So, of course, the first question I asked Branson after we sat at our table was, "If you could be any type of animal ... " He looked blankly at me, almost in disbelief that he had heard me right. Then I laughed. Choi filled him in, and he laughed, too. The conversation was breezy from there on.
I had just two questions for him. One: What was the lightbulb moment when he went from thinking about doing well financially to thinking about doing good in the world? Two: Take me from that moment to where he was, today.
I knew that Branson had launched his not-for-profit foundation, Virgin Unite, eight years ago and that he had been spending more and more time on it. Virgin Unite states its mission as connecting "people and entrepreneurial ideas to make change happen. To help revolutionize the way government, business and the social sector work together-business as a force for good."
It has a number of initiatives, from The Elders program where dignitaries such as Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter work together to bring about peace in the world; to the Carbon War Room, which fosters innovations to mitigate carbon emissions; to The Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship in Jamaica and South Africa, which incubate and support social entrepreneurs; to Gaia Rocks, which is about preserving and conserving nature.
Naturally, since Virgin Unite is a reflection of the polymath Branson, it isn't just about one thing. And it also bleeds into his other businesses. Part of what Virgin Unite does is to work with the for-profit Virgin Group's businesses to exact and instill positive values for "people and the planet."
What I learned by asking Branson about his lightbulb moment, however, was that it didn't occur with the start of Virgin Unite. His moment happened long ago, with the start of his first real business. Doing good has been imbedded in his business thinking from the very beginning.
"It goes back an awful long way and that was when I was a 15-year-old at school," Branson says, struggling to do the art of eat-speak and answer my question. "The Vietnamese war was raging. It was the 60s. It was the time when students wanted to put the world right and students believed that they had a right to try to speak out and be listened to. I, like a lot of other kids my age, believed the war to be an unjust war, a horribly sad war, and an embarrassment to the Western world to be sort of conducting such a horrendous war, a militarily horrendous war with napalm, and killing children, women indiscriminately in the forests and burning them to death. In fact many, many, many years later [former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Robert McNamara on his deathbed confession said that he should have been prosecuted by a war crimes tribunal for conducting such a war. So I decided to launch a magazine to try to campaign against the war."
It wasn't the idea of making money for Branson that was attractive about business, it was the challenge to change things.
Steve Jobs, in his biography by Walter Isaacson, said it wasn't about the money for him either; it was about bucking the system and forging new ways to do things. "Think Different," remember, was the famous Apple slogan. Branson has his own way of putting it: "Screw Business As Usual." Seriously, that's the tagline to Virgin Unite's Web site, as well as the title of the book he released last year. (He says it's written for those who want "to develop a business and make a living, [and who] also want to do more to help people and the planet.")
With a few fried squid out of the way, Branson continues with our talk: "So I left school to get the magazine going. I never thought that I was going to be a businessman and an entrepreneur; that grew rapidly since. I just wanted to create a magazine, edit it, and be proud of it. Then alongside the magazine we soon found that people were coming to us with problems, young people with suicidal problems, or psychiatric problems, or people who had contracted venereal disease, or wanted advice about contraception, etc., etc. And so we set up a center, the Student Advisory Center, to help people who had problems."
It makes sense, this bit. As the magazine began to cover social issues relevant to students, it also became more engaged in those issues. It's a logical progression. But I had to stop and think about the root, the foundation and the drive that made Branson into a billionaire. This bit is important. The crux is that Branson gravitates toward serving a need-whether in the marketplace for a new business or in the mind space for a new social solution, or for that matter, space itself. (He recently announced the launch of Virgin Galactic to take tourists into outer space.)
The idea of profits lags the promise of something new.