When Poppa G was in high school, he skipped a large portion of his classes because he didn’t enjoy reading books and studying. G realized that it was not the case later on. He just couldn’t deal with the boredom, but mainly, he didn’t know what he wanted to do and what he wanted to be after his high school education. His interest was in making money immediately than learning a skill trade or studying for his future career. Though G was smart enough to do well in exams, he decided to take an easy way out by hustling on the street whether it was gambling or whatever. Out of all the people, G started to hang out frequently with a guy named V who wasn’t the most popular kid in the school. By hanging out with V from Macedonia one day made him realize that if G had a tendency to spend time and befriend closely with people based only on popularity or similar interests/habits/lifestyle, he might miss his chances to learn, grow and open his Oriental eyes to other possibilities and opportunities. This is why he should always treat others who are different from him with respect and appreciate for their intellects and etc.
Out of G’s close high school crew that he spent most of his time in high school days, V was a smart kid who used to get teased a lot by some kids in his social circle. Tyrion and a couple of others would laugh at V and make fun of him for no real reason in many occasions just becuase he wasn’t the most popular and he had different interests. V received those unfair treatments because of his peaceful and book nerdy nature. Based on G’s history of friendships at that age, V was not the type of person G would frequently hang out with.
One day Poppa G was at V’s house for reasons he couldn’t remember. G could’ve been there for a class project. During this visit, V showed G a computer equipment and what it was able to do. This was the first time G was introduced to CDR-Recorder. Now this was before USB, portable hard drives and smartphones, so this was an interesting discovery. G knew just enough about computers and how to operate them since MS-DOS days, but he didn’t know shit about how the computer tech market was advancing. While most high school kids didn’t care about that, but V did for whatever reasons he had. His parents were lucky in that sense because he could’ve bought crack and smoked it instead of buying a CDR-Recorder. His dog, Molly, would’ve been sold for a bag of crack and that could’ve been a tragic incident.
Being a hustler or somewhat of an entrepreneur that G was at that time, he couldn’t go to sleep when he returned to his home. Regardless of V’s popularity among other kids and nerdy nature, G realized that V was a person he should hang out more often than some other kids because he was cut from a different cloth. Even though V had this CDR drive, he didn’t realize he was sitting on a gold mine. After thinking for awhile, G came up with a plan to make money by using his CDR drive. G knew it was going to work if he executed his plan with the right product. Shortly after, G asked V to burn him a personal mixtape with many different artists in one CD.
And because this was right before the Napster and Limewire era, G had to acquire every song by actually buying CDs of all artists at music stores. V made G’s first mixtape with some popular songs and some unknown songs on the radio and TV that G thought that were going to be big hits. G really had to spend days to figure out the final playlist. After coming up with the list and required CDs of all artists, V made a mixtape CD for G to enjoy. Once G received the CD, he talked to someone in the school and let him listen to it. Then G asked him if he wanted to buy it for $10 or $20, and he agreed to pay and buy the mixtape right away.
V was the first and the only person with CDR-Recorder in his high school or maybe even the whole town at that time, so G pitched a plan of duplicating that same mixtape CD and selling them in school. G eventually made V realize and see what was possible. V agreed to the plan and they decided to split the profit. By taking pre-orders, they managed to control their expenses efficiently as students with not much money.
The product was moving in a slow pace in the beginning, but that changed very soon thanks to hours of G spending time listening to the radio and watching music videos. There was one song by a new group that G included in the playlist which was fairly new and unheard of. It was not even a chart topper and most people didn’t even know about the song. The song was “Too Close” by the group NEXT. When this song blew up on the chart, their sales of mixtape CDs blew up along with the success of that song. Everyone was singing or dancing to the song in almost all dance parties, clubs and talent shows.
Their profit margin was awesome and the demand was great. With some word of mouth, they were even selling these mixtapes to kids from other high schools nearby. It got to a point where V didn’t even have time to focus on school work or party because he had to pump those mixtapes non-stop out of his computer. This overnight success was a gift and a curse for G because he had a taste of being an entrepreneur and making money without proper mentorship and guidance. It made him start to drift further away from the cold reality, books and studying in school.
Surfers are somewhat similar to entrepreneurs. When surfers go out on the water, they will paddle on the board to predict or identify a wave and prepare themselves to catch that oncoming wave to surf as long as they can. Entrepreneurs have to do the same thing pretty much. When you see an opportunity in the market, you have to be on time and not miss the perfect timing in order to maximize that wave of opportunity. Also, it is critical that you are well trained and prepared with a proper plan to ride that wave successfully as long as you can before you wipe out or else. This can also apply in corporate settings and stock trading/investing.
Just by collaborating with V for Groove Master venture, G learned a lot of hands-on valuable business and entrepreneur lessons without actually attending business classes. Here are some key points of what G learned during that time:
1. Perfect Timing
Groove Master was a huge independent success because V was the only person with a CD burner in the school and surrounding neighborhoods. And CD was definitely one of the most popular medium at that time. No one has done what they did before and they didn’t have any competition. There was only one place you had to go to get them, Poppa G and V.
2. Your shit is only as good as your last one
After the first mixtape, it was no brainer that they had to come up with another one. This time around, truthfully speaking, G didn’t put in the effort and time like the first one when he made the playlist. Also, G included a few unpopular songs that he personally enjoyed which captured a new demographic or potential customers. However, they didn’t have the same success as the first mixtape. They sold enough to make some money, but not as much as the first one. After that, G paid more attention when it came to making a product or a playlist.
3. Copycat (Competition)
Once they were making good money with this mixtape hustle, it was just a matter of time that somebody would try to do the same thing. It didn’t take too long for some other kids who had similar computer tech interests as V to buy CD burners. However, G and V were still better than others because G was a student of pop and hip hop cultures. Burning CDs was one thing, but you had to actually make a hot mixtape that the majority of people would willingly pay without any resistance.
4. $h!t happens whether you like it or not: Nothing lasts forever for the most part
If you didn’t actually put in the work to acquire those potential hit songs, it was tough to dominate the market. G was not a DJ and he didn’t know anybody in the music industry. G had to spend hours and lots of money to buy CDs of artists. This was another reason why they were successful. Just like pretty much everything else in evolutions, that was about to change for good. A computer software program called Napster along internet and mp3 arrived on the scene and it changed the course of music industry and business. That was the introduction to file sharing between people from all over the world for basically free. That enabled anyone with CD burners and the program to easily make hot mixtapes or copy other hot mixtapes. G and V weren’t prepared for the storm of Napster and file sharing. Some people were making customized order mixtapes. Their sales were going down drastically as they were losing their market shares due to various factors.
5. Branding & Management
In order to increase revenues, they really had to make their future mixtapes better than before. They had to be different than others and stand out when it came to the product. One too many people were burning CDs and selling them. That’s when they started to actually edit soundwaves with a program called Soundforge to produce non-stop mix of songs. G and V spent countless hours to edit soundwaves. It was taking up too much of their time to make just one mixtape to duplicate. (However, this was a skill that eventually assisted G in making beats in the future.) Their next two or three products were much better overall, but it was too late at that point. The market was oversaturated and their time of Groove Master venture started to fade away as they started to enter different phases of their lives after high school. If they actually made a full commitment to it with convictions instead of thinking about post high school education and 9 to 5, they could’ve achieved something extraordinary and special. From the very start, if G and V had a proper plan with management system in place, who knows?
Instead of just selling hot mixtape CDs, they failed to create a brand with proper logo, packaging and distribution channels. Groove Master was just a title of CD, it was not an entity or a brand. After the successful sales result in their high school, they should’ve expanded their marketing campaigns and operations with haste to all other schools around the town. Who knows what could have happened after that as long as they didn’t smoke crack and shoot up heroin? They could’ve had a legitimate profitable company for years to come.
6. Vertical Integration
When numbers were not doing good and the market was oversaturated with other people with CD burners, V made a move to cut G out of the mixtape business. G was upset, but he could understand how V thought at that time. For that reason, G wasn’t mad or angry. At the same time, V didn’t recognize that someone had to light up a match to start the fire. This was a valuable lesson of vertical integration, ownership and partnership. Though G played a vital role making that mixtape business happen, he didn’t have any ownership of that business. G didn’t own a computer and a CD burner. There was no partnership agreement on record. G could’ve bought his own CD burner and did it on his own. However, that was not what G was thinking at the time with other things he had going on.
If Poppa G didn’t hang out and spend time with V in high school due to his ignorance, peer pressure or popularity contest, there is a great chance that G would’ve never gotten far in life from being broke with 20K debt and no job. G also had another successful commuting initiative venture with V in high school on top of burning and selling CDs. Anyway, G definitely benefited from their short stint together because G learned to keep an open mind to new trends or technologies. G also learned not to be afraid of new technologies and learn how to adapt and improve his life and business.
Years later, V became an engineer and had a good job in a well known reputable company. He was doing well, but eventually, he quit his job and moved on to something else. When G met up with V and found out that he quit his job, V told G that his parents weren’t too happy about his decision to quit a good paying job in a reputable company. When G heard that, he immediately told V that he made the right decision without even knowing what really happened. At that point, G didn’t need any explanation since he knew V was not a complete moron and G already had his first hand exprience of working in a Fortune 100 corporate setting full of egotistical smart dimwitted employees with agendas who couldn’t see the bigger picture beyond what they were used to see.
It was not guaranteed, but if V was advanced in the right path and put in the right position, he could’ve been the next Elon Musk or someone similar to do big things with innovation for the company and eventually create jobs, boost up the country’s economy and GDP in a major way. But of course, people in his company couldn’t see it for whatever reasons they had. Then, they would probably blame others for their own stupidities to save their faces or positions in order to keep collecting paycheques. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it goes.
Even when he was out of his job, he didn’t just stay home and did nothing. He started a venture to push an idea he had. He did it right by having a patent and everything. But unfortunately it didn’t take off even though it was a good idea due to the market. G encouraged him to keep pushing, but V told G that it was not going to work due to many factors. And V was right about it because even Google was pushing the similar idea with a different twist at that time and it never took off even with their big money and marketing machine behind it. V was smart enough to know when to stop and cut his losses. You could only imagine what could’ve happened in his previous company and their stock/share prices if he was put in the right position.
