Richard Branson Biography: Businessman, Adventurer & Icon,

                 

Richard Branson Biography: Businessman, Adventurer & Icon

                             

                                 

                                           Richard Branson

 Is there anything Richard Branson doesn’tdo? A high school drop-out at 16, he’s startedcompanies, seen the world, and had more adventures than anyone could dream of in a lifetime. He’s a creative personality and a brilliantbusinessman... an energetic, charitable man who has built a brand recognizable aroundthe world. And he’s worth nearly 5 billion dollars. So how did Branson get to where he is today?

Early Life

Let’s start at the beginning...1950 in Surrey,England. Branson was born the eldest son of Edward and Eve Branson, a lawyer and flight attendant. Though she was a flight attendant, Eve Branson didn’t sit idly by on her days off. She built wooden trash cans and tissue boxes,selling them for extra money for the family. Watching his mother’s success built Branson’sadmiration for entrepreneurs, and gave him an option for when school just wasn’t workingout. She was always supportive of him, and waseven known to tell people he would one day be Prime Minister of England. His mother was also an influence on Branson’sactive mind and lifestyle that have become so much a part of his international brandtoday...she didn’t let her children watch TV, instead pushing her son and two daughtersoutside to entertain themselves and “make themselves useful.” Though clearly brilliant, Branson was nota successful student.

He has dyslexia, and growing up school wasdifficult for him. But dyslexia did not stop him, and now, hecredits it as a key part of the formula of his success. “If you have a learning disability, youbecome a very good delegator. Because you know what your weaknesses areand you know what your strengths are, and you make sure that you find great people tostep in and deal with your weaknesses.” He moved through several schools as a child,eventually just giving up on institutionalized learning at the age of 16. But he did not give up on achieving. When he dropped out of school, he alreadyknew that being an entrepreneur was the right life for him. He started out with an idea, and with an ultimate goal far beyond just earning money. “From my very first day as an entrepreneur,I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better.” His first venture as a teenage businessman was publishing a magazine called “Student.” At only sixteen years old, with no input or work from anyone but students, Branson was able to secure $8,000 in advertising for the magazine’s first issue.

This was 1966, and $8,00 was a lot of money. So much, in fact, that Branson didn’t even have to sell the first issue. Instead, he gave away 50,000 copies, building  the brand name and a potentially loyal customer base for future issues. It was the first demonstration of a brilliant business mind with an utterly impressive talent for marketing. “Student” continued in its original form for three years, but in 1969 Branson felt the urge to make it bigger, to take it in a new direction. Advertisements for records were a large partof the magazine’s revenue, so Branson took records and the magazine, put them together,and saw a gap in the market for record sales - mail order sales. His mail order business was christened withthe name we all now recognize … “Virgin.” But it wasn’t Branson who came up with thatname, it was one of his first employees. Though they were successful, the name wasperfect for the company as all of the young people involved were new to business. It stuck, and has now come to represent muchmore than mail order music.

Though the mail order business was popular,it wasn’t making enough money to stay afloat, and Branson needed cash. He decided the best way to do that was toavoid giving the government their entire share of the taxes he actually owed. He came up with a scheme through which heavoided reporting all the records that were sold in the UK, falsifying the numbers ofthose that were exported. It sounded good, and it brought in cash, butit was discovered. Branson ended up in jail, and ended up havingto pay over $60,000 in fines. This obstacle and a short time in jail didn’tslow him, or his business ambitions down, though. Even with the tax fraud scandal, it was onlyless than two years after starting the mail order record business that Branson was ableto take yet another leap. In 1971, he opened an actual brick and mortarstore to sell records.

 Then, it was only another year before he boughthimself a home, and was able to build a recording studio inside of it. Now that he had a studio, the next logicalstep was to start a record label. So he looked around, and ended up signingan artist he thought would be okay, but likely not to have overwhelming success as no oneelse would take him. The name of the newly created label that thisnewcomer artist signed on to? Virgin Records, of course. The label had success almost immediately,with its first artist, Mike Oldfield, staying on the charts with the album “Tubular Bells”for nearly five years. To put this in perspective...the record wason the charts for as long as it took Branson to go from selling records by mail to havinghis own record label. The success of Oldfield and Branson underthe upstart Virgin label didn’t go unnoticed - far from it. Huge names like the Sex Pistols, the RollingStones, Culture Club, Janet Jackson and Genesis were later signed to the label. Later Career Throughout the 1970s, while Branson was inhis 20s, he focused on his ever-growing music business. But by 1984, he was again itching to try somethingnew. So he took what seems like a large jump acrossindustries … he invested in a new airline business. Before launching the full-fledged airlineservice, Branson had realized the potential for doing so when his own flight to the BritishVirgin Islands was cancelled.

 Being wealthy, he didn’t have to wait aroundan airport for the next flight at the whim of the airlines...he could charter his ownplane. So he did, but he didn’t keep the largeplane to himself. Instead, he charged the others who were supposedto be on his original flight to the British Virgin Islands a small fee, and they all flewtogether on the chartered plane down to the island. His creative mind and business intuition sawan opportunity, and Branson was ready to seize it. Soon after his initial experimental charterflight to the British Virgin Island, he called up Boeing and asked what they had for sale. A 747 was available, and Branson bought itto start up his fleet of airplanes. As he had with the mail order record business,Branson saw a need and a way he could run a business better than others were currentlydoing. So he did. “We just made it that much more specialthan all the other airlines we were competing with,” he says of what he achieved withVirgin Atlantic Airways. Long before it was the norm, Virgin was offeringsuch luxuries as individual tv screens to help people pass the time on flights. Initially, Virgin operated only out of London’sGatwick airport. But by 1991 it had grown to the point whereit was given permission to fly out of Heathrow. British Airways was not pleased by this newthreat to their previously largely unchallenged primacy, and they didn’t want to sit idlyby while Virgin kept gobbling up market share. In 1993, Virgin accused British Airways ofa series of so-called “dirty tricks” that ranged from computer hacking to libel. Following the accusations, British Airwayssettled, and forked over nearly $4 million in legal fees and compensation.

What did Branson do with the money he receivedin the settlement? He didn’t just put it in his account - insteadhe shared it with Virgin’s employees. Though the settlement was a win for the company,it didn’t mean Virgin and Branson were completely successful and had nothing to worry about. On the contrary, Branson was forced to sellhis music business to keep his entire empire going. EMI bought Virgin Records in 1992, and thoughit was a good business decision, it was a tough personal decision for Branson. The music business was Branson’s baby, hisfirst venture, and the reason everything else he had built was possible. Over the years, he’s been very open aboutjust how difficult that sale was for him: “I mean, you build something from scratch,we had just signed Janet Jackson, we had just signed the Rolling Stones when we sold it,and I remember running down Ladbroke Grove, tears streaming down my face with the checkfor a billion dollars.” Since the sale, Virgin Airlines has continuedto grow, Branson added a cell phone sector to his business, and then, a space travelventure called Virgin Galactic. 500 people have bought tickets an as-of-yetunscheduled flight into space with Virgin Galactic. Overall, he owns 200 companies linked to theVirgin brand, but business isn’t his only interest, nor his only talent.

Adventures Branson could just sit comfortably in hisisland resort home, but he prefers to explore all corners of the world, and to do so inways far more interesting and far more perilous than in the comfort of a Virgin Airlines plane. He’s flashier than your average billionaire,with no qualms about risking his life in the pursuit of adventure … adventure that alsooften serves double duty as a completely out of the box marketing strategy. He makes no distinction between his professionaland personal endeavors, simply aiming to enjoy life and make a difference where he can. “I don’t think of work as work and playas play. It’s all living.” In 1985, Branson made international news whenhe tried to set a world record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. He failed in spectacular fashion, as his boatcapsized and he had to be rescued by a British military helicopter. “Do not be embarrassed by your failures,learn from them and start again” is one of Branson’s life mottos, and try againhe did. In 1986, he attempted the Atlantic crossingagain, but this time he succeed in spectacular fashion - he broke the world record for thecrossing by two hours. But breaking the record wasn’t enough forBranson.

He needed more adventure, and he wanted tokeep his name and Virgin’s name in the news. He’d done a water crossing - now he wantedto move into the air. Airplanes weren’t exciting enough, so heopted to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. Then, crossing the Atlantic wasn’t enough,so he decided to cross the Pacific in a hot air balloon. It wasn’t purely for the pursuit of adventurethat he took on the hot air balloon challenges. He actually truly enjoyed travelling by hotair balloon. “My favorite mode of transport is hot-airballooning … It's so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you." The balloon Branson took on his first flightwas a recordbreaker in and of itself. It was the size of a 21 story building, andwas built to fly at a speed of 200 miles per hour - it was the largest and fastest balloonever constructed. Large and fast, the balloon wasn’t immunefrom danger. The flight’s path was from the state ofMaine to Ireland, and when the balloon reached Ireland it didn’t detach as it was supposedto. Instead, Branson and his crew found themselvesdipping into the freezing waters of the Atlantic.

 His crew jumped out of the balloon, but Bransonwas forced to stay put after the balloon rapidly lifted to 12,000 feet with him still in it. Terrified, but able to remain calm, Bransonnavigated the balloon back down towards the water, and jumped into the ocean when he wasa few dozen feet above its surface. The Pacific balloon trip wasn’t much calmer- they ran out of most of their fuel partway through and were dependent on the jet streamto push them forward. “I was facing almost certain death …. Wecould have just slumped on the floor and accepted our fate or try to fly the balloon into thecore of the jet stream and find the strongest winds you can find, stay awake for three days,and do everything you can to avoid what, on paper, looked like a sad ending.” Branson and his crew chose to stay awake anddo what they could - and they overcame their challenge. They didn’t break the records they wantedto, but they did live to tell the tale of their adventure. And that was all they could ask for at thatpoint.

 Charity Work A man like Branson who devotes much of hislife to the pursuit of pleasure and growing a business might seem to be full up on histime commitments. But for Branson, business and success is aboutmuch more than just amassing wealth - it’s about helping people. “I never started out in business to makemoney – I wanted to create products that made a difference in people’s lives. The same is true today. In my opinion, there’s nothing quite likethe gift of giving. When you see first-hand the impact it canhave, it becomes the best feeling in the world.” Branson has used not only his money, but hisbrand and his notoriety to influence world leaders. He and Peter Gabriel, of the Virgin Recordsband Genesis, talked to Nelson Mandela about their dream of having a group of world leadersformed to work on the pressing issues facing the people of the world. The result? The Elders - a group of some of the world’smost respected former leaders, including UN officials, President Jimmy Carter, and DesmondTutu. Branson provides funding for the group andits initiatives, but it was his initial idea, his willingness to care and to take a leapin talking with one of the world’s most famous men about his idea that led to thegroup’s creation and its ability to influence world events. Environmental issues are one of Branson’spassions.

 He’s committed hundreds of millions to fightingglobal warming, and even hosted a summit at his private island in 2009. Why this commitment to the Earth and preservingits beauty? Like his creative bent, Branson credits hischildhood home and the amount of time he spent playing outside. “I was fortunate to have been brought upin the countryside in a little cottage, and I suppose that the first 10 years of my lifewas spent in the countryside - biking, climbing trees, and in touch with nature. And I suppose that's where my love of naturestarted.” Overall, he’s worked with dozens of charitiesin his life, dedicating his time and money to the causes he cares about and that he believesmatter most to his fellow humans. The United Nations has even recognized hisefforts, giving him their Citizen of the World award in 2007. Most recently, Branson has thrown his charitableenergy towards helping the Caribbean islands rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Irma’sdestruction during the fall of 2017. With his home on Necker Island in the BritishVirgin Islands, he has a personal interest in doing so, but has gone well beyond justrebuilding his own luxurious home.

 He spent time helping mobilize rescue efforts,and assisted with the distribution of water and supplies as well as helping people findshelter. Clearly, Branson is not a man to stand idlyby when there is a need or an opportunity. Media In promoting the Virgin brand and promotingthe causes he cares about, Branson has become a highly recognized personality and a frequentguest on news and other shows. But he doesn’t always stick to the seriousstuff. He’s made cameos in the Bond film CasinoRoyale, and cemented his place as a 90s icon when he guest starred on both Baywatch andFriends. He was also featured in the iconic Apple ThinkDifferent ad alongside such luminaries as John Lennon, Gandhi, Einstein and Pablo Picasso. Richard Branson is not your typical uptightbusinessman. He’s a creative luminary who has impactedall corners of business and impacted many parts of the world. And that’s what he aims to do, each day.

He wants to put the things he’s passionateabout to work for himself, and for the world. “A passionate belief in your business andpersonal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren't proud of what you're doing,why should anybody else be?” Personal Life Amid everything, Branson also found time tomarry and have children. His first marriage was in the heyday of VirginRecords, when he wed Kristin Tomassi in 1972. That marriage lasted only seven years, andthe couple divorced in 1979. Branson had already met his second wife, JoanTempleman, by the time he and Tomassi divorced. And, as Branson admitted much later to PiersMorgan, he had a daughter with Templeman in 1979. Sadly, the child only lived for four days. It wasn’t until ten years and two more childrenlater that Branson and Templeman actually tied the knot. Conclusion Richard Branson could have continued to strugglethrough school, doing things he hated and that he didn’t care about.

He could have fought his way through to becominga lawyer like his dad, or settling into a middle-class office job in London or the surroundingareas. He could have stuck it out - but he listenedto his instincts instead and went with his heart. A dropout, he could have fallen to the bottomand struggled through life feeling sorry for himself for having a learning disability. But his passion and his personality, alongwith his mother’s constant encouragement, propelled him forward. Richard Branson drew on his creativity, tookrisks, and never shied from a challenge. Every time he failed, he brushed himself offand tried again. He gives back to a world that has given himmuch, and he continues to succeed as a businessman and as an admired personality. Branson once said “If you want to standout from the crowd, give people a reason not to forget you.” Richard Branson has certainly followed hisown advice, and it’s helped him lead a successful and passionate life.