Richard Branson’s golden touch: Here’s why he did it so well

Sir Richard Branson’s phenomenal success can only be described as meteoric. From his humble beginnings when he dropped out of high school, young Branson followed his passion. His love for music led him to music by post. He sold vinyl albums through written classified ads.

The success of this simple business model as an entrepreneur, he realized that owning his own production label was where the money was and Virgin Records was born. He produced many artists, including Mike Oldfield’s haunting classic hit Tubular Bells. Of course, beyond this, he went on to buy his own damn airline!

Branson as an entrepreneur is a fascinating case study. This article is more about his structure and business moves than the man himself. Branson has the uncanny ability to empathize with a target audience. If you were to ask Branson himself, I’m sure he’d have to admit that’s where he drives most of the business focus out of him. His ability to put himself in the shoes of an entire demographic and “see” what they most want is the secret weapon in this arsenal of giants.

My own observation is that Branson learned this skill very early. His first business success was direct marketing. (your record business) Direct marketing is a very scientific business model in which you create advertising and closely monitor the reaction of your audience, then adjust your advertising and refine it to ever higher levels of response.

This approach kept Bransons in good standing throughout his entire business career. He learned that valuable lesson in business empathy very early in his business career and has applied it to everything he’s done since. There is much that novice entrepreneurs can learn from studying Branson, but the big lesson to be learned from his career is business empathy and understanding the lowest common denominator needs of an entire market demographic.