Tupac and Me

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:19This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altature Show.

1:36Rolling. So I'm going to talk about Tupac Shakur and what happened with me relating to Tupac Shakur in my first business. This was a critical lesson for me for business. First off, being an entrepreneur is, as you know, very hard. There is no easy route. People say, oh, I have an idea. Here's how a lot of people, I've noticed this. This is not a criticism if you think like this, but I've noticed a lot of people think of entrepreneurship like this. You get an idea, you raise money, like millions of dollars, you quit your job, you build a product, which you're sure is gonna sell to everybody and you sell to everybody and you make a lot of money.

2:23Or you fail, but now you're an entrepreneur and you failed, so now you have another idea and you raise more money and life is wonderful. So when I was first an entrepreneur, I was working a full-time job at HBO and I stayed at that full-time job for 18 months after I started my first company. My first company was called Reset and I've talked about it before. I won't go into all the details, but basically Reset was one of five or six companies that built websites. This was in the mid nineties, built websites. And we focused on building websites for entertainment companies. But I also did the website for AmericanExpress.com, ConEdison.com, which was a utility company.

3:08So I did boring websites to make, that was, I could charge more money that way. But we built a brand by doing fun, entertaining websites. Eventually though, it was so much work and we were starting to hire people. We had like, I don't know, 20 employees already. And I was still working my full-time job at HBO in part because I wasn't motivated as much by money. I still don't even think I'm really that motivated by money. I was obsessed with making a TV show for HBO. Again, that's a completely other story. Perhaps I talked about it a little bit on my podcast with Sheila Nevins who worked at HBO.

3:52In fact, I just remembered, Jay, remind me, I have to write back Sheila Nevins. She wrote me and I'm so bad at, so many amazing, wonderful people have written me and I'm just so bad at returning emails. I really got to get better at it, but I've got to write back Sheila Nevins. Anyway, she was the head of documentaries and reality TV at HBO. She's won more Oscars than any other human being on the planet, I think, because so many documentaries won Oscars, so many documentaries from HBO. Anyway, very creative, somewhat eccentric, but genius person. And I was working on potentially turning my 3 a.m.

4:32project into a TV show. She gave me money to film a pilot and we filmed the pilot. It was amazing. I did the pilot with another guy who's been on this podcast, John Alpert, who's a great documentary filmmaker. in any case i started doing websites and i did it for 18 for other companies and i would work all day at hbo and then around like 6 p.m i would head on over to reset where we had an office and employees and everything i would head on over to reset and literally work all night and you could only do this when you're young there's no way i would be able to do this now eventually i quit my job i thought here's what i thought was going to happen this guy at loud records which among other artists did they did the wu-tang clan he told me that oh the wu-tang clan is going to need 18 different websites and you could charge thirty thousand dollars for a website so i figured i did the math that's like six hundred thousand dollars and i figured this is amazing i'm gonna now's the time after 18 months of doing both now's the time i could fully quit my job and and full-time be ceo at reset first day i'm at reset i called the guy and i said okay we're ready to do the 18 websites for the wu-tang clan i think they wanted a website per album per artist for everything you know the wu-tang clan has like and and it was interesting working with them i remember i met this guy power he doesn't sing for the wu-tang clan but he kind of was their initial manager um the rumor had it he raised money for the wu-tang clan he produced their initial album uh he raised money for it through let's call it illicit activities i met with power he said you're one of us now and so i really felt like okay i'm gonna do a lot of business with them he he wanted that i used to go down me and my friend elon so in elon schwartz back in 2014 was i think the third or fourth podcast i ever did he was a professional poker player so elon and i on the weekends we would go up to harlem 148th street inst nick there was this park and we would play chess all day and um that's right in the middle of harlem if you don't know the the geography of of harlem and and so power from the wu-tang clan wanted to or you know he was the manager he wanted to go with me they were all into chess you know their album was called the mystery of chess boxing uh i've played chess with the jizza he's pretty good and uh anyway so i did a lot of stuff for the wu-tang clan then i did the website for the source magazine so the source magazine was the premiere magazine for all things hip-hop it was started by two jewish guys uh god what was the The guy's name, Jonathan, we call him Shecky.

7:26I forget if his name was Sheckman or Sheckler. And Dave Mate. I forget, again, I'm forgetting all the names. But Ed Young, so the Jewish guys didn't know really how to run a magazine, but Ed Young kind of took over to run it. And Ed and I became very good friends. He eventually became CEO of another company I was involved in. and i remember i we should get ed young on this podcast i remember one time ed young retired so he sold his shares of the source i think it was about two million dollars forgive me if i'm out of line here and uh or if i'm wrong and then i remember i could be wrong on the details again this is back in 1996 or 97 ed tracked down through his family history who you know so ed's an african american he tracked down where his ancestors were slaves like the exact house or plantation in virginia and he bought the house and lived in it i remember visiting him there and and so on but anyway we did the source magazine we did bad boy records so on another episode perhaps i could tell stories about diddy so diddy obviously uh owned bad boy records they were famous for not only you know all of diddy's music but even more so for notorious big's music and we did a lot of stuff for them we did loud records uh death row records interscope jive records and on and on all these sort of rap record labels and i have stories about all of them uh but this particular story is about none of those record labels so after two so of course if you don't know the story uh tupac shakur was killed i think they just caught and put in jail his the guy who killed him 20 or 30 years later but tupac shakur was shot and killed and he was this amazing rapper you've heard a lot of his songs and he had a new album coming out and his mom wanted to release kind of his album plus a greatest hits.

9:40And so his mom talked to her manager, the manager talked to a guy I knew who talked to me and said, do you want to do Tupac Shakur's greatest hits album? His mom's producing it plus his manager. And I said, of course. And, and it was going to be a$90 ,000 deal. Now for an entrepreneur, so I was an entrepreneur, but I didn't have any money. So my first business, I didn't even know anything about raising money, like venture capital. What's it like? Why would I sell a piece of this company? And in a service business, like we would make websites for people. So in a service business, if you get more business, you hire people.

10:24And if you lose business, you get rid of people. Now, of course, I never wanted to get rid of people and knock on wood, or not knock on wood, but fortunately we never had to get rid of people. We were always, every month was bigger than the month before, but you don't know that in advance. So I was always, the beginning of each month, the clock started again. We had no recurring clients really. So, you know, it was one-off like, oh, if HBO had a new show come out, I would do the website. If Wu-Tang Clan had another album, I would do another website. But there was no like, hey, we'll charge you 50 ,000 a month just to maintain all your websites.

11:04that we didn't really have any deals like that. So we were a bad model for a service business. So every month I had to kind of, I was much better at sales than I thought I would be. I mean, I was originally a computer programmer, but it turned out I was so passionate about the internet. Like a lot of people didn't think the internet was gonna be here to stay. Part of my job was convincing people, you need a website and you need to do business on your website. Then I have to come up with all the ideas for their business. Here's what you need to do on your website. So as an example, JP Morgan, the bank, they didn't have a website.

11:41I met with them and I said, I had to, and they said, are you sure we need a website? And I had to say like, well, one day you might, you know, customers might be able to see their accounts, you know, and how much money is in their accounts on your website. And plus it's good marketing for new customers. and I had to give them a whole set of ideas. And just like I mentioned earlier, I have to call back Sheila Evans. JP Morgan will call me and say, yes, we want to hire you. And I would never call them back. I just was always bad at calling people back. It is a fatal weakness for me. I don't know how I've survived.

12:21I don't know how I've been able to build the network that I have with a complete inability at calling people back. And I beg people, please just email me. Let's have conversations with email me because I can't talk to people on the phone. I don't know why. It's like this phobia. But that said, I just remembered another person I have to call back by Thursday. So that said, I never called J.P. Morgan back, but that was when I still had my full-time job at HBO. So I wasn't as worried about making payroll because we had enough clients to make payroll. and I was in charge of HBO's website. And so I would always assign my own company projects from HBO.

13:03So I always knew I would make payroll from HBO. But once I left HBO to work full-time for my own company and run my own company, be CEO of my own company, I had to make sure I sold enough websites to companies to make payroll. And if I couldn't make payroll, I would have to both fire people and try to find the money, like borrow money from my parents or something, or they didn't have any money. So I had to, or dig into my own savings, which I didn't have any money. I had a 401k from HBO with nothing in it, but I didn't have to figure out how to pay people. So I figured, okay, if we get this Tupac Shakur deal, I've got payroll probably for two months at least.

13:46This is great. And so the meeting gets set up. My friend who worked at Loud Records at the time, he was going to meet me there. And one thing you should know about the music industry is that, and for anybody who's ever had even five seconds exposure to working with the music industry, you know what I'm talking about. It is the most insane, unreliable, just BS industry you could possibly imagine. I would say just about every record label I did business with had some connection to either crime or organized crime. And I'll distinguish between crime as just being bad people and organized crime is exactly what it means.

14:33Organized crime. So I could write a whole book of stories just about doing websites for the music industry. It probably wouldn't be that interesting, but there's lots of stories. So anyway, this is not necessarily though a bad story, except I show up at this meeting and my friend from Loud Records who had been the intermediary, I needed him because he was the person who introduced me to the Tupac Shakur's manager and Tupac Shakur's mom. He would be kind of the intermediary here. And of course, I would give him a cut if I got the deal. I think I was giving like 10 or 15 % cuts to people who who were intermediaries for me at that point.

15:15But anyway, he never shows up. And this guy, this manager doesn't even know why I'm there. That's what I mean when I say the music industry is unreliable. Why didn't this guy show up? And why didn't this guy, the manager, even really know I was there? Now, I had spoken to him, but he was like, remind me again, like what we're talking about. And I said, okay, from what I understand, Tupac Shakur's mom wants to do a new album for Tupac Shakur, not only will I make the website, but I will do what's called an enhanced CD. So music wasn't, nobody listened to music online then. That didn't exist. There was something called CDs.

15:55You would burn the music onto a CD disc and people had CD players and you would put the CD disc into the player and it would play music. Now you could also put the CD into a computer. or computers had CD drives. And in addition to websites, my company also made what's called enhanced CDs. So there would be a game, like on the Wu-Tang CD, if you put it in a CD drive, there would be a game with the Wu-Tang Clan or a game with Tupac Shakur. So I said, we make it. And I had with me, I would show him some enhanced CDs. And I also would show him, you know, the idea is I would meet him and show him all our websites for different record labels and musicians.

16:38and also my websites for HBO and Warner Brothers. I did the website for the Matrix movies and the Scream movies for Miramax and all sorts of fun websites. We made really beautiful websites and I was proud of them. And the enhanced CDs, I didn't know much about that side of our business, but we did those and apparently we did a good job. So here's the problem.

17:07Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Altucher at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

17:28look as a manager of people as an employer as an entrepreneur and as even an investor in startups i can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire the best part is that great candidates are already on linkedin employees hired through linkedin are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

18:11And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

18:47What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. here's the problem. I show up for the meeting and I explain finally why I'm there and who I am. And the guy's like, great, show me your stuff.

19:29Here's my computer. And so he moves out of the way and lets me sit down in his chair. And I am horrified, or I should say I am terrified because at that time, there were basically three kinds of computers. So you could have a computer that was based on the IBM PC. So like, I don't even know if, I guess Dell existed, but all those Dell-like computers and Compaq and all these other computer companies, they made computers that were based on the original IBM PC and they used the Windows operating system. Or you could have a Macintosh, or you could have a more exotic kind of machine, like a Unix machine.

20:16but those were only popular in academia. So I, you know, at Reset, we had only Macintoshes because Macintoshes were great for design. And at HBO, we only used Macintoshes. And when I was a grad student and I worked a little bit as a programmer after grad school, I only used Unix machines. So I was only familiar, in my entire life, I had only ever used Unix machines and Macintoshes. I had never once touched a Windows based machine. And so I had no idea how to use a Windows machine. I had zero concept. And so I was really hoping the guy from Loud Records, the intermediary, would be there because he knew how to use a Windows machine just in case I needed to use it.

21:05Now, of course, I learned a lesson from this, but I'll get to those lessons later. So I'm sitting down and I'm just sitting there and I have no idea where to put, I don't even know how to turn on the computer. And so I finally said, listen, do you have a Macintosh? And he's like, no, this is my only computer. It's a, you know, it's a PC. And I said, well, to be honest, I don't even know how to turn it on. I've never used a Windows-based machine. and he like put his his hand on his forehead like he was like he had a headache or something he's like what and i said i if you had a macintosh no problem but i've never used a windows machine and he's like you're coming here so he said this to me he said you're coming here to pitch me to give you$90 ,000 to do a website and a hand CD and you can't turn on the fucking computer.

22:07That's what he said. I'm sorry for the language. And I said, well, I'm good with computers. I've just, I went into my old school. I went to grad school for computer science. I've used computers all my life or as long as they've existed, but I only have used Apple Macintoshes and Unix machines. And he's like, yeah, but the whole world uses PCs. Nobody even uses those other computers. And it's true at the time, nobody really used Macintoshes. In New York City, HBO and Philip Morris, the cigarette company, were the only ones known to use Macintoshes for the whole company. And of course, design companies, smaller companies use Macintoshes and web companies like my company, Reset, we use Macintoshes.

22:54but I didn't know how to use a PC, a Windows-based machine. I couldn't turn it on. And if I turned it on, I wouldn't be able to find out where, you know, I probably would have to download a web browser for him. And I wouldn't even know how to find the web browser if he had it on his computer. I just didn't know anything. And then I'd have to, you know, show him my websites from that. So, and by the way, I didn't know how to, if I put a CD into his CD drive, which every computer had then i wouldn't have known how to find the cd the the the the enhanced cd the the software on his computer so i was just completely incompetent and he he kept repeating you gotta be sorry for the language you gotta be kidding me you are the computer guy you're the website guy and you can't use a computer and i'm like no i can use a computer i just I'm sorry I don't know how to use a PC I've never used a PC so well he's like well this is just a joke like we're there's no way we're gonna hire you I don't even know why you came down to talk to me and he's like I'm busy go and and that's again that's the music industry for you but he then sat down on his computer he wouldn't look at me there was no goodbye um I just stood up and I said, okay, well, thanks.

24:18He didn't look at me. He didn't say anything. And maybe I stood there for one or two seconds, but he was focused on whatever was on the screen. And I walked out. And then everybody at my office, at Reset's office, you know, our 20 employees, give or take, they knew I was, you know, visiting with Tupac Shakur's manager, and this was going to be an exciting project. Do all Tupac Shakur's websites and his new websites. and you know people knew that also this is how i was making payroll i was pretty transparent about that so i get back to my office and everybody's surrounding me and saying well how did it go and i said it went awesome it went great and people were like phew that's so good and i said Yeah, there's just some details to iron out, but don't worry, we'll figure it all out.

25:15And this is gonna be a great project for us. So yes, I lied, but here's the thing. I didn't wanna tell people how it actually went because A, I was ashamed of myself that the meeting was one of the worst meetings I had ever had. I have had worse meetings, by the way, but that was one of the worst. And of course I didn't get the job and there was no chance I was gonna get the job. And, uh, and I was ashamed. And I also was, was scared that I wasn't going to make payroll that month. And I didn't want people to, if you're the CEO, okay, yes, you want to be honest with your employees and you want to be transparent, but you don't really want to be scared in front of your employees because once you're the captain of the ship and if the ship's going to sink, then there's going to be a mutiny and, and you're not going to be the captain anymore.

26:13And lots of bad things can happen. So I wanted to exhibit confidence. I wanted, I didn't want people to be nervous that they weren't going to get paid that month. Uh, I would, I knew I would figure it out one way or the other, although to be honest, I was scared to death. I always imagined, And I always imagined I wanted to create an environment where my employees at the end of the day could call their parents and their parents would say, how was your day today? And they would say, it was the best day ever. I learned so much. I have so much fun at this job. I'm doing exactly what I love. So I wanted to create that kind of culture and that kind of environment.

26:56and only as a last resort would I admit that there was a problem. Now, I did talk to people about, you know, like banks about maybe borrowing money to make payroll, but that wasn't really working out because I didn't have any recurring contracts that I could borrow off of. And that's how you typically borrow money. I didn't know anything about business. Let's put it that way. I knew about the web. I knew how to make a website. I knew how to program. I turned out to be much better at sales than I thought I was, although not good enough to dig myself out of the hole I did with Tupac Shakur's manager.

27:34So I had some skills at business and I was pretty good at managing employees and keeping calm in the face of adversity and so on. And I was very good, oddly, at making partnerships. You know, anything sales related, I was good at. Plus I knew how to get things done. so I could get a website, test it, and deliver it on time and manage the people and the projects who were doing that. So I came back and I said, it went awesome. And then, of course, I called this guy from Loud Records. I'm like, where the heck were you? I completely died in there. And he said, ah, don't worry. That guy's crazy. Don't worry about it.

28:20And we'll find stuff for you. And of course, he didn't find anything for me. I did get more jobs that month, one way or the other. I forget exactly which ones, but clearly I made payroll. I was growing. But I knew it's really difficult to be in a service business because you have to constantly please a few people. It's not like I had 1 ,000 clients. I would have like maybe, you know, five to 10 companies at any given point that I was making websites for. And as we grew, it got bigger and bigger. We had more than that. But at that time, maybe I had five or six go-to clients. So I think I probably got more money from Con Edison that month.

29:02And that's how I was able to make payroll. Also, even though they weren't considered recurring, I was always getting new jobs from HBO and from The Source magazine and from Interscope Records and so on.

29:30Here is the point. One is bad things are going to happen all the time that are unexpected. I obviously could have prepared better for that meeting. I could have brought someone with me who knew how to use a PC, or I could have learned how to use a Windows-based machine. My goal then was to try to reach out to one new client or two new clients a day And so I should have realized, though, as part of the sales process, I shouldn't go to a meeting by myself. I should always take with me someone who is good at follow-up and knows how to use a PC. And again, I should have learned how to use a PC. And B, I shouldn't have relied on someone who I knew was unreliable to be at that meeting.

30:14That's happened to me quite a bit also, where I rely on the unreliable. You learn sometimes the hard way, very valuable lessons. So as I've mentioned on other podcasts, you are the average of the five people you spend time with. And if you spend time with, even in a business context, people who are largely unreliable, then you're gonna have an unreliable business. You will be an unreliable businessman yourself. And so I was unreliable because I was hanging out with people who are unreliable. Fortunately, I had enough people who are reliable as well that I survived as a business and went on and we got bigger and bigger until we sold the company, which is completely another story.

30:56So the other thing is you can either be pitiful or you could be powerful. And I didn't want to go back to the office and be pitiful. It wasn't my, it's not my employee's responsibility to make me feel better when I'm feeling miserable. And if I'm pitiful, then they're gonna look for new jobs and they're gonna feel pitiful about their own lives. When they were still working on jobs for me, I needed them to have confidence, to be happy they were with a growing company, which we were, that was no lie. And I wanted them, they also worked on all the boring jobs because they knew I was getting lots of cool, exciting jobs, like, oh, the Matrix movie or Tupac Shakur or Wu-Tang Clan or whatever.

31:46So they knew I was getting a lot of creative projects as well. So that kept them incentivized to work for the boring projects like Con Edison or American Express. So I wanted them to feel like I was out there pounding the pavement for them so they could do artistic, exciting projects, which we were known in New York City at least as being the company that did the most exciting projects. So that's how I was able to attract really great employees for a relatively little salary. So we probably paid the lowest salaries in the industry, but we certainly did the most exciting projects in the industry.