Member Since: 8/27/2012
Posts: 5,009
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Quote:
"Money doesn't make me tick. This definition of success doesn't make me tick. Managing some of the biggest stars in the world doesn't make me tick. Making my family proud makes me tick." He takes off his chunky tortoiseshell glasses to wipe away the gathering moisture in his eyes, which seems to surprise even him.
Carter couldn't get Gaga's first single "Just Dance" on pop radio, so in 2008 he put his new act on a rigorous schedule—sometimes four shows a night, playing to gay clubs or arty fashion crowds. Gaga and Carter began experimenting with Twitter andFacebook, engaging fans and pumping out homespun content on YouTube. At the time, these channels were seen as enemies to the music business, but Carter saw them as inexpensive ways to reach the masses.
Back in his office, Carter wasn't sure what to feel. "I'm human. I went through every emotion," he says. "You go from fear to sadness." When he was finally ready to share the news, he called his wife, Rebecca, a former stockbroker who's now Atom Factory's CFO. Then he told the rest of his staff, delicately. "It's emotional for the company," says Carter. "[*Gaga's] one of us." Gaga didn't say anything publicly, but she wept while performing at the YouTube Music Awards hours before the news broke.
It didn't take long before people checked in. Oseary, Madonna's manager, emailed Carter a Steve Jobs quote exhorting the virtues of his newfound freedom: "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
Carter has a plan, of course: He wants to run the Gaga playbook to launch new brands. He knows how huge corporations roll out products, and that isn't his style.
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