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Comment by zaidf | Hacker News Reader

  The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself.

That's terrible advice for me. I suck at working with others and trusting others and have a tendency to try and do everything myself. Problem is, in short term you can get more done quickly but in longterm doing everything alone does not scale. It's hurt me many times and something I've proactively worked to improve in the past year(with good results).

I'm sure there must be others on the other end of the spectrum who'll find this advice more helpful.

All said, I have tremendous respect for 50 cent. He's got an incredibly sharp business mind. Just look at how much he made off of Vitamin Water.

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  The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself.

Why do these authors seemingly ignore the very obvious contradiction there? The idealism that this piece espouses is directly dependent on the support of other people. If 50-cent, and Vitamin Water did appeal to the averages then they would not have the revenue that they claim to have attained "by themselves".

There are countless people out there who could do exactly what they want, for themselves and never see these kind of returns simply because their product does not appeal to the averages. Getting by through life "completely self-reliant" is at best a joke and at worst myopic denial of reality.

The rhetoric is contradictory...

Yet I think that the direction he's pointing towards is the direction of being "at cause" in the situation. While he depends on his audience as a whole, each audience member depends on him much more than he depends on them. It's a lesson some people need.

It is interesting, though, that native people who depended much less on a vastly developed society actually placed considerable emphasis on being interdependent, on moving well within a whole. Course, they had perhaps more functional (or less competitive) whole than we do.

I believe what he meant by "completely self-reliant" was more like "a work for your own dreams and ideas". Don't just work because you have to (of course everybody has to work, but 80-90% could also be entrepreneurs and wouldn't have to work for others and their dreams) for other people. And don't expect other people to always help you pursuing YOUR dreams.

Curtis Jackson was always self-reliant because he comes from a broken family (mother shot dead when he was 8, grandmother and grandfather had to take care of their own kids -> less attention on him -> more self-reliance and self-belief to actually make something of himself). If he expected to get help from other people or trust other people with his ideas and his dreams even with his work, his life would have been crushed badly. A natural self-belief is very important and should be carried by anyone trying to achieve big things.

I think he's talking about independence and ownership, not isolation. Take that sentence in the context of the sentences before it:

* When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. Your creative spirit is squashed... When it is yours, it is yours to lose -- you are more motivated, more creative, more alive.

I thought the ultimate power in life is to pose in a bulletproof vest on the cover of seventeen magazine. Now that was badass. He showed those teenaged girls who's boss.

vitamin water got famous because he was already famous. as its easy to make money when you are already rich..its easy to make your products famous when you are famous to begin with

It depends on how rich and what type of famous/following you have though because I doubt people would fancy buying water from Bill Gates or Donald Trump. (Even if it wasn't immediately obvious who was selling said water once word gets out it all goes down the hole)

Yeah, but he wasn't born famous. For that matter, I had no idea he put money into vitamin water, it doesn't even remotely overlap with his personal branding.

He promoted it and made ~400M when it sold to Coke.
The parent poster's comment does not give 50 Cent enough credit. 50 Cent didn't just become "more" rich from being rich, be became significantly more rich. While the former may be common(as endorsement deals are), the latter isn't(where the celebrity involved walks away with hundreds of mil).

Right, but it's still because he was already famous. You can argue about what constitutes 'more rich' and 'significantly more rich', but at the end of the day, his already earned fame was probably the biggest reason to him being successful with that venture.

I mean, that was the deal, right? He played his strengths.
He knew he'd make Vitamin Water a mint, so he took an equity stake to promote their product.
Fame is a kind of capital (social capital).

Both replies are making it out to be like I said the deal was stupid. It was a very smart move on his part leveraging his fame to reap such huge rewards. The debate was whether his fame had anything to do with it, and it did. He would not have been able to make such a move had he not been famous. The fame made it possible and easier for him. You or I certainly wouldn't have been able to effectively promote such a product based on our own personal brands. That's all I'm saying.

But the set of all other similar celebs potentially had the same opportunity but didn't take it.

He traded off his fame in a spectacular way that I don't see the truckloads of other famous people doing.

its easy to make your products famous when you are famous to begin with
If that was true, every celebrity would be making few hundred mil from endorsement deals. Not just a few like 50 Cent.

50 Cent took his payment in company stock, that's why his pay out was so huge. I'm sure if other celebrities followed suit, they'd see similar returns.

Exactly, that makes him different from the average famous person:)

that, and 9 scars from bullet holes.

50 has also invested in a few startups! I know one startup where he is a major investor, and I've heard of a few others.

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