Marketing guru Steve Stoute said that he made the strategic decision to leave the music industry after realizing that the real money wasn’t in arguing over song splits, but in leveraging star power to sell higher-priced items.
This insight wasn’t random.
It stemmed from his experience working on Will Smith‘s 1997 “Men in Black” album, which dropped alongside the blockbuster movie. At the time, Stoute was an executive at Columbia Music, collaborating with Trackmasters and overseeing the project. His focus was on ensuring the album’s success in a market that had shifted significantly since Smith’s earlier days as a rapper known as The Fresh Prince.
The album performed exceptionally well, with the lead track topping the Billboard Hot 100 and earning Smith a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance in 1997. But it wasn’t just the music’s success that influenced Stoute’s career path.
“We made ‘Men in Black’ and the song went crazy. It changed his music career,” Stoute said during an interview on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” in March.
Those Shades Changed It All For Steve Stoute
“The album sold 10 million but the glasses sold more,” Stoute continued. “And we never got paid from the glasses. The small advertising agency that did the product placement for the glasses, I spent time with them and literally over the next three years, I left the music business and got into advertising.”
This realization led Stoute to a crucial turning point. If music could drive such significant sales for a product like sunglasses, he wondered what could be achieved by focusing entirely on marketing and product strategy.
That money moment was built into the movie like a ready-made commercial. It occurred when Smith’s character said, “I make these look good,” referring to the Ray-Ban Predator 2 sunglasses that became iconic in the series, people flocked to the store.
The glasses saw their sales triple, reaching $5 million, according to KoiMoi.
The film, which cost $90 million to produce, grossed $250,690,539 internationally, with a successful 26-week run in theaters, Box Office Mojo reported.
The glasses’ sales surge was enough to convince Stoute to leave his high-ranking positions in the music industry, including his roles as executive vice president of Interscope Geffen A&M Records and president of urban music at Sony Music from 1999 to 2009.
“I’m gonna leave the record business, $2.5 million, all of the perks that come with it, who you are, the rooms you walk in, everything that comes with that, to go work in an agency where I don’t know anybody. I really don’t even know the business. I just know that one aspect of the business,” Stoute said, before adding, “And I’m like, ‘If I don’t make that bet on myself now, and I’m 28 years old, 29 years old, when would I ever do it? When I have a family, when I have kids, I’ll never make that bet.’”
He continued, “I made that bet. We sold that agency within two years for $190 million. I was rich as f—k at about 31.”
Today, Steve Stoute boasts an estimated net worth of $55 million.
As the CEO and founder of United Masters, he now teaches artists how to navigate the industry as independents, applying the same strategies and hustle that he initially overlooked during the “Men in Black” project.
