I've had some bad business lessons and learned some things. It's not always about going platinum. So long as I know who is buying my records and I generate revenue that's mine, then it's cool.
You never judge a person if they're going through their downs because you always stick with them when they're going through their ups. If you stay in football business long enough, you're going to have some bad games and you're going to have some bad seasons.
I've learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don't always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.
I decided I could develop a toy and get some revenue from that and then use that revenue to really become an inventor and work on some of the more challenging projects I had in mind.
Today, National Geographic has a membership side with a magazine and some television side, and they generate about a billion dollars in revenue, and they're profitable. And so at the end of the year they have some bottom line profit which they can then reinvest, because they're running it as a not-for-profit in charitable endeavors.
I think everybody should see ('The Star Wars Holiday Special') to realize how bad something can be. There are some cool things in there, but it's two hours long, and you could probably cut it down to about two minutes and twelve seconds of cool material. The animated Boba Fett sequence is great, and there's some cool stuff, but overall, the whole format of a variety show in the 'Star Wars' universe is just a train wreck.
I am big on - even with our whole team - it's always about, well, what were the lessons learned? Something didn't work out? What are the lessons learned? What are the lessons learned?
A friend of mine, that I had known for some time, came up one day with an old guitar. I don't know where he got it, I don't know how long he'd had it, but he knew about two chords on it. He proceeded to teach them to me, and then we proceeded to go crazy over music.
I took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but even before that, you're singing in the classroom and wherever. Gosh, children are always singing. But I took music lessons, some choir and things like that at school. I learned how to play the guitar when I was about 13... ancient history.
By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere records that that Paquito [D'Rivera] was on. And he also played me and our friend, Curtis Haywood, some Phil Woods records. And when I heard Phil, I just about lost my mind. I was playing the Charlie Parker Omnibook as part of my lessons. This was the '80s. There was no YouTube and all that. And we had three or four jazz records at that point.
Some of the best lessons that I've ever learned are on a ball field - basketball, football, baseball, golf. And I learned great lessons from my coaches - being on time, being mentally tough, having some discipline, and being part of a team.
If you have a live reputation and your popularity is proven that way, then you're bound to get signed up because they see all those people buying those tickets and they think some of those people will buy those records, and that's what their business is primarily about.
Now I don't care what people think. I did some internet campaign where I was the voice of a puppet for Ford Focus ads because they were paying me a lot of money to do it, it was a very easy gig, but then the bonus was, it turned out to be an enormous amount of fun. I've learned not to turn my nose up at things just because they're not what other people might consider cool to do. Because I've also matured enough to know, you never know where these things are going to lead, and you never know what the experience is going to be like.
I wanted to sell a million records, and I sold a million records. I wanted to go platinum; I went platinum. I've been working nonstop since I was 15. I don't even know how to chill out.
If you're going to go into the movie business it is so full of heartbreak and you get so close and it doesn't happen and then once in a while it works out and it is the fantasy, like it is that dream. So riding the highs and lows of it you got to have an iron constitution and you got to be able to do what David Dinkins actually one said - "Well you know some days are good, some days are bad, but anytime there is a bad day I know the next day is going to be good and vice versa, so you just can't put too much stock in that moment."
We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.
When I went platinum, you know, I had no idea that it was going to go platinum and I would have been happy if it went double glass.