The two or three hundred members of the commercial expedition team are all famous businessmen along the Datang coast, and their status and status are relatively high, and these people must not have safety accidents, otherwise, they will cause irreparable damage to the entire Datang commercial system, and the consequences are very serious.

Commerce itself does not create any wealth, and merchants never engage in any production, but commerce is a place that can stimulate the production of wealth, and it is extremely important for the growth of wealth in the whole society.

After all, commerce is an institution for the exchange of goods between different groups of people, and without exchange, people will not be able to get the goods they need, and they will not be able to promote the development of the whole society.

The Tang Empire has now entered the stage of industrialization, and the production rate of goods is very fast, if there are no merchants to quickly sell these products to the people who need them, then the commercialization of the Tang Dynasty will not be able to be effectively carried out, and the development of the empire will also fall into a state of stagnation, and even cause a certain degree of collapse and economic depression, which will have a fatal impact on Li An's prosperity and prosperity of the Tang Empire.

Therefore, the lives of these merchants are extremely important, and their existence is necessary for the prosperity of the Tang Empire, and they must not have anything to do.

If you want to talk about buying and selling, anyone can do it, but a small fight is not a good thing, buy a radish for a penny and sell it for two pennies, or grow your own vegetables and sell them on the street, these are very simple, anyone can do it, and there is no loss to the empire if you lose such a merchant.

But a lot of large-scale business requires brains, and the operation, sales, and regulation are very complex, and any problem in any link will lead to a catastrophe.

Therefore, it is very easy to do a stall business, but you can't make much money, and it is more difficult to do a big business, which requires a clear mind and wise experience, as well as the road that has been paved by our ancestors, otherwise, it is simply impossible to do business with ease.

For example, if you don't have your own channels, no matter how cheap your goods are, no one will buy them, and you can't earn a penny if you rot in the warehouse and get moldy, so sales are very critical issues, these big businessmen are basically business elites who have been doing business for generations, and they have their own unique business routines, which are not easy for ordinary people to master, and they will not tell outsiders this secret.

Supervision and control is also a very important ability, this ability is not a short time to learn, you don't need to supervise a stall by yourself, just manage yourself, but if the business is bigger, then you need to open a lot of branches, with hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of subordinates, how should these subordinates manage, how to supervise the financial personnel, so many people under their command are working hard? At the same time, it is necessary to form a special organization to supervise and optimize these subordinate employees to further save costs and create greater business value for themselves, and this is an ability that the layman does not have.

For example, the Chinese Empire in later generations implemented the national enterprise system, and the whole country was a large enterprise, and all large and small enterprises throughout the country were state, so it put forward very high requirements for supervision.

At the beginning, the supervision was quite strict, but after a long time, it was not good, many moths began to multiply on a large scale, using various methods, embezzling the country's property, resulting in all the profits of the enterprise being swallowed up by these moths, so that the enterprise has no funds, and the final outcome is bankruptcy, and it can only be bankruptcy.

So where did the regulators go? I'm sorry, the authorities and institutions were bought by these moths, and they also got a piece of the pie, and they participated in the embezzlement of state-owned property, leaving a lot of mess behind.

In addition to having reliable sales outlets and effective supervision, a successful businessman has more essential skills that can ensure that they can be profitable in the long term and pass on to their children and grandchildren, so that their children and grandchildren can become wealthy.

Business skills are formed in a long-term exploration, and they are definitely not quick in a short period of time, so these most famous businessmen of Datang must not have personal accidents, otherwise, Datang's overseas trade industry will be paralyzed, which will seriously affect the sustainable development of the Tang Empire.

As a maritime businessman, Zhang Batian naturally understands the routine of doing business, but he can't fully understand the market in various places, he knows that if the Tang Empire wants to develop better, it is inseparable from these merchants, although the addition of these merchants will divide some of his own interests, but it is extremely beneficial to the entire Tang Empire, and he is now very rich, after Li An's threats and appeasement, he no longer cares about losing some benefits.

"Li Shilang rest assured, the team has been divided into ten groups, each group is only twenty or thirty people, short and easy to manage, and strictly ordered them not to disperse, I believe it will be fine."

Zhang Batian replied.

When Li An heard this, he nodded with great satisfaction, Zhang Batian's arrangement was very in place, and it was very beneficial to manage these businessmen in groups, two or three hundred people were in a mess, and it was easy to make mistakes when counting the number of people, and after being divided into ten groups, it would be much more convenient for different people to be responsible for management.

In this way, each group has only about 20 merchants, plus dozens of servants who serve them, plus 50 soldiers who escort them, a group of more than 100 people, which is considered a small group, which can be well developed in various places, enjoy the scenery of each country, understand the resources and folk policies of each country, and set up workshops in these countries after a clear investigation.

After simple preparations, the caravan began to set out for the expedition, and in order to feed and live comfortably, Li Ang prepared ten large ships for them, and sent two steam cannon ships to escort them.

And for the sake of safety, they are not scattered expeditions, but act in unison, go to a country together, after landing, they can be slightly dispersed, according to different groups, go to different towns to investigate, and after the end of the expedition date, they will return to the port of departure, leave by boat, and go to the next port.

This way of concentrated investigation can ensure the absolute safety of these businessmen, and once they encounter bad signs, they can quickly gather together, thus forming a relatively strong force.

Moreover, the one-on-one inspection also promotes communication between the merchants, and these guys stay together all day, and it is impossible for them not to talk to each other, but they definitely want to communicate.

And the topic they are most likely to exchange is to make direct investment in workshops in small countries along the way, although their peers are enemies, they also have direct competition with each other, when the resources owned by the countries along the way are very high, this is not something that any of them can swallow alone, even if these more than 200 people are all united, it is impossible to mine all the resources of the small countries along the way, and they will not be able to do it for 10,000 years.

In addition to competition, there can also be cooperation between them, for example, many industries have upstream raw materials and downstream finished products, and there may be more than one kind of raw materials, which requires more businessmen to cooperate.

For example, one of the merchants took a fancy to the climate of a certain place and planned to develop a fruit plantation, while another businessman planned to build a canning workshop here, and another businessman wanted to make preserved fruits.

The three of them can work together, with one of them running a plantation to supply the two downstream families with fresh fruit ingredients, while the other two businessmen run a canning and preserved fruit workshops, respectively.

In this way, a good cooperation was formed, and some people felt that the three workshops could be opened by a single businessman, after all, they were all very similar industries.

But the person who said this ignored a very important point, that is, every merchant has his own characteristics, which can also be said to be ancestral secret recipes.

For example, the first merchant is very good at growing fruits, he has an extremely effective skill, he can grow high-yield and delicious fruits, and this skill, he will not tell the other two merchants, and the other two merchants will not learn in a short time, if forced planting, the effect is not as good as buying the fruit he grows.

The other two merchants also have the same situation, one is very good at seasoning canned food, and the canned food is always better than the others, and the other is very good at making preserved fruits, and after adding ancestral secret recipes, the taste of preserved fruits is always better than that of ordinary people.

In this way, the three people can only get the maximum benefit through the means of cooperation, if they fight alone, their benefits will be reduced a lot, which is the advantage of using their own advantages and complementing the advantages of others.

Of course, there are many more examples, for example, there are businessmen who have made their fortune from logging for generations, and the scale of the business is getting bigger and bigger, and the status is getting higher and higher, but he knows nothing else but logging, so he can only engage in this industry.

There are also businessmen who have been making furniture experts for generations, and others can't imitate it, and they are getting stronger and stronger from generation to generation, becoming well-known furniture experts.

In this way, the merchants who made their fortune from logging could cooperate with the furniture merchants, one to set up a lumber yard in the local area, and the other to open a furniture factory nearby, so as to rely on each other and jointly promote their respective businesses and continue to move forward.

This is called the art industry has a specialization, only in one direction of continuous efforts, in order to make the best and best products, if everything is done, there may be a situation where nothing can be done well.

Of course, these examples are too superficial, and the interdependence of merchants is far greater than these examples, and there will be a greater dependency between them, which is why there are so many merchants in the world.

Watching the merchant ships on which the merchants were traveling leave the port of Malacca and go to various places in the vicinity, Ang Lee conceived in his mind.

In this sea area, it is still a very backward era, but as long as the merchants of the Tang Dynasty gradually pour here, earth-shaking changes will soon take place here, many tall buildings will gradually rise, and the lives of the common people will gradually improve.

Of course, Datang will gain greater benefits and be more brilliant, in addition, some of the resources of these countries will be lost, and the environment will deteriorate a little bit.

In short, the Tang Empire will only get benefits, and there will be no harm, and although the small countries along the way have paid some costs, their living standards have been greatly improved, which is worth it, if you don't pay a little when you are poor, how can you let yourself get faster development?

In a small and impoverished country, where the people are so poor that they can't eat, how can they have the energy to think about environmental protection, which is at the expense of economic interests, and it is not suitable for a poor small country.

The pigtail dynasty of later generations in China, in order to protect the environment, refused to develop high-tech trains, insisted on using horse-drawn carriage transportation, which is environmentally friendly, but the efficiency of horse-drawn carriage transportation can not be compared with the train at all, and the promotion of economic development is also very different, not the same, therefore, insisting on horse-drawn carriage environmental protection is absolutely wrong, even if the environment is sacrificed, it is necessary to engage in trains.

Later, Taizong learned a lesson, vigorously developed science and technology, and engaged in industrialization on a large scale.

This has caused two consequences, the first is that the economic development of the Chinese Empire has entered a stage of rapid progress, people's living standards have been greatly improved, and the second is that the environment is very seriously polluted, after the introduction of various industrial and mining enterprises, as well as pesticides and fertilizers, the clear river has become a stinky ditch with sewage flowing sideways, the fish and shrimp in the river have disappeared, and the flies and mosquitoes have paved a layer.

Not only the state is like this, but the personal situation is also like this, young people are in good health, but there is no money, in order to obtain money, the best way is to sacrifice the body at the expense, to work hard, let yourself succeed, but in the process of struggle, you must endure great hardship, and this will inevitably damage the young person's body.

Some people think that you can combine work and rest, but many jobs will not give you the opportunity to combine work and rest, work more than ten hours a day, and work overtime on weekends, and want to take leave to rest, then you can only resign, and if you leave your job, you will not have income.

For ambitious people, you can work hard and be your own boss, but there are a lot of people who work hard, others use 16 hours a day to fight, you use 8 hours a day, how can you fight others?

If you want to surpass others, you have to work harder, twenty hours a day, but this will undoubtedly damage the body and make people's bodies deteriorate.