Richard Branson

You probably have heard of this guy owning a capital of approximately 4.4 billion US dollar. This year he was ranked as the 236th richest person on earth. His grades used to be like yours (in other words he sucked during his studies) but at he started enterprises almost on a daily basis. This guy is no one else than the the main man behind the Virgin brand with 360 companies.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

Young Richard started his first two failing enterprises at the age of 15, growing Christmas trees and raising budgerigars. However, his first success was with a student magazine at the age of 17. (just like iStudyAtHES.com only than in printed form) Later Brandson bought records at discount stores in order to resell them from the back of his car under the name. This was a success as well and he opened a record mail order business under the name Virgin. He and some colleges decided on the name Virgin since they where all Virgins in business. The competitive advantage of Virgin was that it sold records unused and for a better price than the high street outlets. Eventually Branson started his first outlet in Oxford Street the main shopping street of London.

“I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.”

From here together with Nick Drake he also launched his first record label and bought a music studio from the revenues of the Virgin store. In 1971 Branson got arrested for selling export labeled records in the Virgin store for which he had to re-pay extra tax plus fines. This was a large sum and to help him out Bransons mother re-mortgaged her house.

“With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.”

Later Branson started and bought various different companies which where mainly under the Virgin brand. The companies under the Virgin brand go from Virgin health care and a gay club to Virgin airline and from Virgin balloon flights to Virgin telecoms providers. Pretty cool! he just did it! However, not all his enterprises went straight to the top many of them failed as for example a Virgin Cola brand and Virgin Railway.

“We’ve got an engaging, edgy, vibrant, fun product, … It may or may not work, but we’re going to give it our best shot.”

In 2004 he announced that Virgin would go into space tourism launching its first flights in 2009. Many famous actors and musicians already signed up to be among the first passengers of Virgin Galactic.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them…from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it.

Richard Branson is know for his kindness for his 20.000 employees. He regularly takes full flight crews out to dinner and talks a lot to hem. He is especially know for always having a notebook and pen with him to write new ideas down while talking to employees. Employees are also invited to email him personally and each morning before doing anything else he reads all the received emails and replies to most of them. The amount of emails mostly is between 25 and 30 which is low considering the workforce of 20.000 employees world wide.

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If your employees are happy, they will do a better job. If they do a better job, the customers will be happy, and thus business will be good and the shareholders will be rewarded.

Branson admits to be afraid to speak in public and had a hard time changing this when he was battling with British Airways. Richard Branson is also known for special stunds to promote new products. Like half naked business man giving away the first chapter of his latest book in the center of London. And yess he is on all the pics in this post!

“In a sense, you are ultimately directing the war and the critical thing is to be constantly in touch and constantly motivating your troops and to see how you can help people if they’ve got a problem.”

source: wikipedia.com, entrepreneur.virgin.com, virgin.com, hrh.com

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