Virgin: Richard Branson

Richard Branson took a record shop and built it into a label, a bank, an airline, space tourism, and 200 other businesses — all under the name Virgin. But the serial entrepreneur has also had his share of failures. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  You know, I find the bank manager sitting on my doorstep. And stupidly, I invited him into the house. And he tells me that he's going to close the whole Virgin Group down on the Monday. And I don't normally get angry, but I just literally stood up and pushed him out of my house and told him he wasn't ever welcome there again, which was not maybe the best thing to do to your bank manager.

• 0:35Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, the story of how Richard Branson took a record shop and built it into an airline, a bank, space tourism, a cola, and more than 200 other businesses, all under the name Virgin.

• 1:02Guy Raz?

  When a lot of people think of the word mogul, I suspect many of them would put Richard Branson at or near the top of that list. His company, Virgin, is practically everywhere: banks, phones, cruises, trains, planes, spaceships. But the thing about Richard Branson is that he's also failed, and failed pretty badly, at a lot of the businesses he started. And today on the show, we're going to talk a lot about those failures. But let's start with Richard Branson as a teenager, a high school dropout who decided to start a magazine.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Well, I started when I was 15. And that was 50 years ago. And in those days, the word entrepreneur didn't exist. And I don't think I would have been that interested in being an entrepreneur. What I wanted to do was start a magazine to campaign against the Vietnamese war and have a voice for young people. So I left school to run the magazine.

• 1:57Guy Raz?

  I mean, you launched this magazine. It's called Student Magazine, right?

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01Guy Raz?

  And how did you even know how to typeset a magazine and publish it? And like, how did you even know how to do that?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  The best way of running a business is just to throw yourself in the deep end and learn all those things and ask lots of questions and listen, listen, listen. And that's what I did. I mean, I was young, enthusiastic. People were very willing to help. And I managed to attract, you know, a lot of people who believed in the idea, in the quest. And I was a quick learner, but I had to be.

• 2:33Guy Raz?

  What was the magazine like? What kind of articles did it run? And, you know, who would buy it?

• 2:37Speaker 00

  It had a circulation, which is quite big in England, of over 100,000 copies an issue. It was actually a glossy, you know, a glossy magazine so that, you know, people didn't think that it was just a magazine for students. And we got all the best cartoonists to work for it. We got, you know, some of the best photographers in the world. You know, we had celebrities like Vanessa Redgrave and Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Luc Carrie Wright.

• 3:04Guy Raz?

  How did you get these people when you were like 16 or 17 years old?

• 3:08Speaker 00

  I suspect that I didn't know failure. So the idea that somebody would say no is something which I couldn't, wouldn't have been able to understand. You know, I remember James Baldwin was visiting London and I found out which hotel he was in. I turned up at the hotel. In those days, the tape recorders were three foot by three foot. So I was lugging this massive tape recorder with real tapes. And somehow, I think he took pity on me. You know, I think it helped me being 16 and young and invited me in and, you know, had one of the best interviews of my life.

• 3:43Guy Raz?

  So you were running this magazine. You were dyslexic. You are dyslexic. So you already had like some trouble with sort of making out words. Like, how did you, how did you do that?

• 3:53Speaker 00

  I interviewed eloquent people. So I would make a point of only interviewing people who spoke well. So I could then transcribe their words, word for word. And my editor of the magazine, I said, We're not the kind of magazine that's going to embellish what people write. We're just going to give you it word for word. And that got over my problems of dyslexia.

• 4:16Guy Raz?

  And was it, was it making money? Was it profitable? Were you like?

• 4:20Speaker 00

  It was surviving, basically. We only brought out the edition when we had enough advertising to pay for the printing and the paper costs. We didn't have any financial backing at all. So I would, you know, ring up Coke and tell them that Pepsi was advertising and then maybe get Coke and then ring up Pepsi and try and tell them that Coke was advertising. So we did everything we could just to, you know, get enough advertising to get the magazine out. But the magazine became a vehicle for other things. So, I mean, through the magazine, I ended up setting up an advisory centre for young people. You know, young people would contact the magazine with all sorts of problems. I mean, loneliness, suicidal, psychiatric, venereal disease, pregnancy issues and so on.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  So we set up a centre that was, okay, free help and advice to young people.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  And then one day, I just threw in a little advert saying, Virgin Records, 10 to 60% off any album on any label, and got a big response. Nobody had ever sold music at a cheaper price than the normal retail price, and it was the start of Virgin.

• 5:26Guy Raz?

  Virgin Records?

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:31Guy Raz?

  So you put these ads in saying, we'll sell you records for a discounted rate, but how did you get the, how did you get the records? How were you actually able to buy them?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Well, the record, the record, they're a good question. The record companies wouldn't supply us the records because we didn't have the credit. So we'd get, we'd advertise, we'd get people's money, and then we'd go to a local record shop and we'd bargain. You know, we'd say, look, you know, we can give you, you know, 3,000 orders now. And in the end, it became so successful that we had articulated lorries coming up behind this tiny little record shop in Nottingham Gate. And then they would be taking them off the lorries through the shop, you know, through the shop into our vehicles the other side. And, and in the end, the record industry decided that they better deal with us directly and, and stop the charade.

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  So Virgin Records began as one record shop, right?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yes, I mean, we only opened a record shop when the post office went on strike for two months and our mail order company then looked in peril. So we then went above a shoe shop in Oxford Street and found an empty space and threw some records and pillows on the floor and headphones. And we had a queue about half a mile long of people going through the shoe shop, up our little windy stairs, and it became a very hip thing in the 70s for people to do.

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  And I guess this was around the time when you stumbled across a kind of a shady scheme?

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Well, I stumbled across it by mistake. We had an order of records from Belgium, which we'd never had before. And so we filled up our van and we drove to Belgium. But on the way there, going through France, they said, have you got a Carne? And we had no idea what a Carne was. I was 18, 19 years old. And they said, that's a piece of paper to prove that you're going to leave them, where you say you're going to leave them. And so they sent us back to England, but we still had the records in the boot of our car.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  And we got a 35% reduction because the English taxman thought that we'd exported them.

• 7:38Guy Raz?

  Which meant that you could sell your records at a lower price?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so if you export records, you don't have to pay the 35% tax. So naughtily, we sold them in England. And anyway, I got caught and a number of other record shops were doing the same thing. We got a rap on our back of our hand. And it has taught me in life that sleeping well at night is a good idea.

• 8:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right. So how did you go from being a record store shop to turning it into a label?

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Well, one day, somebody played me a tape, which I loved. And we didn't have a record company, so I took it to seven record companies. Nobody would put it out. And so I thought, screw it, let's do it. Let's start our own record company.

• 8:22Guy Raz?

  Let's record this album and distribute it?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. And let's see if we can get some traction with it. And the album, it was a 15-year-old who'd laired over all these beautiful instruments and no words at all. So that's why record companies thought this could not possibly sell.

• 8:39Guy Raz?

  This record was?

• 8:41Speaker 00

  It was Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

• 8:45Guy Raz?

  Which sold like millions of copies, right?

• 8:47Speaker 00

  It sold millions of copies and we also managed to get the footage into The Exorcist, which was completely the opposite, I think, the style of the music.

• 8:57Guy Raz?

  Right, of course, it's in The Exorcist, of course, yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Right, so that helped break it into number one in America as well.

• 9:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  But, I mean, it wasn't an immediate hit, you know, like Mike was a very shy retiring person, he wouldn't do interviews, which is not easy when you've got an artist. And on the way to the first concert that, well, the only concert he'd agreed to do, where we'd pulled together Stevie Winwood from Traffic and Mick Taylor from Rolling Stones and a lot of other great artists to play with him. On the way there, he just said, "Look, Richard, I can't go through with it. I can't go on stage and face people." And I was driving an old beaten up car that I'd been given for my wedding. And so I pulled in and said, "Look, Mike, I know you can't psychologically make it, but if I was to give you the keys to this car, do you think you could overcome your psychological fears?"

• 9:50Speaker 00

  And he paused for a second and said, "I think, I think I might be able to appear after all." So, so I lost the car, but that concert was very instrumental in his success.

• 10:06Guy Raz?

  You were like 22, 23 at the time, I guess.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:10Guy Raz?

  You had dropped out of high school. How did you, how did you have the confidence to like just do this, to start a record label? I mean, you didn't know anything about record labels. Was it just that you were young and you figured, you know, what the hell?

• 10:25Speaker 00

  If you can run one business, you can run any business. You know, people say, you know, how can somebody from the record business go into the airline business or how can somebody from, you know, and so on. I mean, a business... Is an idea that's going to make other people's lives better. That's all the business is. And if you've got such an idea, then find people who can help you turn that idea into a reality. You know, find people who've got experience in that sector. Find people who don't have experience in that sector who can come and, you know, bring fresh ideas and shake up a particular sector and have a lot of fun at it. And that's been my philosophy.

• 11:02Guy Raz?

  But I mean, that hasn't worked out for you every time, right? Because even with things like Virgin Airlines, it wasn't just an easy launch from the start.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. What actually happened was Boeing sent us a 747 and we didn't get the insurance until we'd got our air operator's certificate. And on our very, very, very first test flight, a flock of birds went into one of the engines, which meant that it was going to cost us about $700,000 to fix overnight. And it was that $700,000 that pushed us over our limit. The bank that, you know, gave us our overdraft facility.

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  Basically, it's like a line of credit, right?

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, I come back and find the bank manager sitting on my doorstep and stupidly I invited him into the house and he tells me that we've gone slightly over our overdraft facility and that he's going to close the whole Virgin Group down on the Monday. And I don't normally get angry, but I just literally stood up and pushed him out of my house and told him he wasn't ever welcome there again, which is not maybe the best thing to do to your bank manager.

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  So what happened?

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Over the weekend, we rang all our various record companies around the world and we scraped together the money. And by Monday, we'd got our overdraft facility down. And then, interestingly, by the Friday, we'd found another bank that, instead of giving us a three million pound overdraft facility, would give us a 30 million pound overdraft facility based on the same set of figures. You know, sometimes I think people get too wedded to, you know, the doctor they know or the accountant they know or the bank they know. And it's important to be willing to test the water with, you know, with the competition as much as possible, I think.

• 12:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you had to, I mean, to keep the airline going, you had to make a decision about the record company, right?

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, British Airways quite quickly launched a what became famously known as the Dirty Tricks Campaign. So we had about four planes flying and they went to extraordinary lengths to put us out of business. They had a team of people illegally accessing our computer information and ringing up our passengers and pretending that they were from Virgin, telling them that flights were cancelled and switching them on to BA. They had people going through my rubbish bins and trying to find incriminating stuff. They had people, you know, going to our clubs and going through the rubbish bins outside our clubs and looking for needles so they could then leak stories to the scurrilous press about drugs in the clubs and so on. And in the end, we took them to court.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  We won the biggest damages in UK history. And it was Christmas time. It became known as the BA Christmas Bonus. We distributed it to all our staff equally and we actually rather hope that BA will do this again every Christmas. But anyway, we realised then that we needed the far part to deal with BA. In order to keep all the jobs protected at Virgin Records and at the airline, I needed to sell something. And so, very sadly, we sold Virgin Records. We got a billion dollars for it, so it would make sure that we kept BA honest. But I hate selling things because basically a company is a group of people and it was a very mixed feelings day. I read that you cried when you signed the contract.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  I ended up talking to our staff and then running back to my house down Labbrooke Grove and I had, literally, I did have tears streaming down my face. And then I ran past a sign that said Branson sells for a billion and I thought, I hope no photographer is going to catch me running past a sign with tears streaming down my face. It looked very, very strange. Is that a hard decision to make, to fold things, or do you feel like? No, it is a very hard decision, but it's a necessary decision in order to protect everything else you have on occasions. You know, we've now got 80,000 people who work for Virgin. And, you know, their livelihoods, their jobs, their children, everything depends on that.

• 15:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  And so sometimes you have to make tough decisions along the way.

• 15:19Guy Raz?

  So just out of curiosity, would you, if you had to fly on British Airways today, would you do it?

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Yes, I mean, you know, I would jokingly maybe put a basket over my head or something. But I might get, I might get the neighbor next door to taste the food first.

• 15:38Guy Raz?

  And just a minute, why Richard Branson put on a wedding dress and why he decided to take it off. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 16:03Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So two years after he sells Virgin Records, Richard Branson decides to take on two of the biggest brands in the world. Let's talk about Virgin Cola. OK, what was the, what was the thinking behind, this is 94, what was the thinking behind launching Virgin Cola?

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Somebody turned up at my office one day and said, I want to do a blind test with you. And they gave me three drinks to drink. And they said, all right, which one do you like the best? And I took my blindfold off and I pointed to the one that I liked the best. And, and it wasn't Coke and it wasn't Pepsi. It happened to be this other one. And so we then did the same test at our kid's school and the same thing turned out overwhelmingly. The kids loved the one that wasn't Coke and wasn't Pepsi. So we decided to launch Virgin Cola.

• 16:51Guy Raz?

  Which is based on that test at that kid's school?

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  So it exploded in England.

• 16:58Guy Raz?

  Like right off the bat?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Right off the bat. I mean, it became, you know, like the headline of the biggest newspaper in England, you know, I mean, it's Virgin Cola. I mean, the British loved it.

• 17:06Guy Raz?

  Was there like some national pride involved too?

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, here's somebody taking on the biggest company in the world, which, you know, foolish, foolish person. But we had some big smiles on some days thinking, you know, Coke is the best known brand in the world. And, you know, if we could topple Coke, we thought it would be a lot of fun. Anyway, so everything was going great and we decided to launch in America. And then we got a Sherman tank. So we arrived in Times Square, as you do in a Sherman tank. We crushed all these Coke cans and We'd pyrotechnic up the Coca-Cola sign the night before.

• 17:41Guy Raz?

  In Times Square.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  In Times Square without anybody knowing about it. And we then turned the tanks on it. The Coca-Cola sign went up in flames, but I mean, it didn't really, but you know, it looked like it did. And anyway, we were now launched in America. And what was going on at Coke was they went to any country that we were doing well in. They started in the UK and virgin cola just disappeared from all the shelves.

• 18:06Guy Raz?

  Wait, what did they do? They just went to retailers and get, like, how did they?

• 18:10Speaker 00

  They went to retailers, they gave them offers they couldn't refuse. And you know, Tesco's that had, you know, like shelves and shelves of virgin cola. Suddenly they just had no virgin cola on their shelf. It was a very systematic kneecapping job.

• 18:24Guy Raz?

  Did you, and did you see it happen right before your eyes? Were you watching this happen?

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Um, I was, I didn't know what was going on, except that I knew that retailers were suddenly delisting us. And, and it was a couple of years later that my new bank manager from Lloyd's Bank took me out to dinner. And she had just joined Lloyd's and her previous job had been at Coke. And she proudly told me how she'd managed to drive us out of business.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  Wow, it's like, it's like The Godfather or like Goodfellas. All of a sudden someone, like something just disappears.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Exactly. Now, I mean, it, it, that's definitely a business versions of The Godfather. I mean, BA played it on us. But fortunately, you know, we were a much better quality airline, so we survived in that case. And of course, the court case helped. And then when Coke tried it on us, I mean, the problem was that, you know, we didn't have something completely unique. You know, we, we had a great brand, but Coke had a great brand. The, the taste of the cola was maybe marginally better, but you know, it was neither here nor there. So since then, what I learned from that was only to go into businesses where we were palpably better than all the competition.

• 19:33Guy Raz?

  At what point did you decide, this isn't going to work, we should just stop doing this?

• 19:40Speaker 00

  When I realized that we were the number one cola in Bangladesh and nowhere else, I think we finally decided to call it today.

• 19:47Guy Raz?

  Right. So folding Virgin Cola was not as agonizing as selling Virgin Records?

• 19:52Speaker 00

  It wasn't because Virgin Cola was a soft drink, unhealthy, sugary. And so it really didn't, you know, it didn't have the same, yeah. No, we, by then, I'd already moved on to new ventures, new, new challenges. And I mean, I'm somebody that, you know, I'll fight tooth and nail to make something succeed. But the moment I realized it's not going to succeed, the next day I will have forgotten about it. I mean, I just will move on to the next venture.

• 20:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but I mean, failing must sting a little bit.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, look, if, if something's not working, I mean, you know, the advantage that Virgin had relatively quickly was that we had cash to try things out. And what's important when you do have cash is that you do try things out. There are a lot of companies, when they get cash, they want to conserve that cash. They're frightened of taking any risks with it. But, you know, you, you cannot really be a true entrepreneur if you don't have failures along the way because you're not pushing, that you're not pushing the limits if every single thing you do turns to gold.

• 20:59Guy Raz?

  So, so let me ask you about another interesting venture, Virgin Brights. This was, this was an idea to sell bridal wear, right? It was launched, I think, in 96. What, what was the genesis of that company?

• 21:13Speaker 00

  I loved the name. The problem, of course, was that there weren't any. And, and so we had no clients.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  We soon realized.

• 21:24Guy Raz?

  But why would you want to go into selling bridal wear? Did you look at it and say, this is a, an area to be tapped and disrupted?

• 21:30Speaker 00

  No, I mean, you know, that was one of our more foolish things. A lovely lady came along to me one day and said that she wanted to, you know, set up a bridal shop. And she gave me lots of good reasons as to why other bridal shops weren't doing it well and so on.

• 21:45Guy Raz?

  And you liked her, like you liked her energy and her conviction?

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I was investing in her. And when we launched the shop, I was made to dress up in a beautiful bridal gown.

• 21:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, there are lots of photos of that.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  And had my beard and moustache shaved off. And I think that most likely put a lot of people off as well. So it wasn't the prettiest sight. But there have been quite a few things that we've just tried. And if it had got traction, I mean, one shop, we might have gone to two, we might have gone to three, we might have gone to 300. So I think by trying things, you learn about an industry. And then you see whether there's any way that you can make a difference in a particular industry.

• 22:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And then when do you know when to shut down a venture? Like, is there a moment when you actually know? Is it as simple as just looking at a profit and loss sheet?

• 22:38Speaker 00

  I don't really, I'm dyslexic.

• 22:39Guy Raz?

  Right, of course.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  I don't really look at profit and loss sheets.

• 22:41Guy Raz?

  Right, right, right.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  No, I think if a venture starts losing money, it will certainly be on red alert in my mind. And we'll think very hard about how we can turn it around. So cutting your losses reasonably early on is a good idea. I haven't always been good at that. I mean, for instance, Virgin Megastores, we clung on far too long and cost us a lot of money. But sometimes emotions can get in the way.

• 23:11Guy Raz?

  When you're thinking about starting a business, where do the ideas come from?

• 23:16Speaker 00

  I mean, as I've said, I think the best businesses come out of frustration. So if you have a bad experience with another business somewhere in your life, and you think, screw it, we could do it better than this. Even if you don't know much about it, just do it, get in there. I mean, like, many years ago, I wanted to invest some money. And somebody gave me a bit of paper. And at the bottom of the bit of paper, it said, bid offer spread 5%. So I happened to say, what does that mean? And he said, that means we take 5% of your money before we start investing it. You know, so I thought, screw this, I'm going to set up our own bank. And we'll make sure that, you know, there isn't any jargon like that to hide the real charges.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  And we'll be a very transparent, very open bank. And Virgin Money is now, you know, the prime challenger bank in Britain. And I didn't know, you know, my experience of banks was bank managers coming and banging on my door and trying to put us out of business. So, you know, I didn't know a lot about it, but I've found people who know a lot about it, who run it, and left them get on with it.

• 24:22Guy Raz?

  So I want to ask about your latest venture, Virgin Galactic, which I think is probably your most ambitious project yet.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Yes, I think it's tremendously exciting. We're planning to put hundreds of people into space, hopefully thousands of people into space. And only 500 people have ever been into space. And, you know, 600 wonderful engineers working day and night to make it a reality. It's taken a lot longer than we thought. There's been heartache on the way. But, you know, we hope that we're close to finally being there.

• 24:56Guy Raz?

  I mean, when you're dealing with something so complex like space travel, right? And particularly the craft that you are building, there inevitably is going to be failure. I mean, there's always failure in a huge mission like that. And of course, you had a pretty big one a couple of years ago with a crash. How did you feel when you found out about it? I mean, what went through your mind?

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Gutted. I mean, it was most, I was on Necker Island and I was actually talking to my son, who was in a centrifuge unit training for a spaceflight.

• 25:30Guy Raz?

  Right, because you were planning to launch.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, we weren't many months away. But our test pilots, who, I mean, test pilots are, you know, I think the bravest people in the world almost. I mean, you know, they had to put everything through its paces. And sadly, one of them made a mistake and it cost him his life. Fortunately, his fellow test pilot survived.

• 25:59Guy Raz?

  How did you keep up morale in the company after that happened?

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Obviously, you know, talk to all of our staff, you know, met the relatives, and, you know, dealt head on with the press, which you have to do. And, you know, for 12 hours, I wasn't sure whether it was worth continuing. But, you know, once we realized it was a pilot error, not a technical error, I was able to tell all the engineers that it was nothing to do with them. And that the basic craft was sound. And, you know, once again, you have to learn from it to make sure it never happens again. And that's what the team will have done.

• 26:38Guy Raz?

  And when do you think you'll get to space?

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I've made the mistake of saying when I think I'll get to space before. And I've been trained by my PR team not to give out dates in case we miss them. So we'll see how we go.

• 26:56Guy Raz?

  By the way, how many companies are there now under the Virgin name?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  There's a couple of hundred companies around the world. I mean, Virgin-

• 27:05Guy Raz?

  Do you know how many? Have you lost count?

• 27:07Speaker 00

  I don't know the exact number.

• 27:09Guy Raz?

  Okay. Why so many companies?

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Do you know, it's a hell of a lot better than just having one company. If you have one company and something goes wrong, you don't have any companies. If you have 250 and one goes wrong, you've got 249. So, I mean, I try a lot of things. And sometimes I fall flat on my face. Sometimes they succeed. And sometimes they succeed overwhelmingly. But also, you know, life is a lot easier in that I found great people to run things on a day-to-day basis. And I can sit back and look at the bigger picture and, you know, dream about exciting new projects, which is what really an entrepreneur is all about.

• 27:58Guy Raz?

  Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group. By the way, when he dropped out of high school, his headmaster said, "Congratulations, Branson. I predict you'll either go to prison or become a millionaire." He was right on both counts. Branson did spend a night in jail for failing to pay taxes on those records back in 1971. And for a period of time, he was a millionaire. That is, before he became a billionaire.

• 28:29Guy Raz?

  And please don't turn us off just yet. In a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you guys are building.

• 28:38Guy Raz?

  Thanks for sticking around because we are now at the very end of the show, which means it's time to hear about the things you're building. And this week, we've got a story coming out of Southern California.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  My name is Allison Hans, and I started a company called Living Zesty.

• 28:55Guy Raz?

  And what Living Zesty does, we'll get to in a moment. But long before she launched the company, Allison spent two decades raising her kids, which is a full-time job.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  You know, and you're busy, and your mom and you're driving everybody everywhere. And then, all of a sudden, your youngest gets her driver's license.

• 29:12Guy Raz?

  And when that happened, it meant that, all of a sudden, Allison had some extra time on her hands.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  And I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur. And I'm always thinking, oh, what can I do? What can I sell?

• 29:24Guy Raz?

  The idea of what to sell didn't come to Allison right away. But one day last spring, she was visiting her sister-in-law, and she saw workers pulling out the grass from the front lawn and replacing it with artificial turf.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  What they'll do is they'll just unroll it. It's like carpet. And they'll just cut around where, you know, the flower bed is. And then, so they can't really use this kind of odd shape. So they take it back with them and throw it out.

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  Now, because there's been a drought in Southern California, a lot of homeowners are doing this with their lawns. They're just taking out the lawn and replacing it with artificial turf, which means there is a lot of artificial grass left over.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I'm like, thinking, you know what? We can make use of this one more time.

• 30:08Guy Raz?

  So one day last spring, Allison grabbed some of the leftover scraps from her sister's front lawn. She went to her garage, she took a box cutter, and she carved out a circular doormat made of artificial grass.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  It's surprisingly soft, and it looks really like real grass. Like, it has this clean look, and it didn't go into landfill. So like, green and clean, right?

• 30:31Guy Raz?

  The mat looked so cool that Allison posted a picture on Facebook, and she said, hey, does anybody want to buy this?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  I listed it, went for coffee. Four hours later, I come home, and there's like 11 people who are like, oh, I want one, and, oh, I'm next, and do you have any more? And I'm like, wait a minute. I might be on to something here.

• 30:49Guy Raz?

  So Allison started to collect more scraps of artificial turf. In fact, installers were so happy to get rid of it, they gave it to her for free. She got her son to design the logo, and she made her own website.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  You know, you could do her Pretty Shoestring, you know, the $1.99 GoDaddy domain name. So that's how I did it. So there's not a huge expense.

• 31:10Guy Raz?

  Since Allison launched her website a few months ago, she sold about 50 of the mats. But she says she hopes this is the beginning of something much, much bigger.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I liken it to throwing out chum, you know, when you're fishing. A lot of my day sometimes is throwing out that chum into the ocean to attract the fish. And so some days, you just don't get any bites. But, you know, then some days, there's a bite.

• 31:34Guy Raz?

  That's Allison Hans. She lives in Mission Viejo, California, and her company is called Living Zesty. We really love hearing the stories about the companies and the things and ideas that you're building. And if you want to tell us about them, go to build.npr.org. That's build with a D, dot npr dot org. And thanks.

• 31:58Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also consider subscribing to our show on iTunes. And do us a favor, write us a review while you're there. You can also write directly to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Randa Abdel Fattah, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Niva Grant, Sanaz Meshkampur, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Claire Breen. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 32:50Guy Raz?

  Hey, just a quick thing. Latino USA has something really special this week. It's a radio documentary about the controversial Puerto Rican independence fighter, Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was given clemency by President Obama just a few days before he left office. It's a story with secret identities and safe houses and FBI manhunt and even a little bit of revolution. You can find Latino USA on the NPR ONE app and npr.org/podcasts.