Breaking Barriers and Building Legacy | Sean "Diddy" Combs

He's an American rapper, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. He's won 2 Grammy Awards and 2 MTV Music Video Awards. In 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $735 million. He's Sean Combs, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

Like, a lot of people have asked me, like, how did I get to this, where I'm at? It's my belief. Like, I believe so strong, so crazy. It's like believe, to believe, the power in belief.

What do you believe in the most?

God. I believe in God the most. And after that, myself.

Talk about the doubt you've had in yourself. You're human.

Nah, nah, I've never doubted myself. I go into it knowing I'm one of the best. Baddest motherfuckers that ever lived. You know, not even in a cocky way. I just feel like I'm one of the baddest motherfuckers that ever walked the face of the earth, you know. And that's just how I am, because I feel I am. I am one of the baddest motherfuckers that ever walked the face of the earth. That's just a fact. That's just a pure fact.

I mean, yeah, one of the most important things is that day. I would say my advice is for people to kind of kind of ramp it up, because a lot of times when you're young and you in your 20s or something, you like, "I don't really know what I want to do." But we live in a different world. It's important for you to know what you want to do for the future of your family. So it's a scary thing to make that decision. This is what I want to do. But the sooner you make that decision, I think the better it'll be for your life, you know, and a better chance of success you'll have, because you'll have more time. To mess up. You have more time to fall down.

I loved what I was doing. I decided if I was going to do a job, I loved what I was doing. I would walk around, I would dance and sing as I was delivering my papers, and that kind of helped me for the future of what I wanted to do, and that was just being a young entrepreneur. I thank God every day that I'm blessed with the chance to to do something that I love doing. But I feel anybody could do something that they love doing if they go after it in the right way, if they go after it with the love, if the motivation for it is the love, and the love of leaving a legacy behind more than the selfishness of just doing it for money, doing it to blow up, to be the man or the woman, or to have the fame. If you do it to make history, if you do it to change people's lives, to make people feel good, to make yourself feel good, it's gonna come. It's just gonna come naturally.

You know, we got "Let's go," we got "Don't stop," we got "Let's get it," all of the positive terms to keep us focused, keep us grinding, keep us moving, keep us following, chasing. Catching our dreams. Lock in. Let's lock in. Lock in on your dream. Lock in. If I was coming today, I would do whatever it would take for me to get to the information. I think that no matter what, it could have been in the times of Jesus, before Jesus, caveman times, it was about being around information. Back in caveman times, it was about who knows how to make a fire, 'cause my ass is cold. You know what I'm saying? And now it's like, you know, who really knows who is successful in this day and age and how they are successful? So I think that our educational system needs to be fixed in a sense because, you know, a degree means something to me, but experience kind of means more, and a point of view of where people want to go kind of means more than Somebody saying I have a master's from Harvard or whatever. No, I need to know, are you ready to go to war with me? That's what I need to know. You cannot achieve success without failure. Some of my biggest successes come from some of my biggest failures. In the early '90s, when my friends were graduating from Howard, I got fired from that first job that I got with Andre Harrell. I know a lot of you know this story, but some of you may not know how scared I was. See, I was scared to death. I didn't have a degree. My girlfriend was 8 and a half months pregnant with my first baby. I bought a brand new house in Scarsdale that I could not afford. So I, I found myself sitting alone in my bedroom and asking myself the question that sometimes we all ask each other. What are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do now? You should have kept your mouth shut and shut up and just did what Andre told you to do. But you wanted to act like you was making the hit records. Eh, now look at you. What are you gonna do now? So I had two choices. Either I was going to sit in that failure and give up, or I was going to make a decision to step out of the darkness. You see, when you in that darkness, you want to sit there and wait for the light to come. When you're in that darkness, it feels uncomfortable, but you can't wait and sit in that darkness. The only way out is to step forward, to face your fears, to become your own light. I had to make a decision. I had to decide to become my own light. I had to believe in myself like never before. I had to find my inner power. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you. There's gonna be a lot of times y'all about to fail. I'm still failing every day. We are all a work in progress. And one day, you'll be sitting in the dark like I was. And you're gonna be asking yourself, "What am I gonna do now?" Then you're gonna ask yourself again and slow it down, "What am I gonna do now?" But in that moment, I want you to remember the power of you.

One of the things that I wanted to make sure that I also answered, you asked me a question earlier about fearlessness.

Yeah.

I remember you asked me this before. When we were doing something in Cannes, and I told you, you have to be fearless. You can't be afraid of anything. And then doing this cable network, it's probably, I mean, it's not probably, it's the hardest thing that I've ever done, second to running a marathon, 'cause I almost died running a marathon.

The Chicago Marathon was on Sunday. I bet you didn't come in.

So, and I'll tell you that story another time when you have me back too. But, you know, so I'm in my office, you know, like a couple of months ago, and, you know, fear overcame me. And I remembered that, you know, I'm fearless in a sense, but having some sort of fear is a part of fearlessness. So I think sometimes we don't tell that full story, people may not get it. It's alright to have some fears and some insecurities as you're going through it, but you have to push through that wall. It's almost like if there isn't a little bit of fear, then you can't be fearless.

If you were starting from scratch, from the beginning of your career, and trying to build the career that you have today, where would you begin? Well, well, the real answer, and not the, I guess, successful role model entrepreneur answer, or like the answer you get from your teachers, is, um, I would probably be scared to death, you know. Um, this, you know, this generation is probably one of the most empowered generations of our, you know, ever. Um, the most entrepreneurial generation. And I would say this generation is also the generation who, like the world in a sense, has kind of turned its back on because it's not protecting their future, whether it's from a world point of view or from a personal point of view, or even from a point of view of what their future's going to be like, whether it's global warming or whether it's even how they're going to have a job or a career. So that at first would scare me. Then number 2, it would scare me and make me angry that it was like that for me. And number 2 would be that I also would be kind of intimidated by the competition, because everybody's trying to be the next Steve Jobs, the next— the next Puff Daddy, the next Jay-Z, or so on. You know what I'm saying? So there's so much competition. Like when I started, there was nobody really trying to do what I was doing. And so I think that it's very important to know the reality. So my advice to future entrepreneurs is to always know the reality. Know what you're getting yourself into. Know how hard it's going to be, how competitive it's going to be. But even with that being said, I think there's more chances today than ever to get seen and heard, to get noticed. And I think that we're in a time where the people that really, really work hard and really, really believe in they selves and really, really don't give up on they dreams no matter how many times they fall down are the ones that's gonna be successful. Is there anything you would not promote? I mean, how about Diddy Dog Food? No, I wouldn't do Diddy Dog Food. You know, I don't know, make your dog yap. To a wrap or something. Yeah, I wouldn't do Diddy Dog Food. You wouldn't do Dog Food. I mean, I would do what's organic for me. Like, I love candles. I would do candles. I love jewelry. I would do jewelry that fits. I would do hotels. It, you know, whatever was in the realm of entertainment or lifestyle, a curator of cool, you know, that's what I do.

It's one of my favorite quotes. I came up with it with my uncle. I had an uncle named Uncle Shrimp and Uncle Shrimp, he was a short kind of guy, you know, lost his hair at like the age 20, so he's bald-headed, and he was just so charismatic. And he told me this after I injured myself and I realized that I wasn't going to be a football player, and he told me, you know, to never lose sight of your dreams. But he also told me this as who I was. He knew that now was going to be a turning point, either I could have turned to the streets and followed in the footsteps of my father, or I could dream the impossible dream. And he also wanted me to know this as an African American man, because, you know, that fear of having a dream and that fear of, oh, I can't dream that, that, you know, I can't, I'll never be able to do that. You know, it was important to know that, yes, you can have that dream, but you have to know honestly what it's going to take. It's going to take for you to achieve that dream. And so then I came up with the quote, and it goes for everybody, all genders, all races, you know, don't be afraid to close your eyes and dream, but then you have to open your eyes and see the reality of what it's going to take for you to achieve that dream. And a lot of people, they kind of see whether it's musicians or athletes or entertainers or even just successful people, but they don't understand the thing that it takes for them to get to the point that they've gotten. And, you know, that's why it's a very important quote to me. And I think it, you know, it has inspired people. And it inspires me every day.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because David Newbie asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Sean Combs' 10 rules meant the most to you. Leave it in the comments. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.