What Breaking Bad Can Teach Us About Business Relationships

Fans of Breaking Bad will be riveted to their televisions this Sunday as the wildly popular crime drama comes to the end of its five-year story. Yet there’s another story that will endure long after the credits roll. It’s the story that epitomizes the most fundamental of business relationships: that of a sponsor and his protégé.

First, a brief recap for anyone who somehow missed a series as addictive as the high-quality methamphetamine that high school chemistry teacher Walter White makes and his slacker former student Jesse Pinkman sells: Diagnosed with inoperable, advanced lung cancer, Walter is desperate to find a way to provide for his family before he dies. When he learns that Jesse is a small-time drug dealer, he proposes they become business partners in an industry for which they possess perfectly complementary skills: manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine.