Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2014. Its claims of more than 400 Branson companies and Virgin aiming to be first to sell space travel to the public are from 2014; Virgin Galactic only began commercial flights in 2023, and other companies flew paying passengers earlier.
Nobody achieves anything of value without help. To succeed in business you need to collaborate and delegate. If you go it alone, you won’t make it.
I suppose many of us have thought at some point that one day we might have a business idea, launch it on our own, change the world and make a fortune. The reality, according to Richard Branson, is that nobody succeeds without help.
Behind a Bill Gates there is a Paul Allen, who was part of the early days of Microsoft. Behind Steve Jobs there is a Steve Wozniak. Without him, Apple probably wouldn’t exist today. Richard Branson, after setting up more than 400 companies, knows very well that, whatever aspiring entrepreneurs may think, it is not true that a business owner is someone who, tired of bosses and colleagues, decides to go it alone.
That idea is wrong, because the personality of a single business owner is not enough to bring your idea to market and overcome all the challenges along the entrepreneurial road.
Professional contacts and partnerships become essential in the real world of business, where relationships built above all on trust are absolutely necessary to do business.
Nobody succeeds alone in business
The figure of Steve Jobs might seem to have broken the business mould by presenting a practically antisocial, apathetic, rebellious, talented loner as an entrepreneur, but that image is far from reality, since his vision could only be turned into a consumer product thanks to teams with far more talent than he had himself. In other words, he knew what he wanted, but he didn’t know how to do it.
Likewise, Steve Jobs, for all his antisocial personality, knew how to listen, and he himself said that his ideas came from listening to other people’s needs. According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs found his creativity in conversations, arguments and spontaneous meetings.
(See: What Bill Gates and Steve Jobs really thought of each other)
That is why Branson believes in communities of entrepreneurs: they can be genuine creative hubs, where you can combine the talent of one entrepreneur with the ideas of a second and the needs of a third, who in turn complements other areas where we fall short.
Surround yourself with good people
Part of the secret of business success lies in surrounding yourself with capable, competent people. You will need to surround yourself with professionals, both inside the business and outside it (customers and suppliers), and probably when looking for strategic partners.
That is why people often say that you don’t need to understand everything about your business. It is enough to know how to find the right people who do understand its key functions. As Branson himself has said, he has no idea about rockets or spaceships, but he has found the right staff so that his company can be the first to sell space travel to the general public.
Further reading
- The best advice 9 successful business people ever received
- Richard Branson: don’t hire a résumé, hire a personality
- Branson: 6 business lessons from sporting success
- Lynn Tilton’s advice for entrepreneurs
Featured image: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
