Well if you consider the "makers" magical 5 minute window of extreme insight that he or she might have specked throughout their half-days, it appears to me that it is just as significant as a Branson's. Branson's leverage comes mostly from his wealth, or at least is vastly improved by his wealth by a super-scaler factor. So a "(very) successful entrepreneur" can exert an (exaggiteriously)-greater "leverage" by the good fortunes of their wealth -- seems almost tautological.
(For those 5 minutes of the day, the maker might as well be printing off $1000 bills -- of actual value creation, and not some monetary-network optimization, a fish more fit to be fried by some super rich Bransonian-figure.)
Good point, I'm woefully ignorant of Branson's history of success; perhaps I'll meander through some wiki pages today.
I did liked the notion Stephen Dubner added. Namely that the two schedule types aren't necessarily mutual exclusive to a personality type -- some/(all) can modally switch between them (within reason). Perhaps the Entreprenuer's Schedule is really some personal-proprietary blend of both. (I would like to think Branson as a "maker" on some level or another.)
He started out selling records (as in, vinyl disks that stored audio data, crazy I know) at a market stall. That grew into a music publishing business and a chain of high street stores. He used that as his springboard into his other enterprises.
Stelios from Easyjet is an example of someone who made a small fortune in the airline business... By starting with a large fortune he inherited. Branson is a self-made man. His leverage is his mystique and his charisma.
I haven't read his biographies, but I'd posit this is how it went (since this is the order it usually goes in):
1. RB takes on a few small projects and ships. Develops a reputation for delivering on his promises.
2. Uses this reputation to get money and resources for bigger projects. Meets lots and lots of people while doing these projects.
3. Is now seen as a leader, which makes him charismatic.
4. Spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ full-time voice acting and body language coaches, and further develops his personal brand and mystique.
Now that all this is done, what Richard Branson does for a living is to play Richard Branson. Do you think he actually wants to fly to Fiji and go rock climbing every weekend? Of course not. Most weekends he'd much rather curl up with a pot of tea and read the paper. But he can't; he has to go to Fiji, because that's what Richard Branson would do.
Chances are that a lot of the folks around here are both makers and managers. The contextual change between maker mode and manager mode however is enormously expensive. It's not dissimilar to a CPU context switch. However, meetings have the same effect on a maker that busy waiting has on a CPU. You just can't get anything done while you're waiting for the meeting to be over, something that is exacerbated by the knowledge that most meetings are unnecessary and a waste of time because they're poorly run.
(For those 5 minutes of the day, the maker might as well be printing off $1000 bills -- of actual value creation, and not some monetary-network optimization, a fish more fit to be fried by some super rich Bransonian-figure.)