reading

Foreword

by Sir Richard Branson

I was a determined child, always on the lookout for my next adventure and wanting to discover things on my own terms. Luckily, my parents gave me the freedom to explore the world around me, and see it in all its colours. I was encouraged to be curious, never told I couldn’t achieve something and always allowed to fail. I will be forever grateful for my mum and dad’s parenting style – it not only served me well as a child, but has also greatly shaped the adult I have become.

I have held on to this childlike sensibility throughout my life, and used it to drive my approach to business and personal relationships. Children see the best in people and the world around them. We can all learn a lot from their wide-eyed enthusiasm.

Leaving school early to start a business can be that beginning of a steep learning curve, one that causes many people to grow up fast. On me, though, it had the opposite effect. When I started my first business at sixteen, I felt like I was a toddler all over again. I didn’t have any experience, but instead of feeling embarrassed and discouraged, I embraced my inner child and leapt into the unknown. Like a toddler, I had to learn on the spot, by doing. I failed time and time again, on so many different accounts, but always picked myself up, determined to master a skill and then move on to something new and exciting.

And I did – launching Virgin with this same blinding optimism, which many people called naivety. In the early days of Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic, none of us really knew what we were doing. But, like children, unaware of the rules, we pushed through and achieved what others deemed to be impossible. As the brand’s name suggests, we were all business virgins, willing to try things for ourselves for the first time. With no preconceptions and no idea of what would work and what wouldn’t, we did things differently and paved our own path to success.

I learned so much in those early days of business, to the extent that now, whenever I come across a challenge, I find my mind and actions reverting to those days, or often even further. There’s a lot we can learn from how the unexperienced and the innocent look at the world and navigate obstacles.

Seeing my kids grow up has been the greatest pleasure of my life, and has also taught me some of life’s greatest lessons. While my wife Joan and I taught Holly and Sam their ABCs and how to tie their shoelaces, they taught us so much more. Their hopes and desires encouraged me to keep chasing my big dreams. Their intrepidness and fearlessness gave me the confidence to keep putting myself outside my comfort zone. Their thirst for knowledge and new experiences were my incentive to keep questioning and challenging the status quo, and never rest on my laurels.

Holly and Sam are now both in their thirties, with babies of their own, and I’m still learning. I love being a grand-dude to three gorgeous toddlers, Eva-Deia, Etta and Artie, and to little baby Bluey. They not only bring me so much joy but also inspire me. Watching them develop and come into their own personalities has been nothing short of wonderful. Their minds are extraordinarily powerful and their outlook on life unscratched. I have particularly enjoyed watching them learn to walk. It’s been a truly eye-opening experience that all adults can learn from.

They have each had so many spills and tumbles, yet, while they have bumped and grazed themselves time and time again, their egos have not been bruised nor has their willingness to try been diminished. Their progress has reminded me of one of my favourite quotes: ‘You don’t learn to walk by following the rules; you learn by doing and by falling over.’ This couldn’t be truer for toddlers, but it is equally relevant for all of us learning anything new: grand-dudes and parents, or those starting a business, a new relationship, a new job – you name it. All we can do is keep moving forwards, falling over, supporting each other and getting back up again.

It’s easy to become weighed down by the stresses of adulthood, and deliberately dismiss the energy of the young – but this is a big mistake. There’s nothing wrong with being a kid at heart. Children look at the world with wonder and inquisitiveness, and see opportunities where adults often see obstacles. I believe that we should not only listen to them more, but also act more like them.

Paul Lindley has put this book together to motivate us all to do just that. As the subtitle of the book tells us, there is huge power in thinking like a toddler. Paul and I know all too well that ‘little wins’ can produce big rewards, and have made sure being childlike is a core cultural value at the heart of both Ella’s Kitchen and the Virgin Group. As Paul once said to me, ‘We can all unlock more creativity, confidence, ambition and motivation within ourselves, by looking at our lives through the eyes of a toddler’.

Some people might deride some of the things I’ve done over the years. I’ve put myself in countless risky situations and made a fool of myself time and again. Many people have called me childish, but it’s this playfulness that has led Virgin to great success. Not only have people identified with our spirit, so much so that we have been able to grow the brand, but we’ve also had a lot of fun doing it.

My favourite fictional character has always been Peter Pan. Growing up can be a trap, but it doesn’t have to be. We can all be kids, if we so choose. There’s so much magic in this world, but sometimes we just need to grow down to experience it. Little Wins will show you how you can rediscover the childlike attitudes, behaviours and capabilities that could help you live a fuller and more successful life.

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Introduction

‘The red one. Red like my fire engine.’

Eight words, from the mind of a child aged just four, that helped to shape a household brand. The child was my son Patrick and the brand is Ella’s Kitchen, the baby and toddler food company I founded in 2006 and named after my daughter. The setting was our kitchen table, it was 2005 and I had not long given up my job as a children’s TV executive to start my business. I was surrounded by four young children and bowls of fruit smoothies: the first Ella’s Kitchen focus group. The question was, ‘Which one is best?’ And then Paddy pointed at the strawberry, raspberry, apple and banana mix and said those eight words. The Red One became our first product, effectively launched our brand and remains one of our best sellers to this day. Our icon.

In the next decade Ella’s Kitchen would grow to become the market leader in the UK and beyond. We would expand to over forty countries, profitably grow to over $100 million in annual sales and experience double- or triple-digit growth in every year. We would win countless awards, influence government policy and parents’ behaviour and be bought as a strategic acquisition by an American public company. We would lead a revolution in the baby and toddler food market: from jars to pouches, towards organic ingredients and an industry focus on health. But in 2005, that was all a distant dream. There was just me, my kitchen table, some home-made samples and toddler taste-testers. And there were those eight words.

This is a book which argues that moments of inspiration like Paddy’s aren’t the exception, but the rule. That toddlers and young children are not just dependants whom we help to grow up, but role models who provide important lessons for us all.

The more common view is that adults represent the peak of mental and physical development and that small children are merely in the waiting room, slowly developing the skills and maturity needed to live independently. I believe that tells only half the story. Toddlers aren’t just trainee adults, they are extraordinary people in their own right: their creativity, curiosity, determination, ambition and sociability should be the envy of many high-flying professionals. Toddlers see the world differently, act on their instincts and pursue their goals with rigour and determination. And while those goals might be simple ones – to climb out of the cot, attract a parent’s attention or get to watch their favourite TV programme – the principles are just the same as we need to succeed in our adult lives.

To develop and mature, toddlers must draw on huge reserves of will and ingenuity to achieve even small successes. As adults, we can do so much more, but paradoxically often choose to do less. Many of us create a comfort zone of things, people and routines to avoid situations that might be difficult or where we might fail and be seen by others to fail. The urge to continue developing and improving ourselves, no longer the absolute necessity it was for us as toddlers, can slacken. And we can stop making use of our full range of skills and attributes; indeed, we might even deny they exist.

‘I’m not really that creative’; ‘I’m not very ambitious’; ‘I don’t like meeting new people’. Familiar phrases, but rarely are they actually true. You are creative, because as a toddler you happily drew pictures, painted things and stacked bricks in a way that only you could see the beauty in. You are ambitious, because the very act of learning to stand up and walk was a huge act of will and determination in itself. And, however shy you may sometimes feel, you are inherently sociable, because that is how we are wired as people: as toddlers, we were constantly making new best friends and finding people to play with. We strove to do things we couldn’t, failed and tried again, and ultimately succeeded. We set ourselves big goals and, after plenty of trial and error, often achieved them.

You might feel like those traits are no longer a part of you. Indeed, the skills and attributes you once used to such good effect might have become rusty from lack of use. Yet I believe that the fundamental skills and attitudes to succeed remain in us all, and that they can be rediscovered by looking at life through the eyes of a toddler. In the same way we needed to grow up when we were children, today as adults we now need to grow down.

Growing down is about changing the way you think to become more open, curious and creative. It’s about changing the way you act, and being more determined and ambitious. It’s about changing the way you communicate, to be clearer and more memorable. And it’s about changing the way you explore your surroundings and relate to people around you: being more playful and sociable. I believe that to do these things, you need to take yourself on a journey similar to the one you undertook as a toddler, when you first learned to smile, to walk, to talk and to play.

This book will guide you on that growing-down journey, looking at nine attributes that we displayed as toddlers and examining how we can rediscover and apply them today in our personal and professional lives. This isn’t about abstract thinking or complex routines. I’m not going to prescribe a set way to live your life and pursue your career. Growing down will be different for everyone; we all have our own skills, our own passions and our own dreams. Some of the things I will talk about you probably do well already, others not. But we can all improve, and I believe the way to do so is by using the skills that we acquired as toddlers, even if they have been long forgotten.

Most importantly, I’m not asking you to become someone you’re not. In fact, the opposite: I want you to become the best version of who you already are, tapping into the behaviours, attitudes and attributes that you had as a toddler. It’s my unswerving belief that the tools to succeed already exist in us all. This book is about helping you locate and unlock them.

I’ve written it because both my career and my home life have opened my eyes to just how much we can learn from toddlers. From my role with the kids’ TV station Nickelodeon to building Ella’s Kitchen and now Paddy’s Bathroom, and – the biggest privilege of all – being a father to two wonderful kids, I have seen at first hand the extraordinary power of the toddler mind and their outlook on life. We built Ella’s Kitchen around understanding what kids want, and making mealtimes focused on their interests and needs. What I learned in return is that toddlers exhibit attitudes, behaviours and capabilities that, when harnessed as adults, can transform the way we live our lives and pursue our careers.

Being childlike has become one of the core cultural values at the heart of Ella’s Kitchen. I believe our innately childlike and playful outlook has been at the heart of our success, driving the huge collective effort and commercial endeavour it required to establish our brand in a market dominated by global players and ultimately, here in the UK, to overtake them all.

That is the belief at the heart of this book: that a childlike approach to life can help you do better and achieve more. To become the best possible version of yourself. We all want to be successful and it’s hard, whether we’re trying to build a business, climb the career ladder or become an extraordinary scientist, artist or athlete. It’s the same across all aspects of life and beyond work: we want to do the best we can, whether we are trying to start or maintain a romantic relationship, care for elderly parents or raise our own children.

What I’m not trying to do here is pretend that any of this is easy, or that one wave of a toddler’s rattle is all it will take to bring the barriers you face crashing down. What thinking like a toddler can do, however, is help give you new confidence, new energy, new ideas and new impetus as you try to breach those barriers. It might be about trying harder, finding an alternative or getting the help you need. Whatever you need to do, it will most likely be something that you once did as naturally as breathing.

This idea, that there is huge power in the mindset and outlook of a young child, is one that has been reflected through history and across cultures. In some Jewish traditions, it is believed that God grants all the world’s knowledge to newborns, only to then swear them to secrecy. Most parents, I think, would be able to relate to the notion that their toddlers know more than they seem to be letting on!

Toddler power has also been harnessed by some of our greatest orators. One of my political heroes is Robert F. Kennedy. In 1966, the year I was born, he had this to say in a speech at the University of Cape Town: ‘This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.’ That speech, known as the ‘Ripples of Hope’, may not have referenced toddlers directly, but it gets to the heart of why a child’s perspective on life can be so important. The attributes he listed – imagination, courage, adventure – are fundamental to a toddler’s outlook on life, and exactly the kind of behaviour I believe we can unlock within ourselves by growing down.

But before we do, perhaps we should first define what a toddler is and recognize that, although they can readily be categorized as a group (is it a herd of toddlers? A nursery?), and I do so throughout this book, all toddlers are individual human beings as different from each other as you are from me. No two toddlers are the same, but I believe their life experiences and their physical and psychological development mean that they are much more the same than they are different, more so than for almost any other demographic group. It’s no coincidence that ‘toddler’ is such a universally used, useful and understood term of description. And that definition? Well, I’m going to be liberal and define a toddler as simply being a young child aged between one and five years, for it is between these ages that we experience the greatest period of cognitive, emotional and social development in our entire lives.

Toddlers’ lives are simpler than ours, and so is their approach. As grown-ups, we live in a world of complexity, mental clutter and stress. We have more information to process, more questions to answer and more demands on our time than ever before. Even the pace at which people walk has risen by over 10 per cent since the 1990s. It’s a world that can be overwhelming and it calls for an outlook that is clear about what we want to achieve and how we can do it. This book is about trying to help you get there. Unlocking the skills you have either forgotten or never knew you had. Looking back to move forward. Thinking little to achieve big. So, are you ready to grow down?

LITTLE WINS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Foreword

Introduction