PHARRELL WILLIAM'S PRODUCTIVITY SECRETS

Pharrell Williams is on a Gravity high. "Whew! Whew!" he says. "Listen to me, it is crazy." The 40-year-old musician, producer, and mini mogul is seated on a rolling chair in the tranquil recording studio at the top of Miami's Setai Hotel; he's small and delicate, like an Egyptian cat, with ropes of delicate gold necklaces and bracelets encircling his neck and wrists. The windows behind him look out on the Atlantic Ocean, and, sitting with his back to the brilliant sun, his silhouette flickers as if a mirage. Naturally, Williams has a home theater, but he couldn't wait and saw Gravitysoon after it opened, in 3-D. "I was so happy with the pix­elation," he says. We talk about the scene where George Clooney drifts off into space. "I woulda ruined that moment," he says, picturing himself in Clooney's place. "I woulda cried like a baby." I wonder if the idea of a black void, of being completely alone, scares him. "I don't fear any-thing; I know what to avoid." Williams laughs. "I like looking at space, but I don't need to go there myself."

He's adding Gravity to a list of favorite films that includes Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, and Cloud Atlas--metaphysical explorations of the nature of being and how we grapple with the obstacles placed before us. Dreams, in each, are achieved by rejecting commonplace conceptions of what's possible, an ethos that guides everything he does. His personal bible is Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, the best-selling fable about following your destiny or "personal legend"--the enthusiasms that get buried as we grow up, by prejudice, guilt, and fear. "That book confirmed what I always thought in my heart and felt in my mind," says Williams, who is building a small empire, brick by idiosyncratic brick.

He aspires to something like Andy Warhol's Factory: a hive of creativity that is also profitable, with a heavy dose of altruism. But though he designs clothes and chairs, dabbles in sculpture and architecture, and mentors kids, he will tell you that he is "a musician and not much more than that. Sometimes musicians say things like, 'I'm so happy they see beyond the music.' I've said it too. But people aren't seeing beyond the music; they're seeing something in it. I'm always thinking I'm so eclectic, but the truth is that everything boils down to music for me. That's the key to my success."

Certainly, it all started with music. His two decades in the business have yielded 17 top 10 hits, a No. 1 album, and three Grammy Awards. Williams's career started with his performing-producing partner, Chad Hugo, aka the Neptunes (ranked No. 1 on Billboard's list of the top 10 producers of the '00s). Eventually, he and Hugo formed N.E.R.D., a group that, with its deft fusion of rock, R&B, funk, and hip-hop, remade pop music in its image. Last year, in addition to his Neptunes work, Williams began to write and produce on his own. Since then, he has, among other things, produced tracks for blockbuster albums by Miley Cyrus andJay-Z, cranked out the soundtrack for the hit movie Despicable Me 2 and, at one point in June, had the rare distinction of occupying both the No. 1 and No. 2 slots on Billboard's Hot 100, with Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," which he produced and cowrote, and Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," which he cowrote. He is currently worth around $80 million and takes in roughly $10 million a year, after taxes.

But even Williams will acknowledge that at this point his production work is "just one pixel in the screen" of i am OTHER, his media and philanthropic company--a sort of creative cardiovascular system with Williams at its heart. Included at the moment are fashion labels Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream, the cloud-based music-creation platform UJAM, a YouTube channel (also called i am OTHER), andFrom One Hand to Another, a not-for-profit empowering kids in underserved communities. His partnerships include the enviro-friendly textile firm Bionic Yarn andCollaborative Fund, financier of outside-the-box creative endeavors such asKickstarter. More tangentially, he's flexing his tastemaker muscle as a guest curator on eBay.

The name i am OTHER speaks not only to the mythology Williams has created for himself; it's a clue to how he innovates so effectively. "I've always been the kid who didn't fit in the box," he says. The one who grew up in the projects of Virginia Beach wearing Led Zeppelin T-shirts and playing drums in a hip-hop band. The year-old company is headquartered in New York, with satellite offices in Miami and Los Angeles, all cities that, like his hometown, are close to water, an element Williams finds both inspiring and calming.

He surrounds himself with people who "recognize that they are different, and they're unafraid of that and don't mind shaking hands with the next different person. Most anything I do I do because it involves someone I can learn from," he adds. "Sometimes you just gotta put your pride aside and be quiet so that you can absorb not only what a person is saying but how they are saying it--their energy, their body language. It's all for a reason."

Though he says he has no idea how many people now work for him (for the record, it's 10), he's very clear that only two of them are men. "Oh, I would go crazy with an office full of dudes," he says. "What am I going to talk about? Football? I don't know anything about sports." I am OTHER's vice president, Mimi Valdés, who has been tapping away on her iPad, looks up to mouth the wordnothing. Williams laughs. "Women have always been my motivation, and equality is quite naturally a theme for me. So it's all estrogen: estrogenic--I'm going to create a term--intelligence. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and everyone works way, way, wayharder than me."

Williams's lodestar--the secret, he says, behind all of his disparate ventures--is collaboration. Whether it's partnering with film composer Hans Zimmer to create UJAM or working with the artist Takashi Murakami (their sculpture, The Simple Things, fetched $2 million at the 2009 Art Basel) or running i am OTHER with his staff, "you are only as good as your team," he says. "When you envisage success, you should see all the people you work with, in addition to yourself. When I look at that picture, I see giant angels who are much smarter than me, who can oversee the things that I don't know shit about. I used to hire 21-year-old monsters with a twinkle in their eye," he adds. "I saw potential, but it was what I thought they could do, not what they couldactually do. But you know what happens when you surround yourself with people with experience, who've seen everything a million times? A lot of them are gonna be older than you. When they vet people, they need to see more than twinkles; they need sparks."

Williams's productivity is remarkable, but perhaps more impressive is his humility. In the two hours we are together, he takes credit for . . . nothing. "He has every right to an inflated ego, but he's extra humble," says Tyson Toussant, cofounder of Bionic Yarn. "It has to do with the way he was raised. He's a very amenable Southern gentleman. He calls everyone sir or ma'am. I grew up in Manhattan, and there are friends of mine, you'd think they had invented Twitter. He's not like that. He'll treat a doorman and Bill Gates the same way." The sentiment is genuine, Toussant adds, but also smart. "If you want people to have your back, you need to appreciate them."

Craig Shapiro, founder of Collaborative Fund, agrees. Because of Williams's clear appreciation for his staff, "P really doesn't get stressed, which allows him to be more productive." In addition to Kickstarter, Collaborative Fund and i am OTHER have invested in Quarterly Co., an online site that curates "packages" from artists to their fans, and, more recently, the website Rap Genius. "P's energy is endless," says Shapiro, "and his thirst for knowledge is unparalleled. He truly enjoys learning new things and meeting new people--something most people are overwhelmed by."

Williams is a fan of what he calls tapping in: being open to the kinds of peripheral ideas that lead to innovation. It requires an environment that permits fixation--the antithesis of multitasking--so that you have the ability to, as he puts it, "be quiet and absorb." And walking into the hushed lounge on the floor below the Miami recording studio is not unlike entering a Zendo. Pleasant people--some plugged into laptops, some bustling about--work in near silence. It appears to be, as Williams

describes it, "an extremely well-disciplined environment," and his preternatural calm trickles down. Shapiro says that the i am OTHER team makes it possible for "P to focus on the big picture and thought-provoking ideas. They fill in the blanks. They prioritize and get shit done."

That dynamic is clearly working. Williams's four-year partnership with Bionic Yarn, which manufactures fabric out of discarded-plastic-bottle fibers, has been profitable for the past year, in part because Williams encouraged the brands he designs for--including Moncler, Timberland, Topshop, and Gap--to use the fabric. (Williams, who grew up in an area with a big military presence, is now courting the army to make uniforms.) "Pharrell's decisions are emotion based," says Toussant. "If he were reading spreadsheets, he wouldn't have joined our company when he did because it wasn't close to making money. The ideal of it took a lot of work, but that's the beauty of visionaries like P, who can see what's possible. He's not a celebrity who simply attaches his name to an already thriving franchise."

Yes, emotions are a big part of Williams's decision-making process, "but I use my mind just as much," he says. His "legends," or role models, include architect Zaha Hadid, with whom he's collaborating on a prefab house, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and artist Jeff Koons--visionaries who understand instinctively how to protect creativity within a business. "They are 100% decisive," he says. "Snap, no. Snap, yes. It's right there with them." He singles out the apparel companies Supreme, Adidas, andOpening Ceremony; the advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy; and London's Dover Street Market for operating outside established methods for attracting customers. Each is profitable, he believes, because they put "taste first. The aesthetic matches the acumen."

Shapiro and Toussant each describe a similar process of collaborating with Williams: meetings once or twice a month, where big decisions are made; assistants taking it from there, with emails flowing back and forth. Williams recently designed a line of Bionic Yarn snowboarding parkas and coats forBurton. "He doesn't do the tech specs," says Toussant, "but he gives very specific direction and references--where a cut line is, how to use a color, or where to put texture. The executors will give their best interpretation of his notes, and a few drafts will go back and forth until they meet his vision." How would he describe that vision? "It's hard to put your finger on," Toussant says. "P's interested in so many things, and whatever he's working on at the time, he brings inspiration from that." I ask Toussant if Williams is responsive to input from others; he knows what I'm really asking. "You mean, is he open to hearing that he's wrong?" he asks with a laugh. "Yeah, definitely."

Williams invested in Bionic Yarn in part because Rush Limbaugh shamed him. In 2007, he and a few other celebrities went to Rio to announce a benefit concert for Live Earth, created to increase environmental awareness. "I'm thinking, Okay, cool, we get to do something sustainable, the ecosystem, blah, blah, and I don't have to wear Birkenstocks or be seen with trail mix in my hand," he says. "Limbaugh sees the announcement and immediately identifies me. 'Here's a guy who probably has 40 cars and flew down on a private jet. It doesn't make sense.' And I'm like, Whoa, why me? What did I do?"

It made Williams think that if he had been better educated about sustainability, or more passionate about it, or had an organization committed to it, he could have fought back. Not long after, opportunity knocked; a friend introduced him to Toussant. "I realized that, yeah, it checked the box of getting involved," says Williams. "But I really do love the technology."

Growing up, Williams had no interest in how the world was presented to him, as hard rules or lines. As long as he can remember, he's wanted to blur them. The few times he had a boss, including a stint at McDonald's when he was a teenager, "I got fired--every time. I had good managers, I was just lazy." It wasn't laziness so much as boredom, and his fuel is enthusiasm. Williams describes himself as a visual person, a kind of intelligence that isn't celebrated in most schools. "The school system isn't spending a lot of time looking for specific potential. We are bred to be worker bees; to grow up, get married, have a kid, drive a Volvo, do our taxes, invest in something, find a hobby," says the man who did finally marry Helen Lasichanh--his girlfriend of five years and the mother of his son, Rocket--in October. "I spent a lot of time in school not paying attention."

Luckily, someone couldn't help noticing him: Teddy Riley, the Grammy-winning R&B producer, serendipitously opened a recording studio near Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach, in 1991. Riley happened to catch a pre-Neptunes performance by Williams and Hugo at their high school talent show and signed them when they graduated. Before long, they were producing as well. Williams, in turn, has mentored countless young artists. He asks them--and anyone he collaborates with--two questions: "What do you want?" and "What haven't you done?" Capabilities come into play, of course, but his chief mission, he says, is "actualizing potential." There is no failure, "only lessons."

And, as with everything he does, he puts their creativity first. Williams remains deeply affected by the implosion of the music business. "It's the only industry where the artists have historically been considered to be at the bottom of the totem pole they built," he says. "And when lawyers started running the labels, you saw the best groups and producers get dropped or turned away. But that's true of any art-dependent company run by venture capitalists who don't respect the content, who put their money behind accountants, not creatives." His various collaborations--with UJAM, YouTube,Quarterly Co., and now Rap Genius--are all about empowering and protecting artists. "We never go backward. That's the plight of the human species, but also our privilege. So as always, a new equation will emerge, and that will be led by the artists and likely powered by them as well."

Williams used to believe in luck, but not anymore. "I'd say, 'Me? Really? Okay, cool!' But then when I looked over my shoulder, I could see that there was a clear path. Someone might say that Teddy Riley building his studio five minutes from my high school was luck. I mean, why leave New York and go there? But I don't see that now." For Williams, there is always judgment and choice. "Existence is all mathematics, and I see it as me listening to the math that is right in front of me. There's a key for every door," he adds, "and if you can't find it, you can make one. That's always an option."

MARY KAYE SCHILLING

fastcompany.com

THE BOOKS THAT HELPED JEFF BEZOS CREATE AMAZON

Jeff Bezos, the warrior-king of Amazon, is known for the way he bursts into a room, hates cohesion, and dresses down his employees.

But when he's not on the battlefield, the dude who built an empire selling books actually reads the things, as shared in an appendix to The Everything Store, Brad Stone's new book on Amazon (which at least one reviewer has taken issue with). Shane Parrish, the purveyor of Farnham Street, recently shared the bibliography on hisblog. As we'll see below, certain of books have shaped certain aspects of Amazon's rapid and multi-pronged growth.

THE INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA BY CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN

One book is central to the canon of startup-land: The Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen. In it, Christensen, who last year helped us to measure our lives and find work we love, explains his theory of distruption--the way in which new firms, like say Netflix, displace incumbents, like Blockbuster.

Dilemma, Stone says, helped spur on the creation of the Kindle and Amazon Web Services--two product lines that are quite far from Amazon's original business. Why would they do such a thing? "Some companies are reluctant to embrace disruptive technology because it might alienate customers and undermine their core business," Stone says, "but Christensen argues that ignoring potential disruption is even costlier."

So with the Kindle and AWS, Amazon did some disruptive, potentially alienating things--and thus ensured they'd actually stay relevant.

THE MYTHICAL MAN-MONTH BY FREDERICK P. BROOKS JR.

Amazon is ruled by slices: that is, there's a Two Pizza Rule that governs the size of teams--none should be bigger than what could be fed by two pizzas.

This lunch-sized heuristic draws from the work of National Medal of Technology-winning software engineer Frederick P. Brooks Jr. His Mythical Man-Month, now nearly four decades old, is a technical book that still sells 10,000 copies a year. Why? Because he makes the counterintuitive argument that small teams of programmers work better than large ones: after a while, bringing more people on just adds noise.

CREATION: LIFE AND HOW TO MAKE IT BY STEVE GRAND

Steve Grand is the dude behind Creatures, a computer game from back in 1996 that simulated life. (Yes, really.)

Grand then reflected on his neo-Frankensteinian quest to create artificial life inCreation. One of the central theories of the book is that intelligent systems can be built from the bottom up if you start with the right set of building blocks. Which, Stone says, inspired Amazon Web Services.

So if even world-conquering CEOs find the time to read, maybe us normals can read way more books, too--and thus know way more stuff.

BY DRAKE BAER
fastcompany.com

Interview: 50 Cent Talks Miley Cyrus, Eminem's Legacy, and Making Television

I respect this guy for the way he upturned all the negativity that surrounded his life.

While it may have appeared that 50 Cent had a low-key 2013, as the rapper garnered more headlines for over-the-top cars and funny flight companions. But 50's been hard at work on behind-the-scenes projects, like developing his upcoming Starz TV show Power, which stars Omari Hardwick of Dark Blue and Saved fame. His most visible project has been developing his own headphone company SMS Audio. The line features headsets tailored to the comfort and ease that the Queens-native perfers in a product—sturdy as hell and battery-free. (And the noise-canceling set will block out anything, even office construction two yards away from your desk. Trust.)

The most recent additions to the line are revamped versions of the Sync and Street models, as well as its first Bluetooth-enabled speaker, which he launched last week and NYC luxury department store Henri Bendel. We caught up with 50 before a fan meet-and-greet, where he talked Miley Cyrus, his admiration for Eminem, and which of his own songs has been haunting him for years.

Interview by Claire Lobenfeld

For those who don't know, why headphones?

For me it’s an extension of my passion for music. I know other people are hearing it the way it was intended to actually be heard. [With] these products, Timbaland helped develop the sound. I sent him the DJ headset and he liked that one the most because it’s the closest thing to the [headphones] we use in the studio. Later on, he came back around and [asked to be] involved, so he ended up investing.

The new line has a wireless speaker, not just headphones. That’s new for you.

The technology is getting better and better. I only want to be involved with things that relate to my lifestyle. Music is easy. It is my lifestyle and without that none of the other opportunities would be there. They wouldn’t exist. You can find yourself get bitten by the film and television bug at points and start doing different things. I got four television shows [with] different networks now. I have a scripted show on the Starz Network. Power is actually filming [now]. Omari Hardwick is the lead. He acted on the show Dark Blue. It was amazing. You got Courtney Kemp Agboh, she was nominated for an Emmy for The Good Wife. She’s the first African-American, period, to run a show on network television [and get nominated], so it’s an accomplishment in itself. But this is a project we’ve worked on for two years, just to show you how I multi-task, [it’s in] long periods of time.

And you’ve been working on the headphone line for two years, as well?

Yup. Two years. [For a long time] I only had a 3-D rendering of what I wanted the original headset to look like. I had to acquire a company that was already functioning, with a staff, in order to make it happen fast enough.

How involved are you in testing them out? When I’m wearing your headphones, I am experiencing what is optimal comfort for 50 Cent?

Everything that I have experienced that was wrong with headsets in the past, I took out of these. I used the actual polyurethane to make it tougher, I’ve had headsets that need batteries and you end up spending a lot more putting in the batteries than what you initially paid for. Those headsets turn on in [your] bag. The battery would be dead when I got a nine-hour flight or some shit and I’m stuck there with no music.

What’s your favorite thing to listen to on them right now?

My favorite stuff? It’s changing. If I watch something and it’s on my mind, I’ll have a stronger interest and I’ll be listen more. I was listening to Miley Cyrus after the [VMAs]. Because to me, [she’s making] a creative choice. That’s all. And the things she was doing, I could see Madonna doing it and being accepted immediately. But it’s how they perceive her. And it’s not [by] that creative choice. The perception is "[You're] Hannah Montana, so stay there."

I think that’s part of what she wanted. And it’s working for her.

It works because she’s being an artist that no one expected. A real artist is going to want the ability to be free with whatever they create. When you find yourself in times of stress, but you’ve developed and you got a great idea but I got to give this to someone else because it’s just not good for me… It’s interesting... [But] I was listening to that for a little bit [to] try to see what she was thinking.

With hip-hop, I’ve had a chance to step back from it and be a fan of the culture. It’s good when you can do that—when you have the luxury. A lot of artists are lost in their ideas. This is why we have people who have huge success within the culture. [Listeners think], "It’s cool, but it’s not like when you did this. When that fist record came." [Those comments are] coming from the artist community. That’s another artist waiting for his shot or someone who feels like their friend has what it takes.  He’s creating that negative energy for you. It’s very rare that artists create a record that you consider, for that period of time, the record.

With the Internet, you get more access to how much people are reacting to you. With all that mounting pressure, what do you do? I can see why you would take a step back and see what other things you like to do.

[By] not having interest in a lot of other areas, [Eminem] was able to take a step back from these records. He just goes away and then he’d just watch [other artists] and then figures out what to do next. But [he's] just not as active as all these other folks. Everything else that [he's asked to] be involved in, he says no. He says, "No" more than he says, “Hi.” The circle’s so tight... It speaks to the culture when people see themselves in [your] light, [your] greatness.

When they look at Em and they see themselves it’s because they feel him. You see these other guys come out of nowhere almost, have huge hits. I likeEminem. I think hip-hop grew faster in different areas because of the success of his projects and there’s no other rappers doing other than whatever’s comfortable to them [despite Em's influence]. They’ll name top five MC and not have his name on it. When none of them have music that performed that well.

Is that why when you see artists you're unfamiliar with at award shows you do your research?

I’ve seen award shows and people got awards that I didn’t know. I didn’t know who they were. And I was like who is that? Why did they get the award? And then I go, I gotta listen to their record to see what is drawing people to it. Some of it is, I think, those committees. Award show committees are invested somehow because I’ve seen things that I didn’t understand. Even in my own career, the largest debuting hip-hop album wasn’t the Best New Album. It was Evanescence and they’ve been long gone.

I mean I think there is probably a stuffiness but speaking of never hearing of bands, this is actually something I saw today that I wanted to at least tell you about. Have you ever heard of that band called Arctic Monkeys? They’re a British band.

Arctic Monkeys. I haven’t.

I was watching an interview with them and they were talking about how their new album is a little bit is R&B-leaning. And they said they wanted it to sound as good in your car as when you hear "In Da Club." That you never turn that song off when it comes on. It was interesting to hear knowing we'd be talking about speakers.

You know what? That record—I don’t know. [It's] chasing me. [I keep] running from it. I made a lot of music in 2003—it’s been 10 years and that record just stands out. I guess you never get a second chance at a first impression having it be the first single off the album.

More people have heard it than "How to Rob."

And it doesn’t get old because it’s always someone’s birthday.

www.complex.com

WHY HUSTLING HELPS PEOPLE TO BECOME INSANELY SUCCESSFUL

Super lucky people get so frustratingly fortunate, by finding ways to expose themselves to positive chance.

Such is the story of Chris Sacca, the cowboy-shirted angel investor that made out like a bandit with Twitter's IPO. But Sacca, who invested not only in Twitter but also in small firms like Uber and Quirky and ran special projects at Google, was not always so accomplished. As Ben Casnocha notes, Sacca wouldn't have had the same insane trajectory without finding ways to give himself chances--that is, without hustle.

PULLING APART THE HUSTLE

Let's rewind, care of Casnocha: "not so long ago," he says, "Chris was an out-of-work attorney in desperate need of income to help him pay off his student loans from law school."

So Sacca did what anyone else on the job hunt would do. He snuck into networking and tech events--in an effort, we can infer, to expose himself to the positive chancesthat can turn into gigs. But once he was inside, he noticed something unsettling: the business cards he was carrying--just his name, no employer--weren't going to capture anyone's attention.

It's the same reason that if you're trying to get an insanely busy person to take a meeting with you, you need to make the value of doing so obvious to them and make them feel that the meeting will be mutually beneficial.

Sacca realized that he needed to raise his profile and signal that he had more to offer in exchange. Queue a plan of hustle of cleverly epic proportion: create a consulting firm and employ himself there. According to Casnocha:

He made new business cards, hired a developer to build a website, and enlisted his fiancée to draw a corporate logo. Then he returned to the same networking events with new business cards that read, “Chris Sacca, Principal, Salinger Group.” Suddenly, the people he met were interested in talking more. Through these connections he eventually landed an executive job at a wireless company, and his career took flight.

When we uncover the lives of super successful people, there's often such a pattern of hustle, a will to keep exposing yourself to positive chance until it hits. Cap Watkins, now the design lead at Etsy, launched his career from a fortuitous cup of coffee. Tim Westergren pitched the idea for Pandora more than 300 times before receiving crucial funding. Paul Graham says success can only come from a willingness to schlep.

"Hustle is hard to deconstruct." Casnocha says, "[I]t’s not something you 'learn' like you would accounting or public speaking. It's more a state-of-mind that develops--or doesn’t develop."

From that hustle can come the luck to become successful.

BY DRAKE BAER
fastcompany.com