to give an actual number.
Aside from the triumphs in business, Branson has had a notable series of records in adventure sports and travel. He has made several world record attempts with varied success. In 1985, he attempted the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, but capsized early and had to be rescued. The following year, he beat the sailing record.
One year later, he made the fastest balloon crossing of the Atlantic, in the largest balloon, thereby setting two additional records at once. In 1991, he took his balloon across the Pacific, breaking yet another speed record, reaching 394 km/h.
During the years between 1995 and 1998, Branson, along with Steve Fossett and Per Lindstrand, tried to go around the world by balloon. In late 1998, they did complete a record-breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii. However, they did not complete the global circumnavigation before the record was set by a rival pair of adventurers in 1999.
An entirely different conveyance, an amphibious vehicle, was used in 2004 to set Branson’s speed record for such a crossing of the English Channel. He handily beat the previous record by over 4 hours, completing the crossing in 1 h, 40m and 6s.
Branson has also made numerous appearances on television and in print. Many of these are of course profiles and interviews. However, he has been tapped for cameo appearances in movies and on television. The media mogul doesn’t miss many chances to appear in the public eye.
Finally, Branson is known for the many philanthropic and other causes that he involves himself with. He has either supported or founded many charities and groups. This tendency showed itself very early in Branson’s life, around the time of his first business success. At age 17, he began the Student Valley Centre charity.
Branson is interested in solving the world’s biggest problems and thinks that entrepreneurs and leaders have just the right mindset to be able to do so. With that in mind, Branson founded The Elders, an organisation of the world’s big achievers devoted to solving big problems. Bringing together the unlikely grouping of politicians to musicians to businessmen, he is not afraid to tackle the biggest questions that society is grappling with. The group includes Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, former US president Jimmy Carter and Peter Gabriel, among others. This group is a fitting gathering. Branson has frequently said that his biggest influences have come from his reading of nonfiction. Nelson Mandela is one of his personal inspirations, and he now has helped to form a mutual admiration society of thinkers that he admires, in order to focus on what he sees as some of the major issues facing everyone.
Other charities include the International Rescue Corps, a group dedicated to search and rescue operations. This group is an independent operation, run completely on donations and volunteer time.
Prisoners Abroad is a group with the goal of helping British citizens who have been detained abroad. The group attempts to assure humane treatment for detainees and to provide support for their families.
Sir Richard is a recipient of the United Nations’ Correspondents’ Association Citizen of the World Award for supporting these and many other causes.
Sir Richard Branson’s Tips for Success
Given his meteoric and seemingly erratic ventures, one might expect that Branson would have some complicated formulas for business success. Indeed, one might say that a great deal of his strategy is intuitive. Given his academic struggles, because of his dyslexia, he has learned to operate somewhat by “feel”. He doesn’t read financial reports, being unable to make efficient sense of strings of numbers. He has developed a talent for reading and knowing people. He grasps things in a conceptual way, but often is hard-pressed to quantify things.
A major key for Sir Richard has been the way that he has turned a disadvantage — his dyslexia — into an advantage. His difficulties with the printed page did not stop him from starting a newspaper. Why not? He understood people, and he is a risk-taker. He realised that having a voice was what the media was about, not typesetting. He hires specialists for each job and understands that the people he hires are the real lifeblood of his enterprises.
“…look for the best and you’ll get the best.”Branson runs his companies with the idea, he says, of “look for the best and you’ll get the best.” He is a big proponent of providing encouragement to people, in the form of “lavish praise”, for motivation. He doesn’t run things either by micromanaging or by criticism. “If a flower is watered, it flourishes. If not, it shrivels up and dies. It’s much more fun looking for the best in people. People don’t need to be told where they’ve slipped up. They’ll sort it out themselves.”
Notice the word “fun” in Sir Richard’s advice. Fun is a major part of the experience for Virgin employees, and this translates into the customer experience. As hard as Branson works, the idea of fun seems to underlie everything he does. One gets the impression that the search for a good time is what really motivates him, and has motivated him his whole life.
He has mentioned the fact that he thinks that, “Leaders have got to make a bigger effort to make sure that the people who work for them are enjoying what they’re doing.” Branson himself certainly always seems to be enjoying what he’s doing. He relishes big things, big challenges and big accomplishments. One has no trouble imagining that his charisma is infectious enough to sift down through the ranks to his most minor workers.
He not only communicates with his employees regularly, but shares his thoughts with anyone who cares to listen. He has done many interviews and keeps up a regular blog on his Virgin website. His famous accessibility keeps him in touch with big names and small alike. One sometimes gets the impression that he would chat with just about anyone if he could only find the time.
“He relishes big things, big challenges and big accomplishments.”He has continued to develop this faculty for risk-taking, coupled with finding people who can create perfection in their own specialties. He himself has mentioned that he cannot grasp how to repair an airplane, but he can find the people who can. When critics said that someone would be foolish to go from the entertainment industry into transportation, he saw the weakness in this argument. He knew he could find the engineers for the job, but he also grasped the importance of providing a good experience for passengers, which he exploited by bringing his full experience in the entertainment industry to bear on airline travel.
Virgin Atlantic is run with the flair that people have come to expect from Branson. The flights offer everything from roomy seating with personal entertainment experiences in economy seating, to the super-luxury of a bar and masseuse in first class.
All of these elements make the adventurer and business buccaneer a continued and dynamic success. He understands the importance of corporate culture. He creates a mood in his companies that keep them self-sustaining and growing. He makes sure that his employees are not just holding a job, but working for something important; their investment in their working time is always something bigger than their tasks. The underdog mentality continues to give everyone something to fight for. Despite the size of his empire, each company has a culture and attitude that they are the little guy and are continually climbing closer to the top.
“…get help for mundane tasks whenever possible.”On the other hand, this creative, fluid and intuitive attitude works seamlessly with some extremely simple advice for succeeding. Richard Branson makes to-do lists each day. This is one of his basic pieces of advice. Make lists and get them done. The simplicity here can remind us of the importance of fundamentals. Have a goal, break it down into steps and then go out and accomplish each step, one at time.
Such simple, and seemingly obvious, advice underlies a key strategy for Branson — the importance of dedication. If he dedicates
