Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs. He has built up a net worth of more than $2.5 Billion through his Virgin group of companies.

I’ve read his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, several times and am always amazed at just how close to death he has come with the many stunts he has been involved in. He has attempted to break (some successfully) several World records on the way including crossing the Atlantic ocean twice in a boat and also in a hot air balloon.

The Virgin Brand

All of these publicity “stunts” have done wonders for his business. The Virgin brand is recognized all over the World and includes Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Rail, Virgin Money and Virgin Media to name but a few.

One of his most adventurous recent businesses is Virgin Galactic. This is his dream of taking paying passengers into space in a specially built aircraft. He has licensed the technology that powers spaceships and involved Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, and legendary engineer Burt Rutan. Tickets are said to going to cost $200,000 and they have already sold quite a few.

How He Started

Sir Richard started his business life at the age of 16. He created and published a student magazine, named “Student” and it became very successful. Then four years later (at age 20) he started a mail order record business and just 2 years later opened up the first Virgin Records store. He rolled them out across the UK and was very astute in finding high street premises at very low cost.

A few publicity “stunts” later and he turned his skills to the airline industry, creating his Virgin Airlines business. After a well publicised battle with British Airways, his company is now one of the major airlines in the World and includes the Virgin Blue airline in Australia.

More recently he sponsored the Brawn GP formula one team after Honda pulled out. In its first year they have just clinched the World championship and Constructer’s championship after Jensen Button became World champion on Sunday 18th October.

He Gives Back

One of the things I like about Sir Richard is his generosity. He does a lot of humanitarian work and gives generously to charity including his own Virgin Unite charity project. He helps a lot of people in South Africa and even has a school of entrepreneurship over there.

His Home

Sir Richard lives on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. He bought the island when he just 28 years old for £180,000. He has many famous guests on the island and rents out part of it for a reported $47,000 per DAY. You can see the island on this video:

So that is Sir Richard Branson. He is a fantastic businessman and owes a lot of his success to his publicity. He manages to get his Virgin name in the newspapers and on TV all the time, ever since he first started. He is never afraid of a challenge and always goes beyond what people might consider normal. That is surely one of his keys to success.

Thanks for reading!

Tony

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