Someone with more than 400 companies under their belt, billions of dollars and a knighthood is bound to have made some good decisions in their time. Luckily for the rest of us, entrepreneur Richard Branson has shared his tips for making business decisions, to help out anyone who’s trying to get where he’s at now.
The post on the Virgin blog goes through five steps Branson uses in his decision-making, which are:
- Don’t judge a book by its cover
- Do your homework
- Avoid making decisions in isolation
- Do everything you can to protect the downside
- Give it time
Most are pretty straightforward, but how they relate to a business context is pretty interesting — especially for people who are looking at launching new ventures. On ‘protecting the downside’, for example, Branson elaborates with an anecdote from the early days of Virgin Atlantic: “When we started Virgin Atlantic, the only way I got my business partners in Virgin Records to begrudgingly accept the risks involved was by getting Boeing to agree to take back our one 747 after a year if things weren’t working out as we hoped.”
Most of the process stresses taking it slowly and carefully, however — not rushing into a new venture just because it sounds amazing, or not considering the impact it might have on other projects.
For more of Branson’s wise words, check out the post over on the Virgin blog.
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