In one of the magazines, the writer likes to read, there is an article by Sir Richard Branson head of the Virgin group. Sometimes it is nice to pick up a book that was published a couple of years ago to see how things turned out, recently Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson Virgin Books, 2008 was read. Mr. Branson focuses on the Virgin brand, at this stage, most of us have heard that we are our own brand. Whatever you do should reflect your brand, Mr. Branson writes about the Virgin brand and how Virgin functions. The groups are put together in usually smaller companies (less than 100 people); an important element is to always assessing the downside risk and ensuring the downside risk will not affect the total group; and to target industry groups where both a monopoly like condition exists and the customer is treated badly. Virgin believes and has demonstrated in a variety of industries it can consistently provided better service and make money. One of the methods is to ask a lot of questions about the industry and bring the reasons to enter it down to the simplest equation. Then ensure the people have fun, work hard, and consistently celebrate great customer service.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in an ideal world the companies you invest in have a monopoly like market share. If they have a strong consistent earnings stream then you are confident the companies can be a long term investment. The harder part is to ensure even though the company has monopoly like conditions, the company focuses on ensuring all customers are treated fairly and do not want to switch to someone else. Virgin went after a number of dividend paying companies who were treating their customers badly. If the company you have invested in, besides paying a dividend is also rated high in the customer rating surveys, then as an investor you have less to worry about.

There are always more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions