New Business Lessons from Pablo ESCOBAR.
“Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out what it is.” — Pablo Escobar.
Before you read any further, I would like to make it very clear that I do not encourage the use and sale of illegal drugs. Many of you probably saw the article’s title and thought: “Great…another wannabe drug lord who wants his own Netflix series”. Not the case. Matter of fact, if you read about the lives of legendary drug barons and take out the glamour (real or perceived), you realise that trying to escape death on a weekly basis is an incredible weight to carry. No one wants this. Anyone who is ok with carrying this weight has a very unique psychology that comes along from time to time and which often leads to the best and the worst depending on circumstances. Pablo Escobar had it.
The source which inspired this article is the following book: Escobar, a biography published in 2009 and written by Roberto Escobar, the brother of Pablo. The subtitle is: The inside story of Pablo Escobar, the world’s most powerful criminal. I watched a few documentaries as well but none had the “slap in the face” power of the book. You read it and you begin to wonder how the hell someone who came from virtually nothing can reach such heights albeit in the worst possible way. Escobar was not just bigger than life, he was bigger than fate. All things considered, he was supposed to remain within the social class that defined him at birth. Instead, he rocketed through every ceiling that limited his ascent and created an organisation big enough to test the might of the United States.
Ultimately, Pablo Escobar’s power could only take him so far. When your life goes faster than a ball in a pinball machine, you are going to lose control of the ball one way or another. The man died as he lived: in controversy. Depending on who you talk to, you will get different answers on who were the good and the bad guys in the story. Regardless of which side you’re on, there are clearly some lessons to be learned from Pablo Escobar in 2023. Below are some suggestions.
1. The most profitable market is not one where demand is high. It is a market where demand is high and which expands so fast that supply can almost never keep up.
The key thing here is expansion. This was Pablo Escobar’s opportunity. As explained in his biography, he stumbled upon a market that was like a black hole which could seemingly never be filled. As much as he pumped his products into it, demand remained ten times larger than supply. There was simply no end to it. Had it been a regular market which gradually matures and contracts from time to time, things would have been different. But this one was expansion, expansion and more expansion. Sure, Pablo Escobar controlled a significant part of the supply but the results would have been meaningless in a market that stopped growing. The insatiable market where Escobar operated led him to build an organisation worth 20 billion dollars in the eighties. This is an awful lot even by today’s standards. Key Lesson: Great products and services are good, but having them in a rapidly expanding market is the winning hand. Not having to worry about where the next customer will come from is the ultimate business plan.
2. There is no such thing as a 100% secure business or personal relationship. When the stakes are high, they get tested. Badly.
A recurring problem that Pablo Escobar had to deal with is betrayal. He was very street smart (he had to) and he somehow expected it. However, as cool-headed as he was, it took some very special efforts to deal with betrayal that came from people that he had known almost his entire life and whom he trusted with his…well, his life really. How do you deal with that? Punish them? Kill them? Then what? This did not make things necessarily safer and easier. In fact, the only guarantee was that betrayal could strike him when he expected it the least. So many people wanted a piece of Pablo Escobar that for the right price or simply the promise of power, formerly trusted lieutenants would push him off a cliff. Of course, Escobar was ruthless to them. There was no other choice, but, in the end, was it worth getting so big that it had to come to that? Key Lesson: The people who you think you control do not necessarily control themselves. They are dealing with demons that they themselves are not even aware of. Knowing this softens the disappointment.
3. Keep innovating even when you are ahead of the competition.
One of the striking things about Pablo Escobar was how relentless he was in finding ways to improve his business. This was especially obvious in the field of logistics. He had a knack for solving inextricable puzzles when it came to moving his products from point A to point B. Reading about his skill, I could not help but think that this was due to the very difficult economic conditions under which he grew. Simply put, he was always forced to make the best of what he had. There are instincts that are formed with that kind of environment. His were about noticing minor details that had decisive impacts and creating highly efficient solutions for problems that seemed too big to handle. He found a way around whatever stood in his way and that was because he was willing to expand his thinking beyond what anyone had done before him in the drugs business. Once the machine started rolling, Pablo Escobar could not be stopped. Key Lesson: It is easy to become complacent once you’ve beaten your competitors, but assuming that they will never catch up is a huge mistake. They will find a way to beat you just as you figured how to beat them.
Conclusion: On December 2, 1993, it will be 30 years since Pablo Escobar was shot dead by Colombian special forces while trying to escape on a roof in the city of Medellin. What was once the most famous criminal in the world is now a legend whose shadow still looms large. His story is about drugs, guns, money and power…I’ll let you decide if there is more to it.
Good luck,
Ashley Boolell
Check my latest novel: Market Dystopia
