When Musk and Bezos were still arguing about the space thing, a 71-year-old handsome old man who didn't know where to come out of nowhere preemptively went to the sky. A few years later, when it came to who was the first rich man in heaven, not Musk, not Bezos, but this old man named Richard, he asked the old horse, the old bet, are you angry? There is an old Chinese saying that "things are done in secret", which means that if you want to be silent in advance, you can only get things done by sneaking, and the facts have proved that the wisdom of our ancestors is high!
Of course, the one who can intercept Humask and Bezos will not be an ordinary person, this British old man can be called the British version of Musk, who has escaped from death 75 times in his life, and it is a miracle that he can survive until now and successfully go to heaven. But if you know his past experiences, you won't be surprised that at the age of 71, he is still insisting on going to heaven despite his family's objections. Even if his wife made it clear that she would not attend his funeral if he failed, even before that Virgin Galactic attempt in which the manned spacecraft SpaceShipTwo had a flight anomaly, with serious consequences of one death and one serious injury. Because this was Richard's dream when he was 17 years old, would you like to give up the dream you've pursued for nearly 60 years and now seems almost close at hand? So how did 71-year-old Richard achieve his aviation dream step by step in the past nearly 60 years? Could it be because he has some unusual background? Not!
He is neither a rich second generation nor a so-called child of someone else's family, he is a proper scumbag, he suffers from dyslexia, making it almost impossible for him to complete the learning tasks that other children can easily complete. The beautiful student years in the eyes of others are precisely the darkest moments in his life. Fortunately, his mother was not a Chinese parent, and even in England, few parents could do what Richard's mother did. Richard's successful life is due to his own enthusiasm for entrepreneurship itself, so his mother's education must also be a key factor that cannot be ignored. Richard has said publicly more than once: I am a dreamer. My mother taught me never to give up and to be brave enough to pursue.
Speaking of Richard's earliest entrepreneurial experience is a bit of a child's play now. Richard tried to plant Christmas trees for sale when he was 13 years old, planting 400 with friends. However, due to lack of experience, the Christmas tree did not get the shelter it deserved, and was eaten by hares when the Christmas tree was still a seedling, and this attempt failed! At Christmas, Richard saw the neighbor's brother receive a gift, a parrot. Richard wondered if everyone would give parrots as gifts. Richard persuaded his parents to build a large aviary, but the parrots multiplied too quickly, a cage of birds could not be sold, and the mother could not stand the daily work of taking care of the aviary, and let all the birds go, saying that the birds were eaten by rats to perfunctory Richard who was far away. At the age of 17, Richard decided to drop out of school because of his dyslexia, which was almost impossible for him to have any academic opportunities.
Instead of persuading him to return to school, his mother gave him £100 as a start-up fund to support Richard's business. Speaking of the origin of the 100 pounds is still quite interesting, once the mother went shopping to pick up a string of necklaces that looked very valuable, sent to the police station but no one claimed for a long time, the police informed him that his mother took the necklace home, and the mother sold the necklace by hand, so there was this 100 pounds. After dropping out of school, Richard did not spend all day in Internet cafes or go out to do something wrong like some Chinese children, but actively looked for a way out. With the entrepreneurial fund provided by his mother, Richard officially began his entrepreneurial journey, starting Student magazine. At that time, Richard only did one thing every day, calling the major campuses to get them to publish articles in magazines, and calling various companies to let them advertise in magazines.
In 1968, at the age of 18, Brandon published the first issue of Student magazine, with a circulation of 50,000 copies and a rapid soaring value of 50,000 pounds, and the first official business was declared a success. Then Richard started a new experiment, mail order records. As a scumbag, he first had difficulty naming the company, so he called a group of friends to help him name it. But the scum's friends are obviously mostly lacking in creativity. There wasn't a name that satisfied him. Later, a friend was anxious, and directly said that it was called "virgin"! Originally it was just an angry word, but Richard didn't expect it to be serious! He thought to himself, isn't it the first time every time he starts a business to try a new field? The name virgin is quite compatible with me, just call it "virgin"! Thus there was the later Virgin (Chinese transliterated Virgin) Aviation.
In 1971, the United Kingdom ushered in a nationwide post office strike, and Richard, who had just opened for 3 months, had no way to do business. Richard sold the magazine and used all the money from the sale to go into the physical record store. Just 5 months after opening, Richard was arrested and imprisoned for tax problems, in order to save taxes, Richard filled in all the records sold in china for export overseas, but the paper package could not hold the fire, and Richard tasted the consequences. In order to let Richard out early, his parents mortgaged the house to bail him out. In 1972, Richard took out a loan to buy a manor house in Oxfordshire and convert it into a recording studio, and began releasing his own records. Richard signed 19-year-old composer Mike Oldfield and released a pure performance record called Pipe Clock, which became a hit.
I have to say that Richard's eyes on people are really poisonous! In the UK alone, a sales myth of 3 million copies was created, and the global sales volume was as high as 20 million copies. At just 23 years old, Richard joined the ranks of the multimillionaires for the first time with this campaign! Later, Virgin Records developed into one of the world's top record labels, and well-known artists such as the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson were all stars of Virgin Records. Soon Richard began a new round of challenges, and in 1984 a lawyer named Randolph Fields called Richard to tell him about one of his entrepreneurial ideas about airlines, which was favored by Richard. Because Richard has always been dissatisfied with the services provided by existing airlines but has not seen changes. After Randolph's reminder, Richard had plans to open an airline of his own.
When all was said and done, Richard immediately asked Boeing to rent a Boeing 747. But how can only one plane compete with a big airline? But this is not difficult for Richard. Probably scared by the boredom of airline journeys in the past, Richard wondered why he couldn't have a party on the plane. So Richard invited many beautiful women to play music and various performances on the plane, richard advertised in major media to attract passengers, and because of the full sense of topic, it attracted media reports. Richard was an absolute genius in marketing, and in order to get the media attention, Richard embarked on a death challenge to ride a hot air balloon across the Atlantic. Keep in mind that at least five people have been killed in a similar challenge before.
As a multi-millionaire, dare to meet such a challenge, proper big news! Richard first approached a Swedish hot air balloon expert named Pyle Linscheon, but the expert did not seem to play the desired role in the journey, and both nearly lost their lives in the challenge, and the latter was even more embarrassed. Before the hot air balloon was about to fall, Richard changed into a life jacket and was easily rescued after falling into the sea. And Lin Sichuan did not make any preparations in advance, swam in the sea for 2 hours to be successfully rescued, it is also a big difficulty not to die, but obviously shamed his profession, it turned out that it was not only the Chinese brick family that was unreliable, the foreign brick family did not work every time! However, after this life-and-death experience, the two later became very good friends, and they also carried out many challenges together, especially the one that challenged across the Pacific Ocean together, the flight module was once on fire, but fortunately they were thrilled.
If you think that Richard is just taking risks for the sake of marketing, it is not all, marketing seems to be just a by-product, and risk-taking is what Richard loves from the bottom of his heart. Richard's Virgin Group is involved in more than 400 industries, with several subsidiaries listed, but the unexpected thing is that virgin group parent company has always been a private company, has no shareholders, and is not listed, Richard has absolute control, just to do things without more restrictions. With this strategy, it was much easier for Richard to do something. What other escapes did Richard have in his life?
In a 1972 shipwreck, Richard and his ex-wife were the only survivors because they chose to swim to shore rather than stay where they were, waiting for rescue. In 1976, Richard caused a miniature plane to take off due to misoperation, because he did not know how to fly the plane, Richard had to find a way to crash the plane into the field to force a landing to relieve the crisis, fortunately he was once again in danger. Unfortunately his coach did not have his good fortune and was unfortunately killed while flying the plane the next day. Richard had a similar escape experience 75 times in his lifetime. Now it looks like space travel isn't a fuss about Richard either.
The space trip was not a real challenge for Richard, the whole process was only more than 1 hour, of which the experience time in space was only a short 4 minutes, and there were 2 drivers and 3 passengers in the sky with him. This success has taken another step forward in the commercialization process of Virgin Galactic space travel, and I believe that more rich people will choose to go to space in the near future!
Incidentally, there was an interesting incident related to Richard's trip to space. The Simpsons cartoon is one of the most famous comedy cartoons in the United States, but the main reason why it is famous is that it is considered a cartoon with a prophetic function, and there are more than 30 coincidences that have occurred in the real life since. One of the scenes is of a white-haired old man named Richard enjoying weightlessness in a space capsule, which is exactly the same as Richard's space trip in reality. And this plot is from the 25th season 15 of "The Simpsons" in 2014, which is 8 years earlier than Richard's Virgin Galactic Space Trip, and also casts a mysterious color on Richard's space trip!
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