Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success
256
Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success
256eBook
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Overview
Liles' meteoric climb from urban street kid with hip-hop aspirations to one of the most successful and influential executives in the music industry is far more than a rags-to-riches story. It is a tribute to Liles' incredible work ethic, wisdom and confidence in doing his thing his way -- the hip-hop way.
"Every real success story in hip hop comes down to the same thing: someone who finds the will, focus and drive to achieve," Liles writes in Make It Happen: The Hip-Hop Generation Guide to Success. "It doesn't matter if you are male or female. It doesn't matter what race or religion you are. It doesn't matter what hustle you choose." What does matter, Liles says, is that you fight against the odds to realize a dream and be the best that you can be. You empower yourself and make it happen.
Kevin Liles presents ten rules of business success, which range from "Find Your Will" and "The Blueprint" to "Don't Let Cash Rule" and "Play Your Position." As he outlines his philosophy, Liles shares how he put his principles to work, chronicling his journey to the top and the stories of others -- executives, artists, mentors and friends -- he has worked with along the way.
Make It Happen is both an American success story and a guidebook for the road to having a career and a life you love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416510482 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria Books |
| Publication date: | 09/27/2005 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 489 KB |
About the Author
Samantha Marshall is a senior staff reporter for Crain's New York Business.
Read an Excerpt
Rule 1: Find Your Will
You better lose yourself in the music, the momentYou own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not lose your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo
— Eminem, "Lose Yourself"
Willpower starts deep inside you. You can't have ambition without will and the burning passion to do something. Go find your passion.
Figure out what you want, and what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. Some people call it a dream, a mission or a vocation. I call it will. Whatever word you choose, the idea is to identify something that takes you outside of yourself and helps you envision your future. Name it and claim it.
Everyone has a dream or something they love to do. Whether it's about making it big as a rapper or selling enough insurance policies to afford that dream vacation, if your will is strong enough, it will get you through the hard knocks that might otherwise throw you off the path to success.
Tapping into your will can take time. It's an imperfect process of trial and error. Sometimes we think we know what we want because we are trying to live up to other people's expectations. Maybe you're studying accounting because your parents want you to find a steady job, but you hate working with numbers. Maybe you're working as a hairdresser because your mother made a good living at it, but weaving, crimping, cutting and straightening hair is boring you to death.
People from our culture don't always get to know what they want because they weren't exposed to the possibilities. They are only thinking they will be a product of their environment. They're too caught up in surviving in the streets, struggling on welfare, or dealing with a father or mother in prison. Kids think if they're going to escape their corners and see the world, they'd better join the army.
Their only limitation is that they don't know the game. But awareness can change that.
No Guts, No Glory
There's an underground card game we like to play while we're killing time backstage or just hanging out with our homeboys. It's called "Guts."
Guts is a street version of poker, but in this game everybody gets dealt three cards. Each player has to put $100 in the pot, so if you've got ten people playing, it's $1,000 at the start of the first round. Once you've been dealt your hand, the dealer calls his game. He can say, "One, two, three, drop." Everyone can either hold their cards up or, if they're not going to stay in, drop them. If you've got guts, if you feel you can win, you hold your cards up to see if you or the others have to match what's in the pot. Calling "guts" helps us flush out the people who aren't real players.
The stakes get high, especially when you have a sizeable crew in on the game. One night last year, for example, we had seventeen guys playing Guts at Jay-Z's Manhattan nightclub, 40/40. Jay and his partner in the club, Juan; NBA stars LeBron James and Antoine Walker and their crews; Richard Santulli, founder of the private jet company NetJets; Mike Kyser and Steve Stout, "the Mayor" and marketing wiz of Def Jam respectively, were all in the game. I was the dealer, presiding over a pot that quickly got up to $40,000 just in that first round.
As the dealer, I get to hold my cards until the end and I'm the first person to call guts. Once you call it, all the players have to turn their cards up. The best hand wins, and the losers have to match the pot. Of the five people left in that game, Juan won.
Sometimes the pot gets so big that people are afraid to keep playing and they drop out. If everyone does that you might get to walk even if you're bluffing. Nobody shows their hand and you can put yours back in the deck without having to pay. But we never let people walk. That's why it usually costs people a minimum of $10,000 just to play one round with us.
Wherever we are on the road, me, Jay and the rest of my crew get together for a Guts game. It's become a tradition. We all come as our different characters. Jay-Z's is "Lucky Lefty," because anyone who gets stuck sitting to the left of him loses. They call me "The Cowboy," because they know Kevin Liles is going to shoot you down. I'm not going to let you walk. I'm going to call it in every game. I say, "I'm not letting any of you feel y'all are better than me, so 'Guts!'"
Do you have the guts? Do you have the courage to stay in the game all the way and risk it all? No matter what your face looks like, no matter what's happening in your career, no matter who's in your ear telling you what you should and should not do, no matter who's saying you can't, do you have the will to keep it going? To play Guts, you have to want to win more than anything. You have to overcome your fear. That's what this game is all about.
One of my former employees, Shante Bacon, always has guts. She was just a college rep for us when she first joined Def Jam. But she'd known all her young life that she was destined to work in the music business. Even as a teenager she figured one day she'd run her own label.
When Shante was in college she was a rep for Def Jam's distribution company in Virginia. That means she promoted our label, and any new singles that were coming out, through college parties, football games, homecomings, college radio and concerts. One day in her senior year she sent us a three-hundred-page book she'd put together documenting all the work she'd done for Def Jam over the years. She included wrap-ups of events, pictures and dozens of letters of congratulations from me and Lyor on the success of her work on campus. She put it together in one slick package using everything she'd learned as a marketing major. I'd never met Shante, but I took one look at that book and said, "She's hired."
That was in November 1997, but Shante didn't graduate until May 1998. We wanted her to join Def Jam so badly that we held the job, of sales assistant, open for her by filling it with temps. She already had the winning hand.
Lose Yourself
It's not always obvious at first what we're good at or what we enjoy doing. Some of the skills that can work in the business world don't fit easily into a box. They're not on your high school curriculum. You may even think that something you do is way too much fun to be anything but a hobby.
You may not realize it, but if you love to throw a party, you could be a great event planner. If you like to look fly, you could be a stylist. If you enjoy vibing with other people, you could be a publicist. Plenty of industries need these skills.
When I was fifteen it didn't really occur to me that I could be in a rap group. I was good in English class. I could write well. I was always composing rhymes in my spare time. My buddy Rod used to rap, so he'd come over and ask me to put together some rhymes with him, but it was just something I did for fun.
Then I heard Run DMC's hit song "Sucka MC" at a house party:
Two years ago, a friend of mine / asked me to say some MC rhymes / So I said this rhyme I'm about to say / The rhyme was mecca, and it went this way...
I thought, "Damn, I can do this! Hell, I am doing this." Rod was part of a rap group, Numarx, but it never occurred to him to ask me to join, and until that moment I never even thought about it. But when I heard that rhyme it all made sense. I had to do it.
True passion doesn't always hit you like a lightning bolt. Take my good friend and colleague, Julie Greenwald.
Julie always loved music, but she'd never even considered the music business as a career when she was going to college. She came from a nice, liberal Jewish family that believed in making a difference in the world. From the time she was a little girl she'd always planned to teach or work for some charity organization. The first thing she did when she graduated was sign up for a volunteer program to teach impoverished children in the Mississippi Delta. That year she became like a surrogate mother to these kids, who often had nothing to go home to.
But when her year ended, she moved to New York to be with her boyfriend. She found a job working as Lyor Cohen's assistant at Def Jam. Those two were kindred spirits. They'd spend hours together hatching brilliant and out-there ideas to promote artists. Julie discovered that she loved the business and decided to stay. She learned that by working in a company that was part of the hip-hop culture, she could find another, more lucrative way to serve the young people she cared so much about.
In taking care of Def Jam's consumers and providing a home away from home for the young artists who were signed to our label, Julie's nurturing instincts, together with a great head for marketing, would serve her well at Def Jam. Many of our artists come to us at such a young age, and are so messed up from the life in the streets they've come up from, that a strong, maternal figure is just what they need to set them straight. Julie's found her true vocation in the music industry. Today she works with me as president of Atlantic Records, a division of Warner Music Group.
Like Julie, you'll find your own will when you decide to look for it. Just ask yourself:
Am I creative, or do I like to plan and organize things? Do I see the big picture, or do I like to execute the plan? Do I like the camera, or am I that quiet guy getting it done behind the scenes?Am I a team player, or do I prefer to work on my own?
If you're a detail-oriented perfectionist, or anal, like me, you might become a good chief of operations. If you're into team sports, you might make a good human resources manager, or even company president. If you're a natural-born hustler, you could be vice president of sales. In business, there's enough room for all kinds.
Step back and think about who you are and what makes you passionate. When you know who you are you'll find your fit.
By Any Means Necessary
Finding your will gives you the strength to endure whatever it takes to make it happen, even if it means sleeping on the floor of a friend's cockroach-infested apartment in the Bronx.
Walter Randolph, a lanky twenty-three-year-old kid from Chicago, wants my spot. He's followed my career path from intern to president in the music trade press. He knows that anything is possible because he's read up on it. But you won't believe what he's been willing to go through to realize his dream.
Growing up, Def Jam's music was the sound track to young Walter's life. Every job he ever worked through high school and college was in record stores, sampling and selling rap music. To him, Def Jam was the Mecca of the music business in the Holy Land of Hip Hop.
He was like thousands of other kids who travel across the country to try to get their foot in the door. He didn't aspire to be a rap artist himself. Instead, he wanted to be part of an environment that nurtures artists and creates great music that can change a culture.
At college in Tallahassee, Florida, an acquaintance of Walter's was a college rep for Sony. She'd been up to our offices in New York City to get some CDs and heard that Def Jam was hiring summer interns. She mentioned it to Walter, and his eyes lit up. He told his friend, "I'll sweep the floors, take out the garbage, anything, just get me in there!"
Immediately, he e-mailed the person in charge of recruiting interns, sending in his resume and letters of recommendation from former employers. He got a polite call back explaining the summer intern slots had already been filled, but to please try next year.
Instead, Walter kept in touch on a weekly basis, regularly following up with calls, e-mails and letters. Months later someone took a look at his resume and realized he had some valuable experience in music sales. In the middle of his junior year exams he got a call and was told to be there the next day.
What we didn't realize at the time was that Walter didn't live in New York. Truth be told we probably wouldn't have cared. So he did what he had to do, raiding his bank account for all his cash to buy a $600 last-minute plane ticket to fly up from Florida that same day. With no money left over for a hotel room, he spent the night in LaGuardia Airport's arrivals terminal and came into the city for his interview the next morning.
Walter's sacrifice paid off. He got the position, headed back home, packed all of his worldly possessions into his beat-up Chevy and drove back to his father's place in Chicago. He took a train to New York and started work with nothing but the clothes on his back.
When he started work at Def Jam Walter didn't even have a crib. We don't pay interns at Def Jam. Like me when I interned for Def Jam's regional office in Baltimore, armies of kids are willing to prove their stuff for free.
But Walter had it especially rough. After hours, he'd put his head down on a bench by the piers at Forty-seventh Street, where the cruise ships come in. He'd sleep all night on the subway. He didn't have enough money to buy food. Not eating properly gave him an ulcer.
Back then people used to say, "Walt, you work such long hours!" But he didn't want to leave the office because he had nowhere to go!
His first home, a piece of floor in a crack house in Far Rockaway, Queens, was raided one day while Walter was at work. Then Walter found a distant cousin with a free sofa in the Bronx, but he outstayed his welcome after a few weeks. Last I heard he was sharing a place with a friend in New Jersey.
He survived on the occasional hustle, and charm. Walter's polite demeanor and willingness to do anything to help made him a favorite of the girls in the office. They'd get him Phat Farm clothing samples so he could look cool. They'd order food in so he could get his three squares.
For a while there it looked to Walter like he'd never get paid. The music industry had had a lot of layoffs over the past couple of years. For the longest time I couldn't offer any of the interns full-time paid positions. They just didn't exist.
But even back in the heady days when everything we touched went platinum, most interns moved on before a full-time position opened up. They got tired of doing the stuff that nobody else wanted to do and eventually realized that making it in the music industry was just too much of a challenge for them.
Walter was an exception. No matter how tough it got, he never complained. He just kept coming to the office and working longer hours than Def Jam employees on the payroll. He made himself indispensable to me, and he knew it.
I gave him the demos that aspiring rap groups hand me outside the office so that he could tell me what, if anything, was good. I relied on him to be my eyes and ears.
Every day he'd put together a book of record spins and other daily numbers that I need to scan each morning. Known in the industry as the BDS — or Broadcast Data System — report, I call it my bible. Walter was one of the few people in the office who knew how to put it together just the way I like it.
Every day, he'd sit at the workstation outside my office taking in everything around him. When I dropped knowledge, he was there to catch it. He'd listen in on meetings and study the major players as they walked and talked through the halls. He was one of Def Jam University's best students.
He never asked me for a thing. He endured the hard times and positioned himself just right. So when I left Def Jam last year for Warner Music Group, I took him with me. Now he's getting paid.
I've got big plans for Walter.
Be Resilient
It takes tenacity like Walter's to find your passion and chase it. You have to harness your will to take success to the highest level. You have to be focused.
The dictionary says the meaning of fierce is savage or cruel. But there's more than one definition for the word. Being fierce can also mean intense, untamed, passionate and strong. The most serious are committed to going after what truly matters to them. When you are fierce, you are unstoppable.
Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo is resilient. He knew what he wanted to do before he was old enough to drive.
The head of The Inc., the multimillion-dollar record label that discovered and produced DMX, Ja Rule and Ashanti, Irv was deejaying in the community halls around Hollis, Queens, from the time he was just fifteen years old. He was so set on starting his career producing hit records and promoting talent that nothing could keep him in class. He aced every test, but his high school teachers had to flunk him because he never showed up!
But Irv didn't care. He'd already found his one true love — music.
Irv's passion is writing and producing music. But he's also down with grooming and breaking artists, and taking care of all the little details that are involved with making records and achieving bulk status in sales. He fights so hard for the artists he believes in that I call him the Muhammad Ali of the music business.
"My artist is the best and I'm going to show you guys; we gonna sell bulk!" he announced at one of our first meetings. I had to laugh at Irv's chest-thumping style. But I was also impressed.
Irv started seeing himself as a label executive by the time he was a teenager, when Eazy-E launched Ruthless Records. He saw what Russell Simmons was doing. He watched as young dudes not much older than himself were launching labels like Bad Boy and Death Row. That's what he wanted.
Irv will stay up all night for days in a row when he's laying tracks in the studio. But as far as he's concerned, he's never worked a day in his life. Making records is pure passion. He's been involved in some huge hits, and he'll do it again and again as long as he lives and breathes.
"It all starts with the love," he said. "I would do this for free."
Irv's will was obvious from the first moment I met him. I could see in his eyes an unshakable belief in himself. He was brash but never failed to deliver. Whatever you may have heard about Irv — the FBI investigations into links with drug gangs, the recent arrests — spend five seconds with him and you know he's all about the music. He is a true record guy.
When he was just twenty-three and working for Def Jam's A&R division (artists and repertoire, for those of you not familiar with the music business), we were paying him $40,000 a year. But Irv had signed artists that grossed us $100 million in record sales. By the time he decided to branch out on his own he had our utmost respect and support.
Plenty of wannabes like to say they own a record label but most of the time it's just hype. Today, Irv is one of a rare breed of hip-hop entrepreneurs, alongside P. Diddy and Dr. Dre. He's sustained consistent success in a volatile industry where you're only as good as your last hit record.
Irv is just thirty-five, but I see him as someone who could easily take over a record label like Def Jam. That kind of success has been possible at such an early age because he dared to dream big. He's one of hip hop's great visionaries.
Quincy Jones once said, "Take the biggest dream, the biggest one you can find, and if you get just 25 percent of it, you've made it."
Take that dream and blow it up even bigger.
Repeat after me: "I believe in myself, therefore I am what I believe myself to be."
Try Everything
Don't be discouraged if you haven't found your will yet. Not everyone is like Irv. Not everyone is lucky enough to find their life's passion by the time they hit puberty. Sometimes we get stuck on the wrong path. I took many paths, just so that I could keep my options open.
It's okay to experiment. Take as many risks as you can while you're young. You wouldn't buy a car without test-driving it first, so why not try a few different things before you figure out what's going to be your life's work? Explore!
Lyor Cohen, one of the most powerful executives in the music business, calls it dabbling, and look where it's got him. Today, he's the CEO of Warner Music Group. Dick Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, was a lawyer, a political consultant and a banker before he became one of the few African-Americans to head up a Fortune 500 company. Kenneth Chenault, the CEO of American Express, started out in dental school!
Sean "P. Diddy" Combs expanded his business and widened his appeal to audiences outside of the hip-hop culture by acting in movies and playing Walter Lee in Raisin in the Sun on Broadway. He's got a clothing empire alongside his music empire and the sky is the limit as to what that B-boy will do next.
Trying new things always carries the risk of failure. Puffy could have gotten his ass kicked by critics for his Broadway debut and quit. Not only did he keep it moving, he invested in his own play. He got mixed reviews and a lot of nods for making the effort to stretch himself. He brought young urban audiences into the theater for the first time and exposed them to great American drama. He puts himself out there. As Lyor would say, he leaves a piece of himself on the field every game. That alone deserves respect.
Not everything you do is going to work out, but you'll learn what works, what doesn't, what you're great at, and what you suck at. You may learn that something you love doing will be a hobby, not a career. Doing it may lead to something related that you never even thought about turning into a career.
It took me a while to figure out my true calling. My parents made sacrifices so that I would have the chance to try out all the things that captured my interest. They also pushed me to do things they knew would help me build the skills and character I would need to become a leader. They just had one condition: whatever I tried, I had to put my heart into it and see where it would take me.
I was into everything: Little League baseball, football, basketball, the Boy Scouts, the church choir. And those were just the extracurricular activities my mother knew about.
While I was earning every merit badge in the Scouts I was also hanging out with my homeboys. We'd come together on the corner of Liberty Heights and Gwynn Oaks, a rough patch of West Baltimore where we'd network with the other crews and see how much fun we could have. We were always coming up with creative ways to get the money to finance our latest needs, not all of them strictly legit.
One thing I did know early on was that I loved the power of the Almighty Dollar. I had needs. I wanted the latest sweatsuits or those Air Force Ones I'd seen at the mall. When I was eleven I took on a paper route so that I could buy myself the nice extras my father wasn't willing to pay for. But I soon figured out that there were easier ways to earn a dollar than getting up at four in the morning every Sunday.
I graduated to shoveling snow with one of my buddies. We figured out where the old ladies lived and cleared the paths from their front doors so they wouldn't slip and fall. We clocked when a potential client would open his garage door to drive to work, so we could clear the driveway just in time. We earned hundreds of dollars in extra tips from the appreciative snowbound masses of Baltimore!
Later on, other sources of income came from hustling. By our mid-teens, our crew had all kinds of deals going on, selling any illicit commodity we could steal or turn over for a profit. I wouldn't recommend that way of living to anyone, for reasons I'll discuss in a later chapter. But those experiences were not only lucrative, they gave me a taste for negotiating a deal and thinking fast on my feet.
I was also rapping. I wrote most of the lyrics for Numarx, including a hit song. But I was better at promoting and selling our group. I watched where the money was going. I set up our gigs. I got our music played on the radio. I planned our image and how we would invest in ourselves.
I had so many business ideas that the other guys in Numarx started calling me KG for "Krhyme Genius." One of those ideas was to start our own production company. We used our income from performing and loans from our parents, to invest in equipment for our production company, Marx Bros. Records.
My new hustle led to all kinds of interesting and profitable sidelines: street team marketing, throwing parties and promoting records on local radio. I knew every club owner, music retailer, deejay, cop and drug dealer in the mid-Atlantic who could help me push and sell records.
The sidelines continued on through high school and college. I played football at Woodlawn High for three years. By the age of nineteen I was studying to get my degree in electrical engineering and managing a telemarketing team of four hundred people for a travel marketing company called World Connections Travel.
Something had to give. The first thing to go was football. That killed me. I was one of the top high-school players in the state of Maryland, and I'd been playing football since I joined the Pop Warner league at the age of nine. I hated letting down my team.
Two years later I ditched college. I was so obsessed with music that I couldn't sit down and focus on complicated physics formulas. I'd sit in front of the computer at home and compose rhymes in my head.
Finally, my will to be in the music business was coming into focus. The hardest part was letting down my parents. My mother, Miss Berta, was disappointed. I was always close to my parents and I still am, but my decision to drop out was a turning point in our relationship. Still sore from the time I quit Boy Scouts before graduating to Eagle Scouts, they said, "Kevin, why can't you finish anything? Don't be a quitter!" But when you find your will, nothing, not even the sadness of letting down family, can stop you from going your own way.
I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, but everything I had going on from the very first dollar I earned was in some way preparing me for my career at Def Jam.
Team sports taught me the discipline needed to be a manager and work toward the good of the company. Shoveling snow and delivering newspapers taught me how to think about what the customer wants. Hustling taught me how to handle tense situations and think on my feet. Managing a telemarketing team showed me how to be a leader.
My experience with Numarx made it all clear. I wrote a song that would become one of the biggest singles in 1989, "Girl You Know It's True." National labels were clamoring to sign us to re-record it and fan the flames, but we were tied to a contract with Studio Records, a regional record label in Oxen Hill, Maryland. That didn't stop Chrysalis Records from taking it and recording it anyway as a song by Milli Vanilli.
Watching Milli Vanilli's cheesy video and hearing about those crazy record sales was galling. Our manager found us a lawyer, we sued and we won. We got the BMI award for Song of the Year, and all the royalties. At nineteen I got my first royalty check for $90,000.
At twenty, I was already bringing in $90,000 a year from my marketing job, band royalties and all my other little hustles. That was more than I could expect to make from sticking to college and graduating, so there wasn't much my mom could say.
Through all this I discovered that what I really loved was the business of music. I realized that the industry needed good music executives to take care of their own. I was twenty when I knew, more than anything, that I wanted to be part of an organization that takes care of its artists. I'd finally found my one true vocation.
Stand Up
When you find out what you want to do, stick to it. Like my football coach always said, put your head down and keep those legs moving. Your future employer will appreciate your persistence. It's no good having will unless you're willing to prove it.
Almost every employee at Def Jam who came up through the ranks — which at one time accounted for about 80 percent of the label's executives — will tell you they got their foot in the door the same way. They were beyond tenacious. You might even say they were obsessive.
By persistence, I don't just mean they sent in their resumes and followed up with a few e-mails. They came close to turning themselves into stalkers. They were shameless about using whatever contacts they had. They invented pretexts to come to the Def Jam offices. They called and called and called.
You've got to use that will you've just found to push until you've knocked down that door. There's no doorman with white gloves on waiting to open that door for you. You can't just walk right in, no matter how perfect you think you might be for the job.
I first met Deidre Graham, Def Jam's former senior vice president of marketing, when she was just twenty-two and living in L.A. Deidre's roommate Tina Davis, who was Def Jam's manager for the West Coast office back then, brought this tall, skinny kid fresh out of college to a video shoot.
Deidre had been working for some entertainment lawyer's office for about five minutes and decided that she wanted to get into "a gig that's more creative and hands-on." She asked me if I could help her and I told her I'd see what's up.
I don't think I said more than a few words to Deidre at the time, but I was impressed enough that she found a way to get my ear. There was something in the way she carried herself upright. I could tell she had that confidence and drive. No sh__! She called me for four months straight after that.
Deidre never had an actual phone conversation with me, but she called me every single day. I'd tell her to call me on Saturday morning at seven, my time, and she'd get up that morning at four L.A. time to make the call. She'd call me on my cell and I'd say call me back at three. She'd call my office and my assistant would say I was on the other line or take a message. For weeks on end she never heard my voice.
But I knew she was calling. Finally on the day of the Million Man March, I did call her back. I said, "Yo, you got the job, pick up your keys tomorrow and don't f___ up."
Deidre knew how to be just pushy enough without looking crazy to me. That's a valuable asset in any business. Like a lot of prospective employers, I like to test job candidates to see how badly they want the job.
I'm also a little indecisive about who I hire. I might meet them once and like their spirit, but I want to see if they've got what it takes. In this business, if they don't call consistently, and follow up at the precise time I tell them to, it's a bad sign because they may try even less hard once they're in. Too many kids think they're entitled.
You've got to be able to follow through and deliver, even before I put you on the payroll.
Be Shameless
I respect people who use cunning and guile to get what they want, within reason. It means their will is so strong that they've really gone to the trouble to think about how to create opportunities for themselves.
Gabrielle Peluso showed that kind of chutzpa when she got her start. She already had Def Jam in mind when she was studying communications and the music industry at Syracuse University. She was determined to get her foot in the door of the one record label she loved.
After graduation she called the New York office to see if she could get a summer internship. The person filling in for the receptionist that day said, "Oh sure, come in Monday at ten." She was kidding. But Gabby was dead serious.
She packed up her dreams in her little Volkswagen Fox and drove. The regular receptionist Sonya, who was on duty that day, was surprised to see her. When she told her she had an appointment with Jeff Trotter, the head of A&R, Sonya told her he'd left for L.A. four days earlier and wouldn't be back until Wednesday.
Suddenly it dawned on Gabby that she'd been played. She was on the verge of tears. Then she heard the receptionist tell Julie Greenwald, who was vice president of promotions at the time, that her food was in reception. She knew Julie's sister from college, but she'd never met Julie. So she pretended that she had when Julie walked through the door.
"Julie?" she said. "I'm Sina's friend, remember? We met at commencement?"
Julie didn't remember any such thing, but she was too polite to admit she had no idea who the hell Gabby was. At that point Gabby was visibly upset and the tears were flowing. She told Julie what happened. By pure coincidence the new director of video promotions needed an intern, and Julie gave her the spot. Gabby started the next day, and she's been in the building ever since.
Gabby knew that the only way she was going to get her foot in the door would be to create that opportunity for herself. If you don't know anyone, pretend that you do. Get yourself to the right parties, clubs, offices, events, and network like crazy.
Don't let fear hold you back. Your future bosses will respect you for being gutsy enough to find a way. They'll know that you'll use that same determination to get the job done. Today, Gabby is vice president of video promotions at Def Jam. She's one of the label's most valued employees.
That doesn't mean you should act crazy. Don't turn into a stalker. Deidre's persistent calls were at my invitation. Gabby walked in the door of Def Jam that day because Julie opened it for her. But as a busy executive there's nothing I hate more than being bugged by someone who's got nothing to say but can you give me a job.
A few years ago, this one guy just kept calling. I had my calls screened, because I refuse to take cold calls, so my assistant had to deal with him. Every day, several times a day, that pest would call. This guy just wouldn't give up! He begged my assistant to set up a meeting and promised her that if she did that one favor for him, he'd never bug her again. So, just to get him off her back, she did.
At eight the next morning, there he was, sitting inside my office. I entertained the guy's pitch for a few torturous minutes and sent him on his way. But my happy morning mood was ruined and I was ready to kill someone for wasting my time. He was selling a CD distribution system that I already knew was wrong for us. Otherwise, I would have called him!
There's a time and a place for everything. Not everyone is going to share your sense of urgency. Make your own luck and open up that window of opportunity, but don't piss people off!
Keep the Faith
Once you've found your will, keeping it is the hard part. It can take years for that first taste of success to come. Most people give up before it happens.
You have to love yourself enough to keep the faith. You have to believe in what you're doing even when it seems like nobody else does. If you don't, you won't be able to handle the hard knocks that I guarantee will come your way time and time again.
Russell Simmons, the godfather of hip hop and the founder of Def Jam, has achieved a level of wealth, lifestyle, social status and fame that, back in the day, no one would have thought possible for a black kid from Hollis. He's in television ads for Panasonic's newest digital delights. The culture he created is being used to sell everything from mobile phones to Mickey D's.
But over and over and over again, people used to laugh in his face. He was trying to bring hip hop, the music of the culture he loved, to the public through radio play, concerts and parties long before anyone accepted it as a legitimate form of music or business — let alone as a means to build a commercial empire.
Imagine trying to sell African-American music like the blues to middle-class white audiences before Elvis came along. Now picture trying to promote hip-hop artists long before even most black audiences found the taste for this unique combination of hard-core poetry and gritty sound.
Deejays couldn't comprehend how the rhythmic scratching of records mixed with rhymes could ever be so popular. They'd make public pleas on the radio for more music, less rap. Every time Russell held a sold-out event, people dismissed it as a fluke.
Time and again, Russell was ripped off by other promoters. All the black music industry gatekeepers figured they could afford to screw Russell and his artists. Way back when, in the late '70s, Russell gave a booker at a popular R&B club $1,900 to promote a show. The booker kept it and disappeared.
But one small event got him through and reminded him what he was striving for.
He had to escort the rap artist Kurtis Blow to Amsterdam in 1980 to perform hip hop's first hit record, "Christmas Rappin'." Russell was twenty-three years old at the time. Apart from a short hop to Philadelphia, he'd never been on a plane. Going overseas was huge! Flying first-class on KLM airlines was beyond imagination!
When he boarded the plane, the flight attendant said, "Hello Mr. Simmons, welcome aboard." He was so surprised he had to look around to see who the hell she was talking to before he clocked it was him. "From then on it was Mr. Simmons this, Mr. Simmons that, all the way to Amsterdam," Russell said. No one had ever called him Mister before.
When he deplaned, his hosts took him straight to one of those cafes where you can smoke weed. "Here we were," Russell said. "Me and Kurtis, two kids from City College in New York being given the respect and invited to smoke all the weed we wanted, legally. I was so happy!"
It may not have seemed like a big deal to anyone else. But that one gesture of respect helped bolster Russell's self-confidence and give him faith. It was a little way of saying "hey, you're important," that helped him get through the hard times and reminded him that it was all worth it.
"The thing about success is, you always have to put in more hours than you planned," he told me years later. "It happens on God's schedule, not yours. So sometimes, even though you really believe in what you're doing, you just need something to give you that little extra boost and remind you that there's dignity in the effort and it's all gonna be worth it some day."
It's these small rewards that add up to give it all meaning. They show us we're on the right path and, when the big wins come, they remind us not to take those achievements for granted. They help us keep our will in focus.
Some people don't notice or appreciate these small breakthroughs, whether it's at the beginning of their career or when they're already full-blown into it. That's a damn shame. Houses are built one brick at a time. It's these moments of achievement and nods of recognition that, when you put them together, build true success.
What: Find Your Will Why: Because you need that passion to drive you to make it happen against seemingly impossible odds. How: Look deep within yourself to discover that thing you really love to do. It's never too late, but it's best to start young and explore everything that interests you. But: Don't give up too early. You have to keep trying. It might not be obvious at first. We're not all born knowing we want to be doctors, lawyers or CEOs. Seek and you will find!Rule 1
Copyright © 2005 by KWL Enterprises, LLC
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
Rule 1: Find Your Will
Rule 2: Do You
Rule 3: Walk This Way
Rule 4: The Blueprint
Rule 5: Play Your Position
Rule 6: Embrace the Struggle
Rule 7: Get Connected
Rule 8: Step Outside Your Box: M.I.X.
Rule 9: Don't Let Cash Rule
Rule 10: Flex Purpose, Not Power
The Ten Rules Again
A Role Model for Generation Hip Hop
Must Read
Must Hear
Must See
What People are Saying About This
"Kevin Liles has a timeless, if unexpected, message for the hip-hop generation. Beneath the bling-bling and often obscured by outsized and outrageous personalities, business success still requires vision, focus, discipline and execution. The styles may change, but the basics remain the same."
— Price M. Cobbs, MD
"Make It Happen is a guide for all of you who want to succeed in the music industry — and in life. Kevin provides the tools he has developed from his experiences and mistakes, and teaches you how to apply them to your own journey."
— Terry M. Williams, author of Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens, and founder of the Stay Strong Foundation