Hustling – From the Streets to the Boardroom
“Read this and maybe you will be someone one day”
Those were the words my dad spoke as he handed me a book on the Mafia. I was 12 years old and very impressionable. I would stay with my dad during the weekends. He would rent gangster movies for me to watch while he was away at work. He was obsessed with the lifestyle.
During my childhood my dad was involved in criminal activities that ranged from selling drugs to running numbers. He tried to hide it from me, but I knew. He hung around with low level, wannabe mafia types. They sat in diners all night long drinking coffee, breaking each others balls about women and how “rich” the next guy was. The fact of the matter was none of them were rich.
They told stories about the past while laughing obnoxiously loud in public places, creating a scene. The majority of what came out of their mouths were either lies or half-truths. It was like watching a bad episode of the Sopranos 20 years before it was a show.
As a kid I loved it. I couldn’t wait to be around his friends. I thought they were the greatest. I idolized them. They had nice cars, which my father never had. Some wore gaudy jewelry and always carried big wads of cash.
They were always excited to see me and treated me like royalty. Unlike my father who usually put me down and made me feel less than. When I grew up I wanted to be like them. I had become obsessed with that lifestyle.
At 13 I started selling weed to my friends. At first, I stole it from my brother and my friend’s dad until I found my own source to buy it. I bagged it up in little dime bags and sold it to friends for $10 a piece.
Even back then I remember wanting to make sure I always gave people a great deal. I packed the bags I sold nice and full, removing the stems from the buds. When I bought weed from other people it was mainly stems and seeds. I hated that and wanted to be different, even it meant I made less money.
As I got a littler older and progressed from selling weed to coke, my mentality on making a profit changed. I cut my product, but tried to maintain a certain quality standard. I found that if I added seven grams of cut to an ounce of quality coke and mixed it well people rarely complained. To stretch my profits further I would make half grams weigh .4 instead of .5 and my grams weigh .8 instead of 1. These two tricks net me an additional $500 in profit if I didn’t use too much of it myself. (more…)