September 24, 2007

A short list of Richard Branson’s business ventures.

Richard Branson, according to his article in Wikipedia, heads a list of over 200 companies.

When I lived in England for a few months with my family in 99 I was staggered by the amount of businesses he had going. I was also excited about what this meant to Australia, which was just beginning to be touched by the Virgin mega brand.

Australia currently has several Virgin businesses operating including a mobile phone service, credit card operations, music stores, and an airline. All four have been successful in their own way.

Something incredible about Branson’s success (and that of many other billionaires) is that there’s no massive idea. There’s no incredible invention or stroke of genius. He’s just had the habit of going into industries dominated by lazy corporations and breaking the market open. (It’s said that when he goes into a city, he looks at the logos on the skyline and takes on those companies. If Melbourne is any example, this is true to an extent.)

Yeh, Branson is a pie-in-the-sky example. But think about how many car dealerships, takeaway restaurants, real estate agencies or hotels are making cash all around the place. They were an original idea, once - 50 or 100 years ago. They aren’t any more but smart people are still making millions from the concepts.

It’s an encouraging thought.

Thanks David, Markk and The Paper Bull for previous comments.

No, it’s not a coffin.

It’s a stainless steel tool box:

CarGuyGarage have a ridiculous amount of products related to the garage. This is good though - rather than dabbling in few categories they have gone all out to slaughter a particular niche. This is the way internet business is done, people.

But regarding the toolboxes you’d have to be some sort of hard core professional to want to spend upwards of $1000 on a box. They look nice as far as toolboxes go, definitely. I wouldn’t dispute that.

It’s a bit rich of me to question something that is run so professionally though. If you need a nice BIG toolbox these are your men.

Mechanics who take pride in their work could well lap this kind of thing up. You can imagine the ‘pimpin their boxes’ so to speak. Good luck to them.

Sponsored

My head is sprouting.

You read that correctly. It’s sprouting. And I’m a little bit worried. The thing that’s sprouting is gray hairs. So what - that’s normal, I hear you cry! Normal?! I’m only 22 and I get quite a few comments already!

The comment about my grays is inevitably followed by the statement : “at least you’re not going bald.”

That’s why I feel sorry for the two or three friends my age who are already showing serious signs of thinning on top. When you know a bald man, you’re used to it. But when you’re watching a friend’s hairline recede… man, you feel their pain.

So it was inevitable that someone was going to put a website together reviewing hair loss products.

I’ve seen this one around on other blogs and it’s really quite a good idea.

Trust Source has put together a guide of hair loss product reviews for treatments such as procerin and
provillus.

It’s only new at this stage but hopefully it grows. It’s a similar system to Amazon, where you review the product and other people say whether the review was helpful or not.

The site has a nice-ish design. The header severely lets it down though. Everything below the header down is fantastic.

The reviews are informative. I would probably go with Provillus based on what I read… were my hair going bald. (Readers, if your head is going bald, seriously, check this out.)