MBA916 What You Can Learn From a 30 Year Business Run Buy One Man

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the daily podcast where business is pleasure 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 Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. If you're looking to build your business, if you're looking to get started with your online website, you need to know the must haves for any business website. And that's why we created this free guide, the eight Must Haves of any Business Website. You can check it out at 100mba.net guides. In today's episode you will learn what you can learn from a 30 year old business run by one man. And that one man is Yas Kubota. He is the founder of Happy Eggs. He's an organic egg farmer in Australia and I met him personally when we were up in Port Douglas for our business retreat. Egg farming. Yes, egg farming. And he's got more business than he can handle. In today's episode you'll learn about his business and the hustle behind it, how he manages everything himself and how if you have patience and perseverance, amazing things can happen for your business. If you're a solopreneur, if you're running things lean by yourself, you're going to love this episode because it's going to show you what's possible in a very real and practical example with a physical business. This is going to be a really interesting episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Happy Eggs was started by Yasu Kuboto and his wife Kazuko about 30 years ago. They bought a 24 acre farm up in Queensland in Australia and Today they have 18,000 chickens. Now you might be thinking, wow, that's a lot of chickens, but that's a lot of acres too. 24ac acres is a lot of space for them to roam around and that's their whole thing, fresh free range eggs. Now this couple is incredible. They're Japanese immigrants that moved to Australia around 30 years ago and got started and they've been running on a shoestring budget from the start. Like I mentioned, I met Yas Kubota on a trip up to Port Douglas and it was just by chance because we were stopped at a neighboring town and we stopped in just to have a quick bite at a small cafe. And it was this old, very modest delivery truck. And we're talking about a small delivery truck pulling up with the Happy Eggs logo on it. And this very positive smiley Japanese man comes out of the truck and he's delivering eggs to the cafe. And he just struck me as this very happy person and I just wanted to meet this guy because he had this huge smile on his face and I just find people like that interesting. So after he delivered his eggs to the cafe, I stopped him and I shook his hand, said, hello, my name is Omar and I want to know, is this your business? And he said, yeah, this is my business. I have an egg farm and I've been delivering organic eggs for 30 years. I have the number one eggs in Australia. We're number one. We taste the best. And he was very proud. He wasn't trying to show off or anything like that, but he was very, very happy. We took some pictures and I asked him some questions about his business. And actually when I was talking to him, another man approached him and started talking to him, asking about his family. And I asked him, how do you know him? How did you meet him? And. And the other gentleman said, oh, he's been delivering eggs to my cafe for years. I was like, whoa, this guy really has his network down pat. So after our exchange, I really wanted to do some research on him and I did. And he basically runs his whole business himself. His wife does some of the work back at the farm. So he does have some help, but basically him and his wife run everything. They feed the chickens, they, you know, get the eggs and inventory them and put them in the right boxes. He loads them up in the truck, he delivers them to each cafe every day. And business is booming for him. He can't take on new clients because, you know, his chickens can only make so many eggs. But he's happy with the business he has, and he inspired me to do this episode because he really shows you that you can do so much on your own. You can build a successful business on your own. And he came from Japan with very little. He saved his money. He invested in a farm up in Queensland, which is, you know, less expensive property than somewhere like in New South Wales or, you know, Sydney. And he delivers to cafes in Cairns, which is not a major city in Australia, but there's lots of restaurants and places that need eggs. What struck me about his business also is that it's also very economy proof, meaning that even when the economy is down and people don't have much money, they might cut back on vacations or cut back on expensive items, but they're not going to cut back on something as basic as eggs, which need eggs to cook and bake. And cafes need them for breakfast items like French toast and, of course, eggs and omelets and all that stuff. So he chose a product that he could sell over and over again, regardless of the fluctuation of the economy. But he does focus on having a quality product, making sure that his chickens are always healthy, that the land itself is healthy, that he's feeding them good food so they produce great eggs. You know, I'm not an agricultural expert, but he is told his eggs are number one, so he's obviously doing a great job. So what does this mean for you if you're running a solo operation or maybe just you and your spouse or you and a friend, if you give yourself enough time and you work hard and you hustle. Like Yasukuboto, who actually delivers his own eggs. Yeah, he can get a driver. Yeah, he can get somebody else to do it, but he does it himself because he enjoys meeting his customers and making sure that they're happy with the product. So have a long term view and realize that there's a lot you can do if you give yourself enough time. One of the truths I've learned over my course of entrepreneurship is that we really underestimate how much we can over a long period of time and overestimate in the short term. So for example, we put too much on our plate and say we can get it done within a week, but we put too little on our plate when it comes to a year. And that just has to do with the fact that, you know, most of us are not really great at perception when it comes to long term. Often we think we can't get a lot of things that can get done in a year and then we don't really shoot for long term goals. So make sure you have those long term goals and know that if you have the time that and are willing to put in the work, you're going to outlast people. This podcast is proof of that. We've been doing this podcast since August 2014. So three and a half years. I can hardly even believe it's been three and a half years, but it's been three and a half years and we're still one of the best business podcasts on itunes. We outlasted people. Yes. We try to improve the show and we try to innovate and bring in great, great topics and you know, guest teachers from time to time. And I try to improve my presence on the mic every time I'm on the mic. But a lot of people quit along the way. A lot of people drop out of the race, A lot of people don't try to improve. And just by hanging in there and working hard, you have a competitive advantage. Another thing you can learn from this example, happy eggs, is that he bought an asset and really cultivated that asset so it can work for him instead of the other way around. So he bought a piece of land, his farm, and then he started raising chickens to have eggs. It's really his asset. And, and every business has a common asset that they leverage to build a long term business. So if you have an online business, say for example you sell online courses or software, then your asset is really the audience you build. Your email list, those who visit your website, your blog readers, your podcast listeners, your video subscribers, it's your asset. Those are the people that are going to make your business happen, that audience, those are the people who are going to be interested in what you have to sell. So cultivate that asset, that make sure you have healthy chickens, right? Make sure you have a great audience. Your reputation, your brand is a big part of who you are and the assets you own as a business. When big companies buy little companies, they're not just buying the technology, they can reproduce the technology, they're buying the audience, they're buying the asset they built. So when Instagram got bought by Facebook for a billion dollars. A lot of people are like, wow, that's a lot of money for some app that you can create, you know, in a few months. Well, Facebook is not buying the app. They can create the app. They have plenty of engineers to create an app just like Instagram. But they're buying the usership, they're buying the audience, the millions upon millions of people who are on Instagram already. And they're going to put them into their audience and grow their assets.

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A few more things I want to share with you that I learned from studying happy Eggs and getting to know its founder. The guy is selling eggs, okay? He's selling eggs. It's not revolutionary. It's nothing new. It's not some crazy invention. But he has a profitable business. And that's what I love about this example. It's not sexy. It's not unique in any way. But he has a profitable business. He works hard, he's happy. He has great, happy customers as well. And he earns a great living doing that. If you ask me, this guy won. He won in life. And it goes to show you it's not the idea a lot of people are worried about. Is my idea good enough or I have all these great ideas, I don't know what to do with them? Ideas are dime a dozen it's the implementation that matters. I say this all the time and it doesn't have to be a brilliant idea, it just has to be well executed. It has to be hard. High quality people just need to want what you have. And in Happy Eggs situation, they actually need his product. You know, they need eggs to run their cafes. And the last point I want to share with you, and this is probably the biggest takeaway I got from meeting Yasu Kubota is he had a huge smile on his face and he had the time to stop and speak to me while he was making his deliveries. Told me a little bit about his business and he was very proud of his company. And it was sh. Showing me his logo on his T shirt and even took the time to take a picture with me. And I'm sure he has his own challenges and his own things he needs to deal with is his own business. But I felt like he had perspective, like he was happy he has a business that he is working, that he gets to meet all these people. And a lot of us, sometimes we lose sight of that. I have to admit, sometimes I lose sight of that to be happy that, hey, at least I have something that can sustain me that I can live off. Yes, it's frustrating at times. Yes, it's really challenging all the time. But this is what I want. This is what I actually set out to do to build a business so I can live my life the way I want to live my life and create great things in the world. And he reminded me of that. He reminded me to smile and to enjoy the process. And it reminded me I had nothing to complain about. Why would I ever not be smiling? I should be smiling all the time like this guy. So I hope these takeaways helped you. I hope that this inspired you and gave you some motivation to understand that, hey, you could do this. Even if you're a one person show or it's a small family business, you can do this now. Scuboto, if you happen to listen to this episode one day. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me, to shake my hand and take a picture with me. You inspired me and I know you've inspired many of our listeners listening to this show today. Guys, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Don't forget, tomorrow is free Ride Friday. We give away a lifetime membership to one of our courses every Friday for anybody who's left us a rating and review. It's a weekly random draw. Every week we announce a winner and we Give away a Free Ride. This week we're giving away Easy Course, which is a $500 course on how to create an online course. 30 days to launch. So if you haven't left us an itunes rating and review, make sure you do that now so you can enter the weekly random draw. Alright, that's it for me today guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Lessons in life and in business are everywhere and I'm so gracious and I'm so happy to be able to notice these lessons along the way, even when I'm up trying to relax and have a great breakfast at a cafe. And that's what I love about being an entrepreneur. There's so much to learn. There's so much that you can take in from around you and the people that you meet. All right, that's it for me today guys. I'll check you tomorrow on Free Ride Friday where you will learn how much does it cost to sponsor a major conference. I'll check you then take care. Of.

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