Ever heard of a trumpet player that’s worth $850 million dollars?

 

Who could it be? Mile Davis? Arturo Sandoval? Wynton Marsalis? Dizzy Gillespie?

Nope.

Herb Alpert is the man, with a combined wealth of $850 million dollars.

Combine all the trumpets players net worth above and they wouldn’t come close.  Miles Davis’s net worth was only $10 million. How is it, one of greatest trumpets players of all time was only worth $10 million. I would expect it to be in the hundreds of millions right? Or billions.

Wrong.

Now we know that prestige, skills and fame is not a catalyst for great wealth. Miles Davis was a master at his craft and one of the best.

But Herb Alpert destroys Miles Davis’s pitiful fortune by $840 million. Yikes! I have to agree that Herb Alpert wasn’t a more iconic trumpet player than Miles Davis. Davis is the man, but this site isn’t just about becoming a great musician, but also becoming a wealthy one.

Miles Davis was wealthy by the average persons standard but Herb Alpert is “stupid wealthy”.

Herb Alpert was born on March 31, 1935. He is most known and associated with the group Tijuana Brass. Raised in the ghetto streets of East Los Angeles where all the cholos hung out he took up trumpet at the ripe age of eight years old.

His accomplishments are no joke. Alpert’s musical accomplishments include five No. 1 albums and 28 albums total on the chart, nine Grammy Awards, fourteen platinum albums, and fifteen gold albums.  As of 1996, Alpert had sold 72 million albums worldwide.  Alpert is the only recording artist to hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop chart as both a vocalist (“This Guy’s in Love with You“, 1968) and an instrumentalist (“Rise“, 1979).

He’s also a record executive of A&M Records. The “A” is for Alpert and “M” is for Moss as in Jerry Moss. The label including artists such as: Janet Jackson, The Police, The Go Gos, Chuck Mangione, Oingo Boingo, Bryan Adams and many others.

In 1987 Alpert and Moss agreed to sell their label to Polygram Records for a reported $500 million dollars. Cha-ching! Later they began Almo Sounds music publishing company after a frustrating legal battle with Polygram Records.

Alpert also deals in philanthropy and is a huge supporter for music education. He has donated over $110 million dollars through the Herb Alpert Foundation.

He even admits that he’s not great at business and knows next to nothing about business matters. Jerry Moss, his partner, is the brains of the operation. Which leads me to another fact. You don’t have to be a genius at business to run a successful business.

“In business, if you’re the smartest guy in the room, than you’re doomed to fail.” -Robert Kiyosaki-

I’m sure Alpert understands passive income and how to achieve it, but he’s smart enough to know that he doesn’t need know everything about business, that’s what a partner or hiring smarter people are for.

I myself don’t want to do everything in my business or even this site. Eventually I’m going to hire assistants, consultants web developers and managers to manage my company for me. Delegation is a skill many entrepreneurs lack, many fail because they micromanage.

Lesson.

1. Even kid from low side of East Los Angeles can become wealthy.
2. Team up with the right people.
3. Hire people smarter than you.
4. Give back.
5. Have an plan to sell your business when the opportunity arises.
6. Prestige and fame doesn’t necessarily mean your wealthy.

I’ll leave you with one more quote. 

” Talent works, genius creates..” Robert Shumann

Create your music and find a way to make it into an asset, which is what puts money back into your pocket. Create assets!

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any thoughts.

Thanks friend.