Sir Richard Branson takes stage at GEC2012
Branson offered words of wisdom to budding entrepreneurs at this year's Global Entrepreneurship Congress...
Whilst enforcing the idea that cashflow is the be-all and end-all of business, Sir Richard Branson stated that "Entrepreneurs are always worrying about where to get the money to start a business – we never had any money."
So how did he get around this conundrum? "We had to come up with ways of getting the money up front for all the businesses. With the magazine, that meant selling advertising before we printed anything. With the record shops, we started a mail order company, flyering outside concert halls, then we’d go to other record shops and negotiate deals to actually get the stock and hope that we made a profit."
He concluded, "Cashflow is everything, but sometimes you have to be imaginative to get it going."
The second lesson from Branson was to learn to delegate: "The most important thing when building a business is the art of delegation. Get people to do your job. By the time I was 19-20years sold, I already found people to run whatever business I’d built up which let me think about the next business. You have to be brave and step aside as often as you can."
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