There's nothing better than being your own boss, especially after when you play soccer, you're just controlled by so many different forces. So owning your own company and being your own bosses, it's so liberating and freeing and you get to finally make decisions for yourself, which I think is really powerful.
With a Grammy, if you're releasing your record with a major label, you have a chance with any record. You also have a very long shot with every record.
When you win a Grammy... you're thinking about you winning. It is amazing. Your peers and folks in the record business are saying, 'This is what we think of you.' And that's why the Grammy will always be, to me, the ultimate in what you get as far as a music trophy, because it is the one.
I think for us, we don't feel like the future of music is in the act of being a record company. We feel like the future of the music business is in empowering artists to have better and better tools to communicate with their fans. We want to be people who are saying to artists, "Look, you don't need that company over there to release your album. You can do it this way." Almost more of a band partnership than a label-artist relationship. Not about ownership of content, but about empowerment.
It is not wrong to strive to be better than a fellow human being. Nor is it wrong to desire to be better or even to feel like oneself is better than a fellow human being. What is wrong is to gloat in one's own virtue. Therefore, gloating in one's own virtue is not virtuous.
I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
The reality is the stakes are very high. If your industry is targeted or your company is sued in a class action, your legal costs will soar.
I got so excited about it. I was like, 'Yes! I won a Grammy!' And then my manager was like, 'No, you did not win a Grammy. You were part of a song that won a Grammy. Rihanna won a Grammy.'
I know what not being able to pay your bills feels like real well... I know that way better than a room full of beautiful people and Tony awards and Grammy awards.
Nobody likes a smart alec. Which is why it's always better for your career to be wrong and in company rather than right and on your own.
Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.
In the U.S., you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant.
When you are doing music videos through the '90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.
Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
Being able to create your own work, being able to indulge your own fantasies is so much better than journalism, so much more fulfilling than journalism, to me, that as long as I can continue to write fiction, I shall.
Believe it or not, your company, and even the industry, is not the opportunity. You are. Your company and Network Marketing are simply the vehicles that allow you to express your own inherent opportunity.