to do things better and focused on having fun while I was doing it.
So for me, that was a lovely reassurance that you don't need to have some super intellectual vision or have this change the world mission. That's not super necessary to building a business empire like he did.
You can simply see things being done badly in the world and decide to build a business that does it better.
Oh, and now the thing which everyone has been asking me since I go back is how exactly did I get the invite?
Great question.
I was invited to Necker Island as a part of The Collective. It is a mastermind group I'm a part of full of female entrepreneurs led by the lovely Natalie McNeil, and the Collective is an official partner of Richard Branson's, not-for-Profit, Virgin Unite.
What does the collective do?
So the collective basically collaborates with different projects under the Virgin Unite umbrella to make a positive impact.
So if you're a business owner and you really wanna have a fabulous impact on the world, head on over to check out The Collective and do be sure to tell them that Paige sent you!
Oh, okay. And that bottle of champagne I was telling you about...
Well, when I got home, I debated what business milestone or achievement I should open it at.
I debated should I wait to pop it once we do like a million dollar launch, or if I got featured in something like Forbes....
But I actually decided for a goal which has a lot more personal interest to me...
So be sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel to find out when I'll be poppin my bottle of Necker Champers 🍾🍾🍾!
