Sir Richard Branson’s phenomenal success can only be described as meteoric. From humble beginnings when he dropped out of high school, young Branson followed his passion. His love of music led him to buy music by mail order. He sold vinyl records through written classified ads.

The success of this simple business model as an entrepreneur inevitably realized that owning his own production label was where the money was and Virgin Records was born. It produced many artists, including Mike Oldfield’s haunting classic hit Tubular Bells. Of course, beyond this, he went on to buy his own damn airline!

Branson as an entrepreneur is a fascinating case study. This article is more about his framework and business movements than about the man himself. Branson has the uncanny ability to empathize with a target audience. If you were to ask Branson himself, I’m sure he’d have to admit that that’s where he drives out most of his business concentration. Your ability to put yourself in the shoes of an entire demographic and “see” what they want the most is the secret weapon in this arsenal of monsters.

My own observation is that Branson learned this skill very early. His first business success was direct marketing. (your record business) Direct marketing is a very scientific business model in which you create advertising and closely monitor your audience’s reaction, then fine-tune your advertising and refine it to ever-higher levels of response.

This approach from Bransons kept him in good stead throughout his business career. He learned that valuable lesson in business empathy very early in his business career and has applied it to everything he’s done since. There is much that novice entrepreneurs can learn from studying Branson, but the great lesson to be learned from his career is business empathy and understanding the lowest common denominator needs of an entire demographic market.