LegendaryLife Blog

Over the years, I have studied the Branson way of “Virgin” business and here is the top 10 list that he, so far, has never released as to why he has become such a successful entrepreneur.

10. Keep things small

Keep the size of the companies small, his average is about 60 employees per company, if they get too big, break them up into smaller pieces. This does a number of things, first, it keeps the company nimble and still personalized as everybody knows everybody else on a first hand basis. Secondly, it keeps things manageable, if there is a problem, the risks are minimal for the entire “Virgin Group” both financially and in reputability. Like Sir Richard Branson says, he always pays off the debts of defunct Virgin companies should things go bust which is difficult if you have one huge company with billions in receivership and tens of thousands made redundant.

9. Be ethical

Don’t participate in underhanded business activities such as kickbacks, bribes and sabotage. As a businessperson, the only thing you have to stand on is your business ethics and reputation, once this is tarnished, it’s an uphill battle to regain it. People tend to remember the dramatic and negative about people even if they represent but a small portion of a positive image.

8. Give others a vested interest

Sir Richard Branson has a unique method of building up his conglomerate of companies, he creates partnerships on usually a 50/50 basis. As such, each party has a direct interest in success of the new Virgin brand. This works in several ways for the entrepreneur who wishes to buy into this type of arrangement. Firstly, Virgin has a lot of companies so you may instantly have a customer with another part of the conglomerate, for instance, the in-flight entertainment for Virgin Atlantic may also be used for Virgin Trains. Secondly, Virgin has huge cash reserve, so getting additional funding (seeking it from Angels, Vcs and banks) is far easier when you can say “Oh, by the way, you do know Virgin is a partner in this company right?” Lastly, people work harder when they have a direct vested interest in something, an employee will work 40 hours a week but the founder behind the company has no problem pulling in twice those hours off the clock. This internal motivation usually makes the difference between boom or bust.

7. Follow your gut

Businesses must evolve to stay competitive, if you have a gut feeling to do something that doesn’t show up in the numbers yet, well, DO IT! Nobody knows a company like the founder or executive committee that was there since it all began, competitors, segways and even the market demands are in a constant state of flux. If you want to run a company strictly by the numbers, become an accountant, otherwise, follow your gut more often then not, it will prove right.

6. “Sue the Bastards” – Sir Richard Branson

If somebody is being unfair, tainting your image and reputation or simply not paying their bills after multiple tries to solve a problem, sue them. A friend told me once that there is business and there is personal, you may be great friends with a person who may be one of your suppliers or providers but don’t let that get in the way of running your business. If somebody isn’t treating you right, solve it before things get worse, and yes, they will get worse. I have taken my fair share of people to court, I think it’s a great way towards dispute resolution.

5. Mistakes aren’t a BIG deal

No matter what type of business, there will be some mistakes made, you simply cannot afford to go through the world of business walking on egg shells. No matter the size of the mistake or who it affects, admit to it and move on. Trying to push a mistake under the rug will simply allow it to grow into a bigger problem and eventually, it may get legs of it’s own. I liken the role of an entrepreneur to that of a fireman, you spend your day putting out fires before they become unmanageable, whether this is kicking the sales force back into shape or making sure internal politics don’t get out of hand.

4. Think long term

If you are starting a business with a quick payout then you should stick to your job at McDonald’s flipping burgers. Businesses need to be run for the long term, this is the only way you can attract investment and maintain your sanity through the years. Decisions are a lot easier to make when you can envision their effect a few years down the road then how they will immediately impact your bottom line. Todays investment will result in tomorrows revenue.

3. Don’t cash-out!

Your company just made a huge profit this year, what do you do? No… don’t go on a vacation splurging all this away, look at areas in your company that would benefit from additional investment or even better, consider acquisitions or new areas you wish to create change into. The bottom line is that profits are great mechanisms to further boost future influence, don’t take this cash out and waste it! This is a gift to be taken seriously and shared, not to be squandered at the casino

2. Customers come first

Let’s face it, a business without customers is a dead business. It’s tough to get new customers and even tougher to get repeated business from them, always appreciate them! There is something very wrong when a company begins to take it’s customer base for granted and begins exploiting them. I have seen this time and again, most of the time, the company goes under once all these under-handed activities either become known or the staff themselves get tired of becoming the customers punching bag. Let me repeat, if you want a successful business, you must appreciate each and every customer who ultimately buys into your idea. EVERY ONE!

1. Have Fun!

Life is about having fun, and business shouldn’t be any different, if you don’t enjoy your position in life, change it before it changes you. We are all very lucky to be given the gift of life by our parents, we need to show that appreciation by learning and exploring the world around us. You run a business, great! This is a tool to give you more freedom then the average worker, but be sure to get as much learnings out of it as you possibly can.

The Bottom Line

There is much we can all learn from Sir Richard Branson, hopefully this glimpse into his keys of management opens the doors of possibility for you.

From the small mining town of Sudbury, Ontario to the global success of “Jeopardy!”, how ambition can lead to great things no matter where you are from!Alex Trebek’s Background

Alex Trebek was born on July 22nd, 1940 as Giorgi Suka-Alex Trebek in the small mining town of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He left the small town to received a degree in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Alex Trebek’s Canadian Television Persona

Alex Trebek began a career on television as a newscaster for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) reporting on everything under the sun. In 1964, at the age of 24, he hosted several high school quiz shows under the “Reach for the Top” moniker but his first televised quiz show for Canadian television was called “Jackpot!”.

Alex Trebek’s American Television Persona

Pursuing opportunities when they came, he went to the United States in 1973 to become a host for the NBC quiz show “The Wizard of Odds”. At that time, and still true to this day, many Canadians feel the need to enter the American mainstream media in order to further their career. In 1974 he hosted the game show “High Rollers” and in 1982 he hosted “Starcade”, “Battlestars” and “Pitfal” but his huge breakthrough came when he was selected to become the host of a new show called “Jeopardy!”. He later stated that he doubted the shows success beyond the first few seasons but he needed the money, neither did he predict that it would have had such a huge impact on education as it has.

Alex Trebek’s Global Television Persona

He began hosting “Jeopardy!” in 1982 and has been the only host for that show from then on. Alex Trebek didn’t rest with the success of “Jeopardy!”, he also went on to host two other shows, the first “Classic Concentration” and the other “To Tell the Truth”, both of which where a great success in addition to a few stints on the side. Being the host for “Jeopardy!” lead to him becoming a global television icon through syndication around the world. The fact that his name is now synonymous with the word “Jeopardy!” is a testament to his great success as a host and his abilities to win over a crowd. He also became a regular on the cameo circuit, showing up in a host of movies and television shows such as “The X-Files”, “Family Guy”, “Cheers” and even the teenage drama “Beverly Hills 90210”.

Alex Trebek on “Jeopardy!”

Alex Trebek’s Achievements

He has received a number of awards, from the “Outstanding Game Show Host” Emmy Award to a star on both Canada’s and Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame”. Alex Trebek also hosted a number of charity events and still to this day hosts many events for the National Geographic Society including the annual spelling bee. He is also an active spokesperson for the World Vision Inc., running in many of their commercials as both a host and member. Alex Trebek is also a spokesperson for the USO (United Service Organization) which helps soldiers and other military personnel to burn of some steam through recreation and counseling.

Trivia

Alex Trebek has a deep passion for breeding and racing thoroughbred horses, owning his own 700 acre ranch. He is also an accomplished wine aficionado, owning his own vineyards called “Creston Vineyards”. In 2001 he shaved his mustache that was part of his persona for over 30 years.

The Bottom Line

If he can achieve amazing success coming from a small mining town, there is no reason that you can’t too!

Buzvia: Alex Trebek has heart attack, Wikipedia, National Geographic Society, World Vision, Who Is Alex Trebek?, United Service Organization

Life is about adventure and learning about oneself, about 6 months ago I was on a remote beach in Cape Tribulation, Australia right before the tourist flow and this is what it was like.

How I got there

I rented a room from a great family in Cairns who gave me a ride up to Cape Tribulation, I planned on going there for a week before leaving Canada about 5 months prior simply to see what is was like to actually live on a beach for a week. The roads where not bad but one thing I learned quickly about Australia is that in the outback, there aren’t any straight roads. Past Cape Tribulation is pure off-road dirt roads, south is relatively paved but still rough. After taking too many bends to count and starting to get nauseated, we finally arrived! This place, that I so feared never arriving to was finally a reality. The family stayed there for a day then we parted ways.

Survival: Shelter, Food and Fire

In any survival situation, the first priority is shelter, the elements, even in a tropical area can be extremely grueling. This wasn’t anywhere near a survival situation and I had more cans of beans and peanuts, my staple for a week, to last me easily twice that long. At night, there was a communal camp fire but after coming from a night-shift position I took temporarily, to say my hours where screwed up was an understatement. Being use to waking up at 6pm and going to bed around 8am… well, you get the idea. I went from rarely seeing sunlight to being basked in it full time! Back to the story, after checking-in, I got my tent set-up and jumped right into the waves.

The Beach!

Coming from Canada with it’s polluted waterways, Australia was amazing! I never got tired of heading to the beach every few weekends just to BE THERE. There is something extremely peaceful and yet adventurous about the beach. The beaches North and South of Cairns aren’t bad but they sure as hell aren’t a Cape Tribulation Beach! Beautiful white sand, waves full of sea urchins and jellyfish, nothing comes close! This beach was everything I imagined it would be and more. Well, I soon realized that Cape Tribulation had two tides, the first high-tide was around 11am and the second 11pm. I was also surprised by the complete lack of mosquitoes, the constant sea breeze and salt water sure did a number on them.

What to do on a remote beach?

As this wasn’t a survival situation, I had basically all day to do as I wished. About 95% of the time, I had the entire few kilometers of beach to myself, what I mean by myself is exactly that, no other humans in sight! Backpackers where busy getting over their hangovers or their sunrise mates, most people would walk on the beach then the rest of the day, disappear like I would have if I had been in such a remote place with a lover. The fact that this was the off-season just made things that much better in my opinion. At night it was freezing as I caught a fever which took the first few days to combat and during the day it was easily over 30 degrees with full humidity. I kinda wished it was rougher, this was too easy an adventure for me! I spent my days walking up and down the beach, doing some great photography and in between, going up to the coral reef that outlined the Cape Tribulation beach about 100 meters out. Laying around in the afternoons under a palm tree and taking a nap soon became a good habit of mine. The beach is really a cool place, each tide would being in some interesting creatures, one day, it was a huge lobster and another day interesting shells. Regardless, compared to the modern monotony of the cities most of us inhabit, the beach is always different!

Realizations

What do you realize when you have an entire week to just relax and think? Well, quite a bit, this isn’t a confessional but what I will say is that time “off” like this is vitally important to allow your brain to wind down the recuperate. Much like a muscle that worked very hard, a few days to recover pay huge dividends. Things that once seems unsurmountable begin to make sense, the various mental blocks that get created just dissolve away and better yet, alignments in life can be re-orientated.

Next Time…

Now that I know what it’s like to be a beach bum for a week, next time I want something with more of a survival tone to it. I would like to spend a month, yes, an entire month with nothing but a hatchet, netting and an emergency pack full of food just in case my hunting / fishing skills aren’t where they should be. I have a few tropical islands that are sufficiently remote to accomplish this goal with the timing is right in my life. I want to challenge myself, would I actually be able to live off my wit in the face of nature herself? I am confident I could but I have never tested this out and I am eager to get my feet wet. I have found during my travels that it takes about a week for the brain to realize “yes, you are really here” followed by a week of “what the heck are you doing here” then a few more weeks for the reality to be fully accepted. I have many other outdoor survival adventures I want to try as well in different areas of our vast planet, and I look forward towards turning them into a reality. This is something that every human should live through.

The Bottom Line

Life is about living it!

In the world of strongmen, the legend of Bill Kazmaier lives on due to his incredible super human strength and his ability to get a crowd hyped up as he impressed them with his raw power.

Bill Kazmaier’s early years

Bill Kazmaier was born in Burlington, Wisconsin on December 30th, 1953. He played football for the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1973 season but then left for the pursuit of powerlifting.

Bill Kazmaier’s brute strength achievements

To say that he was a powerful man is an understatement, he was known to have dumbbell curled 100 pounds 41 times in a row with one arm, curling 315 pounds 15 times and even became the first man to ever do all of MacGlashen stones! Here are more impressive numbers, he was able to do a 925 pound squat with an injury and performed a 907 pound deadlift! He also performed regularly as part of his training 900 pound triple squats and 633 pound triple bench presses! At this time, there where no bench shirts or suits that are used by many powerlifters today, this was just raw power.

A few years later, in 1979, he won both the American Powerlifting Championship and IPF (International Powerlifting Federation) championship. Bill Kazmaier’s incredible strength blew away the competition when he was the first person to ever bench press over 300kg (661 pounds) in competition and achieved an incredible career best of 1 100kg (2 425 pounds) in raw powerlifting without the use of a powerlifting shirt.

Following this success, Bill Kazmaier was invited to compete in the Worlds Strongest Man competition, which he won 3 times in a row (1980, 1981, 1982). He so much dominated the field that he wasn’t invited back until several years later where he placed a respectable 2nd (1988) and 4rd (1989). He had suffered a major pectoral tear that required him to retire away from strength based competition for a few years.

Bill Kazmaier: later in life

Bill Kazmaier later dabbed in the world of wrestling who, like Andre the Giant, could have easily torn his competitors to shreds but decided instead to play the game, never winning a championship and loosing several times. This is a testament to his ability to not take himself too seriously. He even played briefly for the Green Bay Packers and opened a gym which closed in 2005.

Bill Kazmaier Trivia

He was known for his varacious apetite, at over 300 pounds, he could eat just about anybody under the table, nowhere was this more impressive then his ability to consume a thousand goldfish in one shot in which he would simply drink out an aquarium.

Bill Kazmaier Multimedia Tribute

The Bottom Line

Bill Kazmaier was to powerlifting what Arnold Schwarzenegger was to bodybuilding, both giants in their respective fields.

Buzvia: Bill Kazmaier profile on bodybuildingdotcom and Bill Kazmaier on Wikipedia

See also: LegendaryLife Profile: Sergio “The Myth” Oliva and LegendaryLife Profile: Mariusz Pudzianowski

Even in big companies where many staff, contractors and third parties play a vital role in keeping everything moving forward, there is always, except in partnerships, that sole entrepreneur trying to make sense of everything before it blows up.

Entrepreneur = Train Engineer

Startups are like a train, usually going completely out of control, where there is but one engineer at the helm who, somehow, keeps things relatively going in one direction. This direction, the vision of the entrepreneur, is very difficult to communicate to others as usually, this deep passion or inner desire simply cannot be transplanted. Of all the entrepreneurs I call friends, they all have this solitary road that sort of links all of us together regardless of market, success or expertise. This solitary road is like a proofing ground, that must be vanquished in order to proceed further into the quest of hoped success. Things don’t always work the way originally envisioned but the proofing ground pays dividends with ever future venture that the entrepreneurs chooses to undertake. Sometimes an entrepreneur hits a land mine with the first few steps, other times, only after great investments in time and money does this happen.

Opportunity Clairvoyants

You can teach somebody how to draw, you can show somebody how to change a tire on their car but you cannot without herculean effort, teach somebody to see opportunity even where there are none. Like clairvoyants of bygone days, entrepreneurs have the instant ability to see and project a business opportunity in just about everything. Like a bodybuilder who can do one tonne squats after years of training, the muscles within the entrepreneurs mind have re-orientated themselves into vast arrays of entanae that are able to pick out and analyze data at an incredible rate. Not to say they are any better then the layman’s reasoning, it’s just that they have developed this ability at a higher level. Most of them have also developed the ability to organize their lives around their businesses and, most importantly, become expert negotiators and sales people. When your living depends on your wits, the opportunity honing devices come fast and furious!

Are entrepreneurs like Superman or Superwoman?

Hmmm… no. We entrepreneurs are like everybody else, sure, the majority of us are obsessive about the next opportunity, if you talk to us long enough over a few years, you will notice that entrepreneurs are always on the “verge” of some breakthrough or another. “Strike while the iron is hot” sounds nice but for entrepreneurs, the iron always seems to be hot! It never has time to cool down! We aren’t like Superman or Superwoman though, we get sick and go through life’s tribulations like everybody else but the scale is different depending on which swing up or down they are currently on. Entrepreneurs life can be seen as a roller coaster, one minute everything is going perfectly then, like a rock getting stuck in the chucks of a skateboarder, everything goes to hell.

Motivation comes from within

Passion or motivation comes from deep inside entrepreneurs, for some, it’s the desire for vast riches while for others it’s simply a method of seeking approval from others or proving them wrong. Regardless of where the passion comes from, it’s there in abundant quantities regardless of how a venture or business goes. It’s like that stain on a shirt that simply will not go away, the motivation to keep working on something even while it’s going downhill is insatiable.

So why is the road a solitary one?

Well, an entrepreneur is a mad scientist of sorts, they have a little organism in a petri dish that they want to see mature into a beautiful being. The hours of careful attention and spirited thought that are involved with this process make a 40 hour workweek sound like child’s play. This comes at a cost, some entrepreneurs are able to find balance but just as many get swamped into their work like a black hole sucking the light out of the universe. The hours, days, months, years FLY by but what entrepreneurs must realize is that unlike a time machine, you cannot go back and relive those lost times that are just as important as the venture itself.

The Bottom Line

Entrepreneurship is an adventure that lasts a lifetime regardless of outcomes.