Everything I Know About Business I Learned From E-40
For 35 years, the Bay Area legend has been putting the world on the entrepreneurial game
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For 20 years, I’ve been speaking to and consulting for today’s biggest brands. Yet, I’d gladly give up my spot at any business conference if it meant getting to hear Earl Stevens — E-40 himself — give the audience his own words of wisdom. For 35 years, the music industry vet and independent publishing icon has arguably been one of the sharpest commercial tacticians we have. Virtually everything I know about business I learned from 40 Water, whose song catalog (rife with hints on how to replicate his success) reads like something straight out of Napoleon Hill.
Since 1986, the Malcolm Gladwell of macking hasn’t just gone from slinging self-released tapes out of his trunk in Vallejo to dropping platinum albums on major labels and guesting alongside a who’s who of rap royalty. He’s also consistently reinvented himself for generation after generation of listeners while launching entrepreneurial ventures from restaurant franchises to alcohol brands — and virtually writing the roadmap for modern-day indie success along the way. Luckily for entrepreneurs…
