I Got Dreams of a Team Still

We watched this Hip Hop documentary The Show (1995) last night. This is tied into the PRSPCTVS Patreon rewards. It showcased a lot of clips featuring various legends in Hip Hop discussing Hip Hop. Something that strikes me as interesting is how few people have done it alone. 

A scene that really struck me was when The Dogg Pound bus was just singing Snoop’s songs word for word. Everyone knew Snoop was the guy, and they knew they were dope, but played their part in sharing the excellence of Snoop Dogg with the world. 

I think we all on some level know that to succeed in our musical hustles we need a team. A lot of us want to be the leader of the team, and usually this leads to the crab in the bucket situation that is local music. We all want to be the headlining star, but only a few of us ever will be that. Most of us can’t afford a team, literally. Teams are rarely free. 

One of my main goals in 2024 is to put together a collective of people who want to make money with me. For the first time in my life I don’t care about the shine, I just want to make sure I can really do this for the next 20 years. 

I’m in the middle of clearing off debt

Debt clearing sucks. This process is going to take a while to do organically. I’m liquid enough to make some moves but the reality is most of my money is going towards a past Holden’s indulgences. If I can give you any advice in this world, don’t wait to clear out debt. It’s going to be a miserable year or two either way, do it before you are 36.

The problem I’m facing is working all the time means I can’t focus on a lot of the backend stuff I used to do. I could stop writing the blog, but a future me would hate that choice. Writing is a skill I want to develop, and while I am not writing poetry or music, I am still using my creative energy to come up with content. When I get back to songwriting, I know I won’t be coming in with a rusty mind.

I’ve also hit this brick wall in my thinking. I don’t know where to go next with finding new people. I know I am looking for a certain kind of person to join the team. Those who are invested in pursuing common goals with me, equipped with the same passion and willingness to do the boring work I am. Some folk who also wants to throw time, money and energy into building a company. To be clear, I mean in Montreal. 

Most importantly I want that person to like who I am, not who they want me to be. 

Often I end up in situations where the people I work with are dealing with their own lives. It sounds wild, but one of the things that makes me lose interest fast in people is their unwillingness to meet and plan. Flacko and I do this and it’s the only reason PRSPCTVS is still alive. 

Since I have all this debt to deal with, and future money making endeavours require more evidence to recruit people I feel stuck. I’ve spent years learning all the things that go into making a music career but can’t find people who want to partner up and split the work fairly. 

This is not a shot at Chris either. He does his end. This is about growing beyond what we’ve been. 

Humility is the first step to more in life

A bunch of people will comment on how I have an attitude and am difficult to work with. There are a lot of moments where I came off wildly cocky and in some cases I truly had to learn that my attitude was foul. Even if others moved in ways I didn’t like, burning bridges has big ol’ consequences in life.

That being said, I’m way less difficult to work with than people think. What happens a lot of the time is people get involved in things I’m organizing. If I’m playing a CEO role in the project, then I’m not going to say yes to everything. The entire N.A.R.S. idea went from something I had a vision for into honestly being another rap show. Mostly because I compromised.

The end result of that is we lost money. The project never achieved an amount of money that was worth pursuing to me. The stress was insane. It wasn’t really what I wanted to build so I was not happy doing it. When I’m not happy, I’m not fun, which is arguably difficult. 

Other times that difficult reputation is because people want to get involved in my world. They come with ideas that are really out of scope, or things that won’t bring the results the person expects. While they have ideas, I’ve seen their ideas in action and know it’s not what I want to pursue. This is rarely a situation where the person is coming and saying here is what I can do for you. What they really want is to use my time and skills for whatever their gain is. Pretty much every book on business expresses that you need to say no to projects because you can’t do everything. 

When I meet people who know more than me I defer to their expertise, even though I can sometimes be petty about it. I struggle a lot with the flip side. When I face those people who have passionate ideas that just don’t fit what I’m trying to do. They rarely want to take the hours to calibrate and understand the bigger picture. Or people feel they can better allocate my time for me. I don’t know, either way I end up not being humble about it. They end up not liking me. I end up not liking them. We move on and no team is made. 

The main point is when all that stress and whatever has me in a foul mood, I need to be more humble. Or at least fake niceness better.  I’m not that special and no one owes me anything. There is clearly a better way of calibrating with people and it’s on me to figure it out. 

It’s not that hard to convince me something is worth doing

If you really want me to get involved with your project, you can show me how I’m getting paid off it. Whether this is you putting money in my hands, or showing me how the work we do now will lead to money later on, it’s pretty easy. You just need to come with a well thought out plan, some market research and clearly defined roles and expectations.

If you have been reading my blog you can see how I’m working on that for my brands. Over the years many people have tried to help me. I never knew what to ask for because in a lot of ways, outside of money, I wasn’t sure what I needed. One of the blog topics I nearly wrote about today was about all the roles and positions I envision for my future team. 

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But I feel frustrated and tired. Paying down credit cards is taking longer than I had hoped for. The good weather means I’m probably going to make less money off Uber this week. The full scope of my commitments is kicking my ass. I feel like I barely have time and I really don’t feel social at all. I’ve been going stupid hard for a few months and maybe I need a “vacation”. Only I’m on my hustle shit and can’t afford to not get paid a week. Mostly because I’m going to Puerto Rico in July and need to pay for that.

Sometimes my stress is a victim of my own life. The truth is I have way less time to do all the work alone. I need people who want to help me build this entity into a real media establishment. Get us press passes and access to stuff. There are a lot of skills I can share to teach people how to make more money in corporate life. I just need help with a lot of the grunt work. I’m not afraid of doing it, there just is too much to do and if other people handled parts of it I could focus more on my end. 

This blog is a step towards visualizing my utopia. I want to be 40 with momentum. That is very doable. Who wants to ride that wave with me?

Live Long and Prosper Everyone