- Richard Branson
- Business Stripped Bare
- Business_Stripped_Bare_split_017.html
Epilogue
Success
If I hadn't badly
damaged my knee as a teenager I would likely have been a sportsman.
If I hadn't been dyslexic I wouldn't have left school at sixteen
and created a magazine, which means I wouldn't have ended up
running Student, which means Virgin
Records would never have been born, which means . .
.
There are different paths that you
can take in this life, and choosing the correct path is supremely
important. And as if that weren't pressure enough, it's no good
choosing not to choose, because that
approach to life absolutely guarantees failure.
I don't think there is enough
attention and help given to young people in life to set them in the
right direction. All young people deserve wise counsel. They need
someone who can show them a future. They need to be able to work
out what they can do with their lives, how they can enjoy their
lives, how they can pay for it and how they can take responsibility
for their actions.
I think it's a shame that we teach
children everything about the world,
but we don't teach them how to take part in the world, how to
realise an idea, how to measure the consequences of their actions,
how to take a knock, or how to share their success. What kind of
world have we built, that people can use the phrase 'it's just
business' without challenge or contradiction?
Entrepreneurship is business's
beating heart. Entrepreneurship isn't about capital; it's about
ideas. A great deal of entrepreneurship can be taught, and we
desperately need to teach it, as we confront the huge global
challenges of the twenty-first century.
Entrepreneurship is also about
excellence – not excellence measured in awards, or other people's
approval, but the sort one achieves for oneself, by exploring what
the world has to offer. I wrote to someone recently who, like me,
is dyslexic. I said that it is important to look for one's
strengths – to try to excel at what you're good at.
What you're bad
at actually doesn't interest people, and it certainly shouldn't
interest you. However accomplished you become in life, the
things you are bad at will always outnumber the things you're good
at. So don't let your limits knock your
self-confidence. Put them to one side and push yourself
towards your strengths.
This, I think, is sound advice for
the young. For those of you who've left youth behind, my advice
would be: reread the paragraph above, adding exclamation marks
after every sentence.
Because, in business, you always have
a choice, and you always have an obligation to choose. With the
right attitude, business will keep your mind eternally young,
because business is always changing, changes always bring
opportunities, and you can never hide from the changes that are
round the corner.
In entrepreneurial business, a
conservative mindset will hamstring you, defensiveness will weaken
you and a failure to face facts will kill you. Entrepreneurial
business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism
drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much
purely for the joy of doing so. It favours people with a humane and
engaged view of the world; people who can imagine themselves into
the skin of their customers, their workers and the people who are
affected by their operations. Business favours people who, when
they see a problem or an injustice, try to do something about it.
It favours pragmatists over perfectionists, adventurers over
fantasists.
Done well and in the right spirit,
business will also bring you success – whatever that
is.
Indeed, how do you measure who's
truly successful? My list of the world's most successful people
includes Sir Freddie Laker – hardly an obvious choice, to go by the
headlines, the rich lists and all the other paraphernalia of
business celebrity. So let's strip this particular business bare
once and for all: when we talk about success, what are we really
talking about?
Are we talking about money? As a
measure of success, money's a crude one at best. People are always
inquisitive about how wealthy other people are. It's a fascinating
subject and one that produces endless reams of copy and discussion.
But the reality is that wealth is like a running stream of water.
During some seasons the flow of money is a torrent and you're
inundated with cash. The next moment, you've put money in to
develop a business and your cash flow dries up overnight leaving a
barren riverbed.
So even the more well-researched rich
lists have to take a bit of a potshot when arriving at their
figures. There have been times I was almost bankrupt, and I was
very glad to see my name in the Sunday
Times Rich List, because I thought it would assuage the bank
manager. (The figures were often wildly off the mark both ways –
but I wasn't complaining.) In the last few years things have gone
well for the Virgin Group. In 2008, it had a reach of nearly £12
billion.
And me? I'm rich. There – I said it.
It's quite an American thing to talk about wealth. In Britain we're
still sort of slightly embarrassed about it, and I think that's a
good thing. When I go to a party I see people, not bank statements,
and I'd like to think that when people get chatting to me they feel
the same. To be perfectly honest I hated the word 'billionaire'
going into the title of that show I did for Fox. It was a great
title, but it wasn't my style at all. Money's only interesting for
what it lets you do. On paper, if I was to sell up my shareholdings
in the companies tomorrow, I would have considerable wealth. But
where would be the fun in that?
If money's a poor guide to success in
life, celebrity is worse. The media likes to personalise and
simplify matters – and that's understandable. It's much easier to
talk about Steve Jobs at Apple, Bill Gates at Microsoft or Richard
Branson at Virgin, but that doesn't really acknowledge that there's
a legion of senior people doing significant jobs and making major
decisions every day. Everyone wants to make business 'simple' and
that's one of my constant goals, but in reality there are certain
complexities about running a media company, a space-tourism
business or an airline. And the financial implications of running a
global business across many jurisdictions require a substantial
level of expert knowledge in accountancy, taxation and legal
affairs, not forgetting the IT, marketing and HR functions too.
I've never met a CEO who had all of those skills. Of course, the
figurehead at the top does make significant strategic decisions but
this is based on the work and capabilities of other people within
the business. We all still have the same number of hours in the
working week. In successful businesses, working hard is never
confined to one or two people – you'll usually find a strong work
ethic runs right through the company.
If neither money nor celebrity really
encapsulate what success is about, what about personal power? I've
been asked what happens if Richard Branson's own balloon bursts:
isn't the Virgin Group far too reliant on one individual? I have
jokingly replied that during our spell running Virgin Records, we
always found that when a major rock-music artist died the records
sales went through the roof.
I have spent over thirty-five years
building the Virgin brand, and if I do get run over tomorrow, I
think it will live on without me, just as Google will live on
without its founders, and Microsoft will live on without Bill
Gates. For me, the major job has been done. A lot of people worked
exceptionally hard in the early years to build the brand. With or
without me, Virgin will be around for many years to
come.
Is this power? In a sense, I suppose
it is. But the idea that I somehow 'control' the brand is a bit
sinister and silly. I gave birth to the brand. I've nurtured and I
continue to nurture it. I brought it into being, and I champion it.
Thinking about it is one of the things that gets me up in the
morning. But you can't really control ideas.
The other thing that gets me up in
the morning is the idea of making a difference. It's why I've never
wanted to run a big company, and it's why I get huge enjoyment out
of creating and tending to lots of smaller ones. (I have to be
careful of my terms here, because airlines are hardly small
companies! But I hope by now that you know what I'm getting at.)
Virgin, by remembering what it is to be a small entrepreneur, has
made large amounts of positive difference in many diverse business
areas.
I think that the more you're actively
and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel.
Actually, that might even be my definition of success. Right now, I
find myself doing more and more to help safeguard our future on
this planet. Does that make me successful? It certainly makes me
happy.
I hope you've found the thinking and
the stories in this book useful. I think you can see that my
definition of success in business has nothing to do with profits
solely for their own sake. This is very important. Success for me is whether you have created something that
you can be really proud of. Profits are necessary to invest
in the next project – and pay the bills, repay investors and reward
all the hard work – but that's all. Nobody should be remembered for
how much money they have made in life. Whether you die with a
billion dollars in your bank account or $20 under your pillow is
actually not that interesting. That's not what you've achieved in
life. What matters is whether you've created something special –
and whether you've made a real difference to other people's lives.
Entrepreneurs, scientists and artists who died as paupers are often
the heroes.
Successful people aren't in
possession of secrets known only to themselves. Don't obsess over
people who appear to you to be 'winners', but listen instead to the
wisdom of people who've led enriching lives – people, for instance,
who've found time for friends and family. Be generous in your
interpretation of what success looks like. The best and most
meaningful lives don't always end happily. My friend Madiba spent
twenty-seven years of his life in prison. If he had died there,
would his life hold no lessons for us?
In business, as in life, all that
matters is that you do something positive. Thanks for reading – and
enjoy your life. You only get one.