Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2014, so its statement that Virgin Atlantic was founded “thirty years ago” and its count of more than 400 companies in the Virgin Group are as of that year.
As you may have noticed, even though many other great entrepreneurs may be more popular when people talk about the business world, personally, I like Richard Branson.
Branson has a philosophy that is probably unique, both in business and in life. His business “song” goes in a very different direction. I think this phrase from him sums up his business philosophy perfectly:
“A business is simply an idea to make other people’s lives better.”
I know many entrepreneurs sell this “song”, but Richard Branson is the only one who really feels it when he sings it, because every company Branson has created to this day is a way of, literally, improving people’s lives.
While other entrepreneurs have built their message around innovation and the importance of being visionaries, Branson has instead set his sights on highly competitive markets. What’s more, he has entered saturated and even burnt-out markets, but he has looked for the flaws in how the companies there treat their customers.
His favourite sectors for doing business are those where he has noticed that customers are unhappy. That has always been his way in, and it is what has led him to create more than 400 companies within the Virgin Group.
(Read: The fascinating life and career of Richard Branson)
How does a company come about for Richard Branson?
Branson doesn’t need to know a sector to enter it. All he needs is to see a company providing poor service and users who are unhappy. Once those factors are in place, Branson applies his philosophy, hires professionals from the sector and creates his own company, improving on what exists and building a profitable business at the same time.
He has done it with gyms, he has done it with telecommunications, and he did it 30 years ago with his own airline, even though he knew nothing about the industry.
How do you create an airline from nothing?
I don’t think Branson ever planned to get into the airline business, but one day he decided to found Virgin Atlantic as casually as someone saying they are going to buy a shirt.
Branson says he had the idea after getting stuck at an airport in Puerto Rico 30 years ago. He saw first-hand how the airline decided to cancel a flight simply because it didn’t have enough passengers to fill the plane.
The company thought only of its own profit, never of the people who needed to reach their destination. And that made him angry, because, he says, a beautiful young woman was waiting for him in the Virgin Islands.
Branson chartered a private plane and invited the annoyed passengers to come with him for just $39 each, and, as a joke, he wrote “Virgin Airlines” on a blackboard.
After that incident, Branson decided he had had enough of airlines that didn’t care about their passengers, and he phoned Boeing to see if they had any planes for sale.
He reached a deal for a Boeing 747. And so Virgin Atlantic was born, one of the airlines with the fewest complaints from consumers.
Richard Branson was the first airline owner to install individual TVs (one for each passenger) with a wide range of channels.
While other airlines are making the space on their planes tighter to fit in more passengers, Branson invested heavily in making air travel more comfortable, with more room for economy-class passengers.
See also: Starting a business vs a stable job: Richard Branson’s thoughts on entrepreneurship
But there is only one way to get to know your customers
Branson is one of the most approachable billionaires in the world. He is almost always surrounded by people who don’t belong to his world. He doesn’t mind meeting a group of students if they ask him to. He enjoys sharing his experience and helping other people, especially when those people have an entrepreneurial streak.
You can only know how people think if you surround yourself with the people who are potential consumers of the products you might one day bring to market. Many business owners don’t give their customers good service because they don’t spend time with their customers.
Richard Branson’s philosophy
Branson doesn’t separate his business philosophy from his philosophy of life. He is here to have fun. Life is for enjoying, and that includes having fun while you are creating companies.
He always has a smile on his face, and he doesn’t mind carrying a naked model on his back or dressing up as a woman to promote one of his companies. He has always stood out as an approachable business leader, with whom his employees can put forward all kinds of ideas.
He listens to them, because he has always started from the premise that his Virgin Group holds the position it holds today not because of him, but because of the people who have worked with him. Branson merely hired them.
Further reading
Featured image: aeroprints.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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