The end of a dream

The old professor said:

• Today it's Tuấn's turn to present his plan for starting a business in the future. We will hear Tuấn answer the question "How will Tuấn start a business later on?" Everyone will put questions for Tuấn to answer, and help make Tuấn's start-up plan more complete. Tuấn, please.
  The whole class turned to look at Tuấn. Tuấn stepped up onto the platform and said:
• Professor, hello everyone. Today I'd like to talk about my dream of a farm. My parents have given me 10 hectares of low-lying land in the border area between Long An and Tiền Giang. This land is contaminated with acid sulphate, so for a long time it hasn't been much used. Everybody there owns a lot of land, but nobody is rich.
  I've researched it carefully and I will go back and work that land. It suits growing pineapples. I will use smart farming and clean organic farming. I will train the farmers around the area so that together we can help each other turn that dead land into a strong agricultural region. The yield will be very high, with pineapples as the specialised crop, and later fish farming in the ditches alongside the pineapple beds. Because we have to dig up earth to build raised beds for the pineapples, many deep water channels appear, and we can make use of them to raise fish and shrimp, so we gain on both sides.

Tuấn eagerly painted a whole bright future. Then the old professor asked the class to find the weak points and question him. One student stood up and asked:

• Professor, hello Tuấn. May I ask: if you plan to produce that many pineapples, who will you sell them to?
  Tuấn faltered a little, then said:
• Somewhere will surely buy them.
  At that the whole class buzzed with comment. The old professor spoke up:
• If you weave a dream, you must follow it through to the very end of the dream. If you plan to grow pineapples, you must plan for the people who will buy them. Everything we do in this life has meaning only when it serves someone. Growing pineapples has value only when someone eats the pineapple or drinks the pineapple juice that you grew.
  There are people who want to buy pineapples to eat but don't know where to buy them. That is the responsibility of marketing and distribution. There are people who never think about pineapples at all; so how do you let them know that pineapples are good for their health? That is the responsibility of advertising and PR.
  Then, will the pineapple output you plan to produce equal, or be a little less than, what the market needs? Are you able to create a market overseas?
  Remember, it is consumption that opens up the flow of goods. When you start a business, you must think about consumption. Who will use your goods, products and services? Don't grow or produce things by imitation and then find nowhere to sell them.
  The secret of success is this: if you take pains over one part of production, you must take pains over five parts of consumption. The effort spent on the challenge of selling must be five times the effort spent on the problem of production.
  To forecast demand for a product, we must use artificial intelligence as well, because the problem of demand is extremely hard. At home or abroad, how do customers understand the product? Is the state of the economy supportive of spending? Which products will conflict with ours? How long before our product becomes boring... ✈️

In starting a business, creating the product or service is the job in front of us, and selling the product is the job further off. So people tend to pour their strength into the job in front and don't understand the job far off. They don't realise that it is precisely the far job that gives direction to the near one. If we know what people need, we will know what to produce.
After all, business is also a form of service.