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Screw It, Let’s Do It – Richard Branson

November 16th, 2010

Screw It, Let’s Do It is another easy reading book by Richard Branson.

This is the second book by Richard Branson I have read, the first one being Business Stripped Bare – Richard Branson.

So here goes my personal review of this book by the chapters:

Chapter 1. Just Do It!

This introduction chapter talks of how he was shaped to be an entrepreneur in the early days of his life, from running a magazine during his schooling days to the embarking of various challenges like breaking record with a boat and manning a stratospheric balloon.

Chapter 2. Have Fun!

He who works all day is miserable. He who plays all day doesn’t pay his bills. The bowman hits the mark, as the sailor reaches land, by having different skills and knowing when to work and when to relax.

From this chapter, you will get to learn that Richard is one that works hard and play hard as well. He tells the story of how he managed to secure his personal island, Necker Island in the Caribbeans for £180,000.

Chapter 3. Be Bold

Be bold but don’t gamble, is the idea of making calculated risks, in business and also adventures. This is where he briefly shared about how Virgin Airlines started, including venturing into the business of trains and also the most glamorous space venture, Virgin Galactic.

Chapter 4. Challenge Yourself

This chapter talks about how he can’t let go of any challenges, including on the bet on how he would be able to learn swimming on a road-trip. There was also another hot-air balloon adventure which gone awry, that doesn’t diminish his interests in keep flying in a balloon at all.

Chapter 5. Stand On Your Own Two Feet

This short chapter talks about Richard buying back the shares of Virgin making it a private company again.

Chapter 6. Live the Moment

Again, Richard make another attempt in a hot-air balloon race in 1997, this time trying to go around the world and how he cheated death again as the balloon crashed into the sea.

Chapter 7. Value Family and Friends

Among his business ventures, Richard was assisted by friends and family, including his best friend Nik. His parents were very supportive in his ventures and dreams. He also had an Auntie who mortgaged her house so that Richard could buy a manor house!

Chapter 8. Have Respect

Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.

Richard reveals how he paid for getting caught by Customs for tax evasion from selling cut-price records. Not doing anything illegal was his watchword since then.

Chapter 9. Gaia Capitalism

Gaia is the Greek version of “Mother Nature” or the Earth goddess. Al Gore met with Richard in the late summer of 2006 and he instantly got intrigued by the scenario of global warming. This led to some ideas and a $3 billion pledge to develop biofuels.
This might sound ironic that an airline company’s boss is trying to go green, but Richard’s excuse was that it doesn’t make sense to stop his planes from flying as people will always want to fly and somebody with no ‘green’ sense will just fill the gap.

Chapter 10. Sex Appeal

Straight from the mouth of Richard, that sex appeal is a useful tool in business as he made a naked appearance in Times Square, New York to promote the Virgin cellphone.

Then also came Kate Moss which Virgin Mobile in UK signed her up for their advertisements.

Richard also believe in using sex appeal for the Virgin image using Pamela Anderson for the image of Virgin Cola.

And this just made me remembered how Richard went windsurfing with a model on his back. 🙂

Chapter 11. Be Innovative

Richard also reveals here about his first sexual experience, although not into the details, but he was having some nocturnal frolics with his headmaster’s eighteen-year-old daughter! OMG.

Other than that, he was also being innovative in getting new routes for his airline as well as how he maneuver his ways over other airlines like Singapore Airlines and British Airways. It sure isn’t easy to run an airline and being innovative is certainly one of the pre-requisites.

Chapter 12. Do Some Good

This chapter talks about his intervention in politics, how Richard helped free British hostages (with the assistance of King Hussien of Jordan) held by Saddam and flew them out with his plane.

Chapter 13. Pow! Shazam!

Richard shares about his dream of flying civilians to space starting 2010 with Virgin Galactic’s spaceship. This is said to be the world’s first space-flight for civilian passengers program.
For a ticket that costs $200,000 and deposits starting from $20,000, any healthy person can reserve a space for this spaceflight.

Chapter 14. Think Young

Citing stories from Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Bill Gates, Richard talks about having a youthful approach to life and also about The Elders organization.

This book is good if you have not read any of Richard Branson’s books before. As I have read Business Stripped Bare – Richard Branson, some stories in this book was not new. Most of the chapters did not really went much into the secret of his success and how you can turn it into your individual goals. It is more or less his autobiography, and there are some room to be filled-in in the future it seems. 🙂

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Business Stripped Bare – Richard Branson

May 13th, 2010

More likely than not, you would have known who Richard Branson is, or Sir Richard Branson who was knighted in 1999 for his “services to entrepreneurship”.

Richard Branson, is the founder of the Virgin Brand, conceived the Virgin Group in 1970 and has since gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel, financial services, media, music and fitness.

Business Stripped Bare is a book by Richard Branson about his life in business especially most of his Virgin business ventures including some of his social responsibility activities.

Just like the way he put it, Business Stripped Bare is a business book told like a story, as other business books are kind of “dry”.

Before I go into my review of this, let me just list some of the things that I only got to know about from reading it:

  • Branson has mild dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student
  • Branson owns an island in British Virgin Islands, named Necker Island
  • Branson started the idea of a small group of global leaders without any vested personal interest to solve difficult global conflicts, with Peter Gabriel and Nelson Mandela : The Elders
  • Virgin Cola tried to wrest a share of the cola market from Coca-Cola

Here’s my personal opinion on all seven chapters from Business Stripped Bare:

Chapter 1 – People : Find Good People – Set Them Free
It started on how Richard Branson or the Virgin Group working culture is, value their employees or talents. Advice on not micromanaging and how teams in a company will split to start other ventures.

Chapter 2 – Brand : Flying the Flag
This chapter talks about the building of Virgin brand, where Nike, Microsoft, Coca-cola has a brand that is unique to product, Virgin is a brand with a variety of products. Richard Branson talks about Virgin Blue, the airline in Australia, Virgin Active and the beginnings of Virgin Records.

Chapter 3 – Delivery : Special Delivery
This is the longest chapter in the book where Richard Branson shares the inner workings of the business, tackling issues and customer’s feedback. There are also instances where how he brought Virgin rising against competitions and how he started Virgin Atlantic, leasing airplanes from Boeing with a name like ‘Virgin’.
There is a also some insights about starting the Virgin brand in Africa especially Nigeria.

An expert who makes things more complicated isn’t doing their job right – and frankly, this is probably your fault. An expert should make things simpler.

Chapter 4 – Learning from Mistakes and Setbacks : Damage Report
Like anything in life, we are bound to mistakes and setbacks, and in this chapter, Richard Branson not only talks about his early days of crime, evading tax from his first export of records and then about damage control when one of his trains from Virgin Train met with an accident. There was also an iPod like venture – the Virgin Pulse that failed and also the project in trying to grab a share from the cola market with Coca-Cola. The Virgin Cola venture in the end did not succeed although initially the brand had entered a number of countries worldwide.
The chapter ended with the story about the plan to pursue Northern Rock bank but failed when it was intercepted by the government.

Chapter 5 – Innovation : A Driver for Business
This chapter about innovation is where the story about its venture business into space comes along and how the calculations of sending people into space for $200k per trip would make Virgin Galactic a viable business.

Chapter 6 – Enterpreneurs and Leadership : Holding on and Letting Go

True leadership must include the ability to distinguish between real and apparent danger.

In this chapter, Richard Branson became humorous in sharing his personal experience in not recognizing a danger he faced although he had doubts about it. He talks about his style of leadership and his friendship with Nelson Mandela including the setting up of The Elders group.

Chapter 7 – Social Responsibility : Just Business
Social responsibility is where Richard Branson was particularly involved in trying to tackle the HIV/AIDS in Africa, running the campaign – no glove, no love.
Another social initiative mentioned in this chapter is about reducing impact of the climate change. Ironically, Virgin Atlantic is an airline company? Richard Branson wrote that all the profits made by the Virgin Group from carbon-creating business, such as airlines and trains be invested in developing cleaner technologies for the future.
How true it that? I’m not quite sure.

No one is asking you to save the planet. Just dream up and work on a couple of good ideas. No one expects you to find a global solution to everything. Just make a difference where you can.

Personally, this is a nice book to pickup if you like to learn more about Richard Branson and his adventures of being a global entrepreneur. Although I was slightly bored with the earlier chapters and some repeat stories, it is inspiring to read about the many business ventures where some failed and some succeeded. Virgin Group afterall, is a global brand.

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