欲尋水者必赴井

If you wish to find water, you simply go to a well. It is, in truth, an incredibly straightforward law, yet when engaged in business, one frequently loses sight of such simple principles. If you desire customers, you must encounter potential customers. At this juncture, conducting every single meeting purely as a sales pitch is the play of an amateur. A master conducts a meeting not with the sole purpose of selling, but with a focus on orchestrating possibilities. If you approach with the unilateral mindset of "I must sell my product to this individual," that meeting will inevitably conclude in one of only two outcomes: success if sold, or failure if not. Conversely, an entrepreneur can construct proposals and narratives fundamentally distinct from a mere sales grind, asking: "What is the problem this customer is agonizing over? What kind of dilemma can my product resolve for them? If my product happens to be unnecessary to them, is there an alternative strategy to enhance my product or collaborate to forge a mutual benefit?"

My assessment of an entrepreneur's caliber aligns precisely with this. A mere businessman views enterprise trapped within a fixed framework. Yet let us ask: Is anyone threatening you with a blade, coercing you to pursue only this specific business? Surely not. There may be diverse reasons why you selected that particular business, but you anchored yourself there because you weighed multiple possibilities and learned from the market. Simultaneously, you are well aware that the market does not remain static; it constantly shifts. Therefore, a proprietor who remains confined within a framework, attempting to conduct trade in a mutating market using only the singular weapon they currently hold, is a foolish one. When it rains, one must sell umbrellas, and when the rain ceases, one must sell salt. If a salt merchant persists in selling nothing but salt in the dead of the monsoon season, they imperil themselves.

Hence, an entrepreneur must seek out the customer, and the act of locating the customer is itself the entrepreneur's capability. Customers are occasionally oblivious to their own necessities. There are also times when they possess no answer to their needs, remaining in a state of mere suffering. Because many customers neither describe in detail nor ponder deeply upon the problems they endure, they frequently hold blurred solutions. In response, an entrepreneur persuades them through their product, while concurrently striving to elevate its value so that by providing them with excellent utility, this business can be delivered to the many who feel the necessity.

This is the virtuous cycle; an entrepreneur incapable of executing this can be said to be falling into obsolescence, even while making money. Just as a parched soul seeks a well, and digs one if none is to be found, there are thirsty customers in this world, and some among them—unable to find the root cause of their thirst—hopelessly swallow saltwater and seawater. Whichever product you forge, there is bound to be a customer willing to gladly purchase it. You must unearth them. You must seek them out with the absolute resolve that if you fail to find them, you perish. And once found, you simply dominate the market by listening intently to their words, as though they were your deity and your master.