What Do Steve Madden and Puff Daddy have in?Common?
What Does Steve Madden and Puff Daddy have in Common?
(TWO CENTS — from My Desktop to Yours, Weekly from Jenny Chen)
You don’t have to belong to anything to be successful.
This week’s little blurb was inspired by a podcast interviewing the legendary shoe maker and designer Steve Madden. During the interview, Steve Madden says he is still pissed that Puffy belongs to CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) and he is not.
Through decades of passion and hard works, Madden has successfully build a shoe empire that produces some of the most ubiquitous fashion items, but many in fashion still sees him as the “outsider”. He never finished college (left second year), did not work his way up the fashion houses in Europe, and…he was in jail for two and a half years for financial crime. People who love Madden’s shoes also aren’t super proud of the brand itself, perhaps because it only costs 1/100th of the typical high-end brand. Yet, Steven Madden is not going away. As a business, it is thriving (Annual Sales up to 1.5B).
Puffy is not offended.
Emerged as a pop culture icon, Puffy was also an “outsider” to the fashion industry. His “Sean John” brand now has annual revenue of at least 500 million. Puffy grew up in Harlem, New York. His father was tragically murdered when Puffy was only 2 years old. He went to Howard University till he was a sophomore. Yet another college dropout.
What does this tell you? That CFDA knows how to pick the winner? Obviously not.
Both are college drop-outs, rebellious iconic figures, who are highly successful no matter what group they belong to.
How many times do we see the member of the Yada-Yada Society of XXX create an original movement like Puff Daddy and Steve Madden?
So, the moral of the story:
Don’t feel bad if you don’t belong to certain groups, or not invited to certain parties, or nominated to receive certain rewards.
None of that matters.
Your work will speak for you, nothing else.
I created 3DHEALS not so that people belong to a certain group, but to send a message that we are the “non-group” group, that only our vision matters. We maintain an “open” stance to anyone who wants to revolutionize healthcare industry (btw, the tower of “status quo”) with a new technology, additive manufacturing. Want to learn? Want to create? Want to connect? We are here for you.