MBA1496 Lesson Learned From My Trip to Japan

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred dollar RMBA show helping you build a better business every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. I want to start by wishing you all well. Hopefully everybody's safe and sound. We got an episode with tons of value for you to consume today. In today's episode you will learn the lessons I've learned on my trip to Japan. Before Coronavirus took over the world, Nicole and I took a 10 day vacation to Japan. This was a pure holiday, but I learned a ton from experiencing Japanese culture for the first time. So many great lessons that you can apply to your business. I have five lessons in particular I want to make sure I share with you that you can apply right now in your business to be stronger. Not only now but in the long term. People say visiting Japan is the closest thing to visiting another planet. It's such a different and surreal experience and I can testify to that. The first day was incredibly overwhelming because everything is so different. In today's episode. I want to share with you what are those different things that they're doing right and how we can apply those principles in our business Japanese culture is all about the details. So we're going to get into those in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. My trip to Japan was incredibly insightful. I'm going to share with you the top five lessons I learned by being immersed in their culture and how you can use these lessons, these insights to improve your business. Let's jump right in. The first thing you notice when you go to Japan, you spend about 24 hours, is how incredible the quality of everything is. Their attention to detail and the way they prioritize the quality of everything they do is, is incredible. They have a culture of mastery where they work tirelessly to make sure they are providing the best quality possible in anything, in a service, in a product, in a ramen, in their subway system, whatever it is, you immediately feel that everything is done so much better. A sandwich from a 711 in Tokyo tastes better than some food. I've paid five, six, seven times as much in a fancy restaurant. And the lesson I learned here is when you have impressive quality, when you have impactful quality in your products, in your services, in everything you do, it's so noticeable, it's hard to ignore. It's easy to remember. And quality is just king in the marketplace. When you're better than everybody else, when you care more than everybody else, when you are providing a better service, a better product, if you care about the details, you will win. It's a long term strategy that doesn't fail. Look at the companies that you admire, look at the products they offer, look at the service they offer. They're winning because their quality is better. I also want to mention that their quality is way more than what you're paying. The value they're offering is exponentially more than the price that you pay for anything. Whether it's to get on the subway and get somewhere where you pay like $2 to go across the city and it's efficient, clean, on time. Or if I'm having a bowl of ramen in a restaurant where the food is incredible, the quality is off the charts, and I'm paying $10 for a lunch for the best bowl of ramen I ever had in my life, which is incredible because this is not the standard in most restaurants around the world. So when you stand out, when your standards are high, you will win. When you go above and beyond, you will win. Zappos, which delivered shoes to people, which got bought out by Amazon, had incredible custom service. They won the number one vacation destination in America, Disney World. And Disneyland. Disney is a master in customer service. Going to their theme parks is a masterclass in customer service. Why is Apple the most profitable business in the world? Well, they prioritize quality. They don't put anything out that is not high quality as much as possible. Right. And in fact, if you read Steve Jobs biography, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Japanese culture had a huge impact on Steve Jobs. Takeaway number two. Japanese people tend to be very reserved, very calm. It's very hard to find somebody in Japan screaming, fighting in public, let alone getting physical. It's just not part of their culture. Yes, they have a lot on their plate. Yes, they have busy lives. But expressing that stress and freaking out everybody else around them doesn't help anybody. In fact, when we were there, it was still very early days in the coronavirus. But, you know, most of Asia was very aware of it by then. While other countries in the world, in the west, were stockpiling toilet paper and going crazy in the supermarkets and having physical fights with other shoppers to grab, you know, a bag of toilet paper. None of that was happening in Japan. Nobody was fighting over toilet paper. Nobody was freaking out. There's a sense of calm and harmony that, that their culture has that is incredible. Now, what can we do with that lesson? When you are in crisis, when there's something happening in your business, a server goes down, you get hacked, you have a disgruntled customer, something gets canceled, something happens where you're in crisis mode, you physically freaking out, stressing everybody around you doesn't help anybody. That panic mode causes more problems. You have to handle the situation, you have to solve the problem. And stressing out and freaking out is really making it worse. You could still solve the problem, but you could do it in a calm way. Japanese people have problems, but they just go about their day and their lives without disgruntling everybody else with their stress. So keep that in mind. You are not alone. You're working with other people. You're running a business with other people. People are watching you. People are seeing how you're handling things. Take a deep breath. Understand that everybody goes through challenges. Take the challenge on head on. Take the crisis head on. And be mindful of how you express yourself in that situation. Number three, being polite works. Okay? Japanese people are very polite. They're very considerate. Being considerate is the law in Japan. In fact, there's signs everywhere in Japan reminding people to be mindful of how they act. Don't disturb other people on the train. There's a sign that Says, you know, be mindful of how loud you're typing on your keyboard on a laptop. You don't want to disturb people around you. The other side of the coin is also prevalent in Japan. You'll see signs on the subway that says, if you see somebody in need, somebody in pain, help them out. There's a sense of harmony and a sense of it's your responsibility as a Japanese citizen to care for one another, to help one another, to be nice to one another. The service levels at hotels, at restaurants are incredibly high. And it's genuine. People are actually, genuinely trying to be nice and polite, not only because you're a customer, but more importantly, because you coexist with them in this world. They understand very deeply that if I create a sense of balance, if I create a sense of harmony and happiness around me and I'm good to other people and they're good to me, it's going to be good for everybody. So how does this relate to your business? Well, we always work in our business with the rule of killing them with kindness. Okay? Being kind, being polite, being nice. No matter what the circumstances, with your customers, with your co workers, with everybody involved with your suppliers, whatever it is always works, even when you don't feel like it. You know, it's easy to be nice when you feel like it, but when you don't feel like it and you're nice, that's when it really counts. Because often it really helps the other party. Let's say, for example, like a disgruntled customer, to just calm down and be like, okay, this person's being really nice to me right now, and I'm being really nasty. Maybe it's warranted at some level, but if I want to get something done here, let me tone it down a little bit. So if you're consistently nice and polite to other people, it's going to work in the long run and in the short term as well. Plus, you're creating a great environment to work in. So keep that in mind in your business. Number four, efficiency and punctuality makes a difference. I cannot tell you how efficient Japan is. I can't tell you how punctual it is. When we were taking the subway or the train or whatever it is, we would open up Google Maps and the train would depart exactly to the second when it said on Google Maps, same thing with opening times for restaurants. Same thing for when anybody was dealing with you and said, hey, I'll be with you in five minutes, or I'll be with you in a minute. It was a minute. It wasn't 10 minutes, it wasn't 20 minutes. Being efficient, being punctual and really doing it is a noteworthy characteristic. And if you can adopt those characteristics in your business, you will be noteworthy. People will say, hey, I can trust this company. They actually do what they say. And by being punctual, by actually doing the things you say you're going to do in the time you say you're going to do, it not only builds trust, but it also shows the other party, hey, I respect your time. Time is the most valuable asset in the world. Let's make sure we respect it. And by that they feel respected. So I took that on big time. I was like, man, I got to do more of that in my business.

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My fifth and final lesson that I took away from my trip to Japan is get out of your comfort zone. When I landed in Japan, the first 24 hours was very overwhelming because it's so different from everything else in the world. Not only is the language different, the culture is different. There's so many people, it's a huge city. All of a sudden you're walking around and you don't understand anything around. You don't understand any of the road signs, you don't understand any of the storefront or the instructions or the ingredients on something that you bought from the supermarket. You're pulling out Google Translate and that's really healthy for entrepreneurs to get out of your comfort zone and be challenged a little bit and understand, hey, there's other ways to do things in the world, there's other ways to do business, there's other ways to do life. I'm so glad I had that experience. I can't wait to go back because being immersed in a totally new climate, a new environment is a very fast way for you to start reflecting and evaluating your own ideas, your own opinions, your own thoughts, being self reflective, your self awareness levels skyrocket and you start to realize, wow, I'm not as smart as I thought I was. I don't have all the answers. Some things that I thought were true, maybe they're not true. So I highly encourage you when you have the chance to take a break, to travel, go somewhere that's totally outside your comfort zone, you're going to gain so much and you're going to take back so much, a renewed perspective and so many lessons that you can adopt in your business. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 BA Show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe right now on your favorite podcast app, whether it's Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or on every single one of them. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A quick tip. This whole trip to Japan, we spent 10 days in Japan, took, you know, a flight, spent five nights in one hotel, five nights in another hotel. The whole thing was free. I know that sounds crazy, but we cashed in our points. If you're not accumulating miles and points for travel with a credit card like the Chase Sapphire card or whatever local card that can give you those points so you can cash them in for rewards like hotel and airline tickets. You should do that. You could charge all your business expenses to that card and earn points so you could travel, whether on a discount or totally for free. Now, I'm not gonna be able to go for free to exotic locations every few months, but we saved up our points from the last 18 months or so and we really cashed them in with this trip. And it was a more enjoyable trip because, hey, we didn't spend so much. So, quick tip about traveling for less. Traveling for free if you can. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Hey Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month?

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