Richard Branson reveals the key lesson he learned from his "most notable failure": "The public tends to admire the underdog."

Richard Branson learned an important lesson from his "most notable failure": always seeing yourself as an underdog has value, as he recently stated on TED's "Work Life with Adam Grant" podcast.

"People tend to appreciate the underdog," he remarked. "It's not always desirable to be the successful smartass."

He shared with Grant that he learned from one such experiment, which was the launch of Virgin Cola by Branson's Virgin Group in 1994.

In 1998, to commemorate the launch of Virgin Cola in the U.S., Branson drove a tank through a wall of Coke and Pepsi cans in Times Square, challenging the dominance of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

NPR reported that Virgin Cola began to vanish from store shelves, according to Branson. He believed Coca-Cola was using "irresistible offers" to pressure retailers, he said. Coca-Cola declined to comment.

Branson admitted that Virgin Cola was only successful in Bangladesh and said, "It was a lot of fun. It didn't do the Virgin Group any harm," to Grant. This made the company appear more endearing, like an "underdog" next to its rivals.

At the time of its launch, Virgin Group was not considered an underdog as it had already established businesses in music, book publishing, video games, and air travel. However, when expanding into new industries, the company adopted a scrappy mindset to innovate and outcompete established leaders, as Richard Branson wrote in a blog post, as reported by CNBC Make It in 2017.

"He wrote that we never viewed Virgin as a "big business." Instead, we've always seen ourselves as the underdog, which he finds appealing."

A 2020 study from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School revealed that employees who perceived themselves as underdogs were more likely to receive higher performance evaluations from their supervisors.

Branson's mindset influences his decision to launch new businesses.

Instead of concentrating on market share or profitability, he posed two questions to Make It in May: "Could I improve upon what everyone else is offering?" and "Could it have a significant impact on the world?"

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