i don't know how to run a business at all. i've never done it and have no desire to do it. i think what allows me to build healthy and constructive relationships with entrepreneurs is that i know that i can't run a business and don't pretend that i can
This is interesting to me because Diego Gambetta wrote a book called Codes of the Underworld about how mobsters and mafia members often depict themselves as utterly incompetent and incapable at doing anything other than being a mobster.
Their purpose: to signal that they have no desire to take over businesses because they lack the capability to run them. As long as you, the business owner, pay the mobster, you know that the mobster will not eventually take 100% of the profit because the mobster can't run the business effectively. And if the mobster tries to extort 100% of the profit, he knows that you'll quit or do something extreme, like go to the police or fight back or find another mobster.
