Steve Stoute On Sean Combs Fight: “We Were Kids…Millionaires At 26″

Translation CEO Steve Stoute shook up the ad world when his 8-year-old company scored the Bud Light account from competitor McGarry Bowen. Stoute’s Bud Light work will appear in this year’s Super Bowl, showcasing Translation as a force to be reckoned with.

Stoute, who has managed Mary J. Blige and Nas, has been widely credited for the marketing genius behind Lady Gaga and Jay-Z’s success. The entrepreneur and author sat down with Business Insider to discuss his business savvy along with the 1999 altercation he got into with Sean “P.Diddy” Combs.” Combs barged into Stoute’s offices and struck him with a champagne bottle for not editing out him being nailed to the cross in Nas’ “Hate Me Now” video.

“We got in a fight when we were kids, and it’s funny that it still comes up, years later. We were millionaires at 26 years old.”

Stoute also broke down why so many athletes and entertainers go broke.

“That’s [something] that people put on athletes, or rappers, and primarily African-American overnight millionaires…But the truth of the matter is, when you grow up in life and you’re poor, and because you’re an athlete or you got rich overnight in music, unless you have access to financial advice or for the transition or matriculation of that process, then of course, you’re going to go broke.”

“You think Jay-Z is going broke? LeBron is going broke? These guys have figured it out. They came from a poor backgrounds, broken homes and they figured out how to be businessmen. They become new aspirations. People say they want to do it like that. So you can be talented, and handle your business, and be married, and have a stable family. You don’t have to be this single parent guy running around at 40 years old. There’s a lot of circumstances where people can now see an archetype and have people they want to follow. If those archetypes weren’t there, there’s nothing necessarily to aspire to.”

Posted by : Mista Bless