Steve Jobs is and will continue to be an inspiration to me. The speech really touched me because, as with all great speeches, every word is true. I think we can all learn a lot from it.

Here’s the speech, word for word, with the parts I find particularly good in bold:

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

Connecting The Dots

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop in for eighteen months before I really dropped out. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young unwed graduate student and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by graduate students so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy – do you want him?” They said, “Of course”.

My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

Seventeen years later, I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford. And all of my working class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out and here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved for their entire lives. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all turn out okay.

It was pretty scary at the time but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room so I slept on the floor in friends rooms. I returned coke bottles for the 5p deposit to buy food with  food and every Sunday night I would walk the 7 miles across town for one good meal a week at the Harry Krishna Temple. I loved it.

And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster and every label on every drawer was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes I decided to take a calligraphy glass to learn how to do this.

I learned about serif and sans serif type faces, about varying the amount of spaces between different letter combinations. About what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture and I found it fascinating. None of this had a hope of any practical application in my life, but ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me and we designed it all in to the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in to that single course in college the Mac would never have had different type faces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied that Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college but it was very very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forwards. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow you heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.

Love And Loss

I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. “Woz” and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage to a $2 billion company with over four thousand employees. We just released our finest creation, the Macintosh a year earlier and then I’d turned thirty. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to help run the company with me and for the first year or so things went well but then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected but I was still in love. So I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years I started a company named NEXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with a wonderful woman who would become my wife.

Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NEXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NEXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renessance. And Lorraine and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

Death

When I was 17 I read a quote that something like, “If you live each day as if it is your last, some day, you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past thirty three years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me that this was almost certainly a form of cancer that was incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. The doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything – you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them – in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that was curably by surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death. And I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: Nobody wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven, don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. Nobody has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But some day not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true.

Your time is limited. So don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and your own intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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When I was young there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlow Park and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late sixties before personal computers and desktop publishing so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, thirty five years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stuart and his time put out several issues of the whole earth catalogue and then, when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid 1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitch hiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you: stay hungry, stay foolish.

The geek in me, these days very often the dominant part of my personality, had decided to track the entire challenge on Endomondo. Sadly, the battery power of my iPhone while running Endomondo continuously was not enough to last the eleven and a half hours it took me to complete the 26.3 miles. So my route shows only around the first 20 miles.

I think I began the walk not really believing that I was going to finish it. I didn’t let myself think about it too much but I think in the back of my mind I was quite certain that “something would happen” which would result in me not completing the challenge. I had vaguely imagined that at some point I would become so exhausted that I would be unable to continue, or maybe I’d get a blister that would make walking just too painful. Or maybe I’d run out of time. It was apparent very early on that our little group was not very fast.  Or maybe I’d hit “the wall”!

In the past I’ve heard marathon runners talk about “the wall”. But I think that must only happen when you run. When you walk, there isn’t a wall as such. Instead, there’s a point when your legs begin to ache. If you’re going to complete the challenge, you will need to continue walking in spite of this pain. And I think the point at which this pain first strikes will largely determine whether or not you can finish or not. To start with, mine never came.

And after 13 miles a lot changed. Now there was more behind me than ahead of me. Suddenly the unimaginable was possible. My “something will happen” theory was beginning to seem less likely. All I had to do now to be able to say I’d done a marathon, was do what I’d already done… again. This had all been easier than I expected. Marathon Schmarathon!

But then, at about 15 miles, I hit the wall. My legs began to ache. My muscles began to tighten. And I started to slow down. Weirdly I never got out of breath, but my lower body was letting me know it had had enough.

I barely made the third checkpoint on time. I arrived there about ten minutes before it was due to close, and I reached the fourth checkpoint at closing time. And now that my iPhone had died, I no longer had any way of knowing how far I had left to go, except for the mile markers at the checkpoints themselves.

But being between the fourth checkpoint and the finish line was a huge confidence boost. The night before the challenge, my flat mate and I were discussing the day ahead and it occurred to me that he, nor I, really respected what walking 26 miles really meant. This wasn’t really something you could just do. It’s a long way. And until I was where I was, between the fourth checkpoint and the finish line, I didn’t really know if I could do it or not. It was only after that point that my internal dialogue changed from “Am I really doing this?” to “Hah! Nobody’s going to believe this!”

After an hour of walking, high on the now quite likely impending achievement, every time I turned a corner I expected to see the finish line. But it wasn’t coming. Then I took a wrong turn across a golf course and lost ten minutes because I had to be transported back to where I should have gone in the first place. I was losing time.

At eight twenty five – five minutes to the deadline – it became apparent that my current walking speed was not going to be enough to complete the challenge in time. But there was no way I’d come this far and was going to let myself fail now. I’ll never know where I found the energy, but I broke into a run.

Then I saw it. The cricket clubhouse. The finish line. The end of the ordeal. The point at which I could say I’d done a marathon. I entered the clubhouse greeted by applause from the coast guard, the organizers and the bar man. I sat down and drank what was left of my water before taking a pee I’d waited eight miles to take.

Then my legs seized up. They’d walked 26 miles and apparently refused to go one step further. They were angry at me for a couple of day after that. The following morning I woke up in quite significant pain. But that didn’t matter. Pain is only temporary. Achievement lasts forever.

Next year, I’ll do it for charity!

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The challenge was organized by Shepherd Walks. I understand they do it annually. And I think they deserve a mention here because they did a great job. It was a very well organized walk and the coast guard also did an excellent job of making sure that everybody was safe. So well done to you all and thank you for your time and effort.

Here’s how to get around that:

HotSpot Shield is a free software application which masks your geographical location from your internet browser, preventing websites from blocking content based on your location. It’s easy to install and once you’ve done so, you can watch TV from any of the official network websites instead of having to go to any less than reputable illegal download or streaming websites and risking downloading viruses or malware.

If you haven’t already heard of SOPA and you don’t know what it is, it stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act” and it is a law that certain politicians are trying to get passed in the US to allegedly prevent copyright infringement online.

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? In fact, as a film-maker and multimedia content producer, this sounds like good news. And it would be if the law wasn’t what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has called “a poorly thought out law” which has the potential to destroy the free and open Internet that we all know and love. And on top of that, it is unlikely that it would even achieve the objective it is aimed at achieving.

If you’re wondering why, Mashable has written a far better explanation of why SOPA is dangerous than I ever could. I recommend you read it.

Like Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, WordPress and countless other massive online properties, I am against SOPA. And yet I do believe that downloading movies and music for free is a crime that should be punishable somehow. If there was a law that would prevent that and only that, I would be in favour of it. But a law that pretty much gives the US government the power to block any site they deem to be infringing copyright either knowingly or unknowingly basically boils down to a law which allows one thing: censorship.

I am against SOPA because there are better, smarter, fairer ways to achieve what SOPA claims to want to achieve. The “Nuke The Web” approach that SOPA takes is destructive to the Internet and everything that the internet supports – free speech and innovation to name but a couple of things.

Yes, the problem of copyright infringement online does need to be solved for the sake of the future of the music and film industries, particularly the smaller record labels and independent film producers. But this is definitely NOT the way to do it.

Does The Entertainment Industry Have A Point?

Well, yes. I have long been a campaigner against deliberate digital copyright theft. Before I get misquoted let me qualify that. As a film-maker I do think that it is wrong for people to go to their favourite torrent site and be able to download movies that in some cases aren’t even in cinemas yet.

This type of behaviour has gone unpoliced and unchecked for too long. Ten years ago it was a problem. But at that time it was mainly something that the geek elite did and students who were savvy enough with the fast evolving technological world to know about things like this. But now it’s ten years later and those students are now the young adults in their late twenties and early thirties who are still doing it. And of course the students of today are doing it too. So the number of people illegally downloading music and movies is growing.

The thought process that makes people think of downloading a movie before they think of buying a cinema ticket has got to go. But how exactly to get rid of it is still a highly controversial issue.

Should Google be forced to block sites that are clearly designed for this purpose? In a way, I think they should. From personal experience running one of the UK’s magic shops which deals primarily in a particular type of intellectual property, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when Google considers a bit torrent search engine’s illegal download page for a DVD Rip of one of my products more relevant to the search term than many of ten or fifteen online stores legitimately selling the product.

Example:

This is page one of Google for the term “13 Steps To Mentalism”, a land mark publication in magic. It’s a 6 DVD box set which teaches how to create the illusion of mind reading. But that’s beside the point. The point is that thepiratebay.org’s download page for this search term is ranked third. How are legitimate businesses every going to sell any product when Google is presenting searchers with results like this?

What We Need Instead Of SOPA

SOPA is only the latest act to try and tackle the problems that the entertainment industry is facing as a result of the ease with which intellectual property can now be shared and mass distributed between millions of people. A couple of years ago there was the Net Neutrality Act which proposed to treat different types of data differently in order to prevent sites from loading which hosted controversial or illegal content. But, it was seen as the first step on a ladder that eventually would lead to the end of the free and open Internet. And rightly so.

It’s only a question of time before politicians eventually reach a status quo with the online world and an act which addresses the issues and comfortably combats those issues and only those issues needs to be reached.

First, I think the act that is eventually passed, needs to be written by a person or group of people who understand the Internet. SOPA, if you care to read it, has clearly not been written by anybody who is familiar with the online world or digital culture. This is perhaps most prominently evidenced by it’s proposal to make site owners liable for anything that is hosted on their sites, even in the world of Web 2.0 where up to 90% of some websites’ content is contributed by its’ user base.

Second, I think we need a new definition of copyright infringement that is suitable for the online world.

Pictures and videos are shared every day as a form of self expression, and it’s high time the entertainment industry came to realize that. Music is  a part of our culture. Current copyright laws make it ridiculously easy to find yourself in breach of them and I think this needs to be thought out better.

While, yes, I would say that websites designed specifically for the deliberate mass distribution of copyrighted material like The Pirate Bay should face some sort of legal action, other websites, like personal blogs that happen to feature a clip recorded from TV the previous night cannot be charged with copyright violation. It is madness.

If these laws are passed, it could mean the end of Facebook, Youtube & Wikipedia to name just a few – all the websites that we know and love. And that’s where the lasting damage of this bill we be – preventing us from posting content on YouTube and Facebook. Not preventing online piracy. We’ll virtually have to hire a lawyer before we can send a Tweet, which will essentially devolve the internet from being the powerful knowledge sharing tool that it is today into a consumption-only entity, much like a library.

The Last Word

The Internet is a beautiful thing. And the Internet as we know it is under threat. While I do think it is important that we find some way of preventing deliberate intellectual property theft and mass distribution of copyrighted material such as sites like ThePirateBay.org, under no circumstances should this affect the fundamental nature of the Internet.

1. After A Few Days, You Forget About It

If you’re trying to make lasting and solid changes to your life, you need to stay conscious of the desired changes for as long as it takes for you to get into the new habit that you’re trying to create. On average it takes between 18 and 30 days (depending on the research you read) to form a new habit pattern so it’s fair to say that if you can make it to the end of January without failing, you have a much greater chance of success.

The Fix: Write your resolution(s) down and stick the list somewhere that you will see it every day. If necessary, create multiple copies of the list. Put aside five minutes before you go to bed every night to review the list and keep yourself mentally on track. If you can get through January without quitting or forgetting, you’ll probably make it.

2. The Goal Is Ill Defined

Other than forgetting about the intended goal, there are two other major reasons why the majority of people fail. One of them is not defining the goal(s) well enough. If a goal is to be achieved, you need some way to measure your achievement. A very common example after the over-indulgences of December is “lose weight”

But “lose weight” as a goal is far too ill defined for anybody to know whether they accomplished it or not. How much weight? And by when? A goal without a deadline is just a wish.

Additionally, you have a far greater chance of success if you write down what you are actually going to do in order to lose the weight. If you will diet, what will be the details of the diet and if you will exercise, how and when and for how long?

Somebody who has followed through the entire thought process of exactly how and when they will lose weight has a much greater chance of success than somebody who has casually said they want to lose weight.

The Fix: Think through your goal in your mind and write down exactly what and when you’ll do everything that you need to do in order to realize your goal. The bottom line is defining the goal quantitatively and writing the steps down as if you were explaining to somebody else how they should accomplish your goal.

3. The Goal Is Not Realistic

The other major reason that most people do not stick to New Year’s Resolutions is that they make unrealistic goals. This usually means they jump straight to their dream goal without considering where they are with it right now and the amount of proverbial distance there is between them and their goal.

Not afraid to look stupid, I’ll tell you one of mine from a few years ago: “To make a million pounds”. You may laugh. And I’ll forgive you simply because I can now laugh at myself too.

I failed to realize that it’s a long way from no pounds to a million pounds. I failed to realize just how much a million pounds is. I didn’t do the maths. I didn’t have a workable and practical plan. But hey – I was young, naive and a little bit deluded.

The Fix: Make sure your goal is realistic. This does not necessarily mean “modest” but it means you have some reason believe that your goal can be achieved. There must be a line of logic which can be followed to the likely conclusion that you will reach you goal.

4. A Year Is Too Long

This is one of my greatest gripes with the term “New Year’s Resolution” – the implication that it’s allowed to take a year to reach the goal. For most things, a year is too long a time frame to influence action and leaves the door wide open to procrastination and the delaying of action.

The Fix: For small goals, set a realistic completion date. I can’t tell you exactly how to do this because it depends on the goal. You’ll have to use your own judgement. But for any goal that you think will take you longer than a month, you need to break it down into monthly sub-goals and then review your progress every month. If you have trouble remembering to review, set a reminder on your iPhone or Google Calendar.

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At the end of the day, you will succeed at your New Year’s Resolutions and goal achievement in general proportionally to how serious you are about it and the degree to which you really want the change to happen.

I wish you all the best with your resolutions this year.

#1. Get Up Earlier (at 7am every day including weekends -well, possibly not Sundays)

Being honest, I hate waking up early. Up to now, my definition of freedom has somewhere included the words “man should have the right to wake up naturally”. And this was all well and good until two things changed: First, I could not ignore the correlation between life success and early rising and this seemed like one of the simplest life changes I could make that would increase my momentum; and second… I got a girlfriend who wasn’t such a big fan of my getting up at close to noon or beyond on a Saturday. But I’m doing this because I want to and not because she wants me to. And it’s important that she, and everybody else, knows that. If I can succeed at this goal, it should lead to a great deal more productivity by adding an estimated 300 additional hours to the year.

The goal: Gradually adjust my sleeping pattern such that I can comfortably wake up at 7am every morning in a fit state of mind to get things done.

#2. Write, Produce & Direct My First Feature Film

After a rather unplanned entry into what I guess could be called my film career in 2011, in 2012 I aim to begin making a film of my own. This is a life time dream of mine and one that I have obstinately refused to allow to die since I was 10 years old.

I know for a fact this will not be easy and will probably be very hard work. It’s also an enormous financial risk and I could list 10 reasons right off the cuff why this could very easily go wrong. But some dreams you just can’t give up on. And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

The goal: To initiate production of a feature film with the intention of it being commercially successful either by cinema release (quite unlikely) or straight to DVD (more likely). Whether the film gets released in 2012 or 2013, we must reasonably believe by the end of 2012, that it will be finished.

Follow blog tag blockbuster or visit and follow the Mogul Films Blog for news of progress on this.

#3. Continue To Hone My Share Trading Skills And Become A Better Investor

One of my greatest achievements in 2011 has been to master the basics of stock trading, a field and subject that I previously did not even understand let alone attempt to dabble in. My success during 2011 has allowed me to grow my capital by an inflation beating 9%. What this means to the layman is that my investment portfolio, to put it simply, made me the same amount of money as a savings account that paid 9% interest would have, if such a thing existed, which it doesn’t.

In fact, no other venture I have involved myself with – and there have been a good few by now – has ever proved so profitable so quickly.

The goal: To grow my capital by 10% (after tax) on the balance at the close of 2011. Providing I don’t do anything stupid and another European country doesn’t need a bail out, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

Follow blog tag investing

#4. Start Doing Magic Again

Prior to starting my degree, magic was a very big part of my life. But as life changed and I reluctantly grew up, there were certain inevitable casualties. Magic was one of them. While I continued to manage and run MagicMegaStore.co.uk, my own skills as a performer atrophied to near extinction. This year I aim to revive the skills I once had and start performing again. As I remember, I used to enjoy it.

The goal: Start performing to actual people again.

#5. And This Year’s New Skill….. Learn To Draw

For the past couple of years, every year I have made an effort to learn a new skill. I think this is something everybody should do because it keeps life fresh. Learning also continues your individual evolution into a more rounded person. If is my belief that if your brain isn’t learning then it is dying.

This year I decided to learn to draw. I’m sure I’ll be posting my attempts on my blog as I go.

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I’ll end by wishing you all a happy, productive and prosperous New Year.

January 24th – Did my first stock trade. Bought shares in Centamin Egypt and made a profit of around £50 in 3 hours without doing anything. It was to be the first of many.

March 28th – Learned to ski in Italy. Very, very enjoyable week.

May 19th to 22nd – Went to New York City for the first time. Enjoyed it.

June 11th – Got my first acting credit in the Superman fan film Superman: Requiem. First time on a film set too. Lot of fun.

June 18th – Went to Film School at the Hollywood Film Institute’s London boot camp.

August 7th – Asked my girlfriend out. She said yes.

August 18th – Went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time. Was a barrel of laughs. Enjoyed very much.

September 2nd – Turned 26. Had a party. Was nice.

September 22nd – Got another acting credit and did my first fight scene in the short action film “The Extraction” with Tony Cook on location in Essex. More fun times.

October 10th  - Made £1000 profit in 24 hours on the stock market dealing Amazon.com shares.

…And Thank You

To conclude, I’d just like to thank everybody who has contributed to my 2011. It has been an excellent year and I hope 2012 can be even better. Thank you. And God bless.

Number one: I grew up reading Total Film. I have quite a few issues of Total Film in my collection. Throughout my teenage years it was this magazine that fed my fantasies of making films myself one day. And now I’m directly connected with a film that is mentioned in it. And that’s kind of cool to me.

Total Film is one of the most widely read film magazines in the UK and I dare say that having the film mentioned in there, as well as where people can watch it, has the power to dramatically increase the audience that Superman Requiem is going to get. It could now potentially be watched by hundreds of thousands of people. I, for one, hope so.

Although I won’t see the film until the premier, I have seen the trailer and while I wondered why nobody actually talks in the trailer, the composition of some of the shots looks very professional and given the budget we were working with here, that’s a pretty impressive result.

My next post on Superman Requiem will probably follow the London premier in about a week in Covent Garden when I’ll see the film in its entirety for the first time. I am rather looking forward to it.

This is a passage from his latest book “Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur” which, I think, is particularly profound.

“Success” by Richard Branson

There are different paths that you can take in this life, and choosing the correct path is supremely important. And as if that weren’t pressure enough, it’s no good choosing not to choose, because that approach to life absolutely guarantees failure.

I don’t think there is enough attention and help given to young people in life to set them in the right direction. All young people deserve wise counsel. They need someone who can show them a  future. They need to be able to work out what they can do with their lives, how they can enjoy their lives, how they can pay for it and how they can take responsibility for their actions.

I think it’s a shame that we teach children everything about the world, but we don’t teach them how to take part in the world, how to realise an idea, how to measure the consequences of their actions, how to take a knock, or how to share their success. What kind of world have we built, that people can use the phrase ‘it’s just business’ without challenge or contradiction?

Entrepreneurship isbusiness’s beating heart. Entrepreneurship isn’t about cpital; it’s about ideas. A great deal of entrepreneurship can be taught, and we desperately need to teach it, as we confront the huge global challenges of the twenty-first centruy.

Entrepreneurship is also about excellence – not excellence measured in awards, or other people’s approcal, but the sort one achieves for oneself, be exploring what the world has to offer. I wrote to someone recently who, like me, is dyslexic. I said that it is important to look for one’s strengths – to try to excel at what you’re good at.

What you’re bad at actually doesn’t interest people, and it certainly shouldn’t interest you. However accomplished you become in life, the things you are bad at will always outnumber the things you’re good at. So don’t let your limits knock your self-confidence. Put them to one side and push yourself towards your strengths.

This, I think, is sound advice for the young. For those of you who’ve left youth behind, my advice would be: reread the paragraph above, adding exclamation marks after every sentence.

Because, in business, you always have a choice, and you always have an obligation to choose. With the right attitude, business will keep your mind eternally young, because business is always changing, changes always bring opportunities, and you can never hide from the changes that are round the corner.

In entrepreneuial business, a conservative mindset will hamstring you, defenseiveness will weaken you and a failure to face facts will killl you. Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the job of doing so. It favours people with a humane and engaged view of the world; people who can imagine themselves into the skin of their customers, their works and the people who are affected by their operations. Business favours people who, whne they see a problem or an injustice, try to do something about it. It favours pragmatists ovver perfectionists, adventurers over fantasists.

Done well and in the right spirit, business willl also bring success – whatever that is.

Indeed, how do you measure who’s truly successful? My list of the world’s most successful people includes Sir Freddie Laker – hardly an obvious choice, to go by the headlines, the rich lists and all the other paraphernalia of bsusiness celebrity. So let’s strip this particular business bare once and for all: when we talk baout success, what are we really talking about?

Are we talking about money? As a measure of success, money’s a crude one at best. People are always inquisitice about how ealthy other people are. It’s a fascinating subject and one that produces endless reams of copy and discussion. But the reality is that wealth is like a running stream of water. During some seasons the flow of money is a torrent and you’re inundated with cash. The next moment, you’ve put money in to develop a business and your cash flow dries up overnight leaving a barren riverbed.

So even the more well-researched rich lists have to take a bit of a potshot when arriving at their figures. There have been times I was almost bankrupt , and I was very glad to see my name in the Sunday Times Rich List, because I thouht it would assuage the bank manager. (Figures were often wildly off the mark both ways – but I wasn’t complaining.) In the last few years things have gone well for the Virgin Group. In 2008, it had  a reach  of nearly £12 billion.

And me? I’m rich. There – I said it. It’s quite an American thing to talk about wealth. In Britain we’re still sort of slightly embarrassed about it, and I think that’s a good thing. When I go to a party I see people, not bank statements, and I’d like to think that when people get chatting to me they feel the same. To be perfectly honest I hated the word ‘billionaire’ going into the title of that show I did for Fox. It was a great title, but it wasn’t my style at all. Money is only interesting for what it lets you do. On paper, if I was to sell up my shareoldings in the companies tomorrow, I would have considerable wealth. But where would be the fun in that?

If money is a poor guide to success in life, celebrity is worse. The media likes to personalise and simplify matters – and that’s understandable. It’s much easier to talk about Steve Jobs at Apple, Bill Gates at Microsoft or Richard Branson at Virgin, but that doesn’t really acknowledge that there’s  alegion of senior people doing significant jobs and making major decisions every day. Everyone wants to make business “simple” and that’s aone of my constant goals, but in reality there are certain complexities about running a media company, a space-tourism business or an airline. And the financial implications of running a global business across many jurisdictions require a substantial level of expert knowledge in accountancy, taxation and legal affairs, not forgetting the IT, marketing and HR functions too. I’ve never met a CEO who had all of those skills. Of course, the figurehead at the top does make significant strategic decisions but this is based on the work and capabilities of other people within hte business. We all still have the same number of hours in the working week. In successful businesses, working hard is never confined to one or two people – you’ll usually find a strong work ethic runs right through the company.

If neither money nor celebrity really encapsulates what success is about, what about personal power? I’ve been asked what happens if Richard Branson’s own balloon bursts: isn’t the Virgin Group far too reliant on one individual? I have kokingly replied that during our spell running Virgin Records, we always found that when a major rock-music artist died the records sales went through the roof.

I have spent over thirty-five years building the Virgin brand, and if I do get run over tomorrow, I think it will live on without me, just as Google will live on without its founders, and Microsoft will live on without Bill Gates. For me, the major job has been done. A lot of people worked exceptionally hard in the early years to build the brand. With or without me, Virgin will be around for many years to come.

Is this power? In a sense, I suppose it is. But the idea that I somehow “control” the brand is a bit sinister and silly. I gave birth to the brand. I’ve nurtured and I continue to nurture it. I brought it into being, and I champion it. Thinking about it is one of the things that gets me up in the morning. But you can’t really control ideas.

The other thing that gets me up in the morning is the idea of making a difference. It’s why I’ve never wanted to run a big company, and it’s why I get a huge enjoyment out of creating and tending to lots of smaller ones. (I have to be careful of my terms here, because airlines are hardly small companies! But I hope by now that you know what I’m getting at.) Virgin, by remembering what it is to be a small entrepreneur, has made large amounts of positive difference in many diverse business areas.

I think that the more you’re actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel. Actually, that might even be my definition of success. Right now, I find myself doing more and more to help safeguard our future on this planet. Does that make me successful? It certainly makes me happy.

I think that you can see that my definition of success in business has nothing to do with profits solely for their own sake. This is very important. Success for me is whether you have created something that you can be really proud of. Profits are necessary to invest in the next project – and pay the bills, repay investors and reward all the hard work – but that’s all. Nobody should be remembered for how much money they have made in life. Whether you die with a billion dollars in your bank account or $20 under your pillow is actually not that interesting. That’s not what you’ve achieved in life. What matters is whether you’ve created something special – and whether you’ve made a real difference to other people’s lives. Entrepreneurs, scientists and artists who died as paupers are often the heroes.

Successful people aren’t in possession of secrets known only to themselves. Don’t obsess over people who appear to you to be ‘winners’, but listen instead to the wisdom of people who’ve led enriching lives – people, for instance, who’ve found time for friends and family. Be generous in your interpretation of what success looks like. The best and most meaningul lives don’t always end happily. My friend Madiba spent twenty-seven years of his life in prison. If he had died there, would his life hold no lessons for us?

In business, as in life, all that matters is that you do something positive. Thanks for reading – and enjoy your life. You only get one.

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If you don’t have a copy of Business Stripped Bare, I strongly recommend it.

And now as the nation suffers from an epidemic of Apple fever once again, not a single conversation in a social gathering going by without somebody asking a question about the new iPhone, I must daily be reminded of my big mistake.

It was August 2011 and I’d had some luck day trading with AAPL shares for a few weeks, pocketing a few hundred pounds here and there. But one thing struck me about Apple Inc that meant I could make more on a longer term hold than I was doing pocketing quick cash on an almost daily basis: the 2 year chart.

As two year charts go, Apple has one of the most impressive that I can find. And you don’t need to know anything about trading to understand that. Key Stage 3 mathematics is enough to know that on a price/time graph, if the line seems generally to go up up and to the right, over a two year period, this is a company whose value is growing, and with a new generation of iPhone rumoured to be on the horizon, I couldn’t see how I could lose.

So, one otherwise regular lunch time I bought a bunch of Apple shares – £15,000 worth. I won’t lie, as I clicked the “Buy Now” button I began to feel slightly dizzy and delerious and my heart rate was raised for the rest of the day. But all would be fine, I told myself, the price will rise.

A few weeks later, I was over £1000 down. I wasn’t worried though, the price would definitely go back up.

Now anybody thinking that this is the story where I stick to my guns as the share price falls and falls until I lose my entire investment is in for a surprise, because yes, the price did go back up and towards the end of September I was staring at a profit of £2500. Sweet! A month’s wages for free for just clicking a few buttons. I certainly couldn’t complain.

The first mistake I made then and as I think back now, I deserved to be sectioned for my decision, was not to sell. That kind of profit was serious. But hey, when they release the iPhone 5 – which they haven’t even said they’re going to do – the price will go up even more. I was a greedy idiot. And in hind site it was mighty freakin’ stupid to base such a huge financial decision on an assumption made regarding the actions of a company world famous for their secretiveness. But hey, you live and learn or crash and burn.

The share price of course fell, since there was no basis for such a high price in the first place. It fell all the way back down to what I’d bought it for and then hovered around $400 a share for a few weeks. I was nowhere near the profit I could have had.

And here I made mistake numero deux: Allowing the profit that I hadn’t banked inside my personal boundary and feeling entitled to it. In my rather deluded mind, now, to sell for less than two and a half thousand pounds profit was considered a loss. Well, a huge loss I was about to make!!!

I was hoping my shares would rise in value following Apple’s keynote on October 5^th. I excitedly tuned in live online to watch the keynote and hear the new CEO, Tim Cook, unviel the iPhone 5. But, of course we now know, he never did.

As soon as that became apparent, Apple’s share price dropped like a stone all the way to $340 a share. I got scared. I was already holding a sizeable stake in Baidu.com that was currently in loss, I couldn’t afford to hold another larger stake in Apple that was worth less than I bought it for.

October 5^th was possibly the single most stressful day of 2011.

Was it time to exit? I really didn’t want to. Not least because of mistake number 3:

My third mistake was to trade US shares using a Halifax Sharedealing account. While Halifax Sharedealing does allow you to buy and sell NASDAQ stocks, I would not recommend anybody to do so.

Here’s why:

The “Current Valuation” screen in a Halifax Sharedealing Account shows valuations that are twenty minutes old which I think is pretty pitiful of a bank to do since there are free iPhone apps and now even the iPhone iOS 5 firmware that give you current and real time stock prices. But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is that Halifax for some reason think it would be helpful of them to show you the valuation of your NASDAQ investments (which you buy and sell in US dollars) in GBP at an exchange rate they don’t tell you.

The massive problem with this is that if and when you have to make a hasty exit from an investment, it’s near impossible to figure out what you’re going to get. You can’t use the real time stock price you can get from Google Finance because you don’t know the exchange rate; and you can’t use the price that Halifax is giving you because at the end of the day it’s twenty minutes old and to all intents and purposes, useless.

But that’s not all. There’s more.

I have tested this four or five times and the result is always the same. From the second you click “Sell” on an international order from a Halifax sharedealing account, you can watch the shareprice in Google Finance and see that it doesn’t move much. But there will be a difference of £200-£300 between what Halifax’s current valuation quoted you’ll get and what you actually end up with. I have found this out the hard way a couple of times because on certain trades where the profit was less than £300, Halifax pocketed my entire profit leaving me with less than I started with.

I phoned them about this a couple of times rather angrily, only to be sold some twaddle about market conditions and that the current valuation screen is merely indicative. They refused to accept on both occassions that they were at fault and would not even acknowledge that you lose £300 on an international trade, let alone explain why it happens.

I have since stopped trading with them altogether for two reasons, one being the one I just explained and the other being their refusal to provide a frequent trader tarriff which reduces your commission fees if you trade a certain number of times per quarter, a critereon I think I could easily satisfy.

So in the midst of the keynote, shortly after the announcement of iPhone 4S, a lame and only incrementally updated version of the iPhone 4, stricken by fear and nudged along by a friend of mine, I sold my shares in Apple, put them through Halifax’s international dealing black box, not knowing how much money I’d be left with after the sale, and that was that.

I laughed histerically when I did the maths and discovered I had made a profit of £9.50!

So there you have it. It could have been my most successful trade to date. Instead, it turned out to be worse than putting the money in a savings account.

So, in summary:

• Don’t be a greedy idiot. Be grateful for profit and bank it thankfully. Selling at a profit is never a bad thing to do.
• Do NOT make any trading decision whatsoever on an impulse. In mine and the experience of several traders who I know, this always leads to losing money unnecessarily.
• Do not ever trade international stocks from a Halifax trading account. It’s dumb. Go for HSBC or Barclays instead.