A Biography of a Great Entrepreneur - Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson was born on July 18th 1950 in Surrey, England. He was educated at Scaitcliffe School until the age of 13 and then attended Stowe School until the age of 15.

By the age of 15 he had already started his entrepreneurial life by starting a small venture growing Christmas trees. This quickly failed when rabbits came in through the fence and ate them all. He then decided to breed budgerigars instead but this also failed when his mother finally got fed up with looking after them so let them all escape.

Undeterred by these two failures Branson quit school at 16. He had also failed academically, partly due to being dyslexic and partly because he knew from an early age that academia just wasn't for him.

At this point he moved to London and began the first of his many successful business ventures. He started a magazine called Student which he funded primarily by advertising. He and his friends who ran the magazine interviewed many famous people for it and it soon started to make a name for itself.

At the age of 17 after having a few personal problems and struggling to find help he started a charity for students called Student Valley Centre. At this point he realised that he was becoming an entrepreneur almost by default and was constantly juggling finances to keep himself and his friends afloat.

He started to take things to another level in 1970 when he opened a mail order records business, selling discounted records, mostly to students. Trying to decide on a name for their business, one of his friends suggested Virgin, because it was catchy and they were all virgins at business. "Virgin it is" he said, and so it was from that point on.

Mail order businesses are heavily reliant on the postal system and after a long postal strike threatened to be the end of his business he decided he needed to open a shop and quickly. Within a week he had managed it. It was a bit shabby, just a small place above a shoe shop but it saved his business from collapse.

Not long after this Branson bought a mansion in the country mostly with borrowed money and kitted it out with the latest recording equipment. This was the beginning of the famous Virgin Records record label.

He leased out the mansion to various artists and eventually found great success after signing a previously unknown artist called Mike Oldfield. The now famous Tubular Bells (the theme tune to the film The Exorcist) was a best seller. Virgin Records continued to sign mostly controversial artists including Culture Club, who were also a great success.

Branson nearly went to prison in 1971 when he was arrested for selling records in his Virgin stores for which no export tax had been paid. After settling out of court he swore to himself that he would never break the law again. With a criminal record he would never have been allowed to start the airline Virgin Atlantic Airways which to everyones amazement he actually did in 1984.

This is just a summary of the first thirty or so years of Branson's life but he was already a great success. By this point he had overcome many adversities but this was just the beginning. He went on to build a whole empire under the Virgin name and is now estimated to be worth over 4 billion pounds (approx 7.2 billion US dollars).

Best Regards,

Jason King BSc MBCS CITP
www.entrepreneur-mindset.com

Jason King designs websites, runs a number of online businesses and is also in the property letting business. His interests include researching the entrepreneurial mindset, his goal being to learn all there is to know about how to be a successful entrepreneur. He is the author of the book 'The Secrets of a Successful Entrepreneur', the result of his extensive research. For more information visit: http://www.entrepreneur-mindset.com

Source: www.articlecity.com