MBA2263 The Business of Japan P3: East Meets West- Business at Its Best

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. The business lessons you need to build the business you want every single 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 Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today is part three of our four part series of the Business of Japan. I travel to Japan to find out why they're so good at what they do and how your business can benefit from doing business with Japan or even just adopting their business strategies. This episode's titled East Meets West Business at its Best and it's all about how you your business can benefit from doing business with Japan. There's a reason why big companies like YouTube, TikTok, Airbnb all have rushed build offices in Japan and hire Japanese locals to help them run their business. But it's not just big businesses. A lot of smaller businesses, whether they are located in Japan or have a branch in Japan or even are running a remote team and they hire from Japan are benefiting from doing business with Japan. And I'm going to explain why in today's episode and I and why there are some amazing opportunities for you to take on to help grow your Business and how to get more value for a dollar when it comes to building your marketing plans, hiring team members and expanding to new markets. Many economists believe that Japan is the model Asian country when it comes to business. And it's because it started to industrialize before any other country in Asia. So they have a bit of a head start. But it's more than just that. There are special benefits that the Japanese government, culture and way of life that have it stand out from the other countries around the world. And I'm here to show you how to leverage those advantages to improve your business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Doing business in Japan presents tremendous opportunities in various industries. And in today's episode, I'm going to explain why and how you can get your business involved even, even if it's just making one hire from Japan. I also want to mention that many digital nomads, people that run their businesses and travel freely across the world, have found Japan to be a great place to settle down. And that has a lot to do with the fact that the yen goes a whole lot further these days, as well as some reforms that have been done when it comes to permanent residencies and your ability to stay longer than your tourist visa. But it's more than just that. We're going to talk more about that in today's episode. So the first reason why Japan has become so attractive to businesses, whether they're investing or opening up an office or hiring from there, is a large stable economy. With a GDP around 5 trillion USD. It's one of the world's highest per capita incomes. But it's not just the fact that they have a great economy. It's that they have a strong economy coupled with a low fluctuating currency. That means the yen doesn't go up and down as much as other foreign currencies against the US Dollar. Now this is incredibly advantageous if you want to keep your costs down and you can predict your costs for the long term. This is excellent for businesses that are in infrastructure or development industry, which they have to kind of predict 3, 4, 5 years in advance how much something's going to cost. But it's also great if you run a software company because software often will take much longer than expected. Japan has also been trying to attract foreign businesses and foreign direct investments for the last few years. It's implemented various measures recently to make the business environment more attractive to foreign companies. One of the things I noticed being in Japan is they made a huge effort in lowering the language barrier. Twenty years ago, if you didn't speak Japanese, it was going to be really hard for you to get by. The Japanese government in the last 20 years has really pushed learning English in schools. So. And even though they'll say, my English is not that good, it's probably a lot better than you expected. And you can easily communicate and converse with anybody in retail. They made a huge effort in installing free public wifi around cities. They made huge improvements to the regional airports to encourage people to come over and do business. But most of all, they've simplified the regulations for foreign companies to come in and set up. In fact, I sat down with one of my buddies who set up their business in Japan and has been living there for 17 years. And he compares the process when he started out as a nightmare. Now it's a whole lot simpler. And now they have drastically reduced the period of residence required to apply for a permanent residency, meaning you can live in Japan indefinitely without having to renew any visas or anything like that. But one of the big reasons many companies have established themselves in Japan, whether it's the Tiktoks of the world or YouTube or Airbnb, is they want to hire Japanese professionals. And this opportunity is open for you, even if you're hiring remotely, because work from home is something that is quite accepted in Japan these days. Now, why would you want to hire somebody from Japan? Well, there's a few specifically Japanese reasons that can really improve your business's productivity and outputs and bottom line. And here they are. Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. It's a highly educated population with some of the highest marks in literacy and numeracy in any developed nation. In fact, recently a study showed that the average 15 year old in Japan scored higher on numeracy and literacy rates than high school graduates in the US So the talent pool is really talented. The Japanese are also very, very loyal when it comes to their workplace. Most, most people will stay at a company far longer than other people from other nationalities. And this is something that is a part of their culture. They believe in sticking with the company, growing with the company, helping them out, learning from the experience. It's very rare when you speak to local Japanese people to hear that they jump around from job to job every two years. In fact, the vast majority of the Japanese people I met told me that their parents worked for the same company their whole life and that they only envisioned leaving a company once or twice in their whole career. And as an employer, you're investing in making a hire Investing in this new hire. You're training them, you're making sure that they're up to speed, they understand your culture. You want to make sure that investment pays off and that it lasts. So another huge advantage also, if you compare Japan to other industrialized Asian nations, the infrastructure in Japan is a whole lot better. Whether it's Internet connectivity or power or or infrastructure. If they have to get to work. Like in terms of getting on a subway in my time in Japan for over three weeks, not a train, not a subway, not a bus was once late and we use public transport the whole time. So this allows your employee, your team member, your office to benefit from a highly established infrastructure that can support your mission as a business to get things done. Don't take this for granted because we've hired team members from across the globe and we love every team member from every part of the world. But there are parts of the world that are challenged in these areas, whether it's power, whether it's Internet outages, whether it's natural disasters like hurricanes or monsoons or tornadoes. The point here is this is actually quite important to make sure it's business as usual, whether you have an office there or you're hiring somebody remotely from there. Now there's another side of doing business with Japan that we didn't touch on that I need to talk about. Doing business doesn't only mean starting a business there or opening an office or subsidiary or hiring from there. It also means doing trade or buying products or supplies or working with businesses that are in Japan. When I had my own e commerce store called Zenum Designs, it was custom tailored clothing for men. And in the fashion industry, a lot of people know that textiles from Japan are one of the highest quality forms of textiles. It's the best fabric you can get. And I highlight this because the products, the quality of products that you get from Japan are superior to other countries. The quality of the actual craftsmanship. And you can prove your product like I improved my shirts that I sold to my customers by having great ingredients, great pieces to my actual end product. And we did business with businesses in Japan a lot to source these fabrics and use them in our products. But let's not stop there. Products in general in Japan are of a superior quality compared to other products manufactured elsewhere. And you don't need to be a big business to do this. And it doesn't even need to be new products. I'll give you an example. I came across an ebay store that sells pre owned designer bags, Louis Vuitton Marc Jacobs, Gucci, you name it. Where do they get their bags from? Japan. Now you might be thinking, Omar, these are Italian brands. What are you talking about? Well, they're second hand bags, remember? But because in Japan, the Japanese people take very good care of their stuff, that when they sell their handbags to a secondhand store or thrift store or privately, it looks absolutely new. I witnessed this myself, going to thrift shops, going to secondhand stores in Japan, seeing these bags myself and saying, these look brand new. I don't understand how these are used. So ebay stores in the us, in Australia, they will go and source these bags, ship them over to their country and sell them at a premium. And they can charge super high prices because the bag quality is superior as a secondhand bag versus other secondhand bags in their local country. There's opportunities like this left and right in Japan because in Japan, quality is king.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. Now, one of the big reasons why Japan is one of the best countries to do business with is because in the last 60 years they have really embraced industrialization. There are open to learn from the west how to manufacture goods properly through the assembly line, through manufacturing best practices that were kind of spun off in the Industrial Revolution. And not only did they take those western practices of manufacturing and business, they then took it to a whole new level. They improve upon it. That's why if you look up the top high quality cars in terms of reliability and lack of maintenance, the top cars will be Japanese. Toyota, Honda, Mazda. They took the best of the west when it came to business and manufacturing and commerce and infused it with the east. Their work ethic, their dedication to mastery and perfection, their love of the craft and of course the already existing powerful economy. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I hope you enjoyed today's part three of our four part series the Business of Japan east meets West Business at its best don't forget to tune in next Monday for our final installment of the Business of Japan, where I share with you how I'm tapping into the $5.6 trillion economy of Japan to improve my own business. To help inspire you and show you how you can do the same, don't forget to hit that subscribe button, that follow button. It's usually the triple dots. When you're on your favorite podcast player. Whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Citradio or Overcast, make sure you hit subscribe right now so you don't miss an episode and you get access to all our back catalog. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. In business, you should always try to find ways to push the boulder down the hill and not up the hill. How can you make your business move smoother? Be easier? Have an advantage? This is why I like to share opportunities like this with you. Because when you do something a little bit differently, it gives you an advantage. It helps you compete, shakes things up in your business, and helps you improve. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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