I think business needs to have a heart and to have a heart a company must be more than just a moneymaking machine.
In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.
Just as a company needs a strategy to capture market share, a company needs a strategy to encourage actions that reflect their core values.
Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.
Once a company develops out of its consumer base, you will often see a well-funded multinational company come in and take over that space. The black-owned company either stays a niche company or just disappears. This is something we don't want to happen.
I don't see any particular sweet spot. But I do see sweet stocks that I really love and like and think are going to do well. And one is a company that probably makes that beautiful toenail polish you've got on. A company called Ulta. And it has just beautiful beauty salons all over the country.
I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.
My approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. A very complicated machine, but none the less a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car.
But one thing I would like to certainly clarify that I am no player-manager, nor is my company a talent management company. That needs to be very clear.
People don't want to pay for pitches. They want to see it. If you hear one more time, "Well, that's execution-dependent." Everything's execution-dependent! If there's something that's going to be a little bit more interesting than The Untitled Slinky Movie, then I think that writers that want to do interesting work and at the same time commercial work need to put it down on paper. So agents and producers that writers are working with are encouraging them to get it on paper because the studios like to see what they're buying rather than just imagine what it could be.
My dad used to say, 'You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,' and there's some validity in it. But honestly, even when I'm inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.
I see a film or a TV series or a play as being this machine. It sounds quite robotic, in its description, but it's basically a machine and you're just one of the cogs that goes in it. You're not the biggest one, and you're not the smallest one. Everyone's the same size.
The good parts about being a public company are increased discipline, increased execution and increased transparency to make sure that you are really building a company for a hundred years.
I'm a maniacal perfectionist. And if I weren't, I wouldn't have this company... I have proven that being a perfectionist can be profitable and admirable when creating content across the board: in television, books, newspapers, radio, videos.
That one person that says "I heard your stuff and I really like this." It really touches my heart because it's what I love to do. I'd rather do it for the people than do it for a machine, a company that just wants to make money.
I'm just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.