Sir Richard Branson (@richardbranson) is an English business magnate, investor, and author. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Host: Roland Frasier (@RolandFrasier)
Why has Richard done so many crazy stunts and attempted to set world records?
  • Originally it was for marketing reasons. The internet didn’t exist back in those days, so Richard had to think of unique ways to build a sexy and adventurous feel around the Virgin brand. 
    • E.g: He would put a big logo on a boat or plane that was part of his world record attempt to cross the Atlantic ocean   
  • However, Richard later got addicted to setting world records and pushing to bounds of possibility
    • “I just love trying to do things that never been done before” – Richard Branson
Richard was 16 when he started his record company Virgin Records
  • The original name he thought of was Slip Disk Records
    • He changed it to Virgin because a friend of his said he was a virgin in life and business
“The more media you can get that you don’t pay for the better” – Richard Branson
You’re only as good as your reputation
  • You need to zealously protect your reputation
  • Don’t do anything that would make it hard for you to sleep at night
You’re only as good as your people
  • Richard wanted fresh ideas for every company he started so he would hire people outside of the industry and bring them in to change things up 
  • Virgin brands give people a second chance by hiring former inmates, many of whom Richard considers his best employees. 
You want your company brand to be bigger than your personal brand
  • Richard worked hard to shift the media’s attention from himself to his company. This way, if anything happened to him, his company would survive and still live on without him.
“If you can get free advertising, you should get it” – Richard Branson
Don’t be afraid to get out of your area of expertise
  • If Richard didn’t enter the airline industry, he would have disappeared along with record stores
For the past few years, Richard has been focusing on the space industry with Virgin Galatic
  • He started the company because he wanted to visit space and saw that NASA and other space agencies weren’t making much progress towards getting public civilians into space
He’s also working on Virgin Hyperloop which is commercializing a high-speed technology concept called the Hyperloop, a variant of the vacuum train
If you want to change the world with your company, start by changing your local community. Then expand to your local city, then your country, and then when you have a global brand, you can work on tackling global issues.