Sean Combs is a great entrepreneur.
He is I will go down in history as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history from my standpoint.
And he's a great entrepreneur. First, a lot of people don't know he started as a businessman.
He you know, the people know him as an artist and a fashion icon and so on and so forth, but his first role in the entertainment business was as an owner, you know, first as an an r at Uptown Records, but then you know, ultimately as an owner of Bad Boy Records. He was not an artist when he first owned bad Boy Records. So from there, from you know, where he took that company alone as a as an entrepreneur was incredible and would go down in
history in and of itself. But then too, one of the things I said, I was really super fortunate to experience, and this is something that you know, is part of the American dream experience is to see businesses go from an idea from like sketches on a table to like a real business with hundreds of employees with hundreds of million dollars in sales, and like not just once like I started like three four times over literally like things being sketched. We're gonna do this, We're gonna do this.
How the cloth is gonna look? What's the TV network gonna look like? You know how, what are the segments we want you know, on on a twenty four hour day, and what's that gonna look like?
Going from that, you know, from an idea to actually happening.
And that's a phenomenal, incredible thing, really difficult to do, and to do it, you know, three or four times over in a big way, like uh, you know Sean Combs did is really unprecedented. And we're not talking about a huge.
Time for what's on, like twenty years, he's done this full time.
Absolutely, you've still got to still going to come too, right, So this is these are the years where most executives are really just getting into groove and and creating great, great ideas.
So here here's what's so.
I will say he is rarefied air as an entrepreneur. So you have to understand that first. So it's not it's not by accident, it's not you know luck, it's you know, he has great instincts. He has great instincts, he has great negotiating instincts, he has great instincts of the marketplace.
Right. So essentially what.
Puff purposefully created was a whole new category, which you know I call and we call urban aspirational.
That category really.
Didn't exist, right, so and off of that category if you really think about everything he created. So it started with the music and everybody was talking about the shiny suits, this, that and the other. But he showed you lifestyle that no one ever thought about other than in a comedic way, showing you know, for the hip hop community. He showed you private jet lifestyle, jet ski lifestyle, and it all was purposeful about this narrative around.
You know, we can aspire to these great things.
Sean John was totally about aspirations, like I want to clothes.
That feel like you're rich that you're wearing.
I want you know, at this time, he had, you know, he had felt you know, Gucci and all these other brand names on him, and he's like, I want Sewing John to feel like that on the consumer.
And I wanted to fit them right, and they're going to feel like, you know, a million bucks when they put it on.
So he created a whole category once again just a rare thing for anybody to do. And he parlayed that category into different consumer products groups from from clothing to uh to then spirits you know, to to even how he approached his television work and uh, you know, and and and many other different consumer products categories that he got it involved in, including water and and and other things. So aquar aquadre. So I started on cameras so you can see it. Uh so uh yeah so that so.
But but a couple of things I would say, this is really I think unique about someone like myself working with him. I'm there to be the analytical person and to do everything I learned, right, is like do valuation models.
And for all of my fellow.
MBAs and so on, like when you get around someone like as Sean Combs or Sean Carter or whatever, don't think you have to lose the skill set that you're supposed to be bringing to the table. In fact, trust that skill set because it's really important and it's important for you to bring that to the table.
But I would say what I learned is that.
There is something important about instinct, there is something important about celebrity, and there is something important about you knowing.
Your value and being able to walk away from a deal. So I would say.
One of the great things that Sean was able to always do it almost any deal I was involved in him with is I would set the range and say, Okay, we're going to the room. If we get this deal to around this level. You know, if we get it too like fifteen million, that's a really good deal.
We really should do it right.
If it's below that, we can, you know, maybe we want to keep negotiating, you know whatever. So many times I've been in the room and we get to the fifteen and I'm like, I'm smiling, I'm happy, like smiling on the inside, and he's and you know, he's just he'll look at him like, yeah, all right, well I don't think we're gonna have a deal today. You know, y'all just don't really know my value. Thanks very much. I talked to you and I'm like kicking them, like
what are you doing? We got we got to our number.
You know what I mean.
But he was like I could look in their eyes and know they wanted to do more.
You know what I mean. I knew, I know they are not leaving here without doing this deal. But like I said, everyone's down.
An entrepreneur that takes guts and to walk away from some of the numbers we would walk away from and say no to that he would walk away from and say no to. Takes a lot of guts and belief in yourself and he and that was part of how he approached deals.
He never went into a deal like I gotta have it.
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He never went as anything with desperation, and some of that is about planning.
When you saw Sean Combs and Bad Boy Do, it had been in the works for years.
I wasn't involved in anything that didn't take twelve to twenty four months.
It had been in the work for years.
So none of these are like knee jerk, like one of the better places to be as an athlete or an entertainer. Is where you have to make decisions to survive, right survival decisions versus you've mapped out. Of course, Like you know, Sean was very strategic about when am I
going to be in the spirits business. I know I'm going to be there at a certain point, but I want to build my brand of celebration and I want to build my brand of aspiration enough so that when I get to the spirits business, I could create a brand that sits at a certain price point, that stands for a certain thing, and that will be presented the right way. So these things were orchestrated, you know, years in advance before we got into the businesses. And then
negotiating the deals. To negotiate the deal you really want sometimes takes a long time and means you're gonna have to have a lot of patients, a lot of faith in yourself. People are gonna come to you many times to say all right, do this deal. Now we're walking away, and you may have to say, all right, walk away, No, You're worth right, And I mean that was him. He was great at that, but also great at just identifying opportunities.
We talked about it earlier, identifying white space in the spirits industry that the success of Sarak was all about identifying.
The white space.
There was no premium alcohol that our community could call it rome. They were like running to the Great Gooses all these other brands that really didn't want.
Us as customers.
And he knew there was just a huge white space.
So how did the Sarrock deal even come about? Right? Because at that time we saw a lot of.
People, well mostly I felt like that boy in Rockefell were going back and forth, right, they had Rock a Wiz, Seawan John Uh, the shouts John, I loved the fifth that was like, I'll fade the crolling line, like we don't want that fifth ass to all the time, right, But you know they were coming out with Armordale and I remember Ludacris had came out with an alcohol and was what was the idea to create your own or partner with a company that was already existed.
How did that deal come though?
So the deal was with the I Joe and they had done a couple of things with bad Boy and Sean and just loved the results. I think I'm not even sure what the lords list of things were, but whether they were events, parties, everything, they did you know, uh, you know, puff just over delivered to you know in a way that they were like, we really want to be in business with So Honestly, the initial conversations were
a range of things. You know, we could start our own products, could develop something from scratch and.
And or anything like what do you want to do the type of thing right which need to So I think the biggest thing that happened was they had this product this uh, this product that they said, you know, look we just launched.
This is not it really hasn't done much, you know, what do you think about it? And he thought it could work for him basically, So we ended up going going.
Down that path and that was the first product.
The next product was he always didn't want to create something from scratch, and the next product was a Tekilla product, which was an acquisition, but again was totally driven by something he wanted to do and something he had vetted out and wanted to launch.
What I read like the history of like soraka names like Nick Stoor him come up and I know he was part of the hypnotic movement?
Yes, and then was is he part of it?
Was he part of the team originally that was the acquisition part with us.
Yeah, he was in day one at the acquisition level.
But I think immediately, you know, he was on that list of people we need like day two to go, you know, promote the brain, And I mean I picked that. Another thing, I'm not going to give all the secrets because I know the book is coming.
The book is coming. The book is coming for sure.
But another thing, you know, uh, you know, Showing was always focused on was.
Not playing fair.
So how do I use my celebrity to catapult something in a unique way? How do I do things that other people can't do to catapult my brands uniquely? And that was the approach with you know, with Sorak, is that I have to really own the lifestyle and I'm gonna do it, you know, unfairly. I'm gonna go get every celebrity friend I have every but not only that, but every lifestyle person in each market. You know, who's the person on the radio, who's the receptionist that just
knows everybody? Who are the party throwers in each market. I'm gonna go lock all of them down. Create ambassadors, you know, just a rock DJs, you know, creates boys, rock girls.
How am I going to lock down the lifestyle.
It's like that they turned from the nineties era of making the million dollar video to the sixty second commercial that feels like the million dollar video.
So he's in the helicopters. He's like James Bondo, like Shot. He likes to call him Black Season. Well most of these conversions, we're.
Like, yeah, if we drinks so Rack, we can have that lifestyle too.
So like he's a genius man man. That's why call him black Season. He used embodies down whole VI.
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Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fine. Nearly one thousand dollars a day. Imprisoned and deported, you will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will be protected.
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