Richard Branson: Secrets to Business Success | Hacker News Reader

Richard Branson: Secrets to Business Success

entrepreneur.com

33 pointskyenneti6 comments

Richard Branson Reflecting across 40 years to come up with 5 secrets to successfully building businesses over his career career.

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As with about 98% of all business advice, this falls into the category of true-but-useless.

It would be impossible to find a person who actually disagreed with any of those points, or who would be able to pull anything of practical value out of them. As with most things, the devil is in the details.

While the first two ones are really obvious, the last three are often known but rarely applied truly. Virgin employees can think "We're a company also building spaceships". I found this article interesting and useful.

With regards to point 4, for some people, never ever criticizing people or losing one's temper can require a lot of effort.

No. 0: Communicate Clearly and Effectively

Branson omits the unspoken secret to business success: good communication skills. He succeeded in business because he learned the art of getting his points across clearly and efficiently. True, the advice in his article is rather general, but that's also its beauty. It's easier to agree with a simple point than it is to agree with a complex composition of points. The point being, it's usually best to get people to agree with you to accomplish anything.

Simple ideas are quickly understood most clearly. Reading through the article, I couldn't help but notice how efficiently Branson gets his points across. I suspect this same approach serves him well in business, convincing partners to sign deals, customers to buy products, and employees to continue doing a great job.

Perfect lesson in creating great linkbait.

Every time he talks to people, he's exercising the linkbait strategy. If it works online, why not offline? Salesmen already know this. Do startup entrepreneurs? When people are listening and understanding, they're ready to be converted into satisfied users and/or customers.

Linkbait is slightly slimy, but it's also a proven success strategy.

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