Richard Branson embarked on his first money-making venture when he was just nine years old. One Easter, he came up with the idea of growing Christmas trees from seed and selling them to his neighbors, family and friends at a profit. This was a long-term plan but Richard felt it was worth the wait.

Richard asked his best friend, Nik, to help him and together they planted 400 seeds in their field at home. Richard was not good at sums at school and found it difficult to make sense of them on paper - but with real money, he found that this made perfect sense!

Unfortunately, Richard's money-making plan failed. Sadly rabbits ate all the seedlings and Richard quickly realised that money does not grow on trees! Challenged with the bad situation, the boys shot the rabbits and sold them for a shilling each to their local butcher. In the end, they did in fact make a small profit and enjoyed some rabbit pie.

  Never fear failure.  Failure leads to success.