/Sir/ Richard Branson

In Entrepreneurship 12, we watched the interview of Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin. Here are a list of things that I have learnt.

He has over 360 companies, which include Virgin Mobile, Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Virgin Trains.


He learnt early on that if you can run one company you can run any company, as long as you can find the right people, and you're constantly drilling out the best in people. He loves to learn, and he sees life as one long learning process.

Branson believes that there is a thin line between success and failure.

The total revenue for Virgin is a bout $25 billion, and there are about 55 thousand employees.

He was dyslexic, had no understanding of school work. He would have failed IQ tests, and he left school when he was 15. If he's not interested in something he just doesn't grasp it. He doesn't know the difference of gross and net sales, even though he has multiple companies. He was the captain of the football, and cricket team. He believes that he was a bit of a rebel, and he was fortunately good at sports.

His mother felt that he should be able to 'stand on his own two feet' by the age of four. His headmaster told him that he was either going to be a millionaire or he was going to go to prison. He did both, and he believed that he went to prison. He was prosecuted for mentioning the word' venereal disease' in public, so he changed it to 'social disease' but then changed it back and got arrested. The police also arrested him for using the word 'bollocks' on The Sex Pistols album.

If you treat people well, people will come back for more. The best way to become a successful business leader is to treat people very well.

He believes that being a father is very important. So when his children went on holidays, he would go with them.

Issues he worries about that he would like to turn his resources towards: Global Warming, trying to find alternative fuels, and extracting carbon from the earth's atmosphere; 'The Wall Room', coordinates all the attacks and social problems that have happened in Africa, trying to look at the best practices.