Roc Nation President Michael Yormark Talks Working With JAY Z, Boxing and Why TIDAL Will Be a Huge Success

Complex has sat down with the less recognizable of Roc Nation’s two head honchos to talk about what it takes to run the international media monster that JAY Z built. Discussing everything from his background in the NHL, Miguel Cotto, and the rest of the Roc Nation Boxing roster, and how he barely ever sleeps, Michael Yormark provides unique insight into a fast-developing company.

I heard a rumor that you go to sleep at 11:30 p.m. and wake up at 3:30 a.m. every day.

I do. I get up at 3:30 every day. I work out for about an hour and 20 minutes, I walk to work and I usually get here about 5:20 or 5:25 every day.

What is your pitch to new athletes? When you see, you know, a Kevin Durant or a Robinson Cano, what is the pitch? What makes you guys the place to go instead of an older agency?

The infrastructure that we have and what we’ve been able to accomplish as far as building brands is probably one of the first things to attract an athlete. We’ve been doing this for years and years and years with artists. Now we’ve taken our infrastructure that includes brand partnerships, social, digital, philanthropy, marketing and creative to support an athlete’s goals and objectives as it relates to building their portfolio off the field. Every athlete today has ambitions about being an entrepreneur. It’s not just about playing. Obviously, it’s very, very important and their number one priority, but it’s also preparing for the rest of their life and one of the ways you can do that, is starting to build that brand portfolio. When we went through our presentations for Willie Cauley-Stein and Justise Winslow, those are a lot of the things we talked about. We surround our athletes with 24/7 managers that quite frankly service every one of their needs, so when they wake up in the morning they focus on one thing: “How do I become the best player I can be today?”

If you had to describe Jay Z in one word from a business sense, how would you describe him?

Fearless. The man is fearless. There’s not a challenge he won’t attack. He and his partners, all of them, approach the business in a very fearless manner and I believe that that has been one of the keys to our success.

Check out the full interview here to see JAY Z’s guy talk about why TIDAL will be a huge success and more.