What’s in it for me?

Learn what the last 20

years have been all about for Sir Richard
Branson.

Sir Richard Branson hardly needs an introduction. His long career at the head of the
ever expanding Virgin business empire has made him a modern day business legend and
a go-to person for anyone wishing to learn what makes a truly great entrepreneur and
how to keep a business thriving in a constantly changing world.

In this follow up to his classic 1998 biography, Losing My Virginity, we pick up the
thread and get Branson’s own version of the events that have shaped Virgin, and
himself, since then; from Virgin Atlantic’s epic battle with British Airways, disrupting
the cellphone market with Virgin Mobile and Branson’s highly personal mission to take
people into space with Virgin Galactic.

In these blinks, you’ll learn:

​ that the best kind of marketing is fun and cheeky;

​ how we may someday thank a paper napkin for space travel; and
​ why none of Branson’s successes would have been possible without Mom.

Virgin Atlantic’s battle with British Airways

presents a classic example of Richard
Branson’s resourcefulness.
In 1999, Richard Branson wasn’t sure what lay ahead. The trendsetting, billionaire
entrepreneur had just wrapped up his latest hot air balloon adventure, attempting to
travel all the way around the world only to end up in need of rescue near the Hawaiian
Islands.

At this time, Branson’s Virgin Group was on the verge of being the global brand he’d
always dreamed of. And while there had been missteps along the way, such as the failed
attempts during the 1990s to get into the cola, vodka and cosmetics markets, he was
constantly learning and becoming more focused on what exactly made a perfect fit for
the Virgin Group.

One of the companies that Branson fought hardest for is Virgin Atlantic, the
international airline whose history shows how determined Branson can be to compete.

Virgin Atlantic was founded in the early 1980s, and as with most of Branson’s projects,
it was born in an attempt to offer people a better experience. In this case, an alternative
to British Airways (BA), which wielded an extremely powerful influence at London’s
Heathrow Airport but offered bad food, bad entertainment and bad service.

But BA would not go down without a fight. Ever since Virgin Atlantic started doing
business, BA has tried to squeeze it out of the competition, even using “dirty tricks” that
involved printing libelous remarks about the company.

Though the libel suit against BA was settled with Branson being awarded damages, he
prefers to win simply by being the best airline in the business, not by being in the
courtroom.

Branson is also always keen to improve and take a shot at his competition. At one point
Virgin Atlantic began offering in-flight massages. Branson advertised this by putting up
a sign at Heathrow that read, “BA Don’t Give a Shiatsu.”
And when BA was spending huge amounts sponsoring the London Eye in the 1990s, and
running into all kinds of technical problems that left the giant ferris wheel stranded on
its side, Branson jumped at the chance to hire a blimp displaying the message, “BA
CAN’T GET IT UP.”

Cheekiness and great service; that’s the Virgin way.

Virgin Mobile found success early on by

disrupting the cell phone market with a
pay-as-you-go plan.

Richard Branson was one of the first Britons to use a cellular phone back when they
were the size of your head. And though few then would have guessed they’d eventually
be the preferred method of communication, by the turn of the century it was clear they
were here to stay.

But how did Branson get involved in the mobile phone market? It all came down to one
expensive telephone bill.

Branson’s business partner Will Whitehorn showed up one day with a prize: British
Telecom had awarded him the honor of having the most expensive phone bill in Britain.

This got Branson thinking: in 1998, mobile phone carriers were making a killing with
expensive and lengthy contracts that customers had no choice but to accept. That year,
phone sales reached $162.9 million, which was more than double the year before.

This is the kind of scenario that Branson loves to work with as it presents an opportunity
for him to come up with a better service. So he founded Virgin Mobile, partnered with
Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, and reduced costs by using their
pre-existing network. Virgin Mobile then offered pay-as-you-go plans, letting customers
pay just for the time they used rather than get locked into expensive contracts.

At the time, Branson had 381 Virgin Megastores, which were perfect locations to sell
Virgin Mobile phones to the target audience, young people who wanted their own phone
but didn’t need big bills or confusing contracts.

The strategy worked. By November 2000, Virgin Mobile UK had 500,000 subscribers,
won a Network of the Year award and had already been estimated as having a value of
£1.36 billion. Soon, the service was reaching Australia, the United States and Asia, while
Virgin Mobile UK became the fastest growing mobile startup in UK history. As for Virgin
Mobile USA, it reached a billion in revenue in only three and a half years and continues
to grow.

Virgin Active set out to improve the

overpriced gym, but it faced a disastrous
start.

Richard Branson gets ideas pitched to him all the time. Many don’t fit the Virgin brand,
but sometimes they’re just perfect, like the time he was pitched the idea for Virgin
Active.

Gym membership is another service that people often complain about but essentially
accept: the equipment is old, the locker rooms are tiny, and the sign-up fees and
membership prices are ridiculous. In other words, it’s the perfect market for Virgin to
enter and improve, but it almost didn’t happen thanks to a disastrous beginning.
After two years of preparation, the flagship gym was nearly ready to open in August
1999 when it caught fire, causing a significant delay.

The location was Preston, Lancashire, especially sought out for its demographics.
Nowadays it’s common to use technology to pinpoint desirable locations for a business,
but in 1999 this was cutting-edge work by Frank Reed and Matthew Bucknall, the two
brains behind the Virgin Active concept.

They also designed a fantastic facility: a big spacious gym with great atmosphere;
showers that were better than anything people had at home; attention to the smallest
details, like towels being ready and available for people and the pool being the right
temperature.

But it all literally went up in smoke, and they had to pay staff while no money was being
made. Luckily, though, while the gym was being repaired the staff remained genuinely
enthusiastic and did a great job of promoting and keeping the business in the minds of
the community.

The main attraction was that it would be affordable. The local competing gym,
LivingWell, was charging £300 just to sign up! At Virgin Active, there were no
outrageous membership fees or long-term contracts. So when the doors finally did open,
the customers were still there and they now had a gym with which they could fall in love.

Virgin Trains has proven the benefits of

privatization for UK public transportation.

Just like British Airways, many services in England were traditionally run by the
government. For phones, you had British Telecom, and for trains you had British Rail.
This is on top of British Gas, British Steel and British Coal.
But Richard Branson was set to change this for rail, ever since he’d experienced the
famous bullet train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto in 1991. When the Department of
Transportation privatized British Rail and invited businesses to bid to run parts of the
system, Virgin Trains was ready.

It wasn’t easy. Introducing new and better trains meant upgrading and installing new
infrastructure that ended up costing four times as much as predicted. But eventually the
two parties reached a deal, and by the early 2000s, Virgin Trains was operating its new
West Coast Main Line service. Improvements were apparent right away.

On a test run of the new Pendolino train that Branson introduced to the United
Kingdom, the London to Manchester route was 15 minutes faster. And in the first week,
82 percent of trains were on time, with only four cancellations – and it just got better
from there.

Virgin Trains improved their part of the messy, poorly scheduled nationalized rail
service. And as a result, the number of passengers has nearly tripled, and the network is
booming.

Some people, such as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, see these bigger crowds as a reason
for Britain to return to nationalization. Corbyn even released a video in 2016 of himself
sitting on the floor in an overcrowded Virgin Train to prove his point.

But the video, Branson claimed, was misleading: there were 140 seats available on the
train, and Corbyn ended up sitting in one of them after his video shoot. But he also
simply missed the point. More people are using trains because of the improvements
made over the past 15 years.

Meanwhile, 65 brand new and improved Azuma trains are being introduced soon. And
as always, Virgin Trains will be making every effort to improve in every possible way.
Virgin Unite brought together an amazing
group to help make the world a better
place.

One of Richard Branson’s dearest friends was Nelson Mandela, a rare sort of person who
could walk into a room, transform its energy and bring a smile to everyone’s face.

After Mandela died in 2013, it was difficult for Branson to adjust to a life without this
tremendous force for good, but he’s forever grateful that he got to work alongside him as
part of Virgin Unite.

Virgin Unite is a charity that Branson developed with the intent of bringing together
different leaders in philanthropy. The basic idea is that those who want to make a
difference can make an even greater impact by joining forces. And at the heart of Virgin
Unite is a group of knowledgeable advisors and leaders Branson calls “the Elders,”
inspired by the concept of village elders.

Nelson Mandela was Branson’s first choice for an Elder, and his second was UN
Secretary Kofi Annan. Once on board, Branson let Mandela create a list of 12 other peers
he believed would be great assets to their cause.

Virgin Unite and the Elders had no specific goal other than making the world a better
place. Branson wanted a group of powerful independent minds who would be able to
respond to a crisis faster than the bureaucracy of the UN would allow.

Mandela’s list included former US president Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, as well
as Ireland’s former president, Mary Robinson, and Nobel Peace Prize winner
Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh. Everyone was united in their desire to improve the
state of human rights around the world, and it was inspiring to have these great minds
sharing ideas and traveling to places like Darfur, Somalia, Palestine, North Korea and
Russia.

These are just some of the places where human rights violations are ongoing, and Virgin
Unite needs the world’s brightest minds and most powerful humanitarians to work
together on a mission to find solutions to these crises.

Virgin America fought hard to become one

of the world’s best airlines, and its sale was
heartbreaking.

Sometimes you have to sell one concern to keep another going. This was the case in 1992
when Richard Branson sold Virgin Records to support Virgin Atlantic, and in 1999 when
he sold 49 percent of Virgin Atlantic to kickstart the Virgin Active gyms.

But one sale really hurt: the Virgin America airline, which began in 2004.

At the time, airlines around the world were still figuring out how to move forward after
the events of 9/11, and most experts thought a new airline wouldn’t stand a chance, even
if it were a recognizable brand like Virgin.

However, Branson noticed that most American airlines were offering services and
experiences that passengers endured rather than enjoyed. So he knew there was a
perfect opening for the Virgin brand to enter and offer something better.

It took three years before Branson collected enough petitions and convinced enough
people at the US Department of Transportation to approve Virgin America for take off,
and it wasn’t long before the new airline was winning over the public. Virgin America
was the first to offer WiFi in every plane and on-demand dining accompanied by great
entertainment choices.

And as a result, publishing giant Condé Nast named Virgin America the best domestic
airline for a remarkable ten years straight.

But Branson by law could not keep full control of Virgin America. Since Virgin America
was American and Branson was not, he was limited to no more than 25 percent of the
company’s voting shares. So when the airline was made public in 2014, it wasn’t long
before other airlines tried to buy it up.

Just 18 months later Alaska Airlines made an offer of $2.6 billion that the board at
Virgin America unanimously approved. The sale broke Branson’s heart since it turned
out that Alaska had no interest in keeping the Virgin spirit alive. In fact, they’re planning
on completely retiring the brand by 2019.

As some angry customers have rightly pointed out, now it’s just “another bullshit
airline.”

Virgin Media brought the brand into

people’s homes like never before.

What do you do when one of the worst businesses in town asks you to partner up?

This was the predicament Richard Branson faced when Simon Duffy, the CEO of NTL,
the international cable communications giant, approached him about joining Virgin
Media. NTL was commonly referred to by customers as “NT Hell” and ranked at the
bottom of every customer service survey.
Since the Virgin brand was built on great customer service, this wasn’t the kind of
partnership Branson would normally get involved with, but Duffy’s idea was too good to
pass up. It was a chance to get Virgin Media into people’s homes for cable service,
internet service and both cellular and landline phones. Duffy called it a “Quad Play”
package, but this being Virgin, Branson preferred the more irreverent name, “Four
Play.”

A quick look at NTL’s customer service revealed the problem right away: all the service
operators were using scripts. Branson tore the scripts up and got everyone on board
with the Virgin way: loosen up, be yourself and never try to help a customer by using a
script.

Branson was excited to be taking care of so many customer needs with one service, and
before long customers were pretty satisfied as well. Virgin Media became the number
one broadband provider and the second biggest pay-TV and home-phone provider in the
United Kingdom.

The only person who wasn’t happy was Rupert Murdoch, who owns Sky TV, the United
Kingdom’s largest pay-TV provider. Murdoch bought up a 17.9 percent stake worth
£940 million in popular British commercial station ITV just to block Virgin Media from
merging with it. Unfortunately for Murdoch, the Office of Fair Trading didn’t take too
kindly to this violation and forced Sky to sell over 10 percent at a £348 million loss.

Murdoch also owns media company News Corp, which has a subsidiary that was found
to be responsible for hacking the phones of Branson, his family and neighbors in 2011.
As a small consolation after the privacy violation was sorted out, Branson received a
letter of apology.
Virgin Money has been a great and natural
addition to the Virgin Group.

As time has passed, the Virgin brand has become clearer for customers and Branson
himself. Nowadays, most of what Virgin offers falls into one of four categories: travel
and leisure, telecom and media, music and entertainment, and health and wellness. But
there’s a fifth category that ties all these together: money. And that’s where Virgin
Money comes in.

If you had told the 19-year-old, spliff-smoking Branson, who had just started Virgin
Records as a mail order service in the back of a magazine, that one day he’d be a banker,
he might have asked you what you were smoking.

However, when the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 left the United Kingdom
badly shaken, it was clear that financial services were another area where customers
were being royally screwed over. Not only that, but one of the United Kingdom’s most
iconic banks, Northern Rock, was in desperate need of saving.

Branson took this as a cue to spend £1.25 billion to rescue Northern Rock and become a
banker. But the origins of Virgin Money actually go back much further to 1997, when
Branson was sold on a simple idea: no one trusts banks, but they trust Branson and the
Virgin brand.

So, for 20 years now Virgin Money has been offering credit cards, savings and
investment services. Now, with Northern Rock, the service has grown into full banking
services, including mortgages. But what Branson really delights in are the Virgin Money
Lounges.

These are lounges around Britain where Virgin Money members can relax for a moment
during a busy day, enjoy some free refreshments or a little peace and maybe meet up
with a friend. They’re community spots that offer a little breathing room in today’s
hectic, fast-paced world. Plus, the Virgin Money branches with a lounge do 300 percent
more business than those without. Clearly they’re working well!

Virgin Galactic is a project dear to Richard

Branson’s heart but was nearly undone by a
tragic accident.

Many dream of being an astronaut when they are young, but few people are as dedicated
to making that dream come true as Richard Branson.

For a long time, Branson thought this dream might remain a fanciful wish until he
accidentally ran into aerospace engineer Burt Rutan at a hangar in the Mojave desert
and heard his plan for SpaceShipOne.

In 2003, 12 years of searching later, Branson found a workable spaceship design drawn
by Rutan on the back of a paper napkin. His amazing design led to the formation of
Virgin Galactic, which became one of the main focuses of Branson’s life for the next 14
years.

Branson immediately showed the design to his friend Paul Allen at Microsoft, who
agreed to chip in $25 million to build the first spaceship, and its mothership,
WhiteKnightOne. The basic idea is that the mothership takes the spaceship up to a
certain height and releases it. The shuttle then launches up into space where it spends
some time before gliding back down to earth.

Things were going smoothly until the fourth powered test flight for SpaceShipTwo in
2014. After the mothership released it up in the skies, a lever was pulled too soon,
opening the ship’s tail to a glide position just as it was about to launch. As a result,
massive force broke the entire structure apart, killing one pilot, Mike Alsbury, and
injuring the other, Peter Siebold.

The press had a field day with the tragic incident, and it almost stalled the project
completely.

Completely inaccurate headlines like “Eyewitness Reports Explosion after Ignition”

were run by supposedly reputable agencies like the Associated Press. In truth, there was
no problem with the engine or any explosion at all. The engine and gas tanks were found
in one piece, and the investigation eventually revealed the true cause, though the media
were still eager to paint the project in a bad light.

As a result, difficult questions had to be asked. Could Virgin Galactic survive this
tragedy?

Branson hopes to take customers into

space very soon, and his desire isn’t ego
driven.

Unlike the SpaceX program being developed by entrepreneur Elon Musk, Branson’s
Virgin Galactic isn’t aimed at reaching Mars. Branson wants to take people to space so
they can see earth from a new perspective, which is an experience they’ll carry with
them for the rest of their lives.

You can already make a reservation to be one of the first astronauts, and Branson is
hopeful that commercial trips will soon take place.

There’s even a new SpaceShipTwo, which resumed testing in February 2016. It took
time to build it and to reassess the project in general after the accident, but things are
now back on track, and commercial flights will be underway in the near future. In fact,
on December 5, 2016, the fifth powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo went off perfectly.

But though Virgin Galactic is pressing on, the 2014 crash did cause Branson to question
his motives – something everyone should do from time to time. Some people were
saying that the pilot’s death should be blamed on Branson’s ego. But Branson saw this
for what it was – bad reporting – and he has only become more determined than ever to
reach his goal.

It took time to mourn the loss of Mike Alsbury, but there was never any doubt among
the engineers and team behind Virgin Galactic that the best way to honor the loss was to
learn from what happened and move forward. Space exploration is for the benefit of
humankind, not personal glory. For Branson, as well as his peer Elon Musk, picking up
where NASA left off on space travel is about reaching new frontiers and showing the
world the endless possibilities that lie ahead.

There is a quote from the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking, the only person to be
offered a free ticket, which sums up Virgin Galactic well. He said, “[Virgin Galactic] has
my utmost respect for enabling more of humanity to experience the true wonder of
space.”

Branson is also excited about Virgin

StartUp loans and creating a worldwide
broadband network.

While helping the public see the wonders of space is certainly a big project, Branson still
finds time to help out fellow entrepreneurs.
One of the projects he’s most passionate about is Virgin Startup, which was created to
help innovative people get the money they need to turn their ideas into reality.

Branson knows he was fortunate to have parents who supported him unconditionally
when he was starting out as a teenager with his Student magazine and then Virgin
Records. In fact, his mother once gave him £100 when he was flat broke. Without this
gift, he might never have built his global empire.

Branson wants others to have the same opportunities he had, so he has been lobbying
the British government to put aside some of the money it uses for student loans into a
Youth Investment Fund to help young entrepreneurs. This is how Virgin Startup began,
as a way to get business loans to young people who don’t yet have the kind of collateral
that regular banks require.

As of May 4, 2016, Virgin StartUp has provided over 1,000 loans in less than three years,
which adds up to around £10 million in funding and tens of thousands of hours in
mentoring.

But that’s not all Branson’s been up to. Another project he’s excited about is OneWeb.
This is the brainchild of Greg Wyler, a technological innovator who plans to launch an
interconnected system of satellites that would provide broadband internet connection to
the entire world, including the four billion people who currently have no connection.

This isn’t just a matter of getting more people on social media sites; it’s about providing
people with the means to help themselves out of poverty and access basic internet
coverage. And it’s an idea that fits perfectly with Virgin Galactic since the mothership,
WhiteKnightTwo, is equipped with LauncherOne, which can send a 500-pound satellite
into orbit much more easily than any current land-based launching system.
Currently, OneWeb is on target to become active in 2019, at which point we’ll have a
communications network that is ten times bigger than anything we’ve seen before.

Branson isn’t afraid of speaking up on

political matters, especially when the
consequences are dire.

Richard Branson is the first to admit that he sometimes has a hard time staying neutral,
especially when people are spreading falsehoods and misinformation about topics that
are close to his heart, like climate change, prison reform, HIV/AIDS prevention and
human rights.

It’s no secret that he can cause a stir. Branson has spent a lot of time in South Africa
trying to provide access to HIV/AIDS medication and slow the spread of this
preventable disease. So it angered Branson in 2014, when the South African health
minister publicly stated that a mixture of beetroot, potatoes, garlic and lemon was a fine
treatment.

Branson made a public statement, calling it a genocidal crime for the health minister
and South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue denying proper treatment and
real medication to the country’s citizens. These remarks opened a fruitful dialog
between Branson and Mbeki, though the president was forced to resign before he could
make the improvements they’d been planning, which included the opening of a publicly
funded Centre for Disease Control.

Other subjects on Branson’s mind are climate change and prison and drug reform.

It’s sad that the scientific facts of climate change have become politicized, but the Virgin
Group is still dedicated to replacing fossil fuels. And it’s also a shame that $100 billion is
spent each year enforcing drug laws, while the criminal drug industry remains a strong
$320 billion-a-year enterprise with no signs of being slowed down by the war on drugs.

Branson points to Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs as a model. The Portuguese now

treat drug addiction as a public health issue and, as a result, heroin addicts are rejoining
society rather than crowded prisons.

There’s still a lot of work to do, and Branson is full of passion for these causes. The sky is
no longer the limit for what can be accomplished.

Final summary

The key message in this book:

Since the fledgling days of Virgin Records in the 1970s, Branson has
continued to find ways of providing exceptional customer service and
experiences. Wherever there’s room for improvement, Branson is eager to
enter the market and get stuck in. But it’s not just airplanes and
entertainment, with charitable organizations like Virgin Unite, Branson is
dedicated to making the world a better place though prison and drug law
reform, reducing carbon emissions and fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Actionable advice:

Take notes.

Branson often reminds his colleagues that no one is above taking notes, and he is always
stupefied at CEOs and executives who refuse to take out the old pen and paper to jot
down ideas. In his research, he’s found that the executives who take notes are more
productive than the ones who don’t since they’re more apt to remember those fleeting
moments when a brilliant plan reveals itself.

Got feedback?

We’d sure love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to
remember@blinkist.com with the title of this book as the subject line and share your
thoughts!

Suggested further reading: Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Losing My Virginity is the autobiography of self-made businessman Richard Branson.

He details his lucrative adventures, beginning with dropping out of school, founding a
record label and crossing the Atlantic ocean on a speedboat. In essence, the book is
about how cleverness, determination and an adventurous mindset played a role in the
making of one of the richest men on earth.