A Quote by Richard Branson
I've never gone into business to make money. Every Virgin product and service has been made into a reality to make a positive difference in people's lives. And by focusing on the happiness of our customers, we have been able to build a successful group of companies.
Related Quotes
I see "demand creation" as a 20th-century construct that's bound up with advertising. It's an outmoded view of marketing that says, "First, we build a product or service, then we advertise it into people's lives." Embedded this view is the belief that companies control brands. This is a myth. My message all along has been that brands are actually created by customers, not companies. Companies only provide the raw materials - the products, messaging, behaviors - that people use these to create brands.
We [Virgin Group] have been successful not by wasting time scrutinising our competitors but by looking at ourselves from the point of view of our customers do and seeking feedback through listening.
To me it seems pretty obvious that it would be simple to build a business around helping people achieve autonomy, a feeling of competence and relatedness. In fact, every web company that has been successful thusfar has their business build solidly on one or all of these. And I believe that as people discover that these things are within their reach, they will gravitate more and more towards companies that offer tools to helping them achieve happiness.
Never compromise on hiring the best talent. Build value, not valuation. We have never used tactics like giving discounts, cashback to make customers use our product. This way no one can create a sustainable business.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire ... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
I want you to say to me right from the start, "We are here to serve customers. We're not here for me to make a lot of money. We're not here to bet on interest rates or credit spreads. We are here to serve our customers really well over a long period of time, and that's how you build a successful business." And so I want to see that, too, you know?
Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macs and so forth. And so we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried.
Having been in the restaurant business, our job in the restaurant business is to be responsible for our customers' happiness. It's the nature of the hospitality business. You need to take care of people. You take care of customers above all others. Customers are your lifeblood.
Service Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.
The only reason I was able to accomplish things is the great people willing to work with me. A company is a group of people organized to create a product or service, and that product or service is only as good as the people in the company - and how excited they are about creating it. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. Without them, I would have accomplished very little. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
Good people have always been at the heart of the Virgin business, and that's largely because we have tried to keep our business small, and our management teams tight-knit. I feel that small, compact companies, are better run. That is partly because people feel more connected in small companies.
Companies can add value and simultaneously promote themselves if their product or service truly improves the lives of their customers. I mean really improve lives, not wishful thinking, rationalization. That's the acid test.
When the functionality of a product or service overshoots what customers can use, it changes the way companies have to compete. When the product isn't yet good enough, the way you compete is by making better products. In order to make better products, the architecture of the product has to be interdependent and proprietary in character.
Major brands don't know what to do with happy customers. They make it hard for customers to say thanks and way too often companies don't celebrate and embrace customers' positive gestures.
We want to build things that encourage creativity and exploration. We're working to build a company focused on sustainable, creative and fulfilling game development. It's aimed at making a positive difference in our lives, as well as the lives of our people.
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