American gangster

"You're either a somebody or a nobody."

What Frank Lucas did in the illegal drug business was innovate the way how business is done by going straight to the supplier. Seems commonsense and obvious these days with the available technology and ease of moving goods around. But in Frank Lucas' time in the late 60s, cutting out the middle man was challenging the norm of doing business.

We all know that both seller and customer will end up with more value by directly dealing with each other but the more important lesson here is to challenge the accepted way of doing business and then do it differently.

"The most important thing in business is honesty..."

Another thing Lucas did was to grow his business. This he did by hiring people he knew he could trust - his brothers. Trust is a much taken-for-granted prerequisite in doing business. Without it you cannot prosper and you cannot grow.

"More important than in any man's life is order."

Much as Lucas was the most successful drug dealer of his generation, what brought him down was his love for his wife. Lucas was a very low-key businessman but one time his wife bought him an extravagant fur coat which he wore at a boxing match, and that is how Richie Roberts, the cop who would later put Lucas in jail, first caught attention of him. Roberts took the first picture of Lucas that time. And the rest was history.

A must-see movie.