With a diverse portfolio and plans to start new ventures, Forbes reports the “Down in the DM” rapper has built a $100 million empire.
As the CEO and founder of the record label Collective Music Group (CMG), Yo Gotti, whose name is Mario Mims, oversees a roster of talented artists, including Moneybagg Yo, GloRilla, and BlocBoy JB. In addition, the 42-year-old business leader owns the restaurant Prive in his hometown of Memphis, TN, and holds a minority stake in the Major League Soccer team D.C. United.
The celebrated musician and business magnate credits his mother, Geraldine Mims, and aunts for instilling a grounded perspective on finances that allowed him to make smart decisions as he got older. Anthony “Big Jook” Mims, Yo Gotti’s older brother who recently passed away, once referred to their mother as “the John Gotti” of their neighborhood, as reported in Vibe Magazine.
Despite being exposed to a lavish lifestyle at an early age, the C-suite executive witnessed the consequences of unsustainable wealth, watching his mother go from “having a fresh roll of cash every night” to earning less than six dollars an hour working at a grocery store, per Forbes.
Today, Geraldine is a chef at Prive, and through these experiences, Yo Gotti recognized that wealth has to accumulate over time to be maintained. He doesn’t believe that short-term thinking leads to long-term results.
“I’m beyond transactional thinking,” he said, per Forbes. “I’m thinking of real generational wealth. How will we have this money forever, like the Walton family [of Walmart]?”
With two decades of experience in the music industry and Hip-Hop billionaire Jay-Z as a mentor, Yo Gotti has earned a wealth of knowledge, which can be a major asset to up-and-coming music artists who hope to handle their finances better.
Praising him as one of the industry’s most well-versed business leaders, Jay-Z told Forbes, “His business acumen is evident in every move he makes, breaking the mold of the old-guard definition of an executive.”
Even with this expertise and an endorsement from Jay-Z, Yo Gotti knows there is still much to learn about the business if he wants to stay at the top of his game.
As reported by AFROTECH, he enrolled in classes at the University of California Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Business, starting with the course “Corporate Valuation.” This endeavor will equip him with crucial analytical skills for evaluating projects, corporations, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, private firms, and debt.
For the successful businessman, this represents a pivotal step toward mastering the language of business.
“I may want to buy a company or acquire another company. So I’m making sure I’m super tight and understand the language and verbiage myself other than listening [to financial experts],” he said to Forbes.
Emphasizing the importance of patience and diligence in pursuit of success, Yo Gotti likened his approach to planting seeds for future growth.
“A lot of people don’t have patience. They want it all tomorrow. So they can’t execute a real plan,” he noted.
The Memphis rap star aspires to be a role model for the next generation of Black entrepreneurs, advocating for a diversified approach to financial security.
“If I never wrote another rap again, I’m financially straight,” he told Forbes, “My whole career, I was setting up for that.”
