Richard Branson: Like a Virgin

Luckily for me, fitness has always been a hobby. At school I was a keen sportsman until a knee injury cut short my hopes of professional success. Unable to pursue my sporting dreams, I threw myself into my early business career and set up Student magazine. My passion for sport remained, and I have continued to play tennis, swim, ski (on snow and water), sail and, more recently, to kite surf.

I try to fit in at least one good workout per day, and sometimes two, if I have the opportunity. Our home on Necker Island is a great place for me to keep up my swimming. Most mornings when I am there, I head off for a swim around the island – about three miles. It is the best way to clear the head (sometimes from the excesses of the night before!) and sets one up for the day.

Set on its own at the end of the archipelago of islands, Necker is also a great place to sail and kite surf. After a long day of correspondence or calls, there is nothing better than setting off on my kite board – I soon feel invigorated and renewed.

Fitness goals aside, it is important to do something that helps you to achieve distance from the pressures of work. Many people who are faced with the increasing pressures of the modern, global and ‘always-on’ business world struggle to stop working. By focusing on something else – in my case, on sport – you gain perspective on other areas of your life, and this helps you to achieve that elusive work-life balance.

Many of my pastimes are ones that my family enjoys, too, which has helped a great deal. There is no better way to forget the stresses of a poorly performing company or the frustrations of not closing a deal than kite surfing with your kids or going snow skiing with them.

During periods of travel, you have to plan for your exercise. In April 2010, when I signed up for the London Marathon to coincide with Virgin Money’s sponsoring the race, I faced the challenge of trying to fit the intensive training regimen into an already busy speaking and travel programme. Together with a coach, I mapped out the training runs I needed to do and looked at my destinations to try to make them match up. It was great fun. As I circled the world, I found myself running in the parks of Sydney, along the beach in Barcelona, and through the bush at our Ulusaba Private Game Reserve in South Africa.

Luckily, my children Holly and Sam had also decided to run the race with a group of friends, so we often trained together on our family breaks. This helped to maintain some friendly family competition and ensured that we all remained focused on the challenge ahead. On race day, we all completed the race in good time and, along with their thirty-two team-mates, Holly and Sam set a world record for the most people (thirty-four no less!) to finish a marathon while tied together.

Occasionally things don’t go according to plan. That same year, all three of us tried to kite surf across the English Channel, but rough seas quickly foiled our attempt. In January, a skiing accident caused me to snap my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and so I was unable to run, ski or kite surf for more than six months. As a way of motivating myself to keep fit during that period, I threw myself into training for the swimming leg of the London Triathlon. Holly and Sam completed all three legs of the race, so we all had a great time.

At Virgin, I am notorious for constantly inventing challenges that will help us to push ourselves harder – and that includes physically. But making small changes can be even more helpful in the long run. Next time you settle down on a Sunday morning to answer that mountain of email, think about whether you might be better off first going for a brisk walk, run, swim or bike ride to refresh the body and the mind.

Remember, very few people have ever lain on their deathbed and thought, ‘You know, I really wish I had spent more time in the office.’

The recent surge in natural disasters all over the world serves as a sombre reminder to us of the fragile hold we have on the planet. The shortest tremor can cause untold damage. When it happens in a location like Haiti, hundreds of thousands can die and the lives of millions are affected.

The world will usually respond by sending rescue team, tents, food, clean water and medicine. Governments, companies, celebrities, everyday individuals, churches and school groups will jump in to assist with donations, fundraising events and all nature of spontaneous aid.

In the midst of this tremendous reaction, one of the biggest tasks is always the coordination of the resources and funding to make sure they get to the front lines in an effective and timely manner.

The challenges Haiti faced in the months following the horrendous earthquake there in early 2010 reminds us of the need for a strong combination of governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations and individuals working together. It is an effective and powerful mix, so long as it is controlled by informed people on the front lines. Something that sadly is not always the case!

While the world recession of the last several years has put a crimp in the funding many in the non-profit sector rely upon, it has also prompted the latest generation of philanthropists to look at ways of working together more effectively to ensure that the best initiatives do the most good on as large a scale as possible.

For example, Jeff Skoll, one of the founders of eBay, used his entrepreneurial skills to establish Participant, a new film company that focuses on combining entertainment with building awareness of major world issues. His films range from An Inconvenient Truth , the great documentary about climate change, and The Soloist , a beautiful film highlighting the issue of homelessness in the United States, to Countdown to Zero , a film about the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Individual fortunes larger than the gross domestic product of many countries have been created in the past twenty years. In response, we need a more benevolent form of capitalism, one that creates wealth and also then spends some of that wealth more responsibly. Business has a new sense of purpose: to prove that capitalism on its own is not enough. We must turn a profit while making the world a better place.

For some people this has involved creating large foundations to distribute wealth; for others, it has meant putting social responsibility and good business practices at the heart of their organisations.

Occasionally it has spelled the demise of the ‘golden charity cheque’ and the birth of new, aid-free, entrepreneurial approaches to giving. The debate continues about whether pure charity is better than giving that fosters economic growth – but the debate is futile. The world needs all the help it can get right now to tackle the scale of the environmental and social problems we are facing.

A few years ago we created the not-for-profit foundation Virgin Unite for our businesses and partners. It is quite simply about connecting people who can tackle tough challenges using entrepreneurial approaches. We want to be catalysts for new ways to deal with providing health care on a large scale, encouraging peace and diminishing factors that contribute to climate change.

As I mentioned earlier, we established the Elders, a group of wise men and women including Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson, to name a few, who work quietly behind the scenes, seeking to resolve global conflicts.

We are working to set up a Disease Control Hub in partnership with the South African government and health leaders to help eradicate suffering from preventable and treatable diseases.

Since we don’t pretend to have all the answers, we work with great partners and experts to make sure we are always informed by the people who are in the thick of the issues. Often, almost by default, these people at the sharp end may know the answers but have just not had the chance for their voices to be heard.