The 1st Crack Commandment And Competition
“Rule Number Uno, never let no one know, How much dough you hold cause you know The cheddar breed jealousy 'specially, If that man fucked up, get yo' ass stuck up” - The 10 Crack Commandments
I have a friend who was once a big-time drug dealer in my city. It’s by sheer luck (and some sloppy police work) that he only got two years when he was finally caught. When I finally got a chance to catch up with him, I had a lot of questions about a lot of things.
The answer to those questions will be sprinkled throughout this text for you to learn from and apply to business. This chapter deals with a specific inquiry I had regarding selling drugs and generating demand.
Why do drug dealers fail?
Contrary to popular belief, not all drug dealers stop dealing drugs because they got murdered or went to prison. For one reason or another, some guys are just not good at selling drugs. They effectively “go under.” They can’t turn a profit, so they’re forced to close up shop.
A big reason guys go out of business in the dope game is that they can’t adjust to the competition.
Crackheads are going to smoke crack. That’s just what crackheads do. It’s not difficult or impressive to sell crack to a crackhead. Crackheads don’t decide to stop smoking crack anymore than you decide to stop eating food. What does happen, however, is that you decide who’s food to eat.
If a restaurant goes out of business, it’s not because people lost their desire for food. It’s because people lost their desire for that restaurant's food. The dope game is no different.
Are they gonna do your drugs or the competition’s?
Because selling drugs is against the law, you can’t exactly run an ad campaign about your product. You have two ways to ensure the addicts use your product: by killing the competition and word of mouth.
Killing the competition is bad for business because that invites police and retaliation. So you make a superior product. You make something that the crackheads can’t stop talking about. If you do this, you’re guaranteed to have the junkies hooked on your product.
He told me that the demand for heroin went up the more people died from overdosing on dope laced with Fentanyl. If this is confusing, think like an addict.
Imagine hearing about a high so good it kills you! THAT'S a statement. You *finally* catch the dragon you've been chasing
So I’ve laid out the only real path to success: a superior product.
The Crackhead Hustle Lesson
In the dope game, there is no:
Ad campaign
Copywriting
Randomly raising prices
Artificial scarcity
Either your product hits, or it doesn't.
If the plug ain't got work, the next man is gettin' your dollar.
If you mess up the count, that's your ass.
No one is really interested in what you say you can do. We want to see if you can perform, execute, and get the damn thing done.
When you do freelance work, you better do a damn good job. If your product claims it’s going to teach something, it better teach that thing. If you claim you have a secret method, it better be something new and novel.
You can do a lot of damage to your ability to earn dollars if you don’t take this part of the journey seriously. Everything you do, everything you produce, should be the absolute best quality you can produce. You need to wow people who come across you.
Here’s a simple litmus test for the quality of your work: does the client feel like they stole something from you? That is to say, does it feel like the client got more than they paid for? For example, does the person feel like they should have paid for your article because of how much value was packed into it?
Give more to get a lot more
People should feel like they got more from you than what they paid for. Anything less is short-selling yourself and leaving the door wide open to potential competitors.
These competitors won’t even have to be objectively better than you. They can beat you by claiming to be better with some clever marketing tricks and not actually being better at the game than you. They’ll be at your level—or worse—but because you left a gap by delivering a suboptimal performance, they’ll be able to sneak in.
From now on, fuck your best. Your best is what you should have been giving in the first place. Your best is the baseline.
Now, in everything you do, you give more than your best. You compete with everyone else trying to make money the way you’re trying to make money. Just because you can’t see your competition doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. It only means that he’s getting ready out of view.
Do a little extra. Do a lot of extra. Overpromise and overdeliver. Find where you have an unfair advantage and press it there.
Let your work speak for you so loudly that competition is forced into another field.
Are you tired of feeling stuck, unsure of how to make the tough decisions that life throws your way?
Do you struggle to communicate effectively, even when the stakes are high?
Have you fallen into a bad habit or way of negative thinking that is costing you time, money, or relationships?