My name is Leroy Williams Jr., Professionally known as Mr. Lee. I’ve been a professional
music producer since 1995. At seven, I took piano lessons from my cousin Joseph Johnson in
Pineville, Louisiana. That’s when I found my interest in music. A year later, I began to
compete in piano competitions. A few years after, I became the head musician at my church,
where my dad was a solo singer, and also I played for the choir there at Mount Pilgrim Baptist
Church.
As I started to get older, I began to find a love for rap music. I used to listen to Eazy E, NWA,
Luke and Skywalker. I used to sneak off and listen to those guys,2 Live Crew and Nemesis,
and a bunch of other people. We used to have these sound systems in our cars. Later, I started
a rap group with my close friends called Four Deep. That’s when I really started to take rap
music seriously and being a producer seriously. Most times, on the path to success, you will
find dilemmas like tragedies and certain life events that will cause people to focus and become
very poised in what they’re trying to do in life. I had one of those moments, got caught up in
the streets, and started selling drugs and doing things I was not taught to do. I was not raised
in the streets. I was raised in the church, but I fell off and got into the streets, which caused
me to get myself into trouble selling drugs, hanging out with the wrong people, and catching

cases with people that I didn’t even have anything to do with, but I got caught up. Those life-
changing events caused me to be razor focused on my music career because that’s all that I

had. I was on the run for ten years, so the whole time I was on my contract with Rap-A-Lot
from 1995 to 2005, I was on the run. It years, so the whole time that I was on my contract with
Rap-A-Lot from 1995 to 2005, I was on the run. It made me so focused on what I was doing
that I never wasted one minute of my day doing something that was not beneficial to my
career.
It gave me all of the confidence, all of the understanding of what my focus was and my
purpose was. I was grateful for those moments because they made me a better person. And
the reason that I share this story with you is that there’s something that I want you to
understand. When there’s something that you want to do in life, there’s nothing that can stand
in your way. No obstacles, no situation that can stop you from doing what you want to do. It
all depends on you, your drive, your purpose, your focus, and your deter- mination, and your
discipline is essential. With all of those keys, anybody can make it, not just me, the person you
admired on the internet, not just your favorite rapper, your favorite producer. Anybody can
make it.
And this is why I’m going to share all of these keys in this book because I want you guys
to understand the basics and structure it takes to succeed. Let me be clear; I didn’t start on
this path perfect, and I have yet to end up perfect on the path I’m on now. There were a lot of
mistakes that I made and many reactions that I made that were poor. I could have handled
many situations better in my career, and I’m going to be very open about them because I was
hoping you could learn from them. The most significant success that you can have is learning
from a mistake. The biggest failure you can have is not admitting that you made one.
One of the first things that I want to teach and want you to learn is that business is business.
Even if you are friends or family with somebody you’re doing business with, You must conduct
the business at all times. You cannot conduct business with personal feelings involved. You
can’t waiver from doing business because you have a personal relationship with someone.
After all, that will put you in a vicarious situation and make you vulnerable. It would also

devalue your worth with the person you’re doing business with. Being in this business for
almost 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve gained a lot of experience. I’ve had a lot of
success. I’ve had a lot of failures. All of that I’ve learned made me a stronger person There’s
been a lot of great things that I’ve done, a lot of good things that I’ve done, and a lot of bad
decisions that I made a lot of wrong moves that I made. I’ve learned from all of those. And one
of the most important things you must understand is that the lesson you learn will make you a
more remarkable person and an excellent businessman. But the focus, especially doing music
business, is that you have to focus on the last word, business. Of course, music is the
intellectu- al property that pays us, and the careers that we base on are our talents. But you
can have a great talent, a poor business mind, and a flawed business model, and you will lose
every time. You will see nothing from your work with a lousy business or business plans over
the years.

So this book is going to teach you and enlighten you on how to maintain your success in your
business and your career. With knowledge comes power. With power comes
respect. With respect, money follows all of those three things. If you put money before your
purpose, career, business, or anything, you will get the money last. Because you’re not going
to be able to be successful in building a business, following your purpose, and being
disciplined enough to do business and grow your company because you’re chasing a dollar.
It’s easy to say that when you have money. It’s easy to say that when you succeed, but if you
start with the structure first, the capital will follow that.
This is why you hear many success stories about people sleeping in cars, not having homes,
and having no money to start their businesses. They’re at rock bottom. At rock bottom, you
can only focus on one thing at a time. You are in survival mode. You’re not looking at doing
anything for money. You’re looking at doing something to survive. You’re looking at doing
things to succeed. You’re not looking at doing things to say, oh, if I do this first, then I can get
this amount of money when I do this. You’re looking at trying to be stabilized forever, not for a
moment. It’s a big difference. A person that loves what they do will be more successful than a
person with a skill that can do it better than them because the drive to be successful is more
embedded in the person that loves what they do more than the person that’s just trying to
make a dollar with what they do.