Sir Richard Branson

Finished reading "Losing my virginity" the autobiography of Sir Richard Branson. WOW!!

Once you start reading the book you find it very difficult to put down, it's always very exciting, funny and very much out-of the box.

To sum it up, he was a normal boy performing quite badly at school, and looking for ways to make money and to improve things. Starting from scratch, he is now the owner of the Virgin group of companies which has over 200 companies under its wing. From Virgin airlines, Virgin rail, Virgin mobile, Virgin Vie (cosmetics) down to Virgin Cola (at present he's supposed to be working on "Virgin Galactic" - space travel !?!) . "Virgin" is considered to be the strongest brand name in use.

His approach to both business and life is very bold. His attempts to fly around the world in a balloon and cross the Atlantic in a speed boat etc. earned him a personality of his own.

The book is fun as fun can be, with a lot of business pranks and challenges to overcome. This is one book that I would recommend to anyone, whether you are business minded or not, it doesn't matter, it's all about guts and glory! Nothing much technical, no it doesn't talk much about balance sheets, the financial accounts and the technical stuff. As he himself mentions in the introduction, "Some people say that my vision for Virgin breaks all the rules and is too widely kaleidescopic; others say that Virgin is set to become one of the leading brand names of the next century; others analyse it down to the last degree and then write academic papers on it. As for me, I just pick up the phone and get on with it".