A record-breaking record label, an airline, a cola, a mobile phone company, space travel for tourists who’ve been everywhere… Sir Richard Branson is the DaVinci of the business world. Not bad for a kid who started life with dyslexia and dropped out of school at 16 to start a magazine for teens.
Branson’s serial-entrepreneur career has had wild ups and downs. From signing groups like The Rolling Stones, Genesis and The Sex Pistols to make his Virgin record label one of the top six in the world, to having to sell his beloved company to EMI in 1992 due to financial problems (Branson reportedly wept after signing the contract), to a knighthood in 1999, it’s been a roller-coaster ride. But one suspects Branson wouldn’t have it any other way. His private life includes feats of derring-do such as the record-breaking Atlantic crossing in Virgin Atlantic Challenger II in 1986, and the first crossing by hot-air balloon of the Atlantic (1987) and Pacific (1991).
Branson’s Virgin Group now holds more than 200 companies in over 30 countries including the United Kingdom, the U.S., Australia, Canada, Asia, Europe and South Africa. He has expanded his businesses to include a train company, a luxury game preserve, and a mobile phone company He donates much of his profits now to causes he cares abut, like fighting AIDS, climate change and more. Branson’s latest brainchild is a space tourism company, Virgin Galactic. Fellow adventurers are invited to “book your place in space”.
Branson’s example for DaVincis is that your adventures and your ventures have no limits but your imagination. and that spectacular failures can be the springboard for even more spectacular successes. See a video about Virgin Galactic below.
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