Career Curveballs: Embrace Change or Become 04-26

Career Curveballs: Embrace Change or Become 

This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share how they turned setbacks into success. .

If you are running a successful company, one of the most terrifying things you can ask your business partners is: “What do you think about starting an airline?” When your successful company features The Sex Pistols, The Rolling Stones and Culture Club, the idea of going into aviation sounds even more shocking.

To be a real entrepreneur you always have to be looking forward. The moment you rest on your laurels is the moment your competition overtakes you. Out of frustration at poor service and cancelled flights, I ended up chartering the first Virgin flight. It was only natural that out of that frustration – and subsequent fun and excitement! – I began seriously considering the idea of a whole airline.

However, to my colleagues at Virgin Records who lived and breathed music 24 hours a day, aviation was completely alien. While I was no expert, I could see how having an airline would expand the brand, create jobs and provide new adventure and opportunities. Nevertheless, when I told my partner Simon “I’ve got a proposal here,” it should have been no surprise when he called me mad. “For God’s sake!” he shouted. “You’re crazy. Come off it.” Still, entrepreneurs have to take calculated risks. After protecting the downside by keeping the two companies separate, and agreeing a deal with Boeing, whereby we could hand the plane back after 12 months if the airline wasn’t working out, we started Virgin Atlantic.

I’ve often joked about the best way to become a millionaire – start out as a billionaire and launch an airline! While moving from the music industry withVirgin Records to aviation with Virgin Atlantic was a huge career curveball for me personally, it was an even bigger jump for the rest of Virgin, not to mention my friends and family. We went from taking on rival labels in the charts and in the clubs to challenging global airlines in the air – and eventually in the courts!

Despite being independent companies, Records and Atlantic were intrinsically linked (a model that has worked well across the Virgin Group ever since). However, when British Airways’ Dirty Tricks campaign put a huge strain on the future of Virgin Atlantic, we had to make the decision to sell Virgin Records in order to give the airline the financial muscle to compete. It was the right decision, but an incredibly tough curveball moment. I found myself running down Ladbroke Grove in London with tears streaming down my face and a $1 billion cheque in my pocket.

Companies are simply groups of people working together to make a difference – so by selling a company it feels like you are losing a part of your family. It certainly felt like that for me, and for all of the Virgin Records team. However, decades on, Virgin Atlantic has been joined by Virgin America and Virgin Australia (not to mention Virgin Galactic) in the skies, and Virgin Records celebrated its 40th anniversary last year with a new generation of disruptive artists flying up the charts, from Emeli Sandé to Bastille.

If we hadn’t embraced change, we would have become stagnant – and you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.

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Class of 2013 collection of top commencement speeches 05-28

Oprah Winfrey's Commencement speech at Harvard to the Class of 2013

Class of 2013: You'll Never Again Be so Unburdened; Do Something Bold

Sir Richard Branson Founder at Virgin Group

Class of 2013: The Advantages of an Accent

Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief at The Huffington Post Media Group

Class of 2013: The Top 10 Lessons You'll Need

Guy Kawasaki, Advisor at Motorola Mobility

Class of 2013: Question Authority

Charlene Li, Founder Partner at Altimeter Group

Class of 2013: So, You Want To Start a Company?

Michael Fertik, CEO at Reputation.com and Owner, Reputation.com

Class of 2013: The Power of the Pause

Maria Shriver, Author, Journalist & Activist at Maria Shriver

Class of 2013: Understand Your Greatest Asset, Then Every Day Can Be...

Michael Skok, General Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners

Class of 2013: 3 Myths About Changing the World

Wendy Kopp, CEO & Co-Founder, Teach For All / Founder & Chair, Teach For America

Class of 2013: Sleeping Through an Exam Was My Key to Success

Emily Chang, Host of "Bloomberg West"

Class of 2013: Here's What I'd Give Up to be You

T. Boone Pickens, Founder, Chairman and CEO at BP Capital and TBP Investments Management

What Successful People Aren't Telling You

Adam Lashinsky, Sr. Editor at Large, Fortune Magazine

Class of 2013: Being a Nerd Has Brought Me Success

Craig Newmark, Founder at craig connects

Class of 2013: Ignore Your Commencement Address

Jon Steinberg, President and Chief Operating Officer at BuzzFeed

Class of 2013: You'll Never Again Be so Unburdened; Do Something Bold 05-28

Class of 2013: You'll Never Again Be so Unburdened; Do Something Bold

The best advice I could give any graduate is to spend your time working on whatever you are passionate about in life. If your degree was focused upon one particular area, don't let that stop you moving in another direction. If college hasn't worked out for you, don't let that put you off. Virgin's expansion into so many different areas is borne out of my insatiable curiosity to enjoy new experiences and pursue fresh challenges.

You may decide to take a break and consider your options. I would urge you to travel, take on new experiences and draw upon those when it comes to making the decisions that will shape your future. The amount of business ideas that people pick up from travelling the world is enormous. If you don't want to reinvent the wheel, you may find a business that works in another market that could be adapted for your own. Gap years don't only have to happen before you go to college. Actually, a good option is to travel instead of going to university. You can work and still have a lot of fun along the way: you won't create as much debt, you'll learn an awful lot and may come back with some great ideas. 

Equally, if you spot an opportunity early on and are really excited by it, throw yourself into it with everything you have got. Be ambitious. There probably won't be another time in your life when you have such freedom of opportunity. Grasp it with both hands. If you can't find an opening that fits what you want to do, why not try to create one yourself? We always enter markets where the leaders are not doing a great job, so we can go in and disrupt them by offering better quality services. Until this week I had never had a boss in my entire life. I lasted about five hours before Tony Fernandes sacked me, after throwing a tray of drinks over him while working as a stewardess on a flight! (It was all for a bet to raise money for charity, so I wasn't too upset.)

My own transition from education to a working life was pretty straightforward. I started Student Magazine at school and was spending an increasingly large amount of time working on getting it off the ground. The headmaster gave me an ultimatum: he said if I wanted to carry on with Student, I had to stop being a student. So I left to start my adventures in business. Being dyslexic, I never excelled in the classroom and entrepreneurship wasn't encouraged. I didn't even know what I was doing was called entrepreneurship until somebody told me!

However, education is absolutely crucial to success and to the progress of the world at large. As Nelson Mandela said:

Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world."

But education doesn't take place in stuffy classrooms and university buildings, it can happen everywhere, every day to every person. I was on a panel at a University in Australia recently and it turned out the only one of us onstage who had graduated was the Dean himself!
I have been offered to do graduation speeches over the years and did accept an honorary Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University. It was strange at the time, but now we have Virgin Galactic perhaps it's not so strange! I was chuffed to receive it, having left school at 15. It was a hell of a lot easier than going through university to get it! If you are graduating, congratulations and good luck for your future. Every graduate - scratch that - every person has the chance to reach for the stars in their chosen field.

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Big Brands Are Missing the 'Social' in Social Media 05-27

Big Brands Are Missing the 'Social' in Social Media

A recent report from Forrester Research (FORR) found that a third of U.S. marketers surveyed were dissatisfied with their social marketing results. Meanwhile, only 38 percent of those surveyed targeted their fans on social networks, and just 38 percent targeted friends of fans.

You would think those results would give marketers pause. Forrester also reports, however, that U.S. marketers are pouring more than $2 billion annually into social media—including ads and promoted content—to try to reach the 1 billion-plus social media users.

What many big social media advertisers have failed to grasp is the “social” component of social media. To date, many brands have focused on individuals rather than relationships among individuals and the economic power of those relationships. Who is most likely to influence their friends? Who is most likely to share with friends? Who is most likely to buy or take some other action?Those are vital questions to address to truly unlock the social value of an audience.

That effort starts with a brand redesigning its digital advertising so individuals are encouraged to engage their social networks on the brand’s behalf. If the campaign is paired with the proper analytics, a brand gains visibility into how its offer is playing out among friends and their followers and among brand “likers” vs. “non-likers.” It can understand who is influencing whom to take action.

Many major brands today, however, are not taking full advantage of their social advertising opportunities. For instance, Target’s (TGT) current “Give with Friends” campaign on Facebook (FB) lets consumers choose an e-gift card design, invite friends to contribute, then give a gift together with them. By simply leveraging paid media in tandem with the social activation, Target would be able to have more of its audience do the selling for them and reach a new audience in the process.

In March, Virgin America unveiled a promotion to mark the launch of its nonstop flight service from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Newark, N.J. The “Fly Like a Boss” campaign offered an engaging social media contest on Twitter and Facebook with attractive goodies, including the chance to score a ticket to the launch and attend aGoogle+ (GOOG) hangout onboard with Virgin Group Chief Executive Officer Richard Branson and Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore. While the campaign was a winner, it missed an opportunity to encourage people to refer the offer to friends. Were social analytics tied to automated advertising efforts, Virgin could have identified key buyers, sharers, and influencers—and consumers like them—based on their social actions to further improve future promotions.

If you’re someone like Buzzfeed, with content that is so darn cute, timely, or jarring that it becomes infectiously viral right away, it’s not as critical to deliver a social experience that combines gaming with a shareable reward. Content consumption and sharing will do the heavy lifting of delivering that new audience, and the offer can be a tasteful companion.

But for most brands, unconnected tactics in social media aren’t going to gain traction with people who are there to hang out and share cool stuff with their friends and family. Instead, brands need to create the architecture that ignites the “social” in social media if they are truly going to thrive.

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