Rapper 50 Cent’s real name is Curtis James Jackson III. His book on strategy is attracting some attention.

He is a man who takes business seriously. As befits an artist whose breakthrough work was titled “Get Rich or Die Trying”, he has invested in a wide range of different enterprises, and has built a personal fortune estimated in nine figures.

This is doubly remarkable given where he was only 15 years ago. Brought up, without a father, in a tough neighbourhood, his mother, a drug dealer, was murdered when he was eight, and, although he excelled as an amateur boxer, he was himself a convicted drug dealer by the time he was twenty.

It takes a strong character to leave that behind. If ever there was a self-made man, it is Curtis James Jackson III.

Entrepreneurs from more conventional backgrounds have much to learn from those who cut their entrepreneurial teeth at the very margins. Nowhere are competitive skills so finely developed as on streets where business mistakes can be literally fatal.

Possibly the most useful lesson we can all learn from 50 Cent is not to be afraid. The fear of failure and rejection that stops most people thrusting themselves forward has little meaning to a man who was once hit by nine bullets.

Yet the streets also instil a negative view of human nature which can be counter-productive. True, no one ever got rich by relying on the generosity and honesty of their competitors – but that does not mean there is no place for generosity and honesty in business.

There are lessons to be learnt on the streets – but, like 50 Cent himself, we must strive to rise in the world, both economically and morally, so that the mean streets, and their values, are left behind.