406 - How would you handle this situation?

I have to get this off my chest AND I'd like your opinion.

What do you do when you meet with a prospective business partner or client who shows up visibly high?

Yesterday, I met with a young man I had chatted with one day earlier.

He was a young, fast talking entrepreneur who had grand visions of where he was going in life and he wanted to get together with me to be "partners".

He would share what I do and I will share what he does. He had it all mapped out in the first 5 minutes of talking to me.

He had no idea what I do, because I never got a word in, nor did he ask, but I decided to meet with him to possibly mentor him a bit.

What came next was a fiasco of scheduling issues.

Finally, we decided to meet at 3 pm. Right as we were about to hang up he said, "OK, see you between 3 and 4".

WHAT? I asked explicitly, 3 or 4, I have work to do... He said 3:30 and told me where to meet him.

At 10 minutes to 3, I received a text, "OK, 3 pm...Where?". I replied, "3:30!!!"

I laughed out loud at this message. Now I was in it for fun. I know I won't do business with him.

I wasn't prepared for the exchange we had once he arrived, about 5 minutes late.

This young man was high. I don't know what he was on but he appeared stoned out go his mind.

His eyes were half shut and he was slumping in his chair, and slurring his words.

Even our server noticed that he was struggling.

His only interest was in making $250K THIS YEAR! (I laughed at that and he didn't notice)

There was little talk of what I did, thankfully, because he already knows everything. He doesn't need attorneys because he can read.

It wasn't until later that I realized I was witnessing an extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Thank You @Paulette Dale for reminding me of that.

I ventured to ask if he understands legalese and the look on his face was priceless. He had no answer, maybe because he didn't know the term legalese.

For all I know, he thought I was talking about an ethnic group like Vietnamese, Chinese, Legalese?

I'll never know.

Luckily, we only met for about 30 minutes and he had to go. I watched him stagger out.

My dilemma was, what to do next.

- Do I drop the whole thing, block him and forget about it?

- Do I contact him and let him know what I experienced?

- Do I contact his boss because his demeanor will damage the company reputation?

- Do I write it off as a one time thing and move forward with him? (Sorry, this won't happen)

How would you handle an exchange like this?

#entrepreneurship#entrepreneur#business#professional