What does the day in the life of a billionaire look like?
Sir Richard Branson spoke to news.com.au on-board his newest ship, Resilient Lady, on Wednesday where he revealed what 24 hours looks like for him — and let’s just say it involves a lot of exercise.
Sir Richard is currently in the country to promote his Virgin Voyages cruise line launch where he made a grand entrance into Sydney Harbour on a classic wooden speedboat.
The 73-year-old, who owes his multi-billion dollar fortune to a conglomerate of businesses bearing the “Virgin” brand name, lives on his private island called Neckar Island.
The 74-acre property is located in the British Virgin Islands just north of Virgin Gorda where it sits in turquoise waters surrounded by coral reefs and beautiful white sandy beaches.
And just as he puts it, it’s his “home and favourite hideaway”.
He gave a glimpse into what a typical day looks like for him on the island, and it’s pretty epic. His fitness is certainly a priority.
“I get up at about 6am — I am on the tennis court at 6.15am and play a hard ball of singles tennis,” he says enthusiastically.
“Then I generally go kite surfing if the wind is up. Then I go to breakfast and walk around the island where I live and my assistant reads me out my emails.
“While I am walking I’ll deal with the emails, then I’ll do 20 minutes in the gym.”
Straight after that he will socialise with guests. It sleeps 48 adults and you can hire it all for $US149,100 ($A225,000) a night — or individual rooms cost roughly $A6840 a night.
“I’ll have a lovely lunch then do a bit more work and in the evening I might go for a bike ride on the neighbouring island — and then tennis again.”
He does two “extreme” bike rides a week and also loves to play a game of chess.
“I love good conversations between all that,” he added, before explaining his days are a nice balance of work and play.
“[But] if the (four) grandkids are around, everything changes,” he laughed.
He also tries to get as much sleep as possible because he “hates not being able to perform 100 per cent the next day”.
And when you have as many responsibilities as Sir Branson, you can only imagine how important a balanced lifestyle is.
“Keeping active is a huge part of my life. I seriously doubt that I would have been as successful in my career (and happy in my personal life), if I hadn’t always placed importance on my health and fitness,” he said in a Virgin blog post back in 2017.
And speaking of successes, he basically hasn’t stopped kicking goals since his first business venture at 16 when he dropped out of high school and created a magazine called Student.
From there he started selling records by mail-order, opened his first record shop, launched Virgin Records in 1973 and the list goes on — including the launch of Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Cargo, Virgin Galactic, Virgin mobile and hotels and one of his more recent ventures, Virgin Voyages.
According to Forbes, he has a net-worth of $US2.9 billion — about $A4.43 billion.
He dabbled with the idea of creating a cruise liner back in his 20s and 30s, but got serious about it in the early 2000s. He thought instead of buying an old ship, why not build his own? And not just any — a superyacht-inspired ship that would attract even the non-cruiser (someone who he admits he once was).
“I was not a cruiser and just thought ‘let’s create a cruise ship … like a yacht and just make it very appetising for people who would never go on,” he said.
Resilient Lady has 1408-rooms and is for adults-only — yes, that means no kids are allowed on it at all.
It is equipped with 25 restaurants, a record shop (of course), hair salon, gyms and spas, which features a mud room, salt room, steam room.
“We are proud of it and the feedback from travellers has been great,” he said.
Sir Branson named the ship Resilient Lady for a specific reason — to honour the women of the world.
“I am surrounded by resilient ladies. My mum, who sadly past away in Covid, was one of the most resilient women I know,” he said.
“I have the most incredible resilient daughter Holly, two fantastic resilient sisters, Vanessa and Lindy and a bevy of resilient granddaughters.
“Women have to be resilient, it’s forced upon them at birth and us guys can tag along and be as resilient as possible but for women it is forced upon them by and large.”
Resilient Lady will head to its home port of Melbourne this week where Sir Richard said it will stay put despite the “sudden” tax hike of 15 per cent announced last week.
“Our team are going to talk to Melbourne. It was sudden news to us and slightly unfortunate timing as we are about to arrive in Melbourne,” he said.
“But we will see how the talks go. For the timebeing we plan to operate out of Melbourne.”
He hopes to one day also operate out of Sydney — but right now there is nowhere to berth it.
Space
If his latest ventures weren’t enough to keep him busy, Sir Richard told news.com.au he’s currently building five more spaceships.
“We have had six successful flights into space in the last six months, so we know the prototype spaceship works really well,” he explained.
“So we are now going to mass produce spaceships.”
Motivation
Just as he says, life has been pretty full on, but the one thing that keeps him motivated is his love of creating things.
“I have burnt the candle a bit at both ends,” the humble 73-year-old said.
“I remember the day after going to space and waking up – I just thought ‘was that a dream, is my whole life a dream?’
“I have been extraordinarily lucky and fortunate and I appreciate every minute of it.”