It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize that if you want to be successful at anything, you have to work at it. But there are different ways of working and different ways of thinking. Jay-Z’s early mindset is classic entrepreneur – when the door to the ‘normal way’ was closed to him he found a creative solution that ultimately set him on the path to becoming who he is today.<\/p>\n
When Jay-Z was an unsigned rapper, he sold his tapes from the trunk of his car while trying to get a record deal. All of the major labels refused to sign him. He finally scored a deal with Payday Records, but after seeing how amateurly they operated, he realized something that became very critical to his success:\u00a0they didn’t do anything for him that he couldn’t do for himself.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nYou could argue that selling tapes from the back of your car is not particularly creative (re-brand it as a ‘pop-up-shop’ and it will sound a bit more savvy) but creating your own record label is. That’s what Jay-Z decided to do when he created Roc-A-Fella records when he realized everything they were taking a cut for he could do better by himself.<\/strong><\/p>\nBeing willing to take risks, potentially fail and work a lot harder are all key to building your own business. Finding creative solutions to the particular problems you are facing, and eschewing the ‘normal way’ things are done is an incredibly important muscle to develop. Asking questions like: What would it look like to break this? What would it look like to do everything ‘perfectly wrong’? What is the culturally accepted way of doing my business? What does it look like to flip that on its head?<\/p>\n
Do things for yourself and find creative ways of doing things differently. \u00a0Don’t just do things because it’s the “normal” or “typical” way.<\/p>\n
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