Thrive: 30 Inspirational Rags-to-Riches Stories

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson was born in Blackheath, London, England. The eldest of three children, Richard's father was a lawyer and his mother was a ballet dancer, flight attendant, and homemaker. Growing up, Richard performed poorly in school, being severely dyslexic, and could barely read by the age of eight. He developed an interest in sports and business from inheriting his mother's entrepreneurial spirit. At thirteen years old, Richard started his first business of growing Christmas trees. The business failed after rabbits ate most of the tiny sprigs.

At age sixteen, Richard started a national student magazine entitled Student. Working out of quarters in his school, Richard cold-called large corporations, including Coca-Cola and Barclays, trying to get them to advertise. He dropped out of school at age seventeen to focus full-time on the magazine, with his headmaster's departing words, "Congratulations, Branson. I predict that you will either go to prison or become a millionaire." He moved the magazine into the basement of his friend and business partner Jonny Gem's house, where they managed to land interviews with musical figures John Lennon and Mick Jagger. The first issue had a circulation of 30,000.

Student's offices moved to a commune, followed by the basement of a church, which was also known as "the crypt." Although the magazine grew in popularity, it wasn't making money. So Richard searched for ways to develop the Student brand in other directions. He thought about the high cost of records and the sort of people who bought Student, and wondered if he could advertise and sell cheap mail-order records through his magazine. He wanted to create a new name for the business, something that would be eye-catching, that could stand-alone and appeal to a broader audience. One of the girls on his team suggested the name Virgin, as they were all essentially virgins in business. The name stuck.

The orders poured in for Richard's new mail-order record service, which offered prices cheaper than its competitors. However, things took a turn for the worse after a postal strike that lasted six weeks delayed shipment of records. In response, Richard opened a record shop to sell records directly to consumers. Within a week, they found a location and opened Virgin Records, a record store with headphones and water pillows that catered to a younger generation of music lovers. It was as much a social hangout as it was a record store. Around the same time, Richard was also looking to create a recording studio that had a relaxed environment for recording artists, so he purchased a manor with fifteen bedrooms via a mortgage, his savings, and a loan from his aunt. By this point, the company's bank account was thousands of dollars overdrawn, and Richard was searching for ways to pay off his debt.

Richard devised and executed a plan where he illegally imported records and evaded paying a 33 percent record tax. While he was successful in paying off the debt in executing this plan, he was also arrested for tax evasion and spent the night in prison. His mother had to put up their home to bail him out. In order to avoid a criminal offense, Richard agreed to pay three times the illegal profit he had earned while conducting the scheme, to be paid over the next three years. If he failed to pay, he was to be rearrested and tried.

With a mortgage, overdrawn bank account, family loans, and now a hefty fine to pay off, Richard rolled the dice on some new business ventures. He, along with his team, opened thirteen more Virgin Records shops across the country and started their own record label, Virgin Music. With the current infrastructure in place, Richard could record, publish, promote, and distribute his artists' music. The first artist he signed was Mike Oldfield, who had originally failed to secure a record deal. Oldfield's debut album, Tubular Bells (1973), became a hit, selling millions of copies in Britain, and also became the soundtrack for The Exorcist (1973), which allowed the album to enjoy great success in the United States.

Richard reinvested all of the profits into growing the company and signing more artists, many of whom became commercial failures. The label initially struggled to sign big bands, including The Who, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones. After repeated attempts, the label signed The Sex Pistols, whose debut album became a massive success and catapulted the label's image into the punk rock scene. Richard bought a private island in the Virgin Islands, and successful musical acts followed, including Human League, Culture Club, Simple Minds, and Phil Collins. With Virgin Music a success, Richard expanded his empire into megastores, film, books, and an airline service named Virgin Atlantic, which faced cutthroat competition from rival airline British Airways. The competition was so fierce that Richard had to sell Virgin Records in order to keep the airline afloat.

Virgin Atlantic became one of the United Kingdom's largest airlines, and The Virgin Group is a multinational conglomerate that employs more than 50,000 people around the world, with over $24 billion in revenue (in 2012).