
Although I have heard several distinguished persons
as part of that recurring series including, Madelyn Albright, Colin Powell,
Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Rudy Guiliani and most recently, George Will, Sir
Richard was one of the most memorable.
Part of the reason for that was the complete confidence of the man. Confidence gained through both success and
failures.
He came from a comfortable life with private
schooling, made somewhat difficult because of dyslexia. When he was sixteen, he started a newspaper and
did quite well with it, using it as a vehicle to popularize songs he was
pushing through a fledgling record company.
That record company would eventually define the man and his business
acumen. A fellow student, working with
him suggested that because they were all novices at business a good name might
be Virgin Records. And that, as Paul
Harvey used to say, is “The rest of the story.”
I’ll skip the “begats” of the Virgin Empire and
settle for providing you a link to Wikipedia,
should you wish to explore that further.
His enterprises are certainly a work-in-progress. As I write this, Virgin America has changed
significantly in his stake in the company.
While I have yet to read his book, I am sure that the unconventional approach
he takes to problem solving and his strong belief that before you start a
business you should be trying to solve a problem that is meaningful to you, are
keys to “Things They Won’t Teach You in Business School.”

He disavowed an interest in solving the U.S. rail
problem, suggesting that we were not yet at the “trying to solve a problem”
phase. I found it interesting that he didn’t confess that many of our rail problems
came because we started by using an English model, including the gauge of our
tracks, which I am told trace their origins back to the Roman cart paths of
Great Britain.
Considering why the ADA chose Sir Richard as a
speaker, I think his image: that of a wide-eyed, out-of-the-box thinker who is
willing to take responsibility for his own success or failure appeals to the
image that the ADA thinks is their representative membership. I am unsure if that is an accurate picture of
the present dentist, particularly those coming out of school today; burdened
with $250,000 or more debt, seeking security, dependent in many cases on the
Corporate World, at the expense of their independence. But, even if inaccurate,
it is a nice image and may serve to inspire our dentists to heights otherwise unattainable.
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jonathan Goldsmith |

In my next post I’ll relate a story about Paul
Harvey and how he affected my life when I was in college. Stop on by.