MBA2253 The Business of Japan P1: Why Japan Is So Good at Business

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More impressively, they have a population of 125 million people with a staggering low unemployment rate of 2.5%. It's the lowest unemployment rate in any of the G7 countries which include Canada, FR, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU. Many economists believe that Japan breaks a lot of the rules of business and yet is successful. It's the third largest economy in the world and it's powered not just by the big companies like Toyota and Sony, but also many small businesses. On this journey, I'm going to share with you exactly why this all works and how we can apply some of the things that they do in whatever we do today and every Monday. For the next three Mondays, I'll be publishing an episode specifically on this topic, ranging from how to tap into the $5.6 trillion economy yourself, how business here is east meets west at its best, or even how Japan has built in billions of dollars in revenue every single year by creating beautiful, cute things. I'm not joking. It's actually a thing here. And I'll explain in further episodes. So let's get into it. Let's a business. The first time I came to Japan, it mesmerized me. And not because of all the typical reasons of crowded streets, huge buildings, and neon signs. It was really all about how they do business. Even as a tourist here, you notice that they do things differently here. Whether you're buying a meal, a retro Nintendo video game, or doing any basic routine, mundane things like renting a car, a lot of the things they do actually seems counterintuitive, but it works. And I'll explain in today's episode. We're gonna focus on why Japan is so good at business. And it really boils down to one concept, one idea, and that's the Japanese art of mastery. It's called shu ha ri. Shuha ri is a philosophical concept for mastery of skills and techniques. It's embedded in Japanese DNA, from tea ceremonies to flower arrangements to martial arts to craftsmanship art, and of course, business. Shu ha ri is three concepts, three words or three phases. And that's shu is protect, ha is break, and re is detach or transcend. Now, what does it all have to do with business? And more importantly, your business and how to improve it? Now, what makes Japan special or very good at what they do, especially in business, is they don't have the concept of good enough. They have a learner mindset. They have a mastery mindset, meaning every time they do something, they're trying to get better at it, even if it's just their job, even if it's cleaning toilets. And by the way, the toilets are spotless here. And it's because of this tradition. It's because doing things right is really the only way to do it. And this goes back to an episode I done recently about whatever you do, whatever product or service you have, if you do what you promise and you do it well and you do it consistently, it's very hard for you to fix, because most people don't do this. Most people cut corners, they're not consistent. They don't actually show up every single day doing things right. They see this as an act of service. Let me give you an Example, a few days ago, I checked into my hotel in Tokyo. In most countries around the world, when you check into a hotel, it's a little bit of a pain in the butt. You gotta put a credit card on file. They put a hold on your credit card. There's incidentals, there's extra charges left and right. They'll often nickel and dine you for every little thing that you want. Let's say you forgot your toothbrush. We'll charge you for that now. But when I checked into my hotel, I paid for my stay in advance. There was no hold on the card because there's no incidentals. There's no mini bar in the room, so you don't have to worry about that. And they're here to serve you. And it would be, in their culture disrespectful to not trust you enough to hold your money just in case you damage the room. There's a sense of harmony and a sense of community that, hey, these are adults. They're not going to mess around. So what this does is it creates a great experience for the customer. They feel respected. They feel like it's seamless. You're checked in in less than a minute. And if you forget your toothbrush, they will give it to you, no extra charge. They don't really nickel and dime you here. There's no tips here. There's no extra charges. In fact, tipping here is seen as disrespectful. And that's again, because it seems like, hey, I must not be doing my job right. So this leads me to think, hey, what do I need to do? What do I need to do in my own business to make the whole experience of working with me seamless, easy, effortless, respectful. And that brings me back to shu ha ri. The second part of shu ha ri is ha, which stands for break or transformation. How can I make things even better in my business? How can I improve things beyond what I set out to do in. In my business when I started? How can I transform the experience for my customer to make it better than ever? And the last one re is detach and transcend. And I think this is a very important one. And this means detaching yourself from the work, meaning you detach yourself from the actual action. Meaning if somebody complains on an email about your service, you don't take it to heart. You don't see this as a direct attack against you. You see it as more of a way to improve, a way to grow your business. This allows you to be a little bit Less emotional about your decisions in business and more practical. This is why the Japanese have no problem apologizing. Sumimasen, which means excuse me or sorry, is said often, especially in business transactions. And it's not seen as weakness, is seen as a way of accepting feedback and accepting that, hey, I can get better. One of the things that you notice quickly here in doing any kind of business in Japan is how polite people are. Of course, there's a lot of bowing in Japanese culture, but there's also a lot of respect. And what I think is interesting is in the west, many people see this as a sign of weakness. They see that if you're too nice, you're gonna get walked all over. Nothing can be further from the truth, and you can't become the third largest economy doing so. If that was true, when I was first exposed to this type of attitude, when you're doing business with customers, I started applying to my own business. For example, if a customer sent a message to our customer service desk, upset about something, not happy about something that we're doing, I started my reply with sincerely apologizing, making sure that I know that, hey, I'm really sorry you had this experience. This is not what we want to do. We want to make sure you have a great experience. Let me see how I can help you. Many times we get defensive and we want to justify why we do things the way we do. That doesn't really matter from the customer's perspective. What the customer really wants is you to validate the fact that, hey, this is not what they expected. And by apologizing right off the bat, it changes things. More often than not, the reply I get back from the customer is them apologizing. Say, I'm sorry for being so harsh. I wasn't feeling good that day, or I misunderstood. Reciprocation is human nature. People will reciprocate for the most part. Of course you're going to get people that don't. But business is about the averages. Now, there's something I want to share with you that most people don't really pick up when it comes to this topic of mastery. When you are dedicated to mastery, when you want to get better and better at something, you don't mind doing the work. You don't mind rolling up your sleeves and making it happen day in and day out. I visited and chatted with a sushi chef in Tokyo, Japan, right across the street from Tokyo University. The place is called Kazushi and it's 75 years old. The sushi chef took over from his uncle. In the restaurant, you have about 10 seats and it's run by two people. The sushi chef Umemoto and his uncle's wife. His uncle passed away a few years ago, but the tradition and the restaurant lives on. But how many restaurants do you know is run by two people? That's it. They do everything. They serve. They seat people, they take reservations, they clean the bathrooms, they contact the suppliers, they serve the drinks. They do the accounting. They do everything. Why do they do this? Why don't they just hire people to run the restaurant for them? Or maybe they could just do the cooking. And it all boils down to this is their craft. They take pride in running their business and they don't mind doing the work. Because in order to become a master, you gotta keep doing it every single day. You gotta get better and better. And I love this mentality because it's a great reminder when you get up in the morning and you're not feeling so hot about going to work or working on your business, it's the concept of, hey, by me getting up consistently every day, I'm committing to mastery. I'm committing to getting better every day. This is being an entrepreneur. The sweet and the sour.

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So the Japanese do things a little differently. And it's no wonder cars like Toyotas and Hondas and Mazda's never break down or rarely do. They're known for their craftsmanship and their quality and their reliability. And all boils down to shuha ri, the Japanese art of mastery. How can you sprinkle in some Japanese art of mastery in your business? Well, let's think of some practical ways to get started. How about your content? See your content creation as mastery. Whether you're starting a YouTube channel, you're blogging, you're podcasting or growing your following on Twitter. Every time you post, every time you create a piece of content, it's a chance for you to get better. A chance for you to become the creator that people want to watch or read or follow. Let's detach ourselves from the result. And this is the thing about the Japanese. They're not really worried about if they're winning, if they're succeeding, if they're crushing it today, they just focus on the craft. If I get better every single day, if I work on it, eventually I will become a success and you could do the same. I think sometimes we're a little bit data crazy. We obsess about the numbers, about the progress, about the conversion rates, about our MRR and our revenue and all that stuff. And that stuff is important and we're not going to just discount it. But when it's our focus, and the only thing we worry about, the way we grow those things is by just getting better, is being better at what we do, having a better product, having better content, being better at sales and marketing, understanding that it's all rooted in improving our skills. Because that's exactly why the Japanese are so good at business. They focus on mastery and not so much on getting immediate results. I hope you enjoyed part one of our four part series, the Business of Japan. Next Monday, I'm going to go into the economy of kawaii. Kawaii means cute in Japanese. Now this might sound strange, but Japan makes billions of dollars a year on being cute. But it's a part of a bigger idea. The idea of beauty, the idea of aesthetics, but it's also about the idea of being cute. I'll share how they do it and how you can do it in your own way in your business. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 OMBIE Show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast. Appreciate. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I decided to go on this journey to Japan to do this series because sometimes you have to get out of your own bubble, out of your own four walls or even community country to see a new perspective, to change things up and to improve things in your own business and your own life. Sometimes we think we have it figured out, but oftentimes other people, other places in the world have it figured out too, but in a different way. A way that you can use to differentiate yourself and get better. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode where we get into the topic of coaching via email. It's a booming concept, offering your coaching services over emails. I'll share with you how to do it, why you may want to do it, how much to charge and how to set it all up. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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