Let’s talk business. I have met too many people who “study” business but have no real skill in it. On the other hand, I have several friends who have never studied business formally but are natural salesmen with a keen business mindset. The first group esteem themselves as “business professionals” within their own mind, yet when they are asked to represent themselves or a product, they crack under pressure. The second group never labels themselves as businessmen but they are sharp as a knife when it comes to moving, talking and selling. Nearly every person in the second group who I have met learned their skill by dealing with psychoactive substances, commonly known as “drugs.”

[media-credit name=”Andrea Napoli” align=”alignleft” width=”250″][/media-credit]One doesn’t need to sell drugs to learn business skills, but it sure helps. When observed properly, the underground world of drug-dealing is pure free-market capitalism. There are no business licenses, no overhead costs and no taxes. All expenses are either investments or the cost of doing business selling an illegal product. Ironically, the illegality of drugs enhances the aspects of free-market capitalism in the drug market. There is no government regulation, so any kid with enough cash, common sense and bravado can enter the market. His success will be based purely upon his niche within the market, for he must compete against other suppliers in terms of value, pricing, convenience and customer experience. That is business, folks.

There is only one real skill in life, and that is the ability to comfortably interact with other people. I don’t care how much you’ve studied or how much you know — if you can’t convey your knowledge to other people in a format that is comfortable to them, then you are useless to the world around you. You’ve found a new protein that binds to the neurotransmitter that causes Alzheimer’s? Great, I still don’t give a shit, unless you can tell me about it in a manner that makes it interesting. At that point I definitely care, because curing diseases is cool.

Let’s break it down: the CEO of ExxonMobil sells a product that allows millions of people to transport themselves to different places according to their desire, thus the brains of the transported people release dopamine in accordance with the fulfillment of their desire. The chairman of Time Warner oversees the selling of electronic media programming that allows people to be entertained and feel good about themselves by connecting with a particular image of humanity. An executive manager at Google provides a product that allows people to find new information and satisfy curiosity. All of these men are drug dealers. Pleasure is the only true drug, and many roads lead toward it.

A distributor of marijuana allows people to relax in times of stress, find relief in times of pain and, for those more severely affected, to find a treatment in times of cancer. There is no legitimate reason a supplier of marijuana or other drugs that positively influence people should be denied the ability to accommodate a market demand. People need to solve their problems, and when decision time comes, nobody really gives a flying fuck what the government says about it. A million laws and statutes cannot separate a buyer with cash and problems from a supplier with solutions. Nothing can.

Do you have what it takes to succeed in the world of business? Before you answer, set your resumé on fire. I don’t care what a piece of paper says you can do. I care about what you want to achieve in life, and I care about how well you can interact with other people. More often than not, the guy with a nice resumé and no people skills is a guy who never smoked weed. Even more often, the guy with a sporadic list of experience and excellent people skills is a guy who has blazed well over a thousand blunts. More often than both, I’m firing the first and hiring the second. Why? Because the drug-free “professional” is a fucking tool, and the ex-stoner upstart is hilarious. Keep your priorities straight — fun first, money second.