“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It’s hard to make something simple.”
“What really matters is what you create. Does is work or not? Does it make you proud?”
Richard Branson’s 21 Survival Strategies
1. Remain focused on fulfilling your business mission. Never allow adversity divert your attention and efforts.
2. Don’t wait till you are big before you begin building your brand. Build a brand from scratch alongside your business.
3. Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.
4. Build your own business team. Survival in business requires a synergy of skills.
5. Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it’s the life blood of business.
6. If you are a new startup company, try not to arouse the interest or suspicion of your competition; especially if they are a bigger company. They can crush you while you are still in your startup phase. Lie low while still strengthening your bottom line.
7. Grow internally first. Strengthen your bottom line first before considering external growth.
8. Focus on your business strengths and keep its weaknesses away from the competition or public.
9. Be swift to take advantage of business opportunities. Bigger companies are too cumbersome to move quickly; this can be a competitive advantage for you.
10. Learn to live on the edge.
11. Be creative. Innovate consistently on the little things that the big companies ignore. Little things often make big differences in business.
12. Listen to the customer’s complaint and act fast.
13. Meet regularly with your business team and brainstorm. Intricate business problems are mostly resolved at brainstorming sessions.
14. Run lean; avoid unnecessary expenses.
15. Don’t hesitate to seek external help or advice where need be. Sometimes, it takes an external, emotionally unattached individual to detect your business flaws and render unbiased advice.
16. Follow your instincts and live with the consequences.
17. Avoid litigations. They are expensive and consume loads of time but if you have got a good case and a better chance of winning; then fight it out.
18. Free publicity and word of mouth is probably the best and cheapest form of advertising. Learn to use it to your advantage.
19. Learn to raise capital by any means necessary. That’s your primary job as an entrepreneur. You must continually raise capital from family and friends, banks, suppliers, customers and investors.
20. Seek out strategic alliances; they are essential to growth and provide resistance to bigger competition.
21. And if after all this you eventually fail; don’t take it personal. Don’t be ashamed to start all over again.
“You don’t have to run a big business, fly a balloon, or break records in a boat to learn from and use the lessons I learned. Your goal can be small. Student magazine was very small at first. I sold space in it from a payphone at school because I believed I could and would do it. If something is what you really want to do, just do it. Whatever your goal is you will never succeed unless you let go of your fears and fly.”