"Facing death the first thing you think about is not the business, you think about your family, the people who are closest to you". The British billionaire and founder of the Virgin group Richard Branson is widely known for his adventurous life which brought him to near-death experiences many times. How this shaped his business style and what life lessons did he learn along the way - hear what Branson shared on a recent event in Bulgaria.



 I love life. I do not want to part from this life earlier than I should. But I also love adventure. And I have great difficulties saying "No". I can't resist the challenge and it has brought me into trouble on a lot of occasions. When we started the airline business somebody said: Now we should cross the Atlantic in hot-air balloon. And I thought I'd better learn to fly hot-air balloon and see if we can accomplish that. And then about a month later I found myself heading off across the Atlantic. And it was the start of some incredible adventures - meaning that they went horribly wrong and whenever we crashed into the sea the Virgin brand was sticking out of the waters. So when helicopters came to rescue us, we put the Virgin brand on the map.
But facing death, the first thing you think about is not the business, you think about your family, the people who are closest to you. You think what made me do this, there's something more precious than saying "yes". And yet when you survive it, you somehow think what I've learned from all that, maybe next time this won't happen. And you go again and you end up in the same frontier position.

More insight on what it takes to be a great leader here and on how to run a great company here and how to solve the world's biggest problems here