What follows is the first of a series of excerpts from my new book Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All, which will be released on January 4th. To read excerpt 1, click here.
[pagebreak]
EXCERPT 2: Don’t Chase The Money
Even though I’m going to keep encouraging you to look past the money, I want to make it clear again that when I ask you to focus on looking inside for your strength and happiness first, I actually view that as very concrete financial advice.
Certainly any success I have experienced as a businessman is due in large part to the fact that I’ve poured my passion into ventures that made me happy—even joyous—before they ever made me a red cent. Whether it was in the music, clothing, film, or even financial services industries, I’ve only chased things that I thought would make others happy. Never money.
That’s been true since the start of my career, when Rick Rubin and I were running Def Jam Records out of his dorm room at New York University. Even though we were so desperate for funding that we literally begged a bank for a loan (as famously recreated in the movie Krush Groove), making money was never our primary concern. I can honestly say that when we showed up for work each morning (to say nothing of the countless nights we slept at the office), what motivated us wasn’t the money, but the fun and happiness we experienced helping make hip-hop records and then sharing them with the world.
