Jason Geter on getting his label and artist T.I. off the ground:

There was no real template, it was just go hard literally every day. We got an apartment together, me and Tip. Every day our mission was, what are we gonna do, what club we going to? What show we gonna do? Like literally every day that’s what it was. Dedication. A lot of times people never really, really go in hard. We were really doing it full time. Every week, I would go to Barnes & Noble and read Billboard magazine. Sitting with stacks of magazines, highlighting stuff, rip out pages. Not just doing the work but educating ourselves as well. That’s why we knew our value.

Jason Geter on his early hustle sense:

I was one of those kids, I always worked and had something going to make money. I had my first paper route when I was 10 or 11. In the seventh grade, I used to shovel snow in the winter. Everyone was trying to get up the earliest to get to people’s houses first and I came up with an idea to make up business cards. I made business cards up and cut a deal with all of the people and like hey, if you could let me shovel your snow every time, I’ll shovel it at this rate. Now I had clientele. It got to the point where I had so many people that I had four of my homeboys working for me. That was my first real hustle. When I run into the people now that knew me as a kid, they’re like, I’m not surprised because you was always trying to get some money.

In 12th grade I got an internship at Arista with Jeff Burroughs. All my friends were like, Why are you working for free? I just wanted to soak up as much as I possibly could. Being around is how I learned. It was straight flunky work but being in that office, I was able to overhear conversations and when you’re sending a fax, of course you’re gonna be nosy and read the fax and learn by chance. Overhearing conversations is probably how I learned the most.