GO WHERE OPPORTUNITY POINTS YOU

RICHARD BRANSON founder, Virgin Group, and author, Finding My Virginity

When I began, I didn’t know anything about business. I was excited about starting Student magazine, and then we had the idea to use the publication to sell music, too. I didn’t create a formal business plan. That seemed really boring to me. I just thought about the high cost of records and the sort of people who bought Student; we believed we could sell cheap mail-order records through the magazine. We made enough money from mail-order to open a record shop.

In 1971, music retailing in the U.K. was dominated by WHSmith and John Menzies, which were both dull and formal. We decided Virgin Record shops would be where people could meet and listen to records together. We wanted to relate to customers, not patronize them, and we wanted to be more affordable than our competition. Word of mouth spread, and people came to us rather than the big record stores. Cheaper records brought in a flood of inquiries and more cash than we’d ever seen. Virgin Records became very hip. People would stop by, lie on beanbags, meet friends, and listen to the best new music. There was no better place for a self-respecting 21-year-old to be. We aimed to open a shop every month in 1972.

We soon realized the industry was ripe for further disruption. There was nothing overtly rock ’n’ roll about the way artists were treated or records were produced. So we bought a property, the Manor, turned it into a recording studio, and launched our Virgin Records label in 1973. Mike Oldfield was our first artist. His album Tubular

Bells became one of the biggest sellers of the decade and the soundtrack to

The Exorcist. The Virgin brand and its global impact today all grew from those roots. —As told to S.M.