Alex,

I took a look at your sunflower seeds business plan, and have some suggestions for you.

First off, you're missing the point on price. The secret in business is to find a way to charge a high price for very little product, so that you may earn a profit. The Soviet Union has been dead for 20 years, Alex. It's okay to earn a profit. So if I were you, I'd consider a way to package not more than one and a half to two ounces of sunflower seeds for 99¢.

The best way to do that with "alternative" snack foods is to tell some bullshit story to make the product seem exotic and luxurious. I'm not sure how that's to be done with something so prosaic as sunflower seeds. Maybe the health angle or something.

Second, I liked your awareness of transport costs, but... Did you know that trucks are ten times more expensive than ocean freight, and almost as expensive when compared to rail? If I were planning to take 80,000 tons of bulk cargo out of Ukraine, I'd avoid trucks like the plague. A large truck is only going to be able to carry about 20 tons maximum, and that would be on good roads.

Eighty thousand tons of sunflower seeds would best be shipped by dumping them into railcars, and having the railcars dumped into a bulk carrier vessel. A Handysize bulker will ship 10,000 to 35,000 tons at a time.

But here's where the logic is missing from your business plan: 80,000 short tons is more than 2.5 billion ounces. Even at your five-ounce bag plan, you'd have to sell five hundred million bags of sunflower seeds to shift all the product you plan to buy.