Chapter 3
Constructing Your Crew
If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour, you can lose yourself.
—DAVE CHAPPELLE
Ask any successful entrepreneur what their greatest attribute is and you might be surprised by their answer.
It's not their negotiation skills, strategic planning, or ability to understand new technology.
No, they're all going to tell you the same thing: their greatest skill is being an astute judge of character.
Nobody, not even a rapper, makes it on their own. Yes, I'm alone in the booth when it's time to spit my rhymes, but outside of the booth there's a small army supporting me. Managers, attorneys, agents, engineers, producers, roadies, assistants, stylists, publicists, and friends I trust to keep it real with me (probably the most valuable members of my crew).
People like to make fun of rappers' entourages. (I'll admit having your own weed carrier is ridiculous. I don't smoke, but if I did I'd damn sure roll my own blunts. Why would I want someone touching and licking something I'm about to put in my own mouth?) But you must surround yourself with people who can help support, grow, and articulate your vision.
Pick the right people and you can build a team that will take you to the top.
But pick the wrong people and it can derail your vision before it ever fully gets on track.
You can recover from blowing a lucrative deal, missing out on a change in the marketplace, or failing to upgrade your operation. Blowing those kinds of opportunities will hurt, but you'll recover—provided you have the heart of a hustler.
But if you pick the wrong person for a job, especially a critical one, the results can be catastrophic. This is true for every kind of business.
Back when I was slinging rocks, one of the jobs that needed to be filled in every crew was the "steerer." This person wouldn't have any money or drugs on them, but would direct customers to someone who did. Lots of dealers wouldn't even think twice about who they hired for that job—it was an entry-level position, and anyone who approached them was viable. If you weren't a cop, congratulations: you're hired. There was zero consideration about the person's character or who could vouch for them.
Nonetheless, steering presented an extreme liability to the operation. Since steerers usually had the shortest tenure, they also had the least invested in the crew. Which meant that if they got busted, they had little reason not to name names to the cops.
Understanding this vulnerability, instead of grabbing whoever happened to cross my path, I tried to pick people who seemed to possess a strong character. Who seemed like they'd be able to stay cool under pressure and have confidence that I'd bail them out (more on that later).
A lot of my steerers did get busted, but because I'd considered their character before hiring them, they usually didn't flip on me. Dealers who hired without much thought? They generally didn't last too long.
The ability to recognize character—or the lack thereof—is just as critical on the corporate level. Let's say you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and you hire a new guy to be your CFO. Everything can be fine for years. You become very comfortable with the guy. He's proficient with numbers, maybe more so than you are. You get to know his family outside of the office and go to his kid's sweet sixteen. He's so capable that you're able to increase your distance from the day-to-day financial details and start focusing on the bigger picture: mergers that are going to make you a legend, and gala events with celebs as you build your brand.
Then one morning you wake up to find out the CFO has looted the company's accounts and flown off to Dubai with his new girlfriend. Time to kiss your legendary status good-bye. Maybe even your job, too. Sure, a true hustler can survive that sort of blow. They're always going to figure out a way to make more money, because they know the frequent lurches between feast and famine. But they'd also much rather put the right person in that position and sidestep any potential drama than have to deal with the betrayal.
The importance of judging character is especially important in marriage. If you look at the guys who end up on the cover of Fortune, the column that shows where they took their biggest losses is always the same: divorce.
Billionaires don't lose the bulk of their money to competitors or to new technologies; they lose it to their exes. Jeff Bezos of Amazon reportedly had to pay his wife, MacKenzie, $38 billion when they split up. I don't care what happens with Amazon down the road, but there's no way the company itself is going to lose that much money for him.
People get divorced for all sorts of reasons, but a lot of wealthy individuals marry without knowing the true motive of their partners. I can promise you that every millionaire who has had to pay out a huge settlement has wished they were a better judge of character when they said "I do."
RATHER BE ROBBED
I've never had to file for divorce, but I'll be the first to tell you I've got a lot of issues in my personal life. And at the top of the list are trust issues.
A few years ago I was talking with a woman who'd taken some psychology classes in college. We were discussing a situation where I'd become convinced someone close to me was going to stab me in the back.
When I was done venting, she looked at me and asked, "You ever hear of the word 'pistanthrophobia'?"
"Nah, what's that?"
"It's what you have. Look it up."
I typed it into my phone and got the following definition: "The fear of trusting people due to past experience and relationships gone wrong."
Can't lie, it sounded exactly like me.
I think everyone is a little afraid of being too trustful, but I'm definitely worse than most. In my life, I feel like I've been betrayed by people I deserved better from: people I've given money to, opportunities to, love to, even life to. Because of that, for a long time the only thing I had faith in was money. I only trusted the paper that said "In God We Trust."
This is one of the reasons the theme of betrayal is so prominent in my show Power. It's an issue that's always on my mind, so much so that I even called the last season "The Final Betrayal."
I'd rather be robbed at gunpoint than be betrayed (not that I'd suggest you try it). At least getting robbed is exciting! There's an undeniable rush when someone pulls out their piece and growls, "Get on the fucking floor!" Once it's over (provided you don't get shot), you can go back and tell your friends, "Yo, they just stuck me up!" Your pockets might be lighter, but you'll be much stronger overall for having survived the experience.
Getting betrayed is different. You don't get a great war story out of it. I've never heard of someone getting hyped to tell their friends, "Yo, you won't believe this, but I just got backstabbed by my mans!" There are no stripes earned for that shit. When you open yourself up to someone, either financially or emotionally, and they go left on you, it's a different kind of pain, even more dramatic than a stickup kid physically taking something from you. Like Malcolm X said, "To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal."
Because I find betrayal so painful, I put incredible thought and consideration into the people who surround me. As I detail in this chapter, when I was first coming up, I made the mistake of confusing loyalty and location. It's a miscalculation a lot of people make—wanting to believe that just because someone is from the same streets as you that they're going to have your back forever. I learned the hard way that that's not the case. Sure, when you share a common experience with someone, there's a greater chance for loyalty and understanding, but it's far from guaranteed.
To achieve lasting success, you have to strive for balance when building your team. If you only surround yourself with people from your past, then chances are the past is where you'll be stuck. But if you abandon the people who were in the trenches with you for people you've just met—the ones who might be charismatic but have never proved anything to you—you're probably going to get burned.
If you look at my team today, you'll find a mix of old and new blood, weathered soldiers alongside impressive people I've met since my initial success. Walk into the G-Unit Records office and you might see guys who were right there with me on the streets of Southside, proving that they could remain cool under fire.
Some people form that bond going to school or playing on a sports team together. Definitely from serving in the military. When your life is on the line and the bullets are flying, you form a very deep connection with the people who have your back.
This is why I believe that you can learn more about what someone is made of in two minutes on the streets than twenty years in the boardroom.
In business it takes a long time to get a gauge on true nature. Instead of having the luxury of watching someone in action, you'll have to rely on instinct more. But once you do feel confident about someone's loyalty and work ethic, that's a person you need on your team. It's a rare combination in the business world, but one that's extremely valuable.
That's why, in addition to those day one veterans, I've tried to round out my roster with smart businesspeople who I feel I can trust—despite my hang-ups. Like my general counsel, Steve, who oversees my legal and business matters. Or my publicist, Amanda, who doesn't freak out every time I post something on social media and cleans up when I make a mess. Or my book agent, Marc, who helped put this project together. None of them have set foot in the Southside, but they've all been critical in keeping my brand expanding and moving in the right direction.
A great example of someone I've only met in the last five years but who has really helped me evolve is Chris Albrecht, the former CEO of Starz Networks. Chris built HBO into what it is today before taking over at Starz. He's taught me a tremendous amount about how TV works while giving me the freedom to be myself. Plus, he's from Queens, too, so it's almost like our relationship was meant to be.
Chris's number is one I'm never deleting from my phone. I don't care where he goes; I'm going to try to do business with him. I consider television to be my second career after music, and I would never have reached the level I'm at today without establishing a relationship with him. Yes, we're from different parts of Queens and have pretty different backgrounds, but we've clicked since day one and have really been able to help each other. Chris might not be one of my day one homies, but we've been through some wars of our own, and we know we have each other's back.