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Be Resilient

It takes tenacity like Walter's to find your passion and chase it. You have to harness your will to take success to the highest level. You have to be focused.

The dictionary says the meaning of fierce is savage or cruel. But there's more than one definition for the word. Being fierce can also mean intense, untamed, passionate and strong. The most serious are committed to going after what truly matters to them. When you are fierce, you are unstoppable.

Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo is resilient. He knew what he wanted to do before he was old enough to drive.

The head of The Inc., the multimillion-dollar record label that discovered and produced DMX, Ja Rule and Ashanti, Irv was deejaying in the community halls around Hollis, Queens, from the time he was just fifteen years old. He was so set on starting his career producing hit records and promoting talent that nothing could keep him in class. He aced every test, but his high school teachers had to flunk him because he never showed up!

But Irv didn't care. He'd already found his one true love -- music.

Irv's passion is writing and producing music. But he's also down with grooming and breaking artists, and taking care of all the little details that are involved with making records and achieving bulk status in sales. He fights so hard for the artists he believes in that I call him the Muhammad Ali of the music business.

"My artist is the best and I'm going to show you guys; we gonna sell bulk!" he announced at one of our first meetings. I had to laugh at Irv's chest-thumping style. But I was also impressed.

Irv started seeing himself as a label executive by the time he was a teenager, when Eazy-E launched Ruthless Records. He saw what Russell Simmons was doing. He watched as young dudes not much older than himself were launching labels like Bad Boy and Death Row. That's what he wanted.

Irv will stay up all night for days in a row when he's laying tracks in the studio. But as far as he's concerned, he's never worked a day in his life. Making records is pure passion. He's been involved in some huge hits, and he'll do it again and again as long as he lives and breathes.

"It all starts with the love," he said. "I would do this for free."

Irv's will was obvious from the first moment I met him. I could see in his eyes an unshakable belief in himself. He was brash but never failed to deliver. Whatever you may have heard about Irv -- the FBI investigations into links with drug gangs, the recent arrests -- spend five seconds with him and you know he's all about the music. He is a true record guy.

When he was just twenty-three and working for Def Jam's A&R division (artists and repertoire, for those of you not familiar with the music business), we were paying him $40,000 a year. But Irv had signed artists that grossed us $100 million in record sales. By the time he decided to branch out on his own he had our utmost respect and support.

Plenty of wannabes like to say they own a record label but most of the time it's just hype. Today, Irv is one of a rare breed of hip-hop entrepreneurs, alongside P. Diddy and Dr. Dre. He's sustained consistent success in a volatile industry where you're only as good as your last hit record.

Irv is just thirty-five, but I see him as someone who could easily take over a record label like Def Jam. That kind of success has been possible at such an early age because he dared to dream big. He's one of hip hop's great visionaries.

Quincy Jones once said, "Take the biggest dream, the biggest one you can find, and if you get just 25 percent of it, you've made it."

Take that dream and blow it up even bigger.

Repeat after me: "I believe in myself, therefore I am what I believe myself to be." Excerpted from 'Make it Happen: The Hip Hop Guide to Success' by Kevin Liles. Copyright© 2005 by KWL Enterprises, LLC. Permission granted by Simon & Schuster.