I am crediting Ella Ceron, Digital Entertainment Editor for the following pm Justin Beiber:

Scooter Braun is the rare manager whose fame is nearly on par with his celebrity clients. (The story about how he found Justin Bieber is, by now, the stuff of YouTube legend.) But that doesn’t mean his career has always been that easy, and he opened up to Paper about what he called the “biggest obstacle” in his work so far.

He said that the “year and a half with Justin [Bieber] was very hard,” referring to the period of time that was arguably the singer’s lowest point. (Justin has since completed the probation period he was placed on in 2014.) “I love that kid, and I had never been through anything like that before with someone. And for a year and a half, I felt like a failure. Every single day was a battle,” Scooter told the magazine.

The mega-manager also said that the team that had been working with Justin since day one was an integral support system throughout the time period, but he’s also quick to point out that “the reason why things have turned around and why Justin is having the success that he is now is because he made the decision to change. And the person who deserves the credit is him.”

As for what made that epiphany happen? Scooter amounts it to something that just seemed to click. “He woke up one day, and he called me, and he said, ‘Can you come see me?’,” he told Paper. “And we were not on great terms, because we were fighting every day. And he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want to be like this.’ And we figured it out, but I had been trying to figure it out for a year and a half.

The change happened when he decided he was going to change.” Justin, for his part, has been open about his past struggles, too, and it seems that he’s actively taking steps to not repeat his past mistakes. – end of quote.

I really didn’t know much about Justin, but was Usher’s tour manager when he launched his career in 2002. Usher was a huge inspiration in Justin’s career and a mentor to his performance style, etc.  Usher was extremely creative as a performer and was very easy to work with in the beginning when he was under his mother’s (Jonetta Patton) management.  A few years later he fired his mother and that is when things became remarkably more difficult. He wasn’t into substance abuse – just people.  I have seen it a hundred times when money and fame take over an artist’s lives.  Fortunately I have also worked with some artists that never forgot where they came from and the fans that put them where they are today.  A few immediately come to mind. that to this day, made my life as a tour manager very fulfilling – Linda Ronstadt, Lionel Richie, Donny & Marie Osmond, SWV,,,,  The rest I believe were put here for the perfecting of the saints 🙂

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