SKY HIGH | Richard Branson on the 103rd floor of the Empire State Building Juliana Sohn for The Wall Street Journal
I'm still clinging to my trusty BlackBerry Curve, because of the keyboard. There aren't many of us left. I use it for sending emails but also have an iPhone for posting Instagram pictures and browsing Twitter. The freedom that these machines give you is fantastic. I love going to Africa and watching game, but I can still be in touch.
Clockwise from left: Balloon from Lindstrand, BlackBerry Curve, Torgoen T16, ZERO-G Zero Gravity Corporation/Stephen Boxall (plane); Corbis (balloon)

Behind-the-Scene With Richard Branson

When we fly into space, we're going from nought to 3,500 miles an hour in about 8 seconds, so there's going to be quite a lot of pressure on the body. I want to be 100% sure to enjoy my first flight, so I've used the Phoenix Centrifuge [at the Nastar Center, near Philadelphia] to replicate what the body's going to go through on the flight up. I'm going to do that at least twice more to try to see how the body's coping. I've also done some gravity tests with ZERO-G [a charter-flight service in Arlington, Va., that uses modified Boeing 727s to simulate weightlessness], which went great.
My favorite mode of transport is hot-air ballooning. I have a balloon from Lindstrand. It's so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you. Just drifting over beautiful rivers in a balloon is perfect. I once flew over Mount Everest by mistake. We went all the way down the Himalayan chain for a day and a half. That was magnificent, except the Chinese told us they were going to shoot us down if we came out the far end. So I spent a lot of my time contacting former Prime Minister Tony Blair begging him to tell the Chinese we were coming in this direction by mistake and could he please say we have no nasty motives for flying into their territory.
A Vitamix blender is how I take my kale. I put kale, apple, lemon, celery and ginger in my green drinks. I enjoy berry drinks for the antioxidants. No sugar.
Kite surfing is a great way of keeping fit. I have a board by Flysurfer and a custom-made one from [professional kiteboarder] Susi Mai's dad. Kiting is great because you're bouncing over the waves and you're surfing the waves. I do quite long kite surfs—50 miles in a day.
My watch is a Torgoen T16. I bought it because I just thought it had a pretty face. As you can tell I'm not really into things particularly. By the way what time is it?
Richard Branson sounds off on leadership, adventure and why he eats chicken, not beef
My scariest experience was: crossing the Pacific in a hot-air balloon. We were trying to be the first people to cross, and everything that could've gone wrong went wrong on that flight. We had an electrical fault about 500 miles into the trip and lost more than half our fuel. We had a fire on the roof. And we missed Los Angeles by 3,500 miles and ended up in the arctic in a snowstorm. We were 800 miles from the nearest person in minus 60 degrees. I've done a lot of foolish adventures and definitely used up my nine lives.
My most recent adventure was: hiking over the Alps. I was joining my son on a challenge that he did for six weeks, climbing the Matterhorn. At the end, he suffered from altitude sickness and severe headaches and had to be airlifted off the top because he was in so much pain. The moment they got him down, his headache went away. That's obviously the risk of climbing mountains.
My favorite place to write is: in a hammock. I dictate memories, thoughts based on experiences. It's a perfect setting to do that.
A great leader is: somebody who's fairly inspirational, who is a tremendous motivator of people. Somebody who looks for the best in people without criticizing or jumping down their throats. Somebody willing to delegate, who doesn't try to do everything themselves and is willing to let people make mistakes. Somebody who can stand back and look at the bigger picture and by delegating free themselves up to take the company forward into new areas. Somebody who passionately believes in what they're doing. Somebody willing to make a positive difference within their company and their community and within the world as well.
The industry that most needs disrupting is: Most of my disrupting is more on the not-for-profit side than the for-profit side. I'm using my entrepreneurial skills to work on conflict resolution and climate change. I'm trying through the global drug commission to get governments to have a more sensible approach to the war on drugs. On the pure business side, we're going to try to get people who would never dream of going on a cruise ship to go on Virgin Cruises. That's something we're just starting to build.
The technology I'm most excited about is: the small satellites we're developing, which will be quite transformative in the world. Through a big array of these satellites, billions of people who don't have mobile-phone access will be able to get it very cheaply. It'll give them Wi-Fi access, which means they'll be able to get an education and health information. If a plane disappears, we'll be able to know exactly where it is. If there's an illegal fishing boat, we'll be able to pinpoint it.
My favorite hotel is: the Kasbah Tamadot, a beautiful place we have in the mountains outside Marrakech. I like little boutique hotels, and this is up in the Atlas Mountains. I was waiting on one of my balloon trips, which was taking off from Morocco, and my parents discovered this building and said that I had to turn it into a hotel or else they'd disown me.
My ideal meal is: roast chicken and roast potatoes—very English—and Yorkshire pudding, lots of gravy. I've stopped eating beef, simply because of the amount I've read about cattle and the damage to biodiversity and the rain forests. It hasn't bothered me. I stopped 9 months ago and there are always alternatives to beef. Cattle are doing so much destruction in the world, so roast chicken rather than beef.
My uniform is: jeans and whatever my wife has bought me. Because of my training [to travel to space], I've lost weight so I'm actually trying to find a slimmer version.
I never wear: ties. I hate ties. I can't understand how ties ever caught on. They're constricting. I've never found anybody that enjoys wearing them. Men generally are made to wear one because their bosses had to, and they're damned if the next generation is going to get away with not wearing one. I don't like suits either. If you go to Japan, you have all these people looking identical, whereas at the turn of the 19th-century. they had these beautiful clothes. Maybe the only export from Britain that's caught on is the suit and the tie.
—Edited from an interview by Alexandra Wolfe