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Is there anything Richard Branson doesn't do? A high school drop-out at 16, he's started companies, seen the world, and had more adventures than anyone could dream of in a lifetime. He's a creative personality and a brilliant businessman ... an energetic, charitable man who has built a brand recognizable around the world. And he's worth nearly 5 billion dollars. So how did Branson get to where he is today?
有什么事情是理查德·布兰森没有做过的？他16岁时从高中辍学，然后就开了公司，见过世面，他的冒险经历比任何人一生梦想中的都要多。拥有创造性人格的他是一名优秀的商人……这个富有活力、十分仁慈的人创立了全球知名品牌。他的身价接近50亿美元。那么，布兰森是如何获得如今成就的呢？
Early Life
早年生活
Let's start at the beginning ... 1950 in Surrey, England. Branson was born the eldest son of Edward and Eve Branson, a lawyer and flight attendant. Though she was a flight attendant, Eve Branson didn't sit idly by on her days off. She built wooden trash cans and tissue boxes, selling them for extra money for the family. Watching his mother's success built Branson's admiration for entrepreneurs, and gave him an option for when school just wasn't working out. She was always supportive of him, and was even known to tell people he would one day be Prime Minister of England. His mother was also an influence on Branson's active mind and lifestyle that have become so much a part of his international brand today ... she didn't let her children watch TV, instead pushing her son and two daughters outside to entertain themselves and "make themselves useful." Though clearly brilliant, Branson was not a successful student. He has dyslexia, and growing up school was difficult for him. But dyslexia did not stop him, and now, he credits it as a key part of the formula of his success. "If you have a learning disability, you become a very good delegator. Because you know what your weaknesses are and you know what your strengths are, and you make sure that you find great people to step in and deal with your weaknesses." He moved through several schools as a child, eventually just giving up on institutionalized learning at the age of 16.
我们从头开始说起……那是在1950年的英格兰萨里郡。律师爱德华和空姐伊娃·布兰森生下了他们的长子布兰森。虽然伊娃·布兰森是个空姐，但她在休班时也没有无所事事。她做了一些木质垃圾桶和纸巾盒，然后把它们卖出去，给家里挣点外快。母亲的成功让布兰森对企业家有了崇拜之情，这在上学的方式不适合他时给了他一个选项。她一直都很支持他，甚至还告诉别人，他未来将会成为英国首相。布兰森的母亲影响了他，让他具有活跃的思维和积极的生活方式，这也成为了他如今打造的国际品牌的一部分……她不让孩子们看电视，而是让儿子和两个女儿出去自娱自乐以及“让自己变得有用处”。虽然布兰森很优秀，但他并不是一个好学生。他有阅读障碍，对他而言，在学校成长是件很难的事。但阅读障碍并未阻止他的脚步，如今，他将其视为自己成功秘诀的重要部分。“如果你有学习障碍的话，那么你就会成为一个很棒的代表。因为你知道自己的优缺点，而且你保证能找到出色的人来介入并应对你的缺点。”他小时候转了几次学，终于在16岁时放弃传统教学。
But he did not give up on achieving. When he dropped out of school, he already knew that being an entrepreneur was the right life for him. He started out with an idea, and with an ultimate goal far beyond just earning money. "From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better." His first venture as a teenage businessman was publishing a magazine called "Student". At only sixteen years old, with no input or work from anyone but students, Branson was able to secure $8,000 in advertising for the magazine's first issue. This was 1966, and $8,000 was a lot of money. So much, in fact, that Branson didn't even have to sell the first issue. Instead, he gave away 50,000 copies, building the brand name and a potentially loyal customer base for future issues. It was the first demonstration of a brilliant business mind with an utterly impressive talent for marketing.
但他并未放弃实现价值。退学时，他已经知道自己要走的正确人生道路是做一名企业家。他首先有了一个想法，但最终目标不单单是挣钱那么简单。“从我当企业家的第一天起，我就觉得唯一值得追求的商业使命就是让人们过得更好。”作为青少年企业家，他的第一次冒险是出版名叫“学生”的杂志。年仅16岁的布兰森虽然只收到了来自学生的意见，也只有学生为他工作，但他竟筹到了8000美元给第一期杂志投放广告。这是1966年发生的事情，那时，8000美元已经是巨款了。实际上，布兰森甚至没有必要销售第一期杂志。他分发了50000本杂志，建立了品牌并找到了未来的潜在忠实顾客群体。他用自己的营销才能第一次展示出了卓越的商业头脑。
"Student" continued in its original form for three years, but in 1969 Branson felt the urge to make it bigger, to take it in a new direction. Advertisements for records were a large part of the magazine's revenue, so Branson took records and the magazine, put them together, and saw a gap in the market for record sales - mail order sales. His mail order business was christened with the name we all now recognize ... "Virgin." But it wasn't Branson who came up with that name, it was one of his first employees. Though they were successful, the name was perfect for the company as all of the young people involved were new to business. It stuck, and has now come to represent much more than mail order music. Though the mail order business was popular, it wasn't making enough money to stay afloat, and Branson needed cash. He decided the best way to do that was to avoid giving the government their entire share of the taxes he actually owed. He came up with a scheme through which he avoided reporting all the records that were sold in the UK, falsifying the numbers of those that were exported. It sounded good, and it brought in cash, but it was discovered. Branson ended up in jail, and ended up having to pay over $60,000 in fines. This obstacle and a short time in jail didn't slow him, or his business ambitions down, though.
《学生》以最初的形式发行了3年，然而，1969年，布兰森很想把它做大，朝着新的方向发展。唱片广告占了杂志收入的一大部分，因此，布兰森把唱片和杂志放在一起，并发现了唱片销售在市场上的缺口——邮购销售。他的邮购生意正是我们现在都知道的“维珍”。但这个名字不是布兰森起的，而是他的首批员工之一起的。虽然他们很成功，但这个名字对于这个公司来说非常完美，因为所有参与其中的年轻人都是商界新手。这个名字保留了下来，但它现在所代表的行业不仅仅是邮购唱片。虽然邮购生意很火，但这并不足以维持经营，而且布兰森需要现金。他觉得做这件事最好的方式就是不要把应缴税款全部交给政府。他想出一个计划，这个计划不会将所有在英国销售出去的唱片都上报，并伪造出口的数量。这个计划听起来不错，而且能赚来现金，但它被发现了。布兰森进了监狱，还必须交6万美元罚金。但这一障碍以及在监狱里度过的短暂时间并未放缓他的脚步，也没有击退他的商业野心。
Even with the tax fraud scandal, it was only less than two years after starting the mail order record business that Branson was able to take yet another leap. In 1971, he opened an actual brick and mortar store to sell records. Then, it was only another year before he bought himself a home, and was able to build a recording studio inside of it. Now that he had a studio, the next logical step was to start a record label. So he looked around, and ended up signing an artist he thought would be okay, but likely not to have overwhelming success as no one else would take him on. The name of the newly created label that this newcomer artist signed on to? Virgin Records, of course. The label had success almost immediately, with its first artist, Mike Oldfield, staying on the charts with the album "Tubular Bells" for nearly five years. To put this in perspective ... the record was on the charts for as long as it took Branson to go from selling records by mail to having his own record label. The success of Oldfield and Branson under the upstart Virgin label didn't go unnoticed - far from it. Huge names like the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones, Culture Club, Janet Jackson and Genesis were later signed to the label.
即便身陷税务欺诈丑闻，但在开始邮购唱片生意之后不到两年的时间里，布兰森就在另一个行业迈出了一大步。1971年，他开了一家销售唱片的实体店。在那之后的一年，他买了一套房，在里面成立了一间录音室。有了录音室，下一步就是顺理成章地创立唱片公司。经过寻找，他签了一个自认为还不错的艺术家，但他可能不会获得极大成功，因为没有人雇用他。这位新晋艺术家签约的公司名叫什么呢？当然是维珍唱片。这家唱片公司几乎迅速获得成功，它签约的第一个艺术家名叫麦克·欧菲尔德，在将近5年的时间内，他的唱片《管钟》一直在每周流行榜单上。客观来说……从布兰森邮寄销售唱片到拥有自己的唱片公司，这张唱片就一直在榜单上。在维珍唱片公司崛起后，欧菲尔德和布兰森的成功并未被忽视——完全相反。家喻户晓的性手枪乐队、滚石乐队、文化俱乐部、珍妮·杰克逊以及创世纪乐队后来都与这家公司签约了。
Later Career
职业生涯后期
Throughout the 1970s, while Branson was in his 20s, he focused on his ever-growing music business. But by 1984, he was again itching to try something new. So he took what seems like a large jump across industries ... he invested in a new airline business. Before launching the full-fledged airline service, Branson had realized the potential for doing so when his own flight to the British Virgin Islands was cancelled. Being wealthy, he didn't have to wait around an airport for the next flight at the whim of the airlines ... he could charter his own plane. So he did, but he didn't keep the large plane to himself. Instead, he charged the others who were supposed to be on his original flight to the British Virgin Islands a small fee, and they all flew together on the chartered plane down to the island.
整个70年代，也就是布兰森20多岁的时候，他一直聚焦于不断发展的音乐业务。但在1984年，他还是想尝试一下新事物。因此，他跨界了，而且两个行业有很大的不同……他投资了新的航空业务。在成熟的航空服务形成之前，布兰森是在自己去英属维尔京群岛的航班被取消时意识到这项业务的可能性。富有的他并不需要因为航空公司的一时兴起而在机场等待下个航班……他可以包机。他正是这么干的，但还有人与他同行。他向那些与他同乘一架飞机前往英属维尔京群岛的旅客收了很小一笔费用，他们包机去了这个岛屿。
His creative mind and business intuition saw an opportunity, and Branson was ready to seize it. Soon after his initial experimental charter flight to the British Virgin Island, he called up Boeing and asked what they had for sale. A 747 was available, and Branson bought it to start up his fleet of airplanes. As he had with the mail order record business, Branson saw a need and a way he could run a business better than others were currently doing. So he did. "We just made it that much more special than all the other airlines we were competing with," he says of what he achieved with Virgin Atlantic Airways. Long before it was the norm, Virgin was offering such luxuries as individual tv screens to help people pass the time on flights.
布兰森的创造性思维和商业直觉帮助他发现了机遇，而且他也准备好抓住这个机遇了。他第一次前往英属维尔京群岛的试验性包机过后不久，他就给波音打电话询问他们销售什么产品。有一架747可供购买，之后布兰森就购买了它，创立了他的机队。和邮购唱片生意一起，布兰森发现了一种经营企业的需求和方式，这比其他人当下做的都要好。他付诸了实践。“我们刚刚做了一个项目，这比与我们竞争的其他航空公司都要特别，”他这样评价维珍航空达到的成就。早在这成为常态之前，维珍航空就提供个人电视屏幕等奢侈品，帮助人们在飞机上打发时间。
Initially, Virgin operated only out of London's Gatwick airport. But by 1991 it had grown to the point where it was given permission to fly out of Heathrow. British Airways was not pleased by this new threat to their previously largely unchallenged primacy, and they didn't want to sit idly by while Virgin kept gobbling up market share. In 1993, Virgin accused British Airways of a series of so-called "dirty tricks" that ranged from computer hacking to libel. Following the accusations, British Airways settled, and forked over nearly $4 million in legal fees and compensation. What did Branson do with the money he received in the settlement? He didn't just put it in his account - instead he shared it with Virgin's employees. Though the settlement was a win for the company, it didn't mean Virgin and Branson were completely successful and had nothing to worry about. On the contrary, Branson was forced to sell his music business to keep his entire empire going.
维珍航空最初只在伦敦盖特威克机场有航班。但在1991年，希思罗机场允许该公司运营航班。英国航空公司自然不喜欢这一新的威胁，此前该公司的优越性基本上从未被挑战过，而且他们不想对维珍抢占市场份额的行为坐视不管。1993年，维珍指控英国航空，称其有一系列所谓的“卑鄙手段”，包括黑客入侵和诽谤。受到指控后，英国航空的律师费和补偿共花了将近400万美元。布兰森收到这笔款项后是如何利用的呢？他没有放进自己的账户——而是把这笔钱与维珍员工共享。虽然和解对公司来说是一次胜利，但这并不意味着维珍和布兰森是完全成功的，也不意味着没什么可担心的。相反，布兰森不得不卖掉他的音乐业务，让他的整个商业帝国继续运作下去。
EMI bought Virgin Records in 1992, and though it was a good business decision, it was a tough personal decision for Branson. The music business was Branson's baby, his first venture, and the reason everything else he had built was possible. Over the years, he's been very open about just how difficult that sale was for him: "I mean, you build something from scratch, we had just signed Janet Jackson, we had just signed the Rolling Stones when we sold it, and I remember running down Ladbroke Grove, tears streaming down my face with the check for a billion dollars." Since the sale, Virgin Airlines has continued to grow, Branson added a cell phone sector to his business, and then, a space travel venture called Virgin Galactic. 500 people have bought tickets an as-of-yet unscheduled flight into space with Virgin Galactic. Overall, he owns 200 companies linked to the Virgin brand, but business isn't his only interest, nor his only talent.
1992年，百代唱片收购了维珍唱片公司，虽然这是个不错的生意决策，但对于布兰森来说，这是个艰难的个人决定。音乐生意是布兰森的孩子，是他第一次创业，也是他日后能够创立其他业务的起点。多年来，销售对他来说都十分艰难，他对此抱有非常开放的态度：“我是说，你从零开始，我们刚签下珍妮·杰克逊和滚石乐队时就出售了公司，我记得我沿着拉德布罗克丛林路跑下来，眼泪划过脸庞，我还带着10亿美元的支票。”公司出售后，维珍航空继续发展，布兰森创立了手机部门，然后创立了名叫维珍银河的太空旅行企业。500人已经购买维珍银河迄今为止仍未定期的太空航行机票。他拥有200家与维珍品牌有关的公司，但做生意并不是他唯一的兴趣，也不是他唯一的才能。
