Fifty years ago, Sir Richard Branson started his first business. In his new autobiography, Finding My Virginity, the Virgin Founder shares his personal, intimate thoughts on five decades as the world’s ultimate entrepreneur.
Following on from where bestselling Losing My Virginity left off at the dawn of the new millennium, Finding My Virginity reveals how Branson created 12 different billion-dollar businesses and hundreds more companies across dozens of sectors, whilst breaking world records on land, sea and air. It takes us behind the scenes as Sir Richard Branson creates the world’s first commercial spaceline, Virgin Galactic, and handles the biggest crisis he has ever faced.
Join Sir Richard as he juggles working life with raising his children Holly and Sam, building a marriage with his wife Joan and creating a unique company culture. Discover how he created a new life on Necker Island, while continuing to grow the Virgin brand into all corners of the world. Get the real story behind adventures and challenges with everyone from Bill Gates and Kate Moss and Nelson Mandela to Barack Obama.
This is the true account of how the Virgin Founder reinvented himself and his brand for the 21st century, while continuing to push boundaries, break rules and reach for the stars in more ways than one. This is the story of the man behind the beard, the business, the bravado and the brand. Find out how the ultimate entrepreneur did it for the first time – all over again.
Sir Richard Branson is a global entrepreneur, adventurer and founder of the Virgin Group, one of the world’s most recognised and respected brands. He is the international bestselling author of seven books, including the classic autobiography Losing My Virginity. He lives on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, is married to Joan, father to Holly and Sam and proud grand-dude to four grandchildren.
Dedicated to my parents Ted and Eve, who made me who I am. To my sisters Lindi and Vanessa, who have always been there for me. To my wife Joan, who makes every day an adventure. To my children Holly and Sam, who dream of an even brighter future. And to my grandchildren, Etta, Artie, Eva-Deia and Bluey, who make me want to turn our dreams into reality.
A special thank you to Greg Rose for helping me pull this project together. Greg has spent years getting to know my life, my mind (and my tennis serve!) and searched through countless unburnt notebooks and memories for us to bring this book to life.
YOU CAN ONLY lose your virginity once. But in every aspect of my life – building businesses, raising my family, embarking upon adventures – I try to do things for the first time every day.
When I first published Losing My Virginity, in 1998, I wasn’t at all prepared for the reaction. I expected the business community, some newspaper reviewers and a few autobiography readers to pick it up, but before I knew it the book had taken off. Losing My Virginity is still the most common object handed to me (except a mobile for a selfie), usually by a person with a pen and a smile. I have written short updates to my autobiography over the years, but so much has happened in the past two decades that I realised I needed to write a sequel.
I was pondering the right time to do this when I came across my old notes for Student magazine’s launch in the archive. I rubbed the dust away to double-check the date – the notes really were from 1967. What better way to mark fifty years since I started out in business than by sharing everything that has happened and all I have learned over the decades? This book highlights incidents from my early days, but it concentrates on the past twenty years, the time I have been finding my virginity all over again.
Finding My Virginity kicks on from where Losing My Virginity left off, at the dawn of the new millennium. By 1999 people thought we had done everything and there was nowhere else left for us to expand, no new challenges for me to embark upon. But being involved in running a company like Virgin is never a question of sitting back, it’s about constant reinvention as the world changes, and as do I. This is the story of the last two decades, told through one of the most dynamic brands in the world. My home has moved from a houseboat to a paradise island, while my company has grown from a UK business to a global brand. My dream of flying private citizens to space has gone from a childhood fantasy to the brink of reality, and my focus has shifted from battling bigger rivals to changing business for good. In this time I’ve experienced joy, heartbreak, hurricanes, business (and other) highs, grief, records, doubt and my toughest ever crisis. It’s been a rollercoaster ride and I have no intention of getting off any time soon.
Fifteen years after Losing My Virginity’s publication, Zach Galifinakis asked me: ‘Is your book a play on the name of your company, or the first time you had sex?’ ‘Both,’ I answered. This time around, I considered giving my book an even more risqué title. That it was factually accurate only made it more tempting. My alternative name for the book you are reading? Losing My Virginity: The Second Entry. I also considered Virginity Lost, a nod to the title of John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, but it felt too negative. I view life as one big adventure; I’m always learning, and finding new things to try and challenges to overcome. I’m still finding my virginity every day. But now that I am a grand-dude to four wonderful grandchildren – Etta, Artie, Eva-Deia and Bluey – I look at my life in a new way.
Whether you are running a company or simply living your life, hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and put a smile on your face along the way. A reviewer described Losing My Virginity as the first autobiography in which the author had written an exposé of himself. I hope Finding My Virginity will be similar. If your life is one long success story it won’t make for a good read. What’s more, you’re most likely a liar. We all have ups and downs, trials and tribulations, failures and triumphs: we just hope to come out stronger on the other side.
The late Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur I most admire, said: ‘My favourite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.’ That thought has been on my mind as I write this book, thinking back to all the good times and tough times behind me, and looking forward with wonder at what lies ahead. I’ve always lived every day as if it’s my last, fiercely loving my family and friends and trying to make a positive difference. We only get one life, and this is mine.
I hope you enjoy finding out how I did it for the first time – all over again.
NECKER ISLAND, NEW Year’s Eve, 1998. I was in my bedroom, trying to make an urgent to-do list. As I stared at the blank piece of paper in front of me, across a sandy path a song Prince released in 1982 was booming around the Great House on repeat. It was a song that let everyone know 1998 was nearly over and the ball was about to drop on the last year of the millennium: 1999.
The New Year’s festivities were in full swing. My daughter Holly was leading the celebrations with our family and friends. I could hear the clink of glasses as my wife Joan toasted with friends while our fourteen-year-old son Sam ran around getting under her feet. They were the familiar sounds of family life and ones that I was grateful to hear after my adventures of the previous weeks.
Five days earlier, on Boxing Day, I had arrived on the island fresh from my last ballooning adventure. I was lucky to be alive. On 18 December, Steve Fossett and I had set off from Marrakech in the hope of completing a record-breaking round-the-world trip. What had followed was a mixture of high-stakes adventure and diplomacy – pulling in favours as our balloon had veered over Libyan airspace, then having our approval to fly over China rescinded before being reinstated as we made our way over Nepal. Finally, having got close to crossing the Pacific, the winds blew us back, forcing us to land in the ocean near Hawaii. I’d made it there for Christmas, then flew on to Necker Island the following day.
Back in the security of home, with the end of the year approaching and the end of the millennium looming, I found myself both reflecting back and looking forwards. As so often during my life as an entrepreneur, I really had no idea what was coming next. I had created and sold the biggest independent record label on the planet, and fought doggedly to build Virgin Atlantic into the best airline in the world. The Virgin Group had grown from a couple of companies to more than a hundred and I had gone from a struggling hippy to a proud father and businessman. My mind was starting to wander to other projects, fresh ambitions and bigger dreams. Within the space of twelve months we would launch nine different companies and begin turning Virgin into the all-encompassing global brand it is today. It was time for a new start, and to look to the stars.
How do you go about becoming a millionaire? I’m often asked this question and ever since I founded Virgin Atlantic in 1984 my answer has been the same: ‘Start as a billionaire and launch a new airline.’
The first fifteen years of Virgin Atlantic had been a topsy-turvy tale of excitement, innovation and survival. We had taken the might of British Airways head on and, unlike the airlines that came before us, lived to tell the tale. In fact, we won one of the largest libel cases in British history after BA’s Dirty Tricks campaign tried to put us out of business. It was a campaign that most people within the industry knew by another name altogether: Operation Barbara. Why was it called that? Because Barbara Cartland had written a lot of novels about virgins getting screwed.
As we emerged from this most challenging of periods, I had clear skies for the first time in a while, exploring new horizons for the Virgin brand. Many experts will tell you it tends to take a year to get a business off the ground, from the initial idea through planning, market research, development and launch. Personally, I’ve always disregarded this rule. As far as I’m concerned, anyone following it should pull their finger out.
When I was a wide-eyed teenager our mail-order record company was set up in a couple of days, and even more complex businesses like Virgin Atlantic went from idea to lift-off in a matter of weeks. Generally, we like to work fast: try ideas, see if they stick, and, if they don’t, quickly move on to the next one.
I work best when my mind is able to jump from one topic to the next in quick succession. It keeps things lively, and it’s amazing how often good ideas for one company come out of another completely unrelated business. As I took a step back from the day-to-day running of Virgin Atlantic, I was able to concentrate on what was next for Virgin. As it turns out, there was more than even I had ever imagined.
The turn of the century was to prove unprecedentedly productive, even by our standards. After my first wave as a records impresario and second as an airline founder, the third wave of my career as a global entrepreneur was about to begin in earnest. Some of the companies, namely Virgin Blue (now Australia), virginmoney.com, Virgin Wines and Virgin Mobile Australia have gone on to become big success stories. We had already launched the likes of Virgin Clothing, Virgin Brides, Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka and Virgin Vie cosmetics by this point, all of which would disappear in the next few years. But failures didn’t put me off at all. They had all been fun to get stuck into, and we’d learned a lot of important lessons.
Some businesses quickly turned into far less successful operations. Virgin Cars, our automobile company, was effective for a few years but overnight became unworkable. Our business model of purchasing cars, mostly from the Netherlands and Belgium, and importing them to sell into the UK was destroyed by a combination of restrictive practices by the big carmakers and changing currency values. V.Shop, small record stores we launched after rebranding Our Price, never got off the ground, while there were similar stories for Virgin Student, Virgin Energy and Virgin Travelstore. The dot.com bubble was still going strong, but we hadn’t quite got the hang of it. Because our core businesses remained solid, the brand wasn’t derailed by these smaller failures. I was also able to spend even more time with my young family and enjoy life a little more. I didn’t feel I had so much to prove, and was getting more comfortable in my own skin. If the odd business didn’t work out, I was confident there would be another on the way.
We were beginning to see which core areas we could expand the brand into, but it was still taking time for me to understand how flexible the Virgin brand was, the areas where it could bend successfully, and the areas where it would break. The sweet spot was always where we could differentiate from the competition, in service and in product, and where there was a real appetite for change. We were still a long way from creating the more structured strategy we have today, but it was one hell of a ride finding out what worked.
With the financial clout we had gained from selling Virgin Records and the profile lift our battles against BA had inadvertently given us, Virgin Atlantic continued to grow in popularity and profit. I was determined for us to capitalise. Our fleet grew to twenty-eight jets, and by the end of 1999 we had agreed a deal to sell 49 per cent of the company to Singapore Airlines for £600 million in cash. This would give more opportunity to invest in new businesses and reinvest in Virgin Atlantic’s customer experience, while maintaining a controlling stake in our airline. We had already become the first airline in the world to introduce seatback video across our fleet. Now we became the worldwide launch customer for the new Airbus A340-600 and introduced new successful routes everywhere from Las Vegas to St Lucia, Delhi to Barbados and Shanghai to Cape Town.
I began to enjoy flying Virgin Atlantic even more when we created the first ever double beds in the air in business class, and could even continue my meetings mid-flight when we launched Earth Calling in-seat call service via passengers’ mobile phones. Now there really was no escape for my team from phone calls at all hours! Thankfully for them, we also introduced the first ever in-flight bars. It’s amazing who you can get talking to and what you can get discussing over a few drinks at 30,000 feet. I’ve heard hundreds of business pitches at our sky-high bars over the years and several have gone on to become successful companies. As for matchmaking, there are few things I love more than setting up a couple while they sip a drink above the clouds. And at least one hit single has been written at the bar, while birds go flying at the speed of sound outside the window …
One morning in September 1999 I was woken up at four in the morning to learn that BA was having a little trouble with a big wheel. BA was paying big money to be the sponsor of the new London Eye, but its launch was fraught with technical problems. When they were finally ready to launch it, ahead of celebrating the millennium, they were unable to erect the wheel. We just so happened to own an airship company nearby in the Home Counties, so I got on the phone to the team.
‘We need to scramble a blimp,’ I told them. ‘How quickly can you get one to the Thames?’
With the world’s press assembled and the wheel lying limply on the South Bank lawn, our blimp hovered directly above, proudly displaying the legend ‘BA CAN’T GET IT UP’. We got the headlines that night at BA’s expense – literally! The photo also coincided with the same day BA’s share price plunged to a new record low.
The following year, I pulled BA’s tail again when we revamped our free in-flight massages for Upper Class customers. Right outside Heathrow Airport, we installed a giant poster stating ‘BA Don’t Give A Shiatsu’. In just five words we showcased our effervescence, cheekiness and great service. That, to me, is what Virgin is all about. It’s crucial in this job not to take yourself too seriously and people appreciate it when they see a bit of humour and personality shining through. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the average customer is usually far smarter – and more appreciative of a joke – than big businesses give them credit for.
When I founded the airline Lord King from British Airways said that I was ‘too old to rock, too young to fly’. Fifteen years on, where was I now? It was a question I was asking myself, not just from a business sense, but as a father, too. My children, one not yet born, the other tiny when Virgin Atlantic started, were growing up and already making those first steps towards leaving home.
We had never planned to send the children to boarding school; I had suffered such dreadful experiences there myself. But as Holly approached sixteen we discussed the option seriously. Holly was keen to try out full-term boarding, and we compromised on her going to school in Oxford, which was close to where we lived then, but far enough away for Holly to gain some independence.
Choosing a school for your children should be a process of careful thought and contemplation: in our case, we managed to find the right choice by getting lost instead. Joan and I had an appointment at a school in Oxford we were considering for Sam and Holly. But having driven to the school, it turned out we had the wrong one altogether.
Popping inside and realising it was not an open day, we bumped straight into the headmaster, David Christie. Rather than show us where to go, he insisted on whisking us around on a whirlwind tour of his school instead. The tour and his passion for the school were very impressive indeed. It had, until recently, been an all-boys’ school up to Sixth Form, but was now taking girls. There was a progressive air about the place, an unstuffy feel compared to the crammers I had experienced. By the time we left, both children were bound for St Edwards. It was a real sliding-doors moment in more ways than one: as it turns out, a young boy named Freddie Andrewes, whom Holly would get to know rather well in the coming years, was already studying at St Edwards.
When Holly was later named the school’s first Head of School I was overflowing with pride. But I was equally pleased that she was making friends, enjoying herself and growing into a fine young woman. She was already acquiring a taste for tackling injustices, and when she came home bemoaning the fact that girls were not allowed to wear trousers I helped her draft a letter to her headmaster demanding equality for all students. It reminded me of when I was at Stowe School, though in my case I would have campaigned for all students not to wear ties.
There were some amusing antiquated perks to being Head of School, one of which was the right to be able to graze your own goat in the school grounds.
‘Holly, this is too good an opportunity to miss,’ I told her over the kitchen table. ‘Whenever you come across absurd rules, take advantage of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘I think you should buy a goat.’
‘Don’t be silly, Dad,’ she replied, wisely resisting.
As Holly prepared to graduate in 2000, we spent an evening hunched over her desk together working on her big speech to the whole school. I went to see her make the speech and was amazed how she had already become a better public speaker than her dad. She was shy, but concentrated on her words and spoke unwaveringly in her beautiful, clear voice. Not for the first or last time, I wept with pride.
Although sending Holly and Sam to St Edwards was well worth it, it did take some getting used to the children not being at home. I was accustomed to being away from the kids a little, due to travelling with work so much. For Joan, it was a real wrench – to begin with she would cry every day: she missed her babies so much. She took to driving to Oxford quite a lot, and would ‘just happen’ to pop by the school near midday, and take Holly and Sam out for lunch. Back home, after one of these lunches, there was often no food in the house. I remember standing in the kitchen one evening, rifling through bare cupboards, and saying to Joan: ‘Look, I know the kids are gone, but we still need to eat!’
‘Well, you know where M&S is, too, Richard,’ she replied.
It was a fair point. I got used to driving to Marks & Spencer. But she soon took pity on me!
Sitting there on Necker Island on New Year’s Eve, staring at my blank piece of paper, I’d decided it was time for a new start, to look to the stars. The following year, I followed up on that decision, literally so, with the setting up of a new company.
My fascination with space first started thirty years earlier. It was 20 July 1969 and I had turned nineteen two days before, still nursing the type of hangover that any teenager celebrating their nineteenth birthday could expect. My father turned on the tiny black-and-white television in our home in Shamley Green and I, along with countless millions, watched the extraordinary sight of images from space being beamed back to earth. More than 238,000 miles above, Apollo 11 had landed on the moon. I was gripped as Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Whether he fluffed his line or not, it was inspirational.
I was instantly convinced I would be going to space one day. I assumed that if NASA could land on the moon, in the near future they would be able to take anybody who wanted to go to space. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind. But when the Apollo missions ended, and the years started to pass without new breakthroughs, space travel felt further away again. Nevertheless, I was sure it was just a matter of time, and my enthusiasm remained undimmed.
In 1999, I was to take the first small steps towards fulfilling my own dream. For all the remarkable travels around the world I took that year, the most exciting journey started with a short stroll from my then home, across the icy greenery of Hyde Park, to a dreary bureaucratic building. I walked into Companies House and officially registered a new company: Virgin Galactic Airways. (Being a born optimist, I also registered Virgin Intergalactic Airways!) I did not know how to start a spaceline – nobody had ever done it before – but I loved the name and the idea thrilled me. It seemed an exciting way to enter a new millennium, looking up to the stars and thinking about how to get up there – and back again.
All that, though, was in the future. Back on New Year’s Eve it was time to dance with my wife. I put down my pencil, left my to-do list of possibilities on the table and joined our guests downstairs as Prince sang on: ‘I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast. But life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last …’
I WAS ONE of the first people in the country to use a mobile phone in the 1980s. It weighed more than Holly did at the time and was almost as big. To call it a brick would be disrespectful to bricks. However, by the time their size got more manageable, mobiles spread rapidly and transformed the way we did business. I no longer had to be at certain places at specific times so often, and was free to spend more time with my kids in the great outdoors, or just disappear for a while. I hated being stuck at a desk, and could see how mobiles would be transformative for workforces, providing freedom as well as convenience.
The spark for Virgin Mobile came back in 1999. I was sitting in the kitchen of my Holland Park house, working my way through some correspondence, when Will Whitehorn, my head of communications, came in, waving a piece paper.
‘Guess what, Richard. We’ve won a prize.’
‘Oh great. Which one?’ I asked.
‘Actually … I’ve won a prize.’ Will put the document – a phone bill – down on the table in front of me. ‘You have made me call you and every journalist in the country so often that BT has awarded me a trophy for the highest phone bill in Britain.’
Will’s bill got me thinking. No, not that I should bother him less often. But why were we giving BT all the money from so many calls? Why not start our own phone company?
In 1998 global mobile phone sales more than doubled to 162.9 million – we needed to get into the market. But I, along with everybody else, was paying through the nose for the pleasure of using my phone. Lengthy contracts that had huge service charges became the norm. Mobiles had become so useful so quickly that most people just accepted they would be ripped off.
I saw this as a prime opportunity to shake up the market. The Virgin Group was relatively stable and we had cash from Virgin Atlantic’s new partnership to invest – mobile was the obvious space to do it in. My one concern was the idea of footing all the costs of a huge infrastructure investment. This, though, was where the really unusual part came in: we wouldn’t have to build a whole new network, we would piggyback off one of the existing ones. In 1997 we started a twenty-year partnership with Fast Track, a network ranking the UK’s top performing private companies in the Sunday Times. I couldn’t help but notice many of the successful start-ups, such as Carphone Warehouse, were in the telecoms sector. I asked Stephen Murphy and investment guru Gordon McCallum why we weren’t already investing. They were ahead of the game, quickly showing me a Goldman Sachs report about the possibility of MVNOs – mobile virtual network operators. It was filled with jargon that made my head hurt, but, once most of the dozens of acronyms had sunk in, the direction we should take seemed clear: if we could persuade one network to agree, we would rent time and bandwidth on their system, and bring our marketing and customer service expertise to the table.
Once I got the word out that Virgin was interested, we were approached by many networks for partnerships, as well as entrepreneurs with ideas for the mobile space, from handset designers to pager developers. I came across two young men from BT Cellnet with considerable experience in the telecoms industry, Tom Alexander and Joe Steel. After negotiations to form a deal with Cellnet got nowhere, I suggested to Tom that we start a truly different mobile company together.
I invited Tom up to my then home in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, for lunch. In old-fashioned entrepreneur style, we hashed out a plan over the kitchen table. We would launch a pay-as-you-go service, where users would only pay for what they actually used. We would aim at the youth market, appealing to teenagers getting their first phones, as well as slightly older people who had grown up with Virgin and were fed up with being stung by their old providers. And we would use our Virgin Megastores to sell the phones. By this point we had 381 stores worldwide and new flagships in London (Piccadilly Circus), Miami, Glasgow, Strasbourg and Okayama, filled to the brim with the sort of savvy people we could aim our product at. Tom, along with Joe, agreed to leave Cellnet and joined James Kydd from Virgin Drinks as Virgin Mobile’s first three employees.
There was just one small problem. These smart young men were, well, too smart. Being dressed neatly in suit and tie was not really the Virgin way.
‘Do you really want to come to work dressed like that every morning?’ I asked, yanking Tom’s tie. ‘How do you breathe?’
On their first day working for Virgin Mobile, we had a somewhat unusual initiation ceremony: we took their suits and ties, and, making a small fire, set them alight. As we watched the material go up in flames to cheers all round, I knew we had made the right decision. Now we just had to light a similar fire underneath the mobile phone industry itself.
As news of Virgin Mobile leaked out, critics once again suggested we were spreading the Virgin brand too thinly and entering too many sectors in which we lacked expertise. I wasn’t worried about that: I saw change as a challenge, and wanted to meet it head on. But what we needed most was a network. One by one the networks rejected us, concerned that they would lose more than they would gain by letting us into the market. Then, finally, the last one we spoke to, One 2 One, agreed to supply their network and we would provide the brand and marketing. On 1 August 1999 we became 50/50 partners with them. But then, out of the blue, One 2 One was sold off by its owners Cable & Wireless to German firm Deutsche Telekom, who rebranded it T-Mobile. For a worrying twenty-four hours it looked like they were going to drop us, so I jumped on a plane to Germany to meet Deutsche Telekom’s CEO Ron Sommer. Ron was straightforward and very smart. To my great relief, after an hour of listening to me, he said he understood the vision, and agreed to go ahead with our deal.
T-Mobile matched our investment of £42.5 million and we set about creating one of Britain’s biggest start-ups of all time. After we secured bank debt of £100 million, City analysts started putting heady numbers on the value of the company. One even estimated the business was worth £1.36 billion – before we even had our first customer!
‘Did they really say billion, not million?’ I had to double-check with Will.
I was scratching my head, wondering why we hadn’t entered the mobile business earlier.
When it was time to launch the company, I knew I needed an event that grabbed people’s attention. At one airline launch I flipped Kate Moss upside down on the wing as the press looked on at Heathrow. ‘Richard, I’ve got no panties on!’ she shrieked. I had forgotten it had been raining earlier; I felt my feet slipping and my grip getting looser. For a moment, I thought I was about to drop the most famous supermodel in the world off the side of our jet. I managed to cling on, and I think Kate has just about forgiven me.
For Virgin Mobile I wanted to show this was a network with nothing to hide, which wouldn’t screw customers over with hidden charges. What better way than joining seven gorgeous ladies in a huge transparent mobile phone in London’s Trafalgar Square? Oh, and we just happened to be completely naked, except for some little orange cushions barely covering our modesty.
‘What you see is what you get,’ I told the crowds, who got the message and enjoyed a laugh. The Metropolitan Police didn’t quite see the joke, though, and we had to make a dash for it, taking our cushions with us.
Sometimes the publicity stunts we pull can take even me by surprise. That was the case with the launch of Virgin Mobile in Australia. By November 2000, Virgin Mobile UK had more than 500,000 customers and scooped Mobile Choice’s Network of the Year award (not bad, since we didn’t actually have a network!). As the Aussie public had embraced our airline so quickly, it made sense to strike while the iron was hot and launch a second mobile company down under. As in Britain, we found an established company, Optus, and agreed a partnership using their network infrastructure and Virgin’s branding and customer experience. And, as with the launch of Virgin Mobile in the UK, we wanted an event to get people talking.
The first inkling I got that something unusual was going on was when I was picked up from my hotel, the Holiday Inn in Potts Point, Sydney. I got into a car with chief marketing officer Jean Oelwang, Peter Beikmanis and Catherine Salway for a briefing. I presumed we would be driving to the harbour, but instead we started heading out of the city and into the countryside.
‘I thought we were going to do the launch next to Sydney Harbour,’ I said.
‘Erm, yes, we are,’ said Jean, a little too nervously.
As the others in the car exchanged sideways looks, I could tell something was up. The next thing I knew we had arrived in an empty field. It seemed an unusual and unpopulated venue for a business launch. Then I heard the whupp-whupp-whupp of helicopter blades. That made more sense. I stood back in the full force of the wind as the helicopter landed next to the car.
‘I think I get the picture.’ I was about to climb into the helicopter when Jean pulled me to one side.
‘Richard, we probably should have told you this earlier …’
Jean stood back as one of the helicopter crew put a harness on me. ‘You’re not actually going in the helicopter. You’re going to fly a hundred feet under it.’
That was a new one! I could feel my heart beginning to thump, but nothing ventured and all that. The helicopter crew told me to lie flat on the ground. As I lay down in the soft warmth of the grass, I could feel a bungee rope being attached to my waist.
‘Keep still’, I was told. ‘Keep your head down.’
As I lay there I could hear the blades whirr into action. I was just wondering what Joan would make of my current predicament when, with a jerk, I was lifted off the ground. As I went up I span around and around uncontrollably fast. I tried to get myself into a skydiving position – arms and legs spread-eagled. My face had a fixed expression somewhere between bemusement and, I suspect, terror. Probably closer to terror, thinking about it.
Finally, I got the hang of it, and now we were really moving. I was flying forward through the air, 100 feet below the helicopter at a rapid rate. Over the years, I have often had dreams where I am flapping my arms and flying. Sometimes I soar around Necker, smelling the ocean air. Other times I fly up into space, looking down at the pale blue dot of Earth. Usually, however, I am looking down along Oxford Street, where our first Virgin Records store was, knowing that if I stopped I would crash. I swoop down, knock somebody’s hat off and zoom back upwards. Occasionally I wake up falling.
This was as close as I’d get to my dreams in reality. I’ve never had a more exhilarating experience in my life. I worked out that if I dropped my arm on either side I could even control my direction – to a certain extent. As we approached the city I began to enjoy myself, waving to confused-looking people far below, and feeling more like Peter Pan than ever before. This is what being a bird must feel like, I thought to myself.
The next thing I knew, the imposing structure of Sydney Harbour Bridge was approaching fast in front of me. I tried dropping my arms as I’d just taught myself, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I tried shouting to the helicopter pilot to climb higher, but that was just as futile: there was no way he could hear me.
‘Higher! Higher!’ I shouted.
I’m going to hit the bridge. I was sure of it. What a way to go, I thought, zooming across the sky in a harness before … SPLAT! A face-first collision with one of Australia’s most iconic constructions, like Wile E. Coyote in a Loony Tunes cartoon.
At what felt like the last possible second, the helicopter veered upwards and I narrowly avoided becoming a permanent addition to the side of the bridge. I barely had time to catch my breath as we zipped across it, low enough for me to see the astonished expressions of the bridge walkers looking up. Finally, we landed on top of a giant cage structure next to Sydney Opera House. I was bursting with adrenaline, pumped up after everything I’d just been through. Inside the cage people were dressed in the colours of all of our rivals – there were lots in Australia’s highly competitive mobile market. They were wearing handcuffs to signify the long contracts they were locked into by the likes of Vodafone and Telstra, and singing, ‘Set us free! Set us free!’ I set off some explosive bolts, the cage collapsed and the ‘customers’ were freed.
‘I thought I was a goner for a minute there,’ I told Jean afterwards.
‘I’m very glad you weren’t,’ she said reassuringly. ‘We hadn’t managed to get you insured!’
Virgin Mobile became the fastest growing mobile start-up in UK history. We acquired our millionth customer in 2001, an impressive number for a company that had started from scratch as a punt only a couple of years earlier.
But I was eager to capitalise further. On 21 February 2001 I travelled to Cannes for the 3GSM World Congress, where I announced Virgin Mobile as the world’s first global mobile virtual network operator. Within the next few years we would launch new, independent mobile companies in ten countries in five continents. With our UK partners T-Mobile, we launched a new service in Northern Ireland. We negotiated a $1 billion joint-venture agreement with Singtel to set up mobile phone operations throughout Asia, the first being Singapore in 2001.
We had plans for Virgin Mobile South Africa, Canada and France to add to the UK and Australia, but the market I was desperate to get the Virgin brand into was one of the most challenging to break: the United States. We approached Sprint and a deal looked likely to go ahead, but they got cold feet at the last minute as the market shrank after 9/11. I phoned Bill Esray, Sprint’s CEO, who was opposed to the deal. Our pledge to invest heavily ourselves – to the tune of $187 million over the next few years – showed we were serious. My arguments that the deal was cheap for Sprint, could transform their stuffy image and open up a new, youthful audience were all met with radio silence.
‘Look, you need a brand like Virgin,’ I ended up telling him. ‘Right now, you’re the phone company of choice for young Republicans.’
Somehow that did the trick. Bill relented, and in October 2001 we announced a new joint venture with Sprint to offer pay-as-you-go Virgin mobiles in the US. Dan Schulman came on board as CEO and we began preparing our US launch strategy.
Nine months later, once again I was dangling high above the ground, this time from a crane in Times Square. As reporters and tourists gathered below, I ripped off my clothes and threw them into the crowd, a (large!) strategically placed mobile phone covering my privates as I was flanked by six strapping cast members of new Broadway musical The Full Monty.
‘That was fun. But I preferred the UK launch,’ I told Dan afterwards. ‘My support act there was all-female rather than all-male!’
The message was the same, though. Greater transparency and simplicity for customers. What you see is what you get. With the help of some irreverent ads, the business began to grow rapidly. Before we knew it, Virgin Mobile USA had broken the record as the fastest company ever to generate over a billion dollars in revenue, within three and a half years of launch. We sold the business to Sprint in December 2009 for £294 million; it continues to grow and remains the largest Virgin Mobile business worldwide.
THE BEST IDEAS don’t always need to have detailed financial projections and complicated business proposals behind them. Sometimes they come fully formed on the back of a beer mat. One such idea was the spark that led to the fastest growing Virgin company of all time: Virgin Blue.
The beer mats in question had been scribbled on by Brett Godfrey, who at the time was the chief financial officer for Virgin Express, our European carrier. I’ve always loved finding talent from within the Virgin family and encouraging people to challenge themselves in new companies within the Group – Brett was a great example. I’d first spotted his potential when he wrote an excellent note to a group of new starters. I began following his progress closely, and saw how he dealt with people in a personable manner and got the best out of them. He was someone who understood the little details of the airline industry that make all the difference; he knew management had to be accessible and visible, so would often get out and about, even rolling his sleeves up with the baggage handlers to heave bags and hear their issues from the frontline. So when the Virgin Express CEO position came up, I thought he was the man to fill the role.
When I called him up from Oxford one Thursday night to offer him the job, however, he turned me down flat.
‘I really appreciate the offer,’ he explained, ‘but I’ve got two young kids now, and my wife and I have decided to move back to Australia.’
I was disappointed, but accepted his reasoning. ‘I always respect a person who puts family first,’ I told him. Wishing him all the best, I added: ‘If you want to do anything in Australia, let me know and we’ll see what we can do.’
There was a pause. ‘Funny you should say that,’ he replied. ‘I’ve had an idea for a few years now that I’d love you to hear.’
I always like someone ready to seize their chance. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Hold on.’ I heard a muffled sound on the phone as Brett scrambled around for his notes. ‘I’ve got the idea on the back of some beer mats …’
Brett began telling me his plan for a low-cost airline in Australia. As the son of a Qantas employee, he knew the ins and outs of the Australian aviation market. He described how he’d sat down for a few pints with another airline expert, Rob Sherrard, who had launched Sherrard Aviation and also given Brett his first job as an accountant. They talked about the rise of low-cost carriers in Europe and the US, and pondered how this model could be translated to the Australian market. At the time, the public were being ripped off thanks to a lack of competition. Qantas was not being challenged by Ansett and had no incentive to improve their service or lower their prices. As flying is the only way to get around most of Australia’s vast landscape, Qantas knew they had a captive audience. Brett and Rob’s beer-mat proposal was to find a way to set them free.
‘Well, why don’t you put a more detailed plan together? I’m happy to have a look at it,’ I said.
Brett’s plan was delivered to my door the next morning. I’ve always liked people who move fast too.
If I had to pick any single nation that really understands and breathes the Virgin way of living, it would be Australia. I have always loved visiting the country and spent lots of time down under in my early years, travelling around with my family, playing sport on the beach and in the ocean. I fell in love with the culture, the climate and the people.
When we were looking to expand Virgin Atlantic, one of the first destinations on my hit list was Sydney. I began a campaign to get the government to change their single-designation policy, which was allowing British Airways a monopoly on the route from London to Sydney. The authorities were also determined to protect their traditional home-grown airline, Qantas, whether or not it meant less choice and poorer service for Australians and fewer tourism dollars. I tried again and again, but got nowhere fast – there was no appetite for change, and certainly not for helping a scruffy Englishman from the music business.
At one particularly fruitless meeting with Senator Gareth Evans in May 1988, he made it clear in no uncertain terms that there was not going to be a change of policy. I left the room angry but undeterred, and immediately sent a note to the press explaining what had happened. It ended: ‘If Virgin Atlantic was allowed to fly it would stimulate demand on this route, benefiting tourism, small businesses and visiting relatives. Competition must be in everyone’s interest. Fortunately though, I’m only 37 and – as long as I don’t go down in a balloon – time is on my side!’ Well, I did go down in quite a few more balloons, but am still here to tell the tale.
What we really needed was to start a new airline altogether, which was why Brett’s idea was so enticing. Looking through his proposal the following day, it was apparent that the numbers added up, the vision was clear and Brett’s enthusiasm was infectious. Who says accountants can’t be imaginative? Perhaps those few pints helped to get the creative juices flowing! Australia’s duopolistic aviation market was exactly the kind Virgin was designed to disrupt. I asked Brett to fly to Australia to look at the areas I still had some concerns about, in particular ticketing, pilots, terminals, slots, quality planes and staff. Before the week was out he was back, having answered all my questions.
While I was more than satisfied, the Virgin board still needed persuading. They had previously rejected the idea, with Brett telling me he had been close to abandoning the whole concept before I showed interest. This made me even more determined to see it through, but I found myself fighting the same lack of enthusiasm that Brett had faced from Virgin’s executives.
‘Look at the upsides,’ I said in a board meeting. ‘Then look at the downsides. The potential is massive; there is risk, but it is manageable.’
One of my main arguments was the element of surprise. None of the Australian airlines would expect a business like ours to compete with them. We were still establishing our brand on the global stage. Nobody would see us coming. After a big battle, I finally convinced them. I met up with Brett in person to tell him the good news. Shaking his hand, I grinned at him.
‘Screw it,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘If you’ve got purple hair and you’re working in a butcher’s shop and you can still smile after a tough day, you’re the kind of cabin crew we’re looking for …’
Our advertising campaign for airline staff was unusual in many ways. Firstly, rather than focusing on the more obvious location of Sydney for recruitment, we set our sights on the Sunshine Coast. Alongside Perth, Brisbane was the fastest growing market in the country, the beaches were a huge attraction and Queensland’s government was extremely keen to market a new airline and boost its region’s tourism.
Rather than going for experience we wanted to recruit people who wouldn’t usually apply for airline jobs. Virgin has always focused on finding the best possible people, and I was determined to set our new airline apart by having the finest staff in the world. We didn’t want people who had been working at airlines for years – we needed fresh faces with new ideas. A typical Virgin airline employee is the sort of person who will joke with passengers and smile, not just nod their head and say: ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.’ I shared a story about one occasion when we had a short delay before a Virgin flight and people had to queue up at the gate. One of the passengers jumped the queue and marched up to the desk. Our team member very politely asked him to get back into the queue. He turned on her and said: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ So she picked up the intercom and announced: ‘I have a young man at gate 23, who seems to be lost – he doesn’t know who he is.’ The other passengers roared with laughter. ‘Fuck you!’ shouted the self-important man. She kept a straight face and replied: ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to get in line for that too, sir!’
The recruitment campaign was a runaway success, and 12,000 people wanting to relocate to Queensland had sent in their CVs.
Our budget to launch the airline was just A$10 million. That might sound a lot of money but, to put it in context, JetBlue, a low-cost airline in the US, had needed US$120 million to get off the ground. I was eager for us to use the internet like no airline before us – within six months, 92 per cent of bookings were online. This is normal now, but back in 2000 high street stores and holiday brochures reigned. We were appealing to younger consumers, and reducing our costs too, as transaction fees were far cheaper online. We might have been operating on a tiny budget, but we made up the difference with our enthusiasm, initiative and humour. We decided to call it Virgin Blue, a cheeky wordplay on the fact that Aussies call redheads ‘bluey’. It appealed to my sense of humour to name our red planes Blue: it also meant I could convince Brett and Rob to dress up as the Blues Brothers for our inaugural flight from Brisbane to Sydney on 31 August 2000.
As