As I was driving to my cousin’s baby luau this afternoon, I was listening to ESPN Radio as I often do.

Legendary Washington Redskins cornerback Darrell Green was giving his NFL Hall of Fame induction speech. He had a number of former friends, family, coaches and players to thank, and he briefly talked about his path from junior high through the NFL.

But it was the last thing he said that struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it all day.

Green’s very last statement — as he stood upon the pinnacle stage that ALL football players aspire for — was this:

“At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I belong here.

I belong here because I know what to do with this. With God’s fame… with God’s visibility… with God’s success.”

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Posted on Sunday, 3rd August 2008 in Business, Faith | Comments (0)

Startled?

Don’t worry… this isn’t going to be any sort of scandalous, adults-only blog post! I just wanted to share a few recent lessons learned from the billionaire mastermind of the Virgin Group and the world’s greatest entrepreneur: Sir Richard Branson.

I just finished his autobiography, which shares the title of this post. It was a gift from a great friend & CEO of RealEstateInvestor.com, Colin Egbert.

While Branson’s early sexual promiscuity (he actually “wife-swapped” with his friend for a weekend) and his failure to recognize God as God certainly temper my respect, you can’t help but admire the way he did business.

Here are 8 notes I scribbled as I read the story of his success from 1950-2001…

1. A huge key to Branson’s success was his ability to leverage debt and protect his downside. For many years, the Virgin Group consistently overdrafted millions of dollars to finance their ventures. Why were banks willing to do this? Because of Branson’s uncanny sense of choosing the RIGHT ventures and his track record of success. Each of these ventures involved tremendous risk, but Branson was never without an awareness of where the risks were and rarely without a contingency plan.

2. He never shied away from competition. In fact, he seemed to thrive off of it. He entered the airline industry with a single plane when British Airways was dominating UK market share and eliminating smaller competitors left & right. He launched Virgin Cola, knowing that Coke and Pepsi held 70%+ of worldwide market share but seeing small weaknesses that he could exploit.

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Posted on Sunday, 27th July 2008 in Books, Business, Life, Marketing, Real Estate | Comments (1)