Invest in People

In 1984 a 20 year-old philosophy student named Rick Rubin and a 26 year-old hip-hop promoter named Russell Simmons founded a record label called Def Jam Recordings. Def Jam went on to pioneer the hip-hop revolution of the late 80’s, and today is home to artists like Frank Ocean, Kanye West, Rick Ross, and Rihanna.

One of my all-time favourite quotes comes from co-founder Russell Simmons:

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

It’s this mentality that helped Def Jam Recordings become the most ubiquitous label in hip-hop history.

I recently came across a post by Verne Ho about the importance of surrounding yourself with good people, and it reminded me of the Russell Simmons quote I’ve held closely for years. I loved Verne’s sketch notes on the subject, and they inspired my attempt to recreate them as closely as possible on the web.

  1. Check out what I came up with here, or fork the source on GitHub.