Sunday, February 28, 2010

Virgin - Sir RIchard Branson - Live

I am at a YPO event in Barcelona, Spain. Lots of interesting seminars. Lots of stats. EG 40% of the world bandwidth is used by Youtube. I have not yet done anything on Youtube although I have done most other social medias like this blog, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and even a Tumblr. Sounds time intensive but I automated it. The updates for Twitter are the same ones I use for all the others. I even save those updates under Motivational Business Quotations and the same thing under Jim Estill's Quotes and Article Picks.

The keynote speaker yesterday was Richard Branson. More impressive stats - 250 companies. Has never let one fail because reputation is everything. He is the branding king. He understands consumer behavior and branding.

He comes across as humble, real and "normal". I even saw him jogging along the beach after the session.

He used his Dyslexia and ADD to his advantage.

The big take away I got from his session was I should delegate more. He spends 4-8 weeks immersing himself in a business then he hires a leader and lets that person run it.

I had just read his autobiography - Losing My Virginity (thanks to Russ Salo - GPS to go). The book elaborated more on his struggles to get Virgin Atlantic up and running in the face of unethical competitive practices by British Airways. And the cash crisis of his early business that lead to him selling Virgin Music. He is now worth $2.5B according to Forbes so he did manage to do fine anyways.

He did speak of the responsibility of wealth. He also spoke of the value of being a good listener.

3 Comments:

At 9:03 AM, Blogger Gerhard Peters said...

Jim,
I'm interested in hearing more about what you learned on the responsibility of wealth. It is a subject I've been reading on and what to learn more about it.

Have fun in Spain

Hasta Luego!

 
At 8:40 AM, Blogger Patti said...

Thanks for sharing ... Patti

 
At 11:53 AM, Anonymous Bugsy said...

Great read, thanks for posting. Did you get the chance to meet him?

 

Post a Comment

<< Home