Branson didn’t happen upon a perfectly suited business; he made his business suit him.
Marcus Buckimgham, CEO, keynote speaker and best-selling author says, “Successful entrepreneurs are different to the majority of people because they have a keen sense of getting the best return on investments. They know that in order to make money, strengths are the greatest areas for growth and weaknesses are mitigated as far as possible.” This applies in business and personally.
Why is this different to everybody else? Because Buckingham says that we are conditioned into believing that weaknesses are areas for improvement and therefore spend too much energy and effort trying to improve them instead of continuing to improve areas of strength.
Great entrepreneurs are not hung up on failure either. They ride the rollercoaster and take the downs as opportunities to learn for future success. “Steve Jobs failed spectacularly with NeXT but he understood the mistake. He learned to own every part of the process. He then went on to Apple with deeper understanding.”
Finally, entrepreneur greats like Branson, Jobs and Gates tailored their businesses to suit their strengths to a tee, not the other way around. Apple and Microsoft both operate in the computer industry, but what differentiates them is that the company strengths stem from the strengths of their founders, Jobs and Gates.
By identifying their specific strengths (rather than generic strengths of ‘good with IT’, for example) they both developed globally successful companies.