Published by
Richard Posner
Website
http://www.successinjapan.com
Contact
Us
newsletter@successinjapan.com
Thoughts From Above And Below
Water Off A Duck's Back
“What
other people think of me is none of my business”
~Eleanor
Roosevelt, First Lady and Philanthropist~
The greatest obstacle to success on any level is being overly concerned about what other people may think of you.
The majority of people in Japan are very concerned about what others think of them. They follow rules which many outsiders might find suffocating.
"What would your boss, mother, father or neighbor think?" is given deep consideration in social circles. This concern for acting appropriately can bring orderliness and conformity, two positives for society.
But it also means that mindless behaviors - such as smoking, excessive drinking or adultery get a cultural wink. Moreover, it stifles creativity and the willingness to take risks - something a majority of people never do here.
The best strategy is to follow your heart, since we all have only one life to get things right and an undetermined number of years to attain excellence.
The best intention of friends, colleagues and others you associate with are usually detrimental to your best interest and happiness.
If someone praises you, don't attach yourself to that adulation too much because the other side of the coin - when that person scolds or scorns you - will lead to disempowerment and devastation.
You should never let external events steer your internal compass. If you know who you are and what you want and need to maximize your happiness, then trust yourself to navigate the unchartered waters of life.
Everybody has opinion, but yours is the most special. It's time to get off the emotional roller coaster by ceasing to try to please everyone. You can't satisfy everyone and trying to do so will inevitably displease most people you want at your side.
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Japan Niche Opportunities of the Week
1) The number of Japanese aged 65 or older hit a record 27 million in 2007, more than 21 percent of the population. That percentage will nearly double in the next 30 years. The number of people dying annually in Japan rose to 1.1 million in 2007, with nearly all of them cremated in accordance with Buddhist practices, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. With this in mind, the Japanese government is in desperate need of...crematoriums. Death and superstitions about death, however, have made it very difficult nationwide to build more crematoriums.
An Opportunity: The Japan Foundation, saying on their site that they are "the first organization that specializes in international cultural exchange in Japan," have hatched a plan. They recommend building ships designed to house crematoriums. This half-baked idea which has questionable legality, by itself, offers the creative entrepreneur ample elbow room to build such ships. Yet local and regional governments will consider any rational, cost-effective way of dealing with corpses. For example, a Manchester, New Hampshire firm is using a process called resomation by which the body is dissolved by using water and alkali in a hot, pressurized steel chamber. Another alternative I came across is being used in Sweden. This process freeze-dries the body in a promatorium. Swedes will then be able to bury their dead by the pioneering method, which involves freezing the body, dipping it in liquid nitrogen and gently vibrating it to shatter it into powder. When the mind goes to work, solutions - no pun intended - can and will be found. These solutions could lead to a mega-million-dollar windfall.
2) Language teaching - mostly English conversation - is a visa ticket to get your proverbial foot in the Japanese door. Unfortunately, many language teachers come here with the idea of squirreling together a few bucks, playing the sex game, and then returning to their native land to get a real job. Many, for one reason or other, stick around and glide through ten, twenty or thirty years here teaching, marrying, and then building the little schoolhouse business in rural Japan.
An Opportunity: Japan is expensive and brutal for lifetime English teachers. The best teachers often leave or learn that you need to develop streams of income through publishing or automated, online learning. Learning of English has been, for the most part, a fashion. But more and more people in Japan realize that to go for the gold and meet the people reaching spectacular heights through e-commerce they must speak English...well. I am looking for partners who have a teaching background in Japan and are tired of chasing up students all over town for pennies. Let's Mastermind and build the first entrepreneurial English school in Japan. To join me in this venture, email me at teachingmastermind@successessinjapan.com or Skype me at "sushitune." Sorry, but you must reside in Japan for the initial phase of this project.
3) Call me fortunate, but I was able to obtain a drivers license in NY many years ago without attending driving school. I took a high school-subsidized training at my high school, Great Neck North. Despite the free nature of the course, I passed my license test the first time I took it and I have been driving ever since. The Japanese have a different story to tell. Although it is not mandatory, a majority of license aspirers join a driving school and pay anywhere from 250,000 yen to more than 1,000,000 yen to take the course and obtain the license. The Japanese case is not only expensive but time consuming as well.
An Opportunity: There is a service, JapanDriversLicense.com, which helps foreigners through all the steps of converting licenses including an optional course simulation. But the real victims in Japan are the Japanese who attend these exorbitant schools. Many of them were started during the early 60s and the original owners were cronies of local politicians. These schools are - you may say - an institution. The time is ripe to open up a two-prong school at prices which undercut the competition. One prong would cater to many people who have always wanted to take a driving test but have never had the time. The school would offer midnight special courses The second idea would be to cut the cost of such schools in half by offering intensive simulation courses followed by an abbreviated in-the-car training. A good example of such simulation courses being offered in the USA can be viewed HERE.
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Eco Australia Seeks Promoter in Japan
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Well-conceived Farm Stays and Agricultural/Eco-tourism Tours. Professional promotional help to market in Japan. Partnership/commission basis. Main Target: Agricultural Universities. Contact Geoff: 61 3 9458 1320 or email us. |
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Want to Introduce Your Product or Service to Japan? Looking for partners? CLICK HERE.
Kyushu Region Industries & Businesses
This is the first in a series of directories highlighting major industries and businesses in different prefectures and regions of Japan.
Heads Up
I encourage everyone to look at Japan as a place for business, commerce and opportunity in the Twenty-First Century. It is a not only a strong launching ground for enterprise, but the last, great hope for the survival of this planet. Please fill out the form below and join our Japan prosperity circle:
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"Tranquil
Sleep Now" does what no
other sleep |
Coming UpFocus On Asia Film Festival in Fukuoka from 9/12/08-9/21/08 Introducing excellent films from Asia to the entire world. JATA World Tourism Congress & World Travel Fair from 9/19/08-9/21/08 The overall theme for JATA World Tourism Congress 2008 is "Revitalizing the Japanese Market." CLICK HERE for details. |
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Set-Up Business Costs Illustrated
JETRO has a good model of initial costs to set up a business in Japan. View it by CLICKING HERE.
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Some Settling News
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In commemoration of the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH), the Japan Housing Association (JHA) started the IYSH Memorial fund based on contributions from private companies and individuals. It funds annually the training of 14 or 15 individuals from countries or suffering from squalidness or housing displacement caused by war or natural disasters. It has also funded subsidies for individuals from impoverished nations and regions wishing to attend international conferences concerning housing problems. Finally, they offer the IYSH Memorial Prize (1 million yen) to honor individuals and organizations working in the housing resettlement field. Since half of my readers are from regions which qualify, I hope this is a good reference point for you all. Visit the Japan Housing Association site by CLICKING HERE. |
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Understanding Public Works Bidding in Japan
Nobody ever says that Japan is an easy country to do business in. Lack of transparency is commonplace and most businesses and contractors want to keep business - as much as possible - in the Japanese business family. An extremely difficult field to break into is public works. In alignment with my belief that ignorance is not an excuse, please read the "Act for promoting Quality Assurance in Public Works' so that you can know the challenges you need to face in submitting public works proposals. CLICK HERE to read it now.
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This Week's Challenge
Lessons From The Colonel
by copywriter-guru Perry Marshall of PerryMarshall.com
Maybe you've heard the story of 1000 restaurant owners who rejected Colonel Sanders' Fried Chicken proposal, and Prospect #1001 who finally said "yes." BUT... did you ever hear the story behind the story? This is a good one. An old photocopier salesman, who called on Colonel Sanders back in the 60's, passed this along to me. The real story is: The Colonel had a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, which had been doing very well. A new interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing that his business was about to dry up, the Colonel auctioned off his operations. After paying his bills, he had nothing to live on except his $105 Social Security checks. In 1952, confident of his chicken recipe, he began crisscrossing the country in his car, making an offer to restaurant owners: He would walk into a restaurant, announce to the owner, "I bet my chicken recipe is better than yours" and propose a cook-off. (The chicken provided by the restaurants he visited, using his recipe, was part of his plan for feeding himself during those lean days.) If the owner was favorable, he would "franchise" his chicken recipe to them at 5 cents per chicken. In all, just over 1000 restaurants turned him down, without one successful deal. Then one day he was having his daily cooking duel with a bar owner, who said to him, "Sir, I'm trying to sell beer, not chicken. This stuff needs to be a whole lot saltier so customers will get thirsty and buy beer!" So he grabbed the salt shaker, poured some salt on, and took another bite. "Now THIS is GREAT," he said. "If you'll add salt to this recipe, I'm a taker!" The Colonel took a bite and spit it out -- it was terrible! But Colonel Sanders had been on a NO SALT DIET for 30 years, so his tastes were obviously different than everyone else's. The Colonel wasn't stupid! He might not like the salt, but it was better than poverty. Thus began the Colonel's enormously successful Kentucky Fried Chicken legacy. Here's the kicker: At one time, if you bought a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken, here's what it said on the side: "When Colonel Sanders added the 11th spice, he instantly knew it was the best chicken he'd ever had." Of course they didn't tell you what spice it was. This is so instructive. First of all, Colonel Sanders could have made 1000 MORE presentations, driven his car until the transmission fell out, spent every dime of those $105 Social Security checks, prayed for success and recited positive affirmations every morning in front of the mirror. But he still would have come up empty handed, had he not been willing to change his recipe! Secondly, although the recipe he so passionately believed in was the best recipe for HIS taste buds, it was not the recipe that his customers really wanted. Without a recipe that the customers wanted, no amount of effort or persistence would make it work. With the right recipe, he was unstoppable. Third, the recipe he had before he added salt was ALMOST right. It was VERY, VERY CLOSE to what it needed to be. Adding salt to a lousy recipe wouldn't have helped much. So all the effort he expended developing the original recipe was worthwhile. Fourth: Persistence DID pay off, but not the way we might expect it to. Sometimes we're looking for the magical day when our persistence, and the sheer number of people we talk to, leads us to the RIGHT person who will say "Yes" and open wide the doors to success. But for Colonel Sanders, playing the "Numbers Game" was not the key. The real key was bumping into someone with the audacity to suggest something different, and for the Colonel to be eager enough for a breakthrough to change his recipe. Fifth, the magical ingredient was ordinary table salt. Salt, all by itself, is worthless as a food item. Chicken, all by itself, is pretty bland, and may not even do the trick with 10 other perfectly good spices. Put them together, though, and you've got a real winner! Never overlook the possibility of combining very ordinary things to create something "entirely new." Finally, motivation and hard work alone are rarely (if ever) enough to accomplish a challenging goal. Innovation, flexibility, careful listening, endless experimentation, and the setting aside of egos and old paradigms are all equally important. In my own case, I worked for several years in both corporate and direct selling. I had essentially two priorities in mind: motivation and people skills. I was enamored with these two virtues, and spent the majority of my working time pounding the phone, making cold calls, working very hard to get in front of anyone who could fog a mirror, and all that other drudgery that entry-level salespeople normally deal with. Despite all of the effort, the motivational tapes and the people skills books, there were still too many days of heroic effort and no reward. My wallet was still, inexplicably, full of hungry moths. But then things started to dramatically turn around. It was the result of two things: 1) I started to learn how to use marketing, low cost advertising and the web to assist my sales efforts; 2) I found some people who were more able and willing to support my efforts from a "customer service" point of view, than the group I was working for previously. Great marketing almost always includes the addition of some 11th spice. An ordinary ingredient that makes everything come together. It's right under your nose, waiting to be discovered and shared with the world.
